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Wednesday, March 27th, 2013
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| 5:53a | To watch: PBS NOVA on Russian Meteor Strike debuts tonight, March 27  "A blinding flash of light streaked across the Russian sky, followed by a shuddering blast strong enough to damage buildings and send more than 1,000 people to the hospital." Tonight, the PBS program NOVA explores the science questions behind the mysterious events of February 15, 2013, when a 7,000-ton asteroid crashed into Earth's atmosphere. "Is our solar system a deadly celestial shooting gallery with Earth in the crosshairs? And what are the chances that another, more massive asteroid is heading straight for us?"
Watch Meteor Strike Preview on PBS. See more from NOVA. 
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| 6:05a | CIA director promotes woman who approved destruction of CIA "harsh interrogation" videos A woman has been placed in charge of the CIA’s clandestine service for the first time in the agency’s history, reports the Washington Post. She's a veteran officer whom many in the agency support, and the high-level appointment is seen as a step forward for women in Washington. That's the good news! The bad news is... [S]he also helped run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and signed off on the 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture. The woman, who remains undercover and cannot be named, was put in the top position on an acting basis when the previous chief retired last month. The question of whether to give her the job permanently poses an early quandary for [CIA Director John] Brennan, who is already struggling to distance the agency from the decade-old controversies.</p>More: "CIA director faces a quandary over clandestine service appointment". [The Washington Post, via @dabeard] 
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| 6:17a | Cody R Wilson's 3D-printed guns: the VICE documentary  Erin Lee Carr produced this VICE Motherboard documentary on Cody R Wilson of Defense Distributed (DD), who "figured out how to print a semi-automatic rifle from the comfort of his own home" and is now spreading the gospel of "wiki weapons." Yes, they even have a manifesto. Wilson, who recently pitched his ideas at SXSW, is sharing the HOWTO online and encouraging others to join him.
This is a story about the rapid evolution of a technology that has forced the American legal system to play catch up. Cody Wilson, a 24 year old University of Texas Law student, is an advocate for the open source production of firearms using 3D printing technology. This makes him a highly controversial figure on both sides of the gun control issue. MOTHERBOARD sat down with Cody in Austin, Texas to talk about the constitution, the legal system, and to watch him make and test-fire a 3D-printed gun.A related item at VICE by Adam Clark Estes reports on the reaction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The government doesn't seem entirely sure what to think of Wilson's own institution. I talked to a number of ATF representatives, all of whom sent a similar message: 3D-printed gun technology has arrived, but it's not good enough yet to start figuring out how to regulate it. "We are aware of all the 3D printing of firearms and have been tracking it for quite a while," Earl Woodham, spokesperson for the ATF field office in Charlotte, told me. "Our firearms technology people have looked at it, and we have not yet seen a consistently reliable firearm made with 3D printing." 
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| 6:22a | DDoS storm breaks records at 300 Gbps The Internet has been groaning under the weight of a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Domain Name Service, apparently aimed at anti-spam vigilantes Spamhaus, in retaliation for their blacklisting of Dutch free speech hosting provider Cyberbunker. At 300 mbps, the DDoS is the worst in public Internet history.
As bad as this is, it could be a lot worse. An anonymous paper called Internet Census 2012: Port scanning /0 using insecure embedded devices reports on a researcher's project to scan every IPv4 address for publicly available machines that will accept a telnet connection and yield up a root login to a default password. The researcher reports that 1.2 million such devices are available online (s/he compromised many of these machines in order to run the census). These machines are things like printers and routers with badly secured firmware, visible on the public net. They are often running an old version of GNU/Linux and can be hijacked to form part of a staggeringly large botnet that would be virtually unkillable, since the owners of these devices are vanishingly unlikely to notice that they are silently running attackware, and the devices themselves are completely unregarded. Firm Is Accused of Sending Spam, and Fight Jams Internet [NYT/John Markoff & Nicole Perlroth] (via Hacker News)
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| 6:25a | Controversy over Esquire profile of the SEAL who shot bin Laden (or maybe didn't)  Was Phil Bronstein's 15,000-word Esquire profile of the SEAL Team 6 member who killed Osama bin Laden, a Navy SEAL who is "now retired and struggling to make ends meet while dealing with the psychological and physical scars of war," a bunch of “Complete B-S”? That's what some of "The Shooter's" fellow SEALs told CNN's Peter Bergen. Adrian Chen tries to figure it out. Esquire stands by the story. [Gawker]
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| 6:39a | Beautiful photos of cellphone masts disguised as ugly trees
Cellphone Towers Disguised as Trees Are a Puzzling Attempt at Aesthetics
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| 6:41a | Troll comments on YouTube video by sending comment via postal mail to uploader's home  Bill and Mara, Florida-based electrical engineering majors, decided to get married. Their shared passion for their field inspired them to theme their "ultimate geek wedding" as “Circuit and Swirls,” and they created invitations with LED-running circuits.Ever the DIY-er, Bill posted a video and a how-to on his blog. Some jerk mailed a handwritten manifesto (which he described as a "concerned warning") to their home address, because sometimes posting a nasty YouTube comment on someone's sweet shared thing just isn't enough.
