Boing Boing

Fox sues Dish over commercial skipping, claims copyright infringement

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:43:05 PDT

Dish Networks, the satellite TV provider, is being sued by Fox over its "AutoHop" feature, which automatically skips commercials. Fox alleges copyright infringement, which is a repeat of the claims over ReplayTV, which was bankrupted in similar lawsuits in the last decade. The networks claimed then that the whole program, including the commercials, were a single copyrighted work, and that by automatically enabling the skipping of certain sections, the device manufacturers were making derivative works. It's a really dumb theory of copyright and it's hard to imagine that it would hold up in court -- and if it did, it would mean that, for example, allowing screen-in-screen, or changing aspect ratios, or even custom color balances or audio mixes were also copyright violations, and that these violations took place when the feature was enabled by the manufacturer (who would therefore be liable) and not when the customer turned them on.

A more likely claim from Fox is breach of contract -- it's easy to believe that Fox put a "no skipping the commercials" line in their deal with Dish (and if they didn't, you can bet they will). Moreover, the DRM used in satellite receivers is controlled by the big rightsholders, and the license agreement for that DRM (much of which is a secret) allows them to demand arbitrary control over features in devices that can decode it.

Here's more from the LA Times and Meg James and Joe Flint:

Fox filed its copyright violation and breach-of-contract suit against Dish on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Dish filed its suit in U.S. District Court in New York.
"The suit asks for a declaratory judgment that the AutoHop feature does not infringe any copyrights that could be claimed by the major networks, and that Dish, while providing the AutoHop feature, remains in compliance with its agreements with the networks," the Englewood, Colo., company said in a statement.
While consumers with digital video recorders can fast-forward through commercials of recorded shows, Dish's AutoHop takes it a step further. The screen goes black when a commercial break appears. A few seconds later, the program returns. The service can't be used on live programming, such as a sporting event, even after it has been recorded.
With more than 14 million subscribers, Dish Network Corp.'s new technology may threaten the networks' ability to continue to charge premiums for their commercial time.

Fox sues Dish over ad-blocking feature; Dish fires back (via /.)

Pulitzer winner Jennifer Egan tweets a science fiction story for the New Yorker

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 25 May 2012 06:42:27 PDT

Tor.com reports on Pulitzer Winning novelist Jennifer Egan's latest project: a tweeted science fiction story in the New Yorker's fiction feed:

This is part of the launch of the forthcoming first-ever science fiction issue of The New Yorker. The installment will appear starting tonight between 8pm-9pm EST, and will last for ten nights. The entirety of “Black Box” will appear in the next issue of The New Yorker, which will release this coming Monday. The story involves a character from A Visit from the Goon Squad and will be a kind of spy narrative.

Twitter Story to Launch The New Yorker’s Science Fiction Issue

NYC lawyer loses $100K suit over healthclub that stopped supplying yogurt and cereal

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 25 May 2012 06:00:45 PDT

Richard Katz, a NYC lawyer, has lost his breach-of-contract lawsuit against a pricey healthclub that changed its breakfast menu. Katz was a member of The Setai Wall Street Club and Spa, and he was upset when the yogurt and cereal normally provided by the club was discontinued. He sent a series of upset emails to the club's manager, who cancelled his membership. Katz sued, citing damages in excess of $100,000, and an additional $5,000 in damages for an alleged libel from the manager, who wrote an email in response and is alleged to have shown it to a third party. Lowering the Bar has more:

To me, the great thing about this email is not that a lawyer got furious over somebody failing to dish up the yogurt and cereal. It's that even in the grip of this fury, he still wrote "two (2) weeks." Why do people do this? Maybe it made sense when things were written in longhand, but now that we have email and printers and whatnot there is generally not much controversy over what "two" is supposed to mean. If you haven't picked up this habit yet, don't...
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Coin dismissed the case this week, according to the New York Daily News. While there seems to have been no written opinion, according to the manager's attorney the judge told Katz at the hearing that "he should be ashamed of himself" for filing the suit. That's hearsay, but the judge did order Katz to pay $440 in costs, which suggests what she thought of the case. The manager's attorney praised the decision for throwing out a case that was "embarrassing to the profession."

Lawyer's Defective-Breakfast Suit Dismissed

(Image: Yogurt freak, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from dan4th's photostream)

Mondrian PC

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:56:52 PDT

Jeffrey Stephenson made a beautiful Mondrian PC enclosure.

Mondrian is a fanless mini-ITX case design made from wood and hand-cut acrylic tiles. Fresh air is drawn into the case after passing through the exposed heatsink finning. An 80mm CPU fan is mounted under the heatsink and acts as a combo CPU/case fan.

Specific inspirations (including the famous Yves Saint Laurent dress) and a build report at the above link!

Why your camera's GPS won't work in China (maybe)

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:00:54 PDT

If you've got a major-brand camera with a built-in GPS, don't plan on taking any geotagged photos in China. Chinese law prohibits mapmaking without a license, and most of the large camera manufacturers have complied with this regulation by quietly slipping a censorship function into the GPS -- when you take a picture, the camera checks to see if it's presently in China, and if it is, it throws away its GPS data, rather than embedding it in the photo's metadata. On Ogle Earth, Stefan Geens looks at how several different manufacturers handle this weirdness -- how they phrase it in their manuals, and what their cameras do when they run up against this limitation. It's a fascinating look at the interface between consumer electronics, user interface, and the edicts of totalitarian regimes. In some Nikon cameras, for example, the GPS does work, but all its measurements are shifted about 500m to the west (!).

Why does all this matter? Wherever local laws prohibit the sale or use of a personal electronics device able to perform a certain function, manufacturers have traditionally chosen not to sell the offending device in that particular jurisdiction, or — if the market is tempting enough — to sell a crippled model made especially for that jurisdiction.
For example, Nokia chose not to sell the N95 phone in Egypt when the sale of GPS-enabled devices there was illegal before 2009, whereas Apple opted to make and sell a special GPS-less iPhone 3G for that market. Early models of the Chinese iPhone 3GS lacked wifi, while the Chinese iPhone 4/4S has firmware restrictions on its Google Maps app.
The risk to consumers in freer countries is that personal electronics brands might be tempted to simplify their manufacturing processes by building just one device for the global market, catering to the lowest common denominator of freedom — especially if the more restrictive legal jurisdictions contain some of the most attractive markets, such as mainland China.
Still, in the absence of more information from Panasonic, Leica, FujiFilm, Nikon and Samsung, I can’t decisively say whether this is the business logic behind their decision to cripple the GPS in their cameras. And yet uncrippled GPS cameras from Sony and others are freely available for sale in China, for example on Taobao, China’s eBay...

Why do Panasonic, Leica, FujiFilm, Samsung and Nikon censor their GPS cameras? (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

Illuminated manuscript cookies

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:00:56 PDT

Anniina ("Scholar, Writer, Mother, Dreamer. Editor of Luminarium, an online library for English Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance") produced these delicious-looking and awfully lovely illuminated initial cookies:

I wanted to share with you some Medieval manuscript cookies I made for my friend and colleague, Risa Bear, creator of Renascence Editions. I chose historiated initials from several manuscripts, printed them on edible paper with edible ink, attached them to square cookies and gave them gold edges. Who says love of literature and art can't fill a belly?!

Medieval Illuminated Initial Cookies (via Making Light)

Hedgehog stuck in can

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:01:38 PDT

"A hedgehog is recovering in an RSPCA hospital after being found by the side of a road with its head wedged in an empty carrot tin." [BBC]

Nevada Ghosts: photos from an early A-bomb test

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:45:53 PDT

Ben Cosgrove of Life says:

As the prospect of nuclear weapons testing by nations like North Korea and Iran once again makes headlines, LIFE.com presents rare and (mostly) unpublished pictures from the Nevada desert by photographer Loomis Dean shortly after a 1955 atomic bomb test.

These are not "political" pictures. They are, instead, eerily beautiful, unsettling photographs made at the height of the Cold War, when the destructive power of any atomic blast was jaw-droppingly huge, but positively miniscule compared to today's truly terrifying thermonuclear weapons. In short, these pictures from more than half a century ago serve as a quiet reminder of just how insane the very notion of nuclear warfare really is.

Nevada Ghosts: photos from an early A-bomb test

Historical proto-Al Jaffee hides trenchant commentary in design of US Dollar Bill

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:38:50 PDT

The other day I noticed that on the back of the one dollar bill, there is a phrase: The Great Seal of the United States. It is split into two circles. When you fold the dollar so that the two half circles meet exactly, a new phrase is revealed.

The Great Seal of the United States (Thanks, Terry!)

Batteries Not Included - a collection of vintage toy commercials

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:37:35 PDT

From Archive.org's wonderful Classic TV archive, an hour long video of old toy commercials.

Batteries Not Included

Ambiguous "true-false" answer

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 24 May 2012 14:57:32 PDT

I hope this was a clever student's attempt to answer a question that he or she didn't know the answer to. (Via Bit & Pieces)

Why New America Foundation's president quit Facebook

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 May 2012 14:54:16 PDT

James Losey from the New America Foundation writes, "I wanted to share New America Foundation's president Steve Coll's reasoning as to why he is leaving the Facebook. He analyzes a range of concerns including privacy concerns, a chaotic IPO, questionable corporate-governance system, mixed with a lack of user rights. "

I established a Facebook account in 2008. My motivation was ignoble: I wanted to distribute my journalism more widely. I have acquired since then just over four thousand 'friends'--in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and of course, closer to home. I have discovered the appeal of Facebook's community--for example, the extraordinary emotional support that swells in virtual space when people come together online around a friend's illness or life celebrations.
Through its bedrock appeals to friendship, community, public identity, and activism--and its commercial exploitation of these values--Facebook is an unprecedented synthesis of corporate and public spaces. The corporation's social contract with users is ambitious, yet neither its governance system nor its young ruler seem trustworthy. Then came this month's initial public offering of stock--a chaotic and revealing event--which promises to put the whole enterprise under even greater pressure.

I quit FB a few years back. I felt like it took a lot more from me than it gave me.

Leaving Facebookistan (Thanks, James!)

Movie made from Getty's still image collection

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:47:37 PDT

[Video Link] Getty Images hired BBDO Brazil to produce a short movie made entirely of still images from its collection.

(Via This is Colossal)

Anderson Cooper quizzes supporter of pastor who proposes concentration camps for gay people

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:35:47 PDT

[Video Link] This is as entertaining as it is disconcerting.

Solar-powered airplane "Solar Impulse" attempts transcontinental flight

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:33:39 PDT

Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

A Solar Impulse aircraft takes off at Payerne airport May 24, 2012, piloted by André Borschberg. The Solar Impulse HB-SIA prototype aircraft, which has 12,000 solar cells built into its jumbo-jet-sized wings (about 200 feet long), attempted its first intercontinental flight from Switzerland to Morocco with a few days for a technical stop and a change of pilot in Madrid. This flight will act as a final rehearsal for the 2014 round-the-world flight.

The project website is here. More coverage: NPR, Telegraph, AP, more photos and video at MSNBC, AFP, and video from Reuters.

Follow Solar Impulse on Twitter, and pilot André Borschberg is tweeting from the skies.

Flying along big wall of clouds. beautiful and impressiv but will climb higher #solarimpulse
— André Borschberg (@Andreborschberg) May 24, 2012

Starting the climb to make the big jump over the pyrenees #solarimpulse
— André Borschberg (@Andreborschberg) May 24, 2012

Live video feed below.

Blindside, a new "3D audio-only adventure game" for iOS

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:17:42 PDT

Last October, I blogged about a Kickstarter to create "a video game with no graphics, played entirely using audio." The game is Blindside, and it's finished! Now available through the App Store for iPhone4/iPad2+. The project was inspired by co-creator Aaron Rasmussen's temporary blindness as a result of an explosion in high school chemistry.

BlindSide is an audio adventure game, set in a fully-immersive 3d world you’ll never see. Put on headphones, hold your iPhone, and face the direction you want to go. Listen as the world rotates around you and explore the darkness.
You play as Case, an assistant professor who wakes up blind, to find his city destroyed and mysterious creatures devouring people. Will you and your girlfriend be able to find your way without sight? How will you escape? Run for your life, save the girl, and uncover the mystery of the apocalypse--all in the dark!

Blindside.

(thanks, Joe Sabia!)

