The computer security wonks and human rights advocates at Hacktivismo today released Torpark, a portable tool to keep web users' identities private. Think of it as anonymity on a stick. A privacy-pop! Snip from launch announcement:

[The] anonymous, fully portable Web browser [is] based on Mozilla Firefox. Torpark comes pre-configured, requires no installation, can run off a USB memory stick, and leaves no tracks behind in the browser or computer. Torpark is a highly modified variant of Portable Firefox, that uses the TOR (The Onion Router) network to anonymize the connection between the user and the website that is being visited.

"We live in a time where acquisition technologies are cherry picking and collating every aspect of our online lives," said Hacktivismo founder Oxblood Ruffin. "Torpark continues Hacktivismo’s commitment to expanding privacy rights on the Internet. And the best thing is, it’s free. No one should have to pay for basic human rights, especially the right of privacy."

Torpark is being released under the GNU General Public License and is dedicated to the Panchen Lama*.

Link to press release, and here's Here's v 1.5.0.7. (thanks, Oxblood Ruffin and Steve Topletz!)

Reader comment: Amos says,

It might be worth reminding people that your identity and information when using tools like this is only as secure as the computer you are running it from. While suspect the Torpark folks did a very good job of ensuring that it won't *leave* any information on the system it's plugged into, there is nothing they can do to keep a keyboard logger (trojan or otherwise) from logging everything you type or, as we've seen recently, logging everything you see and everything your mouse clicks too.

Booting from a "Live CD" such as Ubuntu's avoids the whole malicious logging software issue, but info could possibly(?) still be written to swap disk and there could be a hardware key logger and/or video recorder capturing everything. Anyway, no security is absolute and using Torpark is certainly better than not using it. Just don't forget to make a judgement call about the environment you're running it in too - including the space around you.

elfspice asks,

I have known about torpark nearly a year now and have been using it frequently for about 4 months. It is most certainly not new, and I should also direct you to a new related project, i can't remember the name now (aargh) which is the same thing but with thunderbird, possibly they called it torbird (?)

Oxblood Ruffin sez,

Torpark and Torbird are both services that run on the TOR network. The former is for browsing and the latter is for email. They're derived from Firefox and Thunderbird respectively, and by the same developer. Also these tools are not brand spanking new and have been floating around the haxor world for a while. However, the improvements and added stability were deemed worthy of a more mainstream release, so we took it to the people, yØ.

Jim says,

The Torpark site seems to be down atm, but here are the direct links to the files on the evilshare download site that Torpark links to off their page: Executable, and Source.

Josh says,

The Torpark is just for Windows machines (for nw). Vidalia is for Macs & Windows and there is a Linux/Unix package as well: Link.

Yahoo and Current TV are teaming up to launch four new internet "television channels" that comprise the new Yahoo! Current Network, and all four go live tonight.

Earlier today, Xeni spoke with former Vice President Al Gore, internet godfather and co-founder of Current TV, about "Yahoo Current." Here's what he had to say:

- - - - - -

BoingBoing / Xeni: What will Yahoo Current be?

Al Gore: Four broadband channels, each consisting of a combination of professionally produced and viewer-contributed content. For Yahoo Current Buzz -- see Yahoo's Buzz Index for an idea of what this will be. We brought Madeleine Smithberg on board for this channel; she was a co-creator of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." Yahoo Current Action will offer sports programming. Yahoo Current Driver will be an auto destination. And Yahoo Current Traveler is our travel channel. That will include video postcards submitted by viewers, as well as Bono's directorial debut with a video he recently made. I've seen it, it's very interesting and very funny.

BB: Why is Current TV partnering with Yahoo for this?

Al Gore: Current has pioneered the use of viewer-created programming, and Yahoo has incredible resources with regard to networks, distribution, and community. It just made sense to join forces. The new project will take advantage of Yahoo's worldwide distribution capability on video delivery.

BB: What should we expect in the way of format? Will the video we see online at Yahoo Current also be broadcast on Current?

Al Gore: Yes, there will be some crossover. We're talking about short form video, updated constantly, and some of it will also show up on TV. These four channels are each based around parts of the Yahoo community, and the idea here is that this online community can generate a lot of interesting content.

BB: Sports, pop culture, travel, automotive -- are you planning additional channels for the future, based on other interests or lifestyle themes?

