There's something grimly fascinating about this Blackhatworld forum in which spammers are discussing with comradely zest the best means of overcoming the new Craigslist phone-verification technique that prevents duplicate listings being posted in CL forums. There's the whole spectrum of netly emotion here: technical generosity; greed; self-pity; quick anger. They could be talking about debugging a video-driver, except that they're talking about turning a beautiful community service into a pile of shit.

They've just started doing this in the computer services section too. I'm seriously freaking out now because I make the majority of my income off that section. I'm a freelance designer.

I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills if I can't find a way around this. Anyone have a suggestion? Please?

Link

Here's a magnificent grid showing how a humble rock would be displayed by an enormous variety of video games' rendering engines, executed with affection and wit (Fipi Lele pointed out that the Zork version would be, "There is a rock here."). The rock is the perfect, Sluggo/Zippy-esque subject for this kind of comparison, absolutely bang-on.

All I know about this image is that Kotaku apparently published it in April, 2006. Oh, and that it rocks. So to speak. Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Geoff sez, "A reader emailed me about this amazingly weird town in Belgium where, due to how the town was divided back in the 12th century, parts of the village are actually now Dutch. In other words, you have this weird island-effect - check out the map - where pockets of the Netherlands exist within the larger matrix of a Belgian town. These sovereign pockets are only big enough to hold a few houses, though - and the houses differentiate themselves, nationalistically, by including coats of arms on their fronts. They even have separate postal services! It's like something straight out of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. What's more, because laws differ in the Dutch parts of the town, restaurants apparently used to close at different times - but in some cases this simply meant that you had to move to another table, thus crossing the national border. " Link (Thanks, Geoff)

Happy Trinity Day: on this day in 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated in Alamogordo, in Los Alamos, NM. Celebrate with a mushroom pizza.

Don't miss Ellen Klages's award-winning Green Glass Sea, the best story ever written about trinitite (the radioactive green-glass "rocks" made from sand fused by the Trinity detonation) and remember, you can buy the stuff online!

With gallows humor, the Los Alamos physicists got up a betting pool on the possible yield of the bomb. Estimates ranged from zero to as high as 45,000 tons of TNT. Enrico Fermi, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938 for his work on nuclear fission, offered side odds on the bomb destroying all life on the planet.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, was under no illusions about what he and his fellow physicists had wrought. The effects of the blast, the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT, moved the intellectual Oppenheimer to quote from the Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."

More prosaically, Dr. Kenneth Bainbridge, site director of the Trinity test, said: "Now we are all sons-of-bitches."

Link (Thanks, Evan!)

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

CAPTCHAs -- the technology used to stop spammers from using computers to sign up for email accounts and the like -- are thoroughly broken; spammers and researchers are finding better and better ways to get computers to recognize the word-soup. Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has a good feature on what happens now:

According to Nagle, waxing sarcastic, "Several commercial products are now available to overcome those little obstacles to bulk posting. A tool called CL Auto Posting Tool is one such product. It not only posts to Craigslist automatically, it has built-in strategies to overcome each Craigslist anti-spam mechanism." It's not the only one. There are, he added, "other desktop software products [such as] AdBomber and Ad Master. For spammers preferring a service-oriented approach, there's ItsYourPost." The result? "The defenses of Craigslist have been overrun. Some categories on Craigslist have become over 90 per cent spam. The personals sections were the first to go, then the services categories, and more recently, the job postings."

Link (via /.)

If you're in Silicon Valley this week and want to have some legal-type fun, you could drop in on the Lenz v. Universal hearing (dress nice, behave yourself!) in which EFF will be arguing that Universal should be punished for sending a bogus copyright threat to a mom who posted a 29-second youtube of her adorable toddler dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy."

EFF represents Stephanie Lenz, who uploaded a 29-second clip of her son dancing in the family kitchen to the Prince song, "Let's Go Crazy," which is playing on a stereo in the background. Remarkably, Universal Music Publishing Group claimed that the video infringed its copyrights, and had the video yanked from YouTube. Lenz's lawsuit against Universal seeks to hold the company accountable for misrepresenting that her fair use violated its copyrights.

