Lazyweb: That leaked AOL user info? Let's do crazy data-plots!

By Xeni Jardin at 10:26 pm Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Paul Boutin says,

Is anyone plotting the AOL data in detail? A friend had a suggestion: Plot search terms by time against the phase of the moon. With three full lunar cycles and 658,000 subjects in the data, are there undeniable patterns of search terms that peak with the full moon?

You just know they do this stuff at Google.

Bundt pan shaped like a "fairytale cottage"

By Cory Doctorow at 10:00 pm Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

These "Fairytale Cottage" Bundt pans turn out little castle-lets of cake, ready for frosting. Low-carbers: substitute ground round for cake-batter. Link (via Cribcandy)

MC Escher remix contest

By Cory Doctorow at 9:54 pm Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Today on the Worth 1000 photoshopping contest: remixes of MC Escher designs. Link

Fun with ticks and flesh-eating fish in C. America

By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:59 pm Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Paul says:

Wendy and I went to Belize and Guatemala for our honeymoon and had a wonderful time, but we got bitten by bugs aplenty and went through almost half a tube of Benadryl Itch Stopping Cream. Before taking a shower one eve, I felt something foreign on my posterior nether regions-- I thought it was a flap of skin or perhaps, um, a "Klingon," until I pinched it off and saw that it was a large flat tick with a chunk of my pale butt-skin still visible in its mouth parts. Here's a photo I took of the tick, after it had released the chunk of skin.

A couple days later Wendy found a similar tick on her leg. Speaking of flesh-eating, we also visited Lake Petén Itzá about a week after I'd suffered a bad sunburn. My skin was peeling, and I found that the tiny fish in the lake loved eating the pieces of skin that were rolling generously off of my back at the time. Here's a pic of me feeding the fish. They crowded and jumped for every morsel.

To do in SF: Data surveillance performance art

By Xeni Jardin at 8:38 pm Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Starting Thursday, August 17 for three nights, there’s a cool multimedia theater piece in San Francisco by the Builders Association: "SUPER VISION tells three stories about dataveillance, using a seamless blend of video, sound, new media, and theater design." Link, and here's a Wired story on an earlier edition of this show that ran at BAM last year. (Thanks, Melanie Cornwell)

Jill Carroll's story: part 3, "The First Video."

By Xeni Jardin at 4:20 pm Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

The Christian Science Monitor's 11-part series on journalist Jill Carroll's abduction in Iraq continues today with part 3:

After dinner they told me to put on a track suit they’d given me two days earlier, and remove my head scarf. I wanted to wear my hijab if they were going to film me; they said no, they wanted to make my hair messy, make me look bad.

They brought me back into the sitting room, and men began filing in, carrying AK-47s and RPGs.

Then the leader turned and coached me intently. I must say that they were mujahideen fighting to defend their country, that they wanted women freed from Abu Ghraib prison, and the US military, particularly the Marines, were killing and arresting their women and destroying their houses.

And I must cry, on cue.

I started to give my speech. A man standing behind the camera ran his fingers down his cheeks, to signal that I needed to cry.

It took me a while to work up to the crying part. But I had a lot of pent-up emotion and stress, and by the time we finished, I was crying for real.

As the taping ended, I put my head down and I just kept crying. I heard Abu Rasha behind me go, “ughh”, in a sympathetic way, like he felt bad that I was sitting there crying in front of them.

Ink Eye’s reaction was different. He showed no sympathy. And I knew his opinion of me – my personal character – might make the difference in whether I lived or died. He said, “We have to do this again.”

Link to "The First Video," and link to yesterday's installment -- part two, "A Spy With a Homing Device." Link to previous BB posts on Ms. Carroll.

Haunted Mansion with the lights on video

By Cory Doctorow at 3:30 pm Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Ricky sez, "supernumber18 on YouTube has posted a couple of videos of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion with the lights on. While this would normally be news in itself (it's fairly rare to see the Mansion with the lights on), there's even more to the story. Evidently the kids were trying to steal something from the recently made-over attic scene."

Hot damn this is a kick-ass piece of video -- the Mansion with the lights on, it's like a cross between seeing your parents having sex and catching the hand of God rearranging the laws of physics while your back is turned.

On 08/13/06 we were riding Haunted Mansion at Disneyland when the lights suddenly came on. We later learned that it was because a few kids tried to steal a prop. They were escorted outside by CM's and dealt with by security.

Link (Thanks, Ricky!)

Update: Andrew sez, "I instantly thought of the video I had recorded of Space Mountain with its lights on, which I recorded on my trip to Disney World last week."

Update 2: This video has been flagged as private, so you and I can't watch it anymore. Man, that sucks.

Update 3: Ricky sez, "I've mirrored the Haunted Mansion lights-on videos from YouTube (snagged them before it went private) on my blog."

TSA will not touch your monkey.

By Xeni Jardin at 2:56 pm Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Jonathan Abourbih says,

The TSA has a really informative article on how to bring service animals through airport security, including helper monkeys. Fortunately for us all, "TSOs have been trained not to touch the monkey during the screening process."

Liebe meine abst-monkey. Now is ze time on ze security screening when we dahnce.

One-eyed baby in Chennai, India: update

By Xeni Jardin at 12:49 pm Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Scott Carney, a freelance tech journalist in Chennai, India, has been following the story of the baby girl born with one eye, no nose, and both brain lobes fused into one (link to previous BB post). He's posted some pretty intense photos and a short article here at Wired News. The images may be disturbing to some. Carney reports that a problematic anti-cancer drug may have caused the deformity.

Cory's WorldCon schedule

By Cory Doctorow at 11:55 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

This year's World Science Fiction Convention starts a week Thursday, on August 24th, in LA. I'm doing a bunch of programming this year, as well as dusting off my tuxedo for the Hugo Awards ceremony, where I'm a finalist for my story I, Robot. I'm doing several signings, as well, but if you can't make it to WorldCon, you can pre-order custom-inscribed signed copies (with free US shipping, too!) from Borderlands Books. Hope to see you at the WorldCon!

Thu, Aug 24

* 11AM: Sign at Asimov's table, dealers' room
* 2PM: Sign at Borderlands table, dealers' room
* 4PM: Podcasting Science Fiction, with Stephen Eley, Paul Fischer and Evo Terra

Fri, Aug 25:

* 1PM: Bloggers as Public Intellectuals, with Kevin Drum, MaryAnn Johanson, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Phil Plait
* 3PM: Autographing
* 5:30: Can Science Fiction Change the World? with David Brin, Sean McMullen, Craig Newmark and Cecilia Tan

Sat, Aug 26:

* 1PM: Open Source Software, with Andrew Adams, Loretta McKibben and Eric S. Raymond
* 4PM: The Singularity -- What Is It And Why Should You Care? with Todd McCaffrey, David F. McMahon, MD, Mark L. Olson and Toni Weisskopf

Sun, Aug 27:

1PM: Kaffeeklatsch

2PM: Reading

(Thumbnail of Hugo Award from a larger image on an AwardWeb page)

Share YouTube video = share friend's email with Plaxo? UPDATED

By Xeni Jardin at 11:38 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

"Natch" was among BoingBoing readers who've written in about this:

While debugging why YouTube videos are not working on one of my PCs, I tried the 'Share' link to try to get to the URL. In the popup that appeared, the NoScript extension was blocking some JavaScript. Clicking on the button to enable the code revealed that the JavaScript was hosted at -- gasp -- Plaxo (no linkee for them), the company that enlists its users to send spamalicious address book related emails. So from the looks of it, when you share a YouTube video with your friends, you may be unwittingly adding your friends' email addresses to Plaxo's databases. Slick. Or, should I say, slimy. At least it appears so. There is no confirmation that this is what is happening, but it certainly does look suspicious.

I emailed YouTube's media spokesperson yesterday evening about this question, and await a reply. I imagine YouTube's privacy policy / terms of use statement would address this possibility in some form, but I cannot access it to check -- the site is currently unavailable: JPEG screenshot.

UPDATE: No reply from YT, but Joseph Smarr, an engineer with Plaxo, explains that the answer the question in this blog-post's subject line is "no." Smarr says:

Nothing nefarious is going on here–no e-mails are being “unwittingly added to our databases”. YouTube is using our Address Book Access Widget so their users can easily pick people from their hotmail/gmail/outlook/etc address books to send video links to. It’s completely optional and no personal info is sent to Plaxo when our JavaScript loads on YouTube’s page. Furthermore, all the data we pass through as a result of using the widget is dropped as soon as the user is done selecting contacts. Lots of other sites are also using our widget (zazzle, break.com, etc.) so they don’t have to write their own auto-importers for the myriad address book services out there.

I’m not sure how many of your readers have been following Plaxo, but we’ve taken serious steps to curtail the amount of update e-mails our users send out, and we’ve publicly apologized to the people who were annoyed by the e-mails in the past. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about this effort, including from some of our toughest former critics, like Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. Our usefulness as a service has also increased a lot recently, with sync clients for Mac, Thunderbird, and AIM, an open API, and over 10M Plaxo members that provide up-to-date contact info automatically (no e-mails). So I hope people will take a fresh look at Plaxo!

UPDATE: YT never did reply, but their privacy policy is accessible again. IANAL, and this is sort of a moot point now since Plaxo already replied -- but the language would seem to prohibit the kind of data-sharing scenario "Natch" and other BB readers asked about.

Functional, full-sized dory-boat made from newspapers

By Cory Doctorow at 11:37 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

A reader writes, "Reverend Rob Murray in Pinawa Manitoba Canada was pining for the ocean. He built a dory out of wall paper paste and the local newspaper. With a couple coats of varathane to keep the paper and water separate she floats! Unfortunately the closest salt water from his doorstep on the Winnipeg River is Churchill on Hudson's Bay." (No word on whether he remembered to pack a tin-opener for the pineapple slices.) Link

Kevin Kelly's new blog: Street Use

By Xeni Jardin at 11:14 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

"Street Use" is a new online project by the mastermind who most recently brought us "Cool Tools." Kevin Kelly explains:

This site features the ways in which people modify and re-create technology. Herein a collection of personal modifications, folk innovations, street customization, ad hoc alterations, wear-patterns, home-made versions and indigenous ingenuity. In short -- stuff as it is actually used, and not how its creators planned on it being used. As William Gibson said, "The street finds its own uses for technology." I welcome suggestions of links, and contributions from others to include in this compendium.

Heres an entry about improvised truck armor in Iraq:

It would be hard to find a better example of "street use" than these hardened street trucks outfitted for desert war. A guy named Defensor Fortis, who was stationed in Iraq, posted some photos on Flickr of truck modifications performed by contractors. These are desperate attempt to protect a factory-issue truck from roadside bombs or enemy fire. They also boast their own artillery posts to return fire. When asked about the effectiveness of the jury-rigged armor Defensor said, "I have seen no proof, but I imagine they're fairly safe from small arms fire and more than like fitted with "run flat" tires."

Adding Asimov's First Law to the GPL

By Cory Doctorow at 11:14 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Matt sez, "In an attempt to prevent military applications of their project to create networked P2P supercomputing clusters, the developers of GPU (Gnutella Processing Unit) have 'patched' their version of the General Public License to add Asimov's First Law of Robotics."

... "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

It's a funny gag, but I'm inclined to believe that this is unenforceable -- it suggests, for example, that if you modify the software and add it to a pacemaker that fails because of a bug, you're violating the terms. The Hactivismo Public License Enhanced-Source Software License Agreement (thanks, Myles) tried a variant on this some years ago, adding a clause that prohibited weakening security, but there's no good empirical measure of whether one has weakened or strengthened the security of a system (for example, what if you increase the number of bits in your key, but accidentally introduce an implementation error that invites a new avenue of attack?). In both cases, making fundamentally innocuous steps can result in a license. If you believed that this license was enforceable, you'd be best off not using this software. Link (Thanks, Matt!)

Malware targets your online gold

By Cory Doctorow at 11:06 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

A Microsoft security person reports that a new breed of malware seeks to take over your characters in online worlds and steal their virtual gold and other loot:

Using malware or software designed to infiltrate a computer system, hackers steal account information for users of MMO games and then sell off virtual gold, weapons and other items for real money.

"Those of you who are working on massively multiplayer online games, organized crime is already looking at you," said Dave Weinstein, a Microsoft security development engineer at the company's Gamefest video game development conference...