Al Gore: Well, we've got a lot on our plate with these four for now. We're going to focus on making these four channels the best they can be, and see where that goes.

Update from Xeni: As with Current TV's satellite programming, Yahoo Current will also pay viewers for selected contributions, as if to woo video authors away from uploading to non-paying sites like YouTube. You'll get $100 for each video featured on the broadband network, and if your video is selected to air on Current TV, you receive an additional $500. The Yahoo! Current site does include lawyertalk worth reading before you submit, naturally. By uploading your file, you grant Current a

...worldwide, exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid, restriction free license for a term of three (3) months (...) to distribute, reproduce, copy, record, modify, add to, combine with other materials, remove, adapt, publicly perform, publicly display, sublicense, freely assign, create derivative works from and otherwise use and exploit any of same, or any part thereof, in any medium now known or hereinafter known, in any language and by any means or manners now or hereafter developed. Further, you hereby grant Current an option to acquire the exclusive right to broadcast, exhibit or otherwise distribute the Submitted Material in all media throughout the world in perpetuity (the “Option”), which Current may exercise within three (3) months of the date you provide us with Submitted Material.

The new partnership between Current and Yahoo is particularly interesting because until now, the television network had close ties with another search and online video titan: Google. Brief Google zeitgeist segments about top search topics aired twice hourly on Current TV. Additionally, Mr. Gore served as Senior Advisor to Google (more on that in this Wired Magazine story from just four months ago).

The Current.tv/Google site is still live for now, and spotlights a Google Current episode that ran today about the Thong Girl debacle. No word from Google or Current on the present or future status of the companies' relationship.

The San Francisco Chronicle's "Tech Chronicles" blog has an item about the deal, with details on the sort of craziness former Daily Show producer Madeleine Smithberg is planning for the "Yahoo Current Buzz" channel:

One of the first bits: She sent a correspondent to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border with one of the female members of the anti-immigration Minutemen organization. The woman wants to rename Los Angeles the "City of Angels" and prefers the term "spicy folders" to tacos.

Update: the terms and conditions blurb above came from current.tv/terms.html (I can't seem to access that page right now). A Current spokesperson writes to say that two licensing options are now possible with Yahoo! Current, and they are detailed at these links: one, two. Alex Dolan of Current says,

There are actually two license options: one exclusive, and one non-exclusive. If producers choose the exclusive option, their videos that are featured on the Yahoo! Current Network will receive $100 and be eligible to air on Current’s TV broadcast for additional payment starting at $500. For producers who choose the non-exclusive option, their videos featured on Yahoo! Current will not be compensated or eligible to air on Current TV. We also have only one month from upload to option the piece.

This Shockwave game, Airport Security, has you playing an airport screener racing to confiscate arbitrary objects from travellers' luggage. Link (Thanks, Raph and Thomas!)

I'm not sure if these handtruck chairs are for sale, but they're way ingenious and a great way to cart your friends around in style. Link (via Gizmodo)

Legal Affairs magazine tells the secret history of the yellow legal pad. From the article, by Suzanne Snider:

In 1888, Thomas W. Holley, a 24-year-old paper mill worker in Holyoke, had an idea for how to use the paper scraps, known as sortings, discarded by the mill. Sortings were anything trimmed away as scrap or considered of lesser quality than the writing paper eventually packaged and sold. Holley's notion was to bind the scraps into pads that could be sold at a cut rate. Convinced he had a winning idea, he founded his own company to collect the sortings from local mills (Holyoke was then the papermaking capital of the world) and began churning out bargain-price pads.

The legal pad's margins, also called down lines, are drawn 1.25 inches from the left edge of the page. (This is the only requirement for a pad to qualify as a legal pad, though the iconic version has yellow paper, blue lines, and a red gummed top.) Holley added the ruling that defined the legal pad in the early 1900s at the request of a local judge who was looking for space to comment on his own notes...

Some believe that writing on a yellow pad is easier to read than writing on a white pad. But Israel Abramov, a professor of psychology at Brooklyn College and a specialist in color vision, dismisses the theory. Readability, he says, is more a matter of contrast—how the color of the ink interacts with the color of the paper—than of the paper color alone...