Link (via Recording Industry Vs. the People)

Craftster user Chris Wass knit an entire Wonder Woman costume (complete with bracelets!) for ComiCon. Alas, I won't be there to see it in person this year, but I'm already subbed to the Flickr tag and can't wait to do some virtual cosplayer watching. Link (via Craft)

Sara Hillenberger's knitted woolen organs have a cashmeresque delicacy that makes them almost yummy-seeming. If all organs looked like this, organ-meat would make the jump from dog-food to mainstream delicacy. Link (via Craft!)

I'm not sure what Chinese string this restaurateur fed to the translation software used to to generate the giant sign hanging over the entrance, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't: TRANSLATE SERVER ERROR. Ah, the special problems of translations into other alphabets. Link (Thanks, Mark!)

Update: In the comments, Insect Hooves adds, "OM NOM NOM. I love their Segfault Chicken. And their Short Stack Overflow is to die for. Ooooh, and their 404 Not Pound Cake (foghorn)"

Recently at Boing Boing Gadgets, we saw new laptops from Sony and Lenovo, a space-age travel mouse, and an apoplectic video game fan.

Joel wants to know about home automation platforms, John needs Fallout 3, badly, and Rob, well, Rob's been playing with the robots.

And what robots! Pittsburgh's BigBots mini-festival is on, so we got electric lawn-mowing sheep, strange humming cables, cellular automata woodblock creatures, and, strangest of all, a clubhouse full of cool 1980s trash, inhabited by animatronic roadkill.

Back in the tubes, we saw SenseSurface stick-on screen knobs; Dell's $300 subnote; and the bright future of experimental solar energy.

ReadyBot is ready to see you; the springy Zing! spoon is ready to fling food at you; and Art Lebedev's new keyboard won't be ready for ages. Whether Psystar is ready for Apple's inevitable lawsuit remains to be seen!

Thinking of trying to combine your Gmail-based life with all of MobileMe's new stuff? Think again.

Eric Mueller took this photo of an AT&T store on lower Broadway in downtown Manhattan (near Park Place / City Hall) today. Seems the iPhone is "temporally out stock." Perhaps it'll be available last year.

Jeroen van Bergeijk says:

Here are some great shots of African cars in various states of disrepair. I made these pictures on my travels through West-Africa. I wrote a book about my efforts to sell an 1988 Mercedes 190D in Burkina Faso, called My Mercedes is Not for Sale.

The book is coming out in translation on July 15th in the US and the UK I am doing a reading in New York City on the 15th in Idlewild Bookstore in Manhattan (7 pm). (BB blogged about that store recently here)

My Mercedes is not for sale booksigning

Brett Dobbs says: "I found this the most useful guide to explain what has gone on with FISA. With flowcharts!"

1. It Eliminates the requirement that there be probable cause that a foreign target is a suspect of any kind — terrorist, criminal, ore “foreign agent.” They merely need be your French grandmother, as long as they are outside the United States and not a U.S. person, and if the government says wiretapping them is for the purpose of collecting “foreign intelligence information” (e.g., her Pommes Frites recipe)

2. It requires the cooperation of telecoms in these efforts

3. It eliminates of the need to specify a particular email address or phone number to be wiretapped

4. 1-3 together imply that certifications of wiretapping on individuals is not the issue. The point is to use telecom cooperation to target large collections of data on communications between U.S. Persons and foreigners. This implies data mining — where, for instance, because a foreign target has communications passing through a given domestic switch, any communications (domestic or international) passing through that switch are subject to collection, analysis, and storage. There are “minimization requirements” meant to ameliorate this, but it is unclear if they really help.

Understanding Recent Changes to FISA — A Visual Guide (Flowchart) (Ketchup and Caviar)

"Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, will search for and find," writes eBay user TPeterson6969. Starting bid for his or her services is $150,000. From the auction listing:

With all the stories and rumors surrounding the legend of Bigfoot,I think it is time to have the right person hunting (searching) for the real answers.Most of the Tv shows,books,and articles covering the search for Bigfoot are a joke.Nothing but pure amatuers.Most searches involve people setting up trail cameras,etc.,in stationary settings,this is totally the wrong approach.My methods would be covering lots and lots of territory in very remote country.I have been a big game hunter nearly all of my life and am an experienced big game hunting guide and am currently employed by a big game hunting outfitter in Wyoming.Contact me if you would be interested in funding an expedition that will get results.