Chair made from Funk & Wagnall's

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:00:45 PDT

Sculptor Jim Rosenau's "Reading Chair" is a 6" high piece made from volumes from an old Funk & Wagnall's and some blunt pencils. It's the perfect chair for a bookish gnome. I've featured Jim's work here before.

Reading Chair (via Bookshelf)

Bronx Parkour: Jose The Amazing (a photo essay)

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:35:31 PDT

Photo: Chris Arnade

Chris Arnade is a photographer based in New York City. I've blogged his urban photography before. Check out these fantastic shots of young men in Hunts Point Bronx, doing crazy gravity-defying freestyle jumps. Below: more photos, and the story behind those photos, from Chris.—XJ

Photo: Chris Arnade

JOSE THE AMAZING
CHRIS ARNADE

Last year I was in a desolate part of Hunts Point, talking to a friend. A group of about ten teenagers came down the street, loud, filled with energy, and seemingly marauding (kicking over cones, jumping on and over stationary cars, etc). I have never had a problem in my twenty years in New York City, but that does not mean I don't stay aware. As they passed, out of the corner of my eye I spotted Jose, do a back flip over a hydrant. Amazed, I yelled out to him. He and his friends, who were also warily eyeing me and my friend, thinking we were cops, were planning to run away, but his friend Henry had a sprained ankle, so they stood their ground.

Since then I have come to grow very fond of Jose and his friends, and have done two proper photo shoots. Big fans of Parkour, Hip-hop, and Anime, they are fighting against an area where the pressures of poverty, drugs, and limited opportunity weigh heavily.

Photo: Chris Arnade

For me it's another lesson in expectations. All of my accumulated baggage from popular culture signaled for me to get away from these kids and their bad intentions, all theirs told them to get away from the cop who would treat them unfairly. Neither of us did that, and because of that I certainly have learned a bit more about the Bronx.

Groups of teenagers have thrown rocks at me from a distance (I just spread my arms and say "Give me your best shot, you arm aint that good." So far that's worked). I understand what the combination of boredom, energy, and hormones can do. Hell, I threw rocks at things when I was that age.

—Chris Arnade, 2012.

Photo: Chris Arnade

More from Hunts Point here: Hunts Point
More of Jose here: Jose the amazing

Photo: Chris Arnade

Course on design/architecture for orbiting hotels

David Pescovitz — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:28:43 PDT

Are you a designer or architect who would like to work within the unique constraints of zero gravity? Spaceship designer Susmita Mohanty, who worked on the International Space Station and Shuttle-Mir missions, is teaching an intensive course at Milan's Domus Academy this summer titled "Zero Gravity Design: Products and Microenvironments for Orbiting Hotels."

As the race to open up the space frontier to tourists revs up, so will opportunities for designers and architects. The participants of this course will design products and micro environments for living aboard future Orbiting Hotels. The Space Tourists, will have to, after all, eat, drink, sleep, cleanse, exercise, work, play, improvise, relax, move, stay still, contemplate, congregate, seek privacy and look out of the window. These everyday tasks, and more, open up an infinite range of design possibilities….
This course will introduce designers and architects, both students and practicing professionals to the world of zero-gravity (zero-g) design. On Earth, we often take a lot of things for granted, for example - gravity, atmospheric pressure, natural illumination and the entire gamut of colors that it brings to us. Living in Earth Orbit is a whole new world where designers and architects have to account for not just weightlessness and vacuum, but also come up with creative antidotes for isolation, confinement, boredom, sensory deprivation, bone-muscle atrophy, as well as social-psychological-and-cultural stressors characteristic of living in cramped spaces where privacy is limited and so are resources. This course will groom designers and architects to work for space tourism companies.

"Zero Gravity Design: Products and Microenvironments for Orbiting Hotels" (via BLDBLOG)

Freaky non-stick coating keeps ketchup flowing

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:23:57 PDT

[Video Link] "MIT PhD candidate Dave Smith and his team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists at the Varanasi Research Group … came up with LiquiGlide, a 'super-slippery' coating which makes the insides of the bottle so frictionless that the sludgy goo inside just slides out like water."