Abramov prefers a psychological to a physiological explanation for yellow's predominance. "White paper that sits around starts to look yellow and old," he said. "I heard of one professor who used yellow paper for his lecture notes because he didn't want his students to know how old the notes were."

Link (via Michael Leddy's Orange Crate Art)

A few years ago I wrote "The Cult of Capsaicin," an article about the subculture of people who are hooked on incredibly hot peppers. The article never ran in the magazine I wrote it for, but I've shared it with a few friends, and they enjoyed reading about these chileheads who get hooked on the endorphins the body releases to suppress the pain caused by eating hot pepper.

Here's an excerpt:

Try this: put a couple of drops of Tabasco Sauce on your tongue. Hot, right? Tabasco Sauce rates between 2,500 and 5,000 on the Scoville scale, the standard measurement system for chile pepper heat. Now try a drop of Mad Dog Inferno, a ridiculously hot sauce that clocks in at 90,000 Scoville units. As I chewed ice cubes and blinked away tears after touching a miniscule droplet of Mad Dog Inferno to my tongue from the tip of a toothpick, I knew I’d never make it as a chilehead.

That’s because I’m not a nontaster, explains Dave DeWitt, author of 30 books about chile peppers and spicy foods, including The Whole Chile Pepper Book and The Hot Sauce Bible. DeWitt is referring to a Yale surgeon’s study in the 1970s that identified three types of people: nontasters, medium tasters, and supertasters. Nontasters are born with as few as 11 taste buds per square centimeter of tongue, while supertasters can have as many as 1,100 taste buds crammed into the same area. Capsaicin has no taste, but taste buds not only sense flavor, they also transmit pain and temperature signals to the brain. That’s why nontasters can tolerate high doses of spice, says DeWitt, who considers chileheads to be on the far right side of the pepper bell curve. “In any movement you have your fringe element,” he says.

For a chilehead, 90,000 Scovilles is pabulum. Andy Barnhart, a recently retired chief scientist for a telecommunications company in Maryland, likes to dump habanero powder (400,000 Scovilles) on his ice cream “until it turns almost black.” But even that doesn’t turn Barnhart’s crank like it used to. “I’ve now gotten into Pure Cap; that is really hot stuff,” says Barnhart, 61. “I blend it with a little alcohol to preserve it and I put it in a bottle with an eyedropper and I carry it around with me.” (Pure Cap, a 570,000 Scoville unit extract, isn’t the same as pure capsaicin, which, at 16 million Scovilles, is as hot as it gets.) If Barnhart comes across a bowl of soup or a drink that doesn’t provide a sufficient jolt, he pulls out the eyedropper and gives it a squirt.

Barnhart’s 38-year-old son, Douglas, shares his father’s taste (or lack of taste buds) for hot stuff. The burly barbeque grill salesman has been known to polish off eight “Biker Billy” jalapeños (an extra large, extra hot variety) in thirty seconds. Peppers are a part of Barnhart’s daily routine. “I’m definitely addicted,” he says. “I get a little grouchy if I don’t have anything hot. I can’t explain it other than that. I just become unsettled. If I don’t have hot peppers around, I start looking for the next best thing, and that’s black pepper. But you can’t get enough heat off black pepper.”

Buy for 50 cents | Other items in the Boing Boing Digital Emporium

Yahoo's gotten Hollywood Records (owned by Disney) to release the new Jesse McCartney's album "Right Where You Want Me," as unrestricted MP3 files:

"We're trying to be realistic," said Ken Bunt, senior VP of marketing at Hollywood Records. "Jesse's single is already online and we haven't put it out. Piracy happens regardless of what we do. So we're going to see how Jesse's album goes (as an MP3) and then decide on others going forward."

Will wonders never cease?

Link (via Deep Links)

MIT researchers have made progress developing a tiny gas-turbine engine using processes borrowed from computer chip fabrication. The idea is that compared to batteries of the same weight, these coin-sized engines would power laptops, cell phones, and other mobile devices for much longer. "Big gas-turbine engines can power a city, but a little one could 'power' a person," said professor Alan Epstein of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. So far, the MIT team has built all of the components. The next step is to integrate them into a complete system. Like integrated circuits, the components are produced en masse on a large silicon wafer and then cut apart. From the MIT News Office:

The MIT team has now used this process to make all the components needed for their engine, and each part works. Inside a tiny combustion chamber, fuel and air quickly mix and burn at the melting point of steel. Turbine blades, made of low-defect, high-strength microfabricated materials, spin at 20,000 revolutions per second -- 100 times faster than those in jet engines. A mini-generator produces 10 watts of power. A little compressor raises the pressure of air in preparation for combustion. And cooling (always a challenge in hot microdevices) appears manageable by sending the compression air around the outside of the combustor.

"So all the parts work…. We're now trying to get them all to work on the same day on the same lab bench," Epstein said. Ultimately, of course, hot gases from the combustion chamber need to turn the turbine blades, which must then power the generator, and so on. "That turns out to be a hard thing to do," he said. Their goal is to have it done by the end of this year.

Link to MIT press release, Link to my related article from Small Times, January 2002, about tiny fuel cells, microturbines, and "The Power of Small Tech"

As BB readers know, there's an interesting culture surrounding Betel nut, a popular stimulant in some Asian countries. Often, the stuff is sold from streetside booths by scantily-clad young girls. My pal Annamarie Ho has created an art installation/performance piece commenting on this "sexually provocative sales style." The work, titled Binlang Shi Shr (Betelnut Girls), will be on display at part of the Entrapment show at the Amelie A. Wallace Gallery at SUNY College at Old Westbury in New York. The show opens tomorrow, September 20, and closes October 21. The image here is from a series of digital prints Annamarie created for the show.

Annamarie says:

I've built a booth inside the gallery and, during the opening and closing, I'll have a scantily-clad girl selling betelnut stickers to viewers. There's also an accompanying video with footage of actual betelnut girls in Taiwan and prints of Taiwanese models in some pretty kitschy scenarios.

And from the show program:

Ho simulates a vending stand of the sort that becomes, in effect, a free-standing display case, where the "betelnut beauties" function as commodified mannequins. She includes an example of the accompanying neon business signs often phrased to sound like the names of love hotels in East Asia. In Binlang Shi Shr (Betelnut Girls), Ho not only expresses a concern over the "entrapment" of women in sexual-economic exploitation, but also exoticizes this selling process, as an actor hired for the performance interacts with viewers like a betelnut girl. Ho assumes her role as a stand owner who monitors the girl's behavior. Bringing this simulating experience of betelnut girls to the space of the art gallery, Ho also raises a larger issue of what's being sold in contemporary commercial galleries, as she uses the actor and the performance piece as a means to sell her installation.

Link

My favorite government publication is the Drug Enforcement Administration's Microgram Bulletin. It deals chiefly with the novel ways drug dealers market, promote, and camouflage their products to avoid detection.

The rewards for being a high-level drug dealer are great, precisely because the punishment for failure (imprisonment or getting rubbed out by a rival) is equally great. In this harsh environment, dealers go to great lengths to conceal their products during storage and shipment.

The photos of confiscated drugs in Microgram Bulletin are good examples of dealer ingenuity, but remember: these are the guys who got caught. Tons of drugs move across borders around the clock, and the best smugglers are hiding them in ways that the DEA hasn't wised up to yet.

HEROIN-LACED BATTING IN FURNITURE (FROM VENEZUELA) IN MIAMI, FLORIDA

The DEA Southeast Laboratory (Miami, Florida) recently received 23 bags of grey colored batting that had been removed from two pieces of upholstered furniture, suspected to be laced with heroin (see Photo 11). The furniture (a chair and sofa) had been shipped from Venezuela, and was seized at the Miami Airport by Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel. Analysis of extracts from the batting (total net mass 62.16 kilograms) by GC/MS and FTIR confirmed 14 percent heroin hydrochloride, equivalent to approximately 8.7 kilograms total net mass. This was the first submission of this type to the Southeast Laboratory.

Link

Fisher-Price has revealed the tenth anniversary edition of the Tickle Me Elmo doll, the TMX (Tickle Me - Extreme). It has three "tickle-points," and slaps its thigh and rolls around on the ground when you prod them. Once it's done laughing, it climbs back to its feet.

I love that cheap-ass robotics platforms are coming out of big toy companies now. Can't wait to see what the hardware hackers do to this thing (if they can get one, that is -- speculators are snapping up supplies and putting them on eBay at double retail). Link

Last Sunday, we recorded the first installment of the new Boing Boing podcast, Boing Boing Boing. This is a weekly podcast in which the Boingers and a guest talk about the week's Boing Boing stories and new projects coming up -- a kind of Best of Boing Boing, in audio form.

This week's guest was the incomparable Mr Jalopy of the Hoopty Rides blog. Mr Jalopy is an incredible craphound and gearhead, a talented yard-saler, maker, and hot-rodder. In this 'cast, Mr Jalopy discusses his new book, his philosophy of yard sales, and the relative value of Yu-Gi-Oh cards versus Hot Cheetos.

Podcast, Podcast Feed, Subscribe via iTunes, MP3 Link

Update: Andrew sez, "Your Hot Cheetos story w/ Mr. Jalopy reminded me of a story from a year or two ago. A friend of mine was on a bus in Chicago, and witnessed a high school-aged girl perform a rather involved ceremony with a bag of Hot Cheetos and a vacuum sealed pickle. Before opening the Cheetos, she mashed them into tiny crumbs. She opened the cheetos and the pickle, setting the pickle to the side, and pouring the juice from the pickle packaging into the Cheetos bag. She then mashed this into a type of Cheetos/pickle juice slurry, and proceeded to squeeze the concoction into her mouth by turning the Cheetos bag into a sort of junk food pastry bag." Squick, squick, squick.

Update 2: Mark sez, "I have been fascinated by the Flamin Hot Cheetos phenomenon for a couple months now. I love looking around youtube for videos and searching the web for mor kids talking about how they love Flammin' Hot Cheetos on their myspaces. For a couple weeks I have been thinking of starting a blog where I can post the best stuff I find. I just didn't think there were many other adults interested. I thought that I must be some sort of creep or something. Then I listened to your podcast and I flipped out. I didn't know other grown people were into this. After listening to it I decided at work that the next day I would start my FHC blog. I just want to let all of you know that because of you I saw my idea to completion."

A reminder to Angelenos: Tonight at 7PM, Michael Ayers will be giving a free public speech at the USC Annenberg School. Ayers negotiates DRM deals for Toshiba, and helped birth such anti-copying systems as CSS for DVDs. He's presently overseeing the deployment of AACS, the anti-copying technology in next-generation DVDs like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Ayers works for a consumer electronics and computer company, so he's often an advocate for user-rights in DRM negotiations, but at the end of the day, he's there to cut a deal that lets Toshiba ship without worrying about getting sued.

We've often been at the same DRM negotiation and though we were rarely on the same side, I always respected his ability to broker compromises, as well as his integrity and candor.

September 19, 7PM-9PM
University of Southern California, Annenberg School, 3502 Watt Way
Room 207

Link

Moo prints beautiful little calling-cards for kids and the young-at-heart. Each card can have a different back, and the undersized cards are just the right size for your name, email address and a URL or two. The project was co-founded by my friend Stef Magdalinski, who also spends his time hacking British democracy with projects like Wikiproxy and TheyWorkForYou -- he's good people.

It's hard to convey just how cool-ass these cards are. They feel like a fetish object, the thick card and soft laminate finish create a great hand-feel, and they're visually stunning -- playful and intensely personal.

They've got an engine to make cards from your Flickr stream, and for $20 they'll send you 100 custom cards -- Flickr Pro users can get 10 cards for free, just as a try-out. We got a box to 100 here this week and when I took them out of the box, it was like Christmas -- so bright and colorful and fun. So many different designs, and all of them from our most beloved Flickr snaps.

I've been making my own business-cards since I was 18, playing with the designs and the stock. I've had folding cards, embossed cards, letterpress cards, oversized and undersized cards. My latest ones are taken from an old ad I found on the Modern Mechanix blog. There's definitely a fraternity among the business-card-proud -- a flicker of recognition when you exchange cards with someone else who takes unseemly pride in his bits of pocket-paper.

There's lots of free stuff on the Internets, but the 10 free cards from Moo might just be the coolest thing for 0 dollars you can get. Link

Several of HPs cameras now feature a mode called "slimming effect" that stretches and squashes your photo subjects to make them appear "10 pounds lighter." The slimming effect is adjustable, for those times when you need to shave off more pounds. Link (via OhGizmo)