Auction for Bigfoot hunter's services (eBay)

James David says:

Mother Jones’s Torture Playlist includes the music used in American military prisons to torture detainees, and ranges from Christina Aguilera to Sesame Street. Using address labels - sized 2.25″ x 0.75″ - you can affix these stickers I designed to CDs in your local record shop and make a small political statement about state violence. I’ve developed the stickers below to raise awareness about this form of torture. There's a copyright-free PDF available at the suggested website link.

US Gov't torture playlist stickers (Groundswell Collective)

UPDATE: Please don't put these stickers on CD cases unless they belong to you. As many people have pointed out in the comments, the artists didn't say their songs could be used to torture, and the record stores don't need the hassle.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Torture playlist

Spurred by my post yesterday about the surreal bird formation video, filmmaker Bob Jaroc pointed me to this captivating music video he made in 2006 for the electronica group Plaid. Bob says, they're "real birds, shot in Brighton, England over a year or so then sequenced." The video is from Greedy Baby, a CD/DVD combination with Plaid's music and Jaroc's videos. Plaid/Jaroc bird video

Previously on BB:
• Video: surreal bird formation

Matt sez, "Net neutrality is the principle that preserves an open Internet. We need to get the word out in order to help raise awareness about this crucial concept. Thirsty Ear Recordings and Future of Music Coalition have come together to release Rock the Net: Musicians for Net Neutrality, a compilation CD featuring artists who support Net Neutrality (Aimee Mann, Bright Eyes, Guster, The Wrens, They Might Be Giants, Wilco and more). Please, help us Rock the Net by talking about this exciting new release and informing your readers about the effort to preserve our basic freedom and keep the Internet thriving!" Link (Thanks, Matt!)

From Living in Small Sizes. (via Finkbuilt)

Munkcy sez, "A dad took his boys to a park and was photographing them as then slid down a slide. An attendee at the slide asked him to stop, he protested, other parents also started telling him to stop, with one even accusing him of taking pictures of children to put on the internet. And here's the truly fun part: he, the accused, got two cops who backed up his claim that he was doing nothing wrong."

He said: ‘The children wanted to go on an inflatable slide and I started taking photos of them having a good time. Moments later the woman running the slide told me to stop.

‘When I asked why, she told me I could not take pictures of other people’s children. I explained I was only interested in taking photos of my own children and pointed out that this was taking place in a public park.

‘I showed her the photos I had taken to prove my point. Then another woman joined in and said her child was also on the slide and did not want me taking pictures of the youngster.

Link (Thanks, Munkcy!)

E. Paul Zehr has a book coming out in October called Becoming Batman: The Possibility of A Superhero, about the physical and mental training one would need to become a superhero without any supernatural powers. Zehr, a professor of kinesiology and neuroscience at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, is also a karate expert. Over at Scientific American, JR Minkel interviews Zehr about how one might train as the Dark Knight. From SciAm:

What's most plausible about portrayals of Batman's skills? You could train somebody to be a tremendous athlete and to have a significant martial arts background, and also to use some of the gear that he has, which requires a lot of physical prowess. Most of what you see there is feasible to the extent that somebody could be trained to that extreme. We're seeing that kind of thing in less than a month in the Olympics.

What's less realistic? A great example is in the movies where Batman is fighting multiple opponents and all of a sudden he's taking on 10 people. If you just estimate how fast somebody could punch and kick, and how many times you could hit one person in a second, you wind up with numbers like five or six. This doesn't mean you could fight four or five people. But it's also hard for four or five people to simultaneously attack somebody, because they get in each other's way. More realistic is a couple of attackers.

Batman and science (Scientific American), Pre-order Becoming Batman (Amazon)

Fortunately, the woman who shot this video was uninjured when she was struck by lightning. Her scream is more chilling than the Wilhelm Scream, if you ask me.