Read the whole thing at PassiveAggressiveNotes.com. (via Matt Richardson)
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| 6:45a | Teen who pointed laser at aircraft jailed for 30 months CNN's Aaron Cooper reports on the consequences for aiming laser pointers at aircraft. U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson sentenced a 19-year-old man on Monday to 30 months in federal prison for shining a laser pointer at a plane and police helicopter, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, which prosecuted the case. 
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| 6:51a | T-Mobile ditches cellphone contracts Cyrus Farivar: "T-Mobile's offering, dubbed “Simple Choice,” makes the company the first of the big four US-based carriers to drop one-year or two-year contracts in favor of purely month-to-month-based arrangements. T-Mobile outlined the new plan on its website Monday." 
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| 6:55a | Charges dropped against groundhog The Ohio prosecutor who called for Punxsutawney Phil's indictment and execution has dropped the charges, saying that "I have really serious work to do." Previously. 
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| 7:01a | No rest for Richard III's bones Weeks after his remains were discovered under a car lot, Richard III's bones are yet to be put to rest. The University of Leicester, which led the exhumation project, plans to inter Richard at the local cathedral. But York, the seat of his branch of the House of Plantagenet, wants him back. Previously. [Reuters] 
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| 7:09a | "Fake" tax-scam movie won film award When British authorities began to suspect that a movie production was in fact a massive tax scam, the producers were forced to cover their tracks by actually making the movie. It even won an award from the 2012 Las Vegas Film Festival; an award only rescinded after tax inspectors nevertheless swooped in. The movie's name? Landscape of Lies. Enjoy the trailer! [Daily Mail] 
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| 7:40a | Back issues of the NSA's secret, in-house mag (via Schneier)
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| 7:41a | Calculating product placement in hip hop songs: CDZA's $56 million musical shopping spree How do you calculate the value of product placement in hip hop songs? Joe Sabia's CDZA ("Collective Cadenza") project on YouTube attempted to do just that, with a virtual 56 million dollar hip-hop shopping spree. Their "Methodology for price determination" breakdown follows:
This edition of CDZA's weekly musical experiments features Mark, Todd and Stasia from the Key of Awesome. Related: CDZA merch, and an MP3 download, neither of which cost $56 million.
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| 7:49a | Rap Quotes: site-specific street art with official-looking signs bearing hip hop lyrics  He installs the signs at those same street corners and locations throughout New York City. Video below. [Animal New York]
(via Ethan Zuckerman)
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| 8:00a | Telekinesis' latest video has a romantic ghost in the machine Ghosts & Creatures is cut from Telekinesis' latest album, Dormarion. Have you loved a computer so much as much as your first? Actually, my first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, so yes. But anyway. 
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| 8:11a | TOM THE DANCING BUG: Super-Fun-Pak Comix, featuring "How to Draw Doug," and more, More, MORE! BE THE FIRST AMONG YOUR COHORT to see Tom the Dancing Bug, by @RubenBolling, every week! Members of the elite and prestigious INNER HIVE get the comic emailed to their inboxes at least a day before publication -- and much, much MORE! Please click HERE for information. Thank you.
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| 8:21a | Are "theory" and "hypothesis" dead? Do you understand the difference between a "hypothesis" and a "theory"? Physics professor Rhett Alain thinks you probably don't. But he says that's not your fault. The words just aren't terribly precise, at least in the public parlance, and they only serve to make discussions about science confusing. He has a modest proposal: Let's replace them both with something that makes sense to the general public. 
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| 8:29a | Calling out Jane Goodall for a plagiarism and error-filled book Jane Goodall's new book isn't just filled with plagiarism, writes Michael Moynihan at The Daily Beast, it also drastically misconstrues agricultural science and presents poor sources — for instance, books published by the Maharishi University of Management and written by people with no scientific training at all are probably not the best sources to use if you're trying to build a legitimate case against the technology of genetic engineering. 
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| 8:43a | Lightest-ever aerogel is only twice as heavy as hydrogen
Graphene aerogel is the new world's lightest substance [Crave/Michelle Starr] (via Beyond the Beyond) (Image: Graphene aerogel resting on a delicate plant, Zhejiang University))
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| 8:44a | Ocean scientists say 19-year-old's "realistic" plan to clean up the ocean isn't actually realistic Earlier this week, Jason told you about a TEDx talk in which 19-year-old Boyan Slat presents a plan to remove plastic from the world's oceans. Lots of people are excited about this, which is reasonable. Particulate plastic in the ocean is a big problem that has, thus far, evaded any reasonable clean-up plans. There's just so much of it, it's so tiny, and the ocean is, you know, kind of huge. If a kid can come up with a plan that works, it would be fantastic. Unfortunately, the ocean scientists at Deep Sea News say Slat's system isn't as simple and practical as he thinks it is. Among the many problems: Slat's plan would catch (and kill) as many vitally important plankton as pieces of plastic, and it calls for mooring plastic-collecting ships in the open ocean where the water is 2000 meters deeper than the deepest mooring ever recorded. Here's a mantra to remember: TED Talks — interesting if true. 