"The police are really good at understanding someone stole my credit card and ran up a lot of money. It's a lot harder to get them to buy into 'someone stole my magic sword."'

Link

Cracked Magazine re-launches

By Cory Doctorow at 9:55 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

An Internet-era VC has relaunched Cracked magazine, redesigned to look and feel like Maxim -- short articles, lots of photos. Good writers, too:

Even he wasn't convinced it was a good idea at first when a friend suggested he consider buying Cracked. "I said 'not interested. It's comics. It's for little kids,'" Sarhan recalls. But the seed had been planted and "for the first time I stopped thinking about Cracked for what it was and started thinking about Cracked for what it could be and what the potential was." ...

Sarhan, who is 33, has gathered a stable of contributors that includes writers for "Saturday Night Live" and Comedy Central's "Chappelle's Show," as well as the satirical author Neal Pollack and the actor Michael Ian Black, co-star of the former NBC comedy "Ed" and snarky commentator on VH1's "I Love The..." series.

Link

Anthology: "It came from airport security" call for subs

By Cory Doctorow at 8:52 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Glen sez,

Following on the now-infamous pictures of confiscated liquids and gels being dumped into plastic bins, some other bloggers and I thought that this called for a new anthology of short fiction. We're launching a contest to find stories for a new anthology called "It Came From Airport Security."

In a nutshell - stories can be of any genre (and we mean *any*) as long as they deal with the results of someone (or something) being exposed to the chemicals in one of the confiscation bins. There are prizes (and room to add more prizes, should we come across any additional to give), and yes, there is a submission fee - but we've tried to keep it small. All stories must be licensed under a BY-SA 2.5 license, and the resulting anthology (and the website accompanying it) will be licensed the same. All entries - not just the top selections - will be considered for publication on the website.

Link (Thanks, Glen!)

$10,000 jewel-studded pack of cigs

By Cory Doctorow at 8:21 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Nandini sez, "Bat International, a cigarette brand, has unveiled an 18ct white gold pack pack that comes studded with a single large diamond and a ruby. The limited-edition packs will be launched for exclusive sale at selected European airports only." And ten minutes later, your $10,000 pack of cigs will be confiscated by security teams on the alert for "diamond bombs." Link (Thanks, Nandini!)

New story on Cory's podcast: Truncat, a sequel to Down and Out

By Cory Doctorow at 7:46 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

After a long hiatus, I've started up my podcast again with my story Truncat, an indirect sequel to my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Truncat is a parable about warez groups and Napster, about generation war and the trouble with power-laws. In Truncat, the reputation-based Bitchun Society is stagnating, and the birth rate has dropped off so far that only a million kids are alive on the whole planet. These kids have hacked the consciousness-backup system and illicitly copy and load the backups of their elders, treating these backups as a kind of drug.

"Adrian, you have a million friends," his mother said. "That's an audited stat. I'm sorry if you feel isolated, but none of us are moving to Bangalore just so you can chum it up with this fellow."

Adrian fought to control his irritation. His mother was always cranky before breakfast, and a full-blown fight could extend that mood through the whole day. No one needed that. "Mom," he said, twisting his body in the narrow, three-person coffin he shared with his folks so that he could look her in the eye, "I'm not asking you to move to India. All I'm doing is explaining my paper."

His mother snorted. "_The Last Generation on Earth_, really! Adrian, if I were your instructor, I sure wouldn't graduate you on the strength of something like that. I don't really care if that boy in India has convinced the ITT people that his trendy little thesis holds water. The University of Toronto has higher standards than that."

It had been a mistake to even discuss it with his mother. At 180, she was hardly equipped to understand the pressures he and his miniscule generation faced. He should've just written it and stuck it in his advisor's public directory. Only just that he'd had the coolest idea in the night and he'd reflexively bounced it off of her: once his generation reached maturity, the whole planet would be post-human, and a new, new era would start. The Bitchun Society, Phase II.

Link, Podcast Feed

Wolverine-claw temporary piercings

By Cory Doctorow at 6:42 am Tuesday, Aug 15 • Comments • Share

Freakboy had these temporary "Wolverine" piercings done at a shop in Brazil; I'm guessing that they're a little impractical around the house and on the toilet, but they're probably good conversation-starters at church and such. Link (via Warren Ellis)