Lightning Strikes Woman As She Is Shooting Video (Laughing Squid)

In keeping with the creepy crawly theme started by David today, here's a BBC video and story about the discovery of a new slug species. It's pure white and carnivorous, feasting on worms instead of the typical slug diet of plants and decaying matter.

Because it was found in Wales, it's been christened with a partially-Welsh name: Selenochlamys ysbryda. Ysbryd is the disemvowel-proof Welsh word for ghost. I think trolls should post their comments in Welsh from now on.

Worm-eating slug found in garden (BBC) (via Arbroath)

Artists Mark Ryden and Marion Peck, the dynamic duo of pop surrealism, made this dark, sweet, and strange short film Sweet Wishes. It's about a dolly, a baby, and a bear who are granted a wish. Peck and Ryden are also publishing a picture book based on the film. Sweet Wishes (Hi-Fructose)

Our pals at Gama-Go are making 50 of these giant wooden Deathbot statues. They're 30 inches tall and sell for $350 including shipping. I am anxiously awaiting arrival of my new Deathbot overlord! And for those seeking an even more intense Deathbot experience, an armor-plated version is also available as part of Gama-Go's new Store Fund Club. To raise money to open a store, GAMA-GO is offering four tiers of membership support where you pay $80 to $5000 in exchange for a 10% to 40% discount and a limited edition creation, from a signed print to metal designer toys. (The giant armored Deatbot is part of the top-tier offering, 'natch.) Membership program sign-up ends July 31.
Gama-Go Store Membership (Gama-Go)

Previously on BB:
• New Boing Boing t-shirt by GAMA-GO!

Huh, looks like Isaac Asimov's 3 laws of robotics have been expanded tenfold by the thoughtful Something Awful guys:

# A robot must tip its hat in the presence of a lady human being, except where such a display would be construed as a come-on by a jealous male human being, who then might pose a difficulty to the Third Law.

# A robot may not act in such a fashion as would make dogs obsolete, because dogs are less expensive than robots, and robots should be reserved for science things.

# A robot, when given contradictory orders by two human beings, and assuming those orders do not violate the First Law, must decide which order to follow based on which human being has a deeper voice.

# A robot, specifically a big, wide robot, may not pretend to be a refrigerator and then make a scary noise when a human being opens it.

Asimov's 30 Laws of Robotics [ somethingawful.com, thanks Coop ]

The Shit Box is a cardboard toilet for outdoor use. It's now available for £15.67. According to the press release, "“The box pops up from its convenient 14” flat pack to a rigid reusable box, you pop in a degradable poo bag, do your business, seal and then dispose." Creative Review has more details.
Shit box (Creative Review)

Previously on BB:
• Bumper Dumper

In Tokyo, a foolish man thought he could make a mass-murder threat with impunity by announcing he'd do it at a train station that doesn't exist. Much to his surprise, he was arrested anyway.

"I'll show you how to avoid being arrested after threatening to launch an attack," the message read. "At 9 p.m. today, I'll murder many people at Ueno Station on the Saikyo Line."

As the JR Saikyo Line does not go through Ueno, police officers were on alert at other platforms at Ueno Station.

Murder threat at non-existent train station (Mainichi Daily News) (via Japan Probe)

Gordian worms are parasites that live inside the likes of beetles, cockroaches, and crickets. The worms can be as long as one meter and 3 millimeters in diameter. Here is a video of a gordian worm emerging from its host in a swimming pool. Gordian worm (YouTube, via 37 Signals, thanks Sean Ness!)

My pal Christy at Instructables says:

Our intern Bilal (a runner-up in the last laser cutter contest) painted and laser-engraved his fingernails, then realized he could use press-on nails for a safer and more portable version. Of course, since concept is everything, he went for an epic Beards vs. Mustaches historical character smackdown. (At any rate, it's much less gross than the laser tattooing.)

Laser-engraved fingernails (Instructables)

We came across these golf balls stuffed into holes in a wall made from lava rock in Kona, Hawaii. My daughter tried to dig one out to no avail.

UPDATE: photo changed to keep creeps at bay.

Flickr set of golf balls stuffed into holes of lava wall

Who knew?