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| 8:48a | Winny Puhh: through YouTube, bizarro Estonian punk band finds new global fame
Death and Taxes magazine has a good backgrounder here, with more of their videos, all of which are weird, some of which are NSFW. Listen to their songs here. * I know this is gonna shock you, but their name translates to "Winnie the Pooh." HT: Syd Garon!
Photos courtesy of Winny Puu, via the band's Facebook. 
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| 9:02a | Two-headed bull shark A Gulf of Mexico fisherman opened the uterus of an adult bull shark and found a two-headed shark pup inside. According to Michigan State University researchers, this is the first two-headed bull shark confirmed by scientists. ""Given the timing of the shark's discovery with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I could see how some people may want to jump to conclusions," Michael Wagner, MSU assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife, wrote in a report in the Journal of Fish Biology. "Making that leap is unwarranted. We simply have no evidence to support that cause or any other." (EurekAlert!)
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| 9:24a | Naming the anonymous victims of US drone attacks Less than 20% of drone victims have been named. UK-based NGO The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has a new project: Name the Dead. There's a fundraiser here. (HT: @ggreenwald) 
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| 9:24a | University in Kansas offers Bachelor of Science degree in Drones "K-State is one of the first two Universities in the U.S. to offer a Bachelor of Science in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). Our program uses a hands-on approach for learning and attaining the skills needed to safely operate and manage UAS -- it’s what sets K-State apart from the rest." [HT: @WilliamJDobson] 
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| 9:25a | Watch the latest video posts in our Boing Boing video archive  We've gathered fresh video for you to surf and enjoy on the Boing Boing video page. The latest finds for your viewing pleasure include:
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| 9:33a | Thursday: White House/Tom Kalil Google Hangout about the maker movement  On Thursday (3/28) at 3pm ET, Boing Boing pal and White House innovation advisor Tom Kalil is hosting a Google Hangout to talk about the maker movement! Tom has been instrumental in helping President Obama and the administration understand the value of maker culture in sci/tech education. Joining Tom in the Hangout will be folks like MAKE founder Dale Dougherty, Super Awesome Maker Show's Super Awesome Sylvia, and Ford future tech lead Venkatesh Prasad. "White House Hangout: The Maker Movement" (Above, President Obama checks out a soccer-playing robot built by Blue Bell, PA high school students. Photo by Pete Souza.)
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| 9:52a | English school (briefly) bans triangular desserts, citing food-fight shuriken risks The ban did not stand very long. Public mockery seems to have killed it.
Triangular Treats Banned Due to Risk of Sharp Corners (Image: Flapjacks..., a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from ajy's photostream)
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| 9:53a | TIme-lapse of a particularly intense aurora borealis display Photographer Göran Strand created this stunning time-lapse video made from photographs of the aurora borealis as seen from Östersund, Sweden on March 17, 2013. The video consists of 2,464 images taken over four hours. The extreme intensity of the aurora borealis display resulted from a huge solar storm spurred by two solar flares that erupted on March 6.
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| 10:08a | A friendly reminder: if you like Boing Boing the blog, join us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or Ins  Boing Boing is on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and Instagram. Join us at the social network of your choice, or heck, all of 'em.
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| 10:10a | Photos from on top of the Great Pyramid
The Pyramids of Giza close to tourists at 4:00 pm. Recently, a group of Russians managed to hide out at the site after closing time and scramble up the Great Pyramid of Cheops in the fading light. Naturally, they took photos. (Because if there is one thing the Internet has taught me about Russians, it's that they like to climb to dangerous heights and then take photos.) These shots are kind of fabulous, not just for the thrill of "yeah, somebody broke the rules!", but because of the perspective you get from on high that isn't visible in the many ground-level shots I've seen. From on top of the Pyramid, you can see how the stone is pockmarked and carved — it really looks like something humans cut out of the Earth. You can also see the graffiti left by generations of tourists in multiple languages; English, Arabic, French, and more. And you can see the edge of the modern city, shimmering just at the horizon. I don't think I'd previously had such a profound sense of how closely modern Egyptians lived and worked to the Great Pyramid, before. What a fascinating view! Thanks to Steve Silberman for the link! 
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| 10:15a | Honoring death by donating your body to science i09's Annalee Newitz is donating her body to science when she dies. In a moving and fascinating article, she tells the story of her mother's death, how it led her to make this choice for herself, and what happens to bodies once they find their way into the hands of medical schools and scientists. 
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| 10:45a | Assemblage raygun
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| 10:59a | Citizens who helped find killer cