Boing Boing

Van Halen's "Eruption" guitar solo shredded by 14yo girl

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 24 May 2013 07:09:45 PDT

The guitar solo from Van Halen's song "Eruption" played by Tina, who is 14. More than 3 million video views in 3 days. She was taught and filmed by Renaud Louis-Servais, and she's playing a Vigier Excalibur Custom.

Below, Eddie Van Halen performing the same, live.

Apple "corporate tax evasion" product parody video: iRS

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 24 May 2013 06:53:46 PDT

The troublesome thing is that only about half of what's in this video is made up. From Sourcefed. Background: Apple, like many other large US corporations, does interesting things with money overseas to minimize the amount it must pay in taxes, and maximize the amount it can keep as profit.

Doc about Louisiana atheist seeks funding

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 24 May 2013 06:44:17 PDT

Bill sez, "Husband-and-wife Berkeley filmmakers Jason Cohn and Camille Servan-Schreiber won a Peabody award for their documentary about design pioneers Charles and Ray Eames, 'Eames: The Architect and the Painter.' Now they want to make a film about Jerry DeWitt, a former Pentecostal preacher who went public about his loss of faith, then lost his wife, yet remains in a town described by its mayor as 'the buckle of the Bible Belt.' Robert Worth profiled DeWitt's pain in the Sunday NY Times Magazine last August - whereupon Jason and Camille headed to rural Louisiana to interview him. As their Kickstarter page shows, they need to raise $30,000 in order to convince bigger funders that the project is viable. Sam 'End of Faith' Harris donated this week, and they're more than halfway to the goal."

My Own Private Westeros: hand-made scale model of Game of Thrones map

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 24 May 2013 06:22:12 PDT

[Click to enlarge]. Mikeal is making an incredibly labor-intensive scale model of the Game of Thrones Westeros map, and you can watch him build it at his tumblr: myownprivatewesteros.tumblr.com. 3D-printed castle models, walls of putty, hand-painted rivers and hills. This guy is serious.

(Thanks, Tom Osborn)

Hardwood Escher tesselated interlocking lizard tiles

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 24 May 2013 06:09:27 PDT

The Spanish firm Arbore offered these custom Escher-inspired floor tiles back in 2011; from the looks of things, they're still available. It's a very well-executed conceit, done in hardwood.

Diseño geometrico inspiración Escher (via Geekologie)

Why is Eric Holder in charge of reviewing Eric Holder's surveillance of journalists policy?

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 24 May 2013 06:02:11 PDT

During Obama's national security speech yesterday, the president unexpectedly mentioned the AP and Fox News press freedom scandals. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs,” he said, adding that he is “troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.” Trevor Timm from Freedom of the Press Foundation asks why, then, Eric Holder is in charge of reviewing Justice Department policy, when he is "the same man who has overseen the Justice Department prosecute leakers to the press at a record rate."

How Edmund Wilson said NO

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:42:44 PDT

Update: Here's Mark's first post of this, from 2009

Here's literary critic Edmund Wilson's form-letter for turning down requests from strangers. As Tim Ferriss notes, Wilson wasn't a hermit or antisocial, but he maximized the time he spent socializing with the people he liked by not letting strangers gobble up his time:

Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him without compensation to:
read manuscripts
< contribute to books or periodicals
do editorial work
judge literary contests
deliver lectures
address meetings
make after-dinner speeches
broadcast;

Under any circumstances to:
contribute to or take part in symposiums
take part in chain-poems or other collective compositions
contribute manuscripts for sales
donate copies of his books to libraries
autograph books for strangers
supply personal information about himself
supply photographs of himself
allow his name to be used on letter-heads
receive unknown persons who have no apparent business with him.

The Best Decline Letter of All-Time: Edmund Wilson (via Making Light)

The unsung heroes of early Tumblr culture

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:31:08 PDT

A good read in The Daily Dot about a "major piece of the puzzle" in Tumblr's origin myth that’s often overlooked: "[Founder David] Karp wasn’t the first person to create a tumblelog, the term used to describe the stripped-down blogging and content curation he has become known for. He wasn’t even the second. The true origin of Tumblr involves a German and an American, hundreds of lines of code, and their common desire to change the way we think about blogging."

Beautiful vintage jetpack-futurist car

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:28:19 PDT

On Super Punch, set of photos of a beautiful, enbubbled, betailfinned Los Angeles land yacht spotted on the 101. Hoo-ah.

Saw a this on the 101 in Los Angeles today. It was caravanning with a bunch of classic cars.