MIT’s Freaky Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing

Nacho-related tattoos

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:16:16 PDT

Nachos NY -- a site celebrating the nacho in all its glory -- has produced three temporary nacho-related tattoos for your delectation.

Nacho Tattoos (via Craft)

Crow vending machine maker Joshua Klein on his new TV show, The Link

Joshua Klein — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:52:08 PDT

I haven't watched television since I was fifteen years old, but up until then my entire world view was shaped by shows like Nova and Nature. I guess there was other stuff on, but nothing else gave me the sense that there was an entire universe out there that I could actually get my fingers into the way those science shows did. So it was a no-brainer to say yes when National Geographic Channel called me about The Link.

At first I was confused about why they were calling. But they'd seen my TED talk about the intelligence of crows and said they'd like me to give an audition. I was scared to death, but immediately bought some books and spent a couple days immersing myself in what I had thought must be a pretty easy job.

Turns out I was wrong, and when I turned up on audition day I was almost certain they were going to realize their mistake right away. But in short order it became clear that the producer and the crew were all there to have fun, and before long we were romping around a grocery store having a blast. One thing that amazed me then -- and still does - is how having a camera opens doors for you, and believe me we made use of it!

It was only a week or two later that they contacted me and told me I had the job. That was one of the hardest parts -- I don't think I'd really realized what it meant to commit to producing a whole TV series until I got that call. For most of my life I've juggled a dozen projects at once, and suddenly I was being given the opportunity to do one thing only for nearly an entire year. I had to shelve a bunch of projects that were near and dear to me, but based on the prospective travel schedule I figured it would be worth it.

In that regard I was entirely correct. The team at Lion Television (who were producing the series) had cooked up some mind-blowing adventures for us, and in the first episode alone I got to make a bronze sword in Xi'an, China, learn how silk is produced in northern Italy, and try and evade a Predator drone in the deserts of southern Arizona.

It wasn't all fun and games -- being on the road three weeks a month was frankly exhausting -- and more personally the work was some of the most difficult I've ever done. Part of the charm of television is that they shoot hours and hours of it and then pick individual moments to make it look easy, but the truth of it was that I had an immensely steep learning curve those first few months.

As an example, the very first day of shooting I showed up in London, jet-lagged and jittery, and was told to walk across a courtyard, and the producer's first comment was to ask me "what the hell are you doing?!?" It turns out that the way you walk, the way you use your hands, tilt your head, lilt your voice -- all of it needs to be subtly tweaked so the camera can do a better job of bringing the experience to the audience. So not only do you have to walk, talk, move, breath, and articulate in a specific way, but you have to do it such that it seems natural. It's harder than it sounds.

That said, it would be impossible to go to all those amazing places and not be one very glad, giddy geek, and that made it a lot easier. At one point we were in Bletchley park, where computing was basically founded, and the crew brought out an original Enigma machine. It was on special loan by the Queen, and I got to take it out of the glass case for the first -- and last -- time in years. After we shot the sequence I set the encoding dials to my father's initials -- it was his birthday -- and the staff all assured me it would stay that way for years. As a closet cryptofetishist the satisfaction was immense.

Which is more or less what the entire series is about; that dizzying sense of amazement and wonder that comes from seeing the most incredible inventions human beings have come up with, and understanding their impact. Each episode traces ten to twelve innovations across history, describing how each one links to the next.

So the commodification of bronze weaponry might give rise to the silk road, for example, and then to the compass, and then stock certificates, and then the chain drive, and then computers, and then the rocket. It's artificial in that causality is infinite, sure, but it's also mind-blowing to see how a single invention can have such far-reaching repercussions. I found it immensely satisfying to bring to light how even small, incremental innovations could change the entire course of human history.

For me, making the show was a chance to share what gets me out of bed in the morning -- that we can all each change the world in some crucial way to make it better, just by being passionate about something we care about. If your thing is World War II control systems or oil platforms or Italian silk weaving or sheep farming or moveable type, the show's got it -- and helps articulate why it's so amazingly cool, and what it did to change the world. It's the kind of show that makes you walk outside and see everything as possible and, hopefully, encourages you to get out there and try something.