Today, part two of Boing Boing tv's UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter's conversation with Toby from Transgressive Records, and Tom from the alternative music news and community website rockfeedback.com.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion, downloadable video, and instructions on subscribing to the daily BBtv video podcast.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Transgressive was founded by two 20-year-old music fans who wanted to create a company that was "ethically sound and would release the best records in the world." Bands represented include The Young Knives (featured in previous BBtv episodes with Russell Porter, part 1, part 2), The Subways, Ladyfuzz, Jeremy Warmsley, and the Noisettes. Snip from the Transgressive manifesto:

It would be a label not linked to a style or genre, but one which would be represented by a logo that would be simply a stamp of quality on each perfect disk.

After a couple of pints in a Holborn boozer (not too far away from where Andy Gill would later record the classic debut LP from the Young Knives – although neither of the Trans twins knew it at the time) they had planned the first three releases and strove to grow the label to the stage where they could fund and make records that otherwise would not be released, and build a community of like minded people who could realise that anything is possible…

Previous PORTER REPORT episodes on BBtv:

Russell Porter roundtable: Transgressive Records, rockfeedback.com, pt. 1

Russell Porter with Alice Russell, pt. 2

Russell Porter with Alice Russell

Russell Porter and Cadence Weapon, pt. 1.

Russell Porter and Cadence Weapon, pt. 2.

Russell Porter with George Pringle

Russell Porter with The Young Knives pt 1

Russell Porter with The Young Knives pt 2

Russell Porter with The Futureheads

Russell Porter with The Guillotines

Russell Porter with Peggy Sue and the Pirates

Russell Porter with Dockers MC

Russell Porter with Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip

I was thinking aloud on Twitter earlier today that the world needs -- ok, ok, *I* needed a new and specific thankyou card, not so much to thank someone for doing something nice, but to thank someone for having not done something not nice when being a jerk would have been an easy option. THANK YOU FOR NOT DOUCHING OUT, the card would read, and I imagined it in a maudlin font with a fat-ass flower right in the middle.

JimB. aka Brons on Twitter, heard the call and came to the P-shop rescue. JimB: a non-ironic thank you, sir. BB audience, feel free to use this as appropriate in your own lives.

The national Terrorist Watch List has now crossed one million names -- that's a million suspected terrorists (including nuns, members of Congress, and people named "Robert Johnson") who will spend their days being harassed, denied the fundamental right to travel, and punished for having a name vaguely like the name used by someone who may or may not be a terrorist. There's no way to get off the list, and the list (and the criteria for adding names to it) are secret.

"America's new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with this administration's approach to security: it's unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives of millions of travelers in this country," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. "It must be fixed without delay."

"Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning," said Steinhardt. "I doubt this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist."

Controls on the watch lists called for by the ACLU included:

* due process
* a right to access and challenge data upon which listing is based
* tight criteria for adding names to the lists
* rigorous procedures for updating and cleansing names from the lists.

Link

Columbia professor Dr. Dickson Despommier is developing models for "vertical farms," swank-looking skyscrapers that produce agricultural products for urban locavores.

The idea, which has captured the imagination of several architects in the United States and Europe in the past several years, just caught the eye of another big city dreamer: Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president in New York.

When Stringer heard about the concept in June, he said he immediately pictured a "food farm" addition to the New York City skyline. "Obviously we don't have vast amounts of vacant land," he said in a phone interview. "But the sky is the limit in Manhattan." Stringer's office is "sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm," and plans to pitch a feasibility study to the mayor's office within the next couple of months, he said.

Country, the city version: Farms in the sky gain new interest [ IHT, via Tim O'Reilly's twitterstream ]

Dennis sez, "My totally sw33t vegan zombie shirt got accepted to Threadless!" I agree -- super-sweet! But "grains?" Some of us are low-carb vegans, you know! Link

TokyoFlash's new Nekura series watches are awfully handsome (even if they're disappointingly easy to read!) -- I'm especially fond of this little puppy, known as the Tumbler. Wheels within wheels!

The Nekura series breathes fresh life into traditional time telling and is certain to be a fashion trend this season. Tumbler features a rotating disc effect, similar to that of a combination lock, with a vivid white dial beneath black glass and inscribed numerals which rotate to present the time.

Link