3D printing: with 2D; with holograms; and all-in-one 3D scanning

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:38:50 PDT

Here's a video from last week's Maker Faire showcasing technologies for printing out 3D-ish objects using 2D printers: ModelBox turns a 3D model into a series of 2D images you print on acetate and set into a frame to cheaply and quickly prototype/simulate the 3D object; Zebra Images turns 3D models into holograms; and Lynx Laboratories demos its all-in-one 3D scanner.

3D Printing on a 2D printer?! - Maker Faire 2013 (Thanks, Francis!)

Monster money!

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:03:00 PDT

Google Translate says that the caption on this image is Japanese for "Bill of surprised frontispiece monster world." I can't really hazard any guesses beyond that, but hey, monster money!

『びっくり口絵怪物世界のお札』 (via Crazy Abalone)

Watch the latest hand-picked videos in Boing Boing's video archives

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:49:23 PDT

Among the most recent video posts you will find on our video archive page:

• Conversations with my 2 year old: a web video series.
• 3D printing saved a baby's life.
• Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" music video.
• New Boards of Canada video!
• 3D printed shotgun slugs (suck).
• Law Enforcement's Guide to Satanism, 1994.
• Open source hardware 3D printer for pizza-on-demand.
• Nikola Tesla pitches VCs.

Boing Boing: Video archives

Victorian-era multitool for women: the chatelaine

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:04:07 PDT

Ben Marks of Collectors Weekly says: "Our Senior Victorian Accessories Correspondent, Hunter Oatman-Stanford, has just written a piece about the chatelaine, which was the killer hands-free device for women back in the Victorian era. For his article, he interviewed author Genevieve Cummins."

Like a customized Swiss Army knife, a chatelaine provided its wearer with exactly the tools she needed closest at hand. For an avid seamstress, that might include a needle case, thimble, and tape measure, while for an active nurse it might mean a thermometer and safety pins. Inspired by the complex key rings carried by “la chatelaine,” the female head of a grand French estate, these beautiful little contraptions were as fashionable as they were practical. In fact, their design was sometimes so trendy that style trumped usefulness.

The Killer Mobile Device for Victorian Women

3D printed bio-absorbable splint saves baby with otherwise fatal impaired breathing

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:00:43 PDT

Elijah sez, "Recent news has been all about the commercial use of 3D printing - from food to weaponry. But recently, doctors at the University of Michigan used quick thinking and 3D printing technology to save the life of a 2-month-old child with a rare disease."

The scaffold was made of a bioresorbable material, polycaprolactone, so it would dissolve and be absorbed by the body after about three years. At this point, his airways should be fully developed and no longer need the stent.
The doctors used high-resolution X-ray scans of one of Kaiba's healthy windpipes to design a computer model for the life-saving brace.
Laser-equipped 3-D printers crafted the device in a few hours, and the university obtained emergency clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to implant it on February 9, 2012 at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor.
"It was amazing. As soon as the splint was put in, the lungs started going up and down for the first time and we knew he was going to be OK," said Green.

3-D Printing Saves Baby's Life [VIDEO] (Thanks, Elijah Wolfson!)

McThanks

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:59:39 PDT

Matthew says: "Charles Ramsay, the man who famously put down his Big Mac to help rescue three women held captive in Cleveland, is getting complimentary McDonald's for the next year."

Prosthetic tentacle

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:37:23 PDT

Taiwanese design student Kaylene Kau created this motorized prosthetic tentacle for a class project: "For this project we were pushed by our Professor to push the boundaries of current upper-limb prosthetic design. Through extensive research I found that the prosthetic functioned as an assistant to the dominant functioning hand. The prosthetic needed to be both flexible and adjustable in order to accommodate a variety of different grips."

PROSTHETIC ARM (via Kadrey)

How London cops use social media to spy on protest movements

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:00:51 PDT

Juha sez, "If you're going to build a protest movement, it might be better to stay off Facebook and Twitter because the cops are fully tuned into social media these days. The Open Source Intelligence Unit at London's Metropolitan Police Service has a staff of seventeen who work seven days a week - to track social media feed back and to monitor community tension. Having a sense of humour and understanding of slang gives humans the edge over social media surveillance software, UK cops reckon. The British cops are worried about 4G mobile broadband though because it'll generate much more data such as video."

The unit monitored some 32 million social media articles during the Olympics, with 10,300 tweets being posted every second during the opening ceremony.
“Companies will tell your that sentiment analysis from a piece of software is about 56 percent accurate … we would say it's lower, because it doesn’t pick up humour or slang,” Ertogral said.
In addition to looking at trends, he said the unit was also exploring association to establish influencers, particularly for protest movements.
“So we’re trying to build friend lists on Facebook, who’s connected to who, who are the influencers out there etc.”

Police tap social media in wake of London attack [Charis Palmer/IT News]

(Thanks, Juha!)

Luke Skywalker's pants sold for $36,000

David Pescovitz — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:32:28 PDT

Luke Skywaler's filthy Levi's worn in the original Star Wars just sold at auction for $36,100. The "sand-colored 'cotton drill'" Levi's were customized by famed London costume-maker Bermans & Nathans. "Lot #555: Mark Hamill's Screen-Worn Hero Pants in the Original 1977 ''Star Wars'' as Luke Skywalker" (via New York)

Walktopus: 5' tall bronze

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:01:01 PDT

There's a lot of personality in Scott Musgrove's 5' tall bronze entitled "Walktopus." If that's a bit on the large side, there's a 20" version, too.

Sculpture (Thanks, Scott!)

Boards of Canada: Reach for the Dead (from "Tomorrow's Harvest," 2013)

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:41:13 PDT

A first music video from the long-awaited new album 'Tomorrow's Harvest' by Boards of Canada. New album due Monday June 10 worldwide except for North America, where it will be released one day later on June 11. Pre-order on Amazon here. Video directed by Neil Krug.

"I feel like I have been force fed tranquillisers and cake," says one YouTube commenter. "This is fucking beautiful."

And that about sums it up.

Crowdsourced advice with author A.J. Jacobs

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:04:31 PDT

A.J. Jacobs is the author of some of my favorite books. In his 2005 book, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, A.J. committed himself to read the entire print edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. In 2007 he wrote The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, he lived by the rules of the Bible, and ended up wearing a white robe and a very full beard. And in Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection, A.J. followed a bunch of extreme self-improvement techniques, including a raw food diet, the paleo diet, libido boosting techniques, and unusual exercise regimens.

(Here's my Gweek interview with AJ.) This week, A.J. has launched a crowdsourced advice column. Here's how he describes it:

I post a quandary from a reader on my Facebook page, and then my 100,000 followers weigh in with advice, rants, wisdom, encouragement, condemnations, etc. Then I curate the best/most interesting/funniest advice and put it in a column, along with my own take on the topic. So it's like a stadium-full of Ann Landerses and Dan Savages.

This week's question is: “How do you deal with perpetually late people who say that’s just how they are?”

Full text of Obama’s speech on national security, drones, and new promises to close GTMO

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:04:01 PDT

Here is the full text of President Obama’s May 23 speech on national security, as prepared for delivery today. The President was interrupted by Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, who challenged him on the urgency of closing Guantanamo Bay prison. He then spoke off script, allowing his heckler to speak at length, and he responded to her statements. A footnote: Ms. Benjamin, whom the President addressed as “that young lady interrupting me,” is 60 years old.

Vermont passes anti-patent-troll law

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:00:13 PDT

Vermont has passed a state-level law that allows companies to sue patent trolls who make deceptive claims in legal threats against them, and has used it to sue the notorious trolls at MPHJ, who say that anyone who scans a document over a network owes them $1000. However, it's not clear that the law will stand, as this is arguably federal jurisdiction.

The new law, believed to be the first in the nation, allows courts to consider if a claim is deceptive, specifies factors that can be considered as evidence, and provides for damages or relief to Vermont companies wrongly pressured into paying licensing fees or a settlement. The Vermont attorney general also can conduct civil investigations and bring civil action against violators.
"This bill will help to protect our good Vermont businesses from unscrupulous patent trolls who take advantage of them through bad faith claims of patent infringement. It will help us grow jobs," the governor said...
...Coinciding with the new law, the state filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing a Delaware company of patent trolling. The attorney general's office sued Wilmington-based MPHJ Technology Investments and its 40 subsidiary companies operating in Vermont.
The office alleged that MPHJ claimed to have a patent on the process of scanning documents and attaching them to emails via a network and that MPHJ sent letters making deceptive statements to small businesses in Vermont, demanded money, and threatened litigation over licensing fees

Vt Gov Signs Novel Law Against False Patent Claims [Lisa Rathke/Associated Press]

(Thanks, awjt!)

NYT Editorial Board: "Justice Interrupted in Guatemala"

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:55:37 PDT

The New York Times Editorial Board: "The United States, which supported [General Ríos Montt] and his regime during the war and apologized for that in 1999, provides aid for the justice system. It should urge that the case be pursued through an independent process. It would be a travesty if a mishandled legal proceeding were to deny victims justice now."

Scary up-close video of Oklahoma tornado

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:49:27 PDT

Matthew says: "Charles Gafford lives in Moore, Oklahoma and held his smartphone out the window of his shelter to film up-close footage of the May 20th tornado." (Via Laughing Squid)