At least that's my hope for it. :)

The Link Premieres May 25 at 7pm ET/PT

Marvel Comics costume jewelry

David Pescovitz — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:32:32 PDT

Jamie at The Mary Sue looks at costume jewelry brand 1928's fun line of Marvel Comics Jewelry. "SHINY THINGS ASSEMBLE: MARVEL-THEMED JEWELRY (THAT YOU CAN TOTALLY AFFORD)"

Quebec cops kettle and mass-arrest demonstrators

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:23:08 PDT

In the Globe and Mail a Canadian Press report by Nelson Wyatt on the mass-kettling and arrest of protesters in Montreal last night. A long-running and hard-fought student strike over tuition hikes led to the passage of a shameful law that limits the rights of protesters. Quebeckers are out in force to protest this law, and often in sympathy with the students' demands. The police have responded with "kettling," the tactic of cordoning off a large area and declaring the resulting space to be a civil-rights-free zone, such that anyone caught inside is arbitrarily detained without access to shelter, food, health services, or toilets. (Above, a photo of Montreal police pepper-spraying demonstrators at a march last week).

Riot officers stood impassively around the corralled demonstrators, feet planted and batons clutched in gloved hands. On a nearby street, a Quebec provincial police officer was seen snapping a rod topped with the flag of the hardcore anti-capitalist Black Bloc and tossing it between two parked cars.
Police on horseback also provided reinforcement as officers sorted out the crowd.
Emmanuel Hessler, an independent filmmaker who had been following the march for a few blocks, said in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press from inside the police encirclement that he was surprised by the action, saying, “Suddenly, there were police all around us.”
While the crowd waited to be led away one by one to be handcuffed and sent for processing at a police operational centre – a procedure expected to take several hours – a man started reading poetry and the crowd hushed to listen. Someone else sang a folk song. At one point a woman called out the phone number of a lawyer which the mob took up as a chant.
Mr. Hessler, 30, was able to tweet to friends, “We are about to get cuffed and off in a bus. Don’t know what happens after. Wish me luck.”
Some demonstrators who had escaped the police cordon continued to march elsewhere while others milled about beyond the police lines and cheered as buses took the detainees away.

400 arrested as Montreal police kettle demonstrators (Thanks, Mom!)

(Image: IMG_6450, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 79393030@N04's photostream)

Digitally-manipulated photos of skinless women

David Pescovitz — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:12:11 PDT

Dutch artist fantastic Koen Hauser's Modische Atlas der Anatomie series of digitally manipulated photos brings to mind the classic "Visible Woman" kit. "Anatomy Revealed by Koen Hauser" (Juxtapoz)

How to buckle a brick column

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:11:09 PDT

[Video Link] There are probably easier ways to cause a column to buckle, but this way looks like fun.

(Via Cynical-C)

Star Trek/skull "Red Shirt" tee

David Pescovitz — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:57:28 PDT

Ian Wilding's clever "Red Shirt" is available from FSC Tees.

Happy 71st birthday Bob Dylan!

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:29:30 PDT

Abraham Piper of 22 Words says: "To commemorate Bob Dylan’s 71st birthday, here’s a Peanuts strip from this day in 1971."

Cyberpunk dress code, circa 1990

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:42 PDT

A 20-year-old photo spread from pioneering cyberculture zine Mondo 2000 asks the musical question: "R U a cyberpunk?" Bruce Sterling, who was, in fact, a cyberpunk, answers: "Since 20 years have passed, contemporary people will fail to realize that this was a comical self-parody."

ru cyberpunk (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Adam Savage's Maker Faire 2012 Talk: Why We Make

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:57:19 PDT

[Video Link] It was so great to see Adam Savage at Maker Faire again this year. Thousands of people crammed into the the giant Fiesta Hall for Adam's presentation.

Adam started by talking about his fedora, which is a replica of the one Harrison Ford wore in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. He explained that the hat was made by a guy named Marc Kitter. Unable to find an accurate Indiana Jones fedora, Kitter taught himself millenary, so he could make one for himself.

After Kitter got good at hat making, he started his own company, the Adventurebilt Hat Company, which makes 40 to 50 pure beaver felt fedoras per year for $650 each. They are so good that Harrison Ford wears an Adventurebilt in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I wonder how many extra orders Kitter got as a result of Adam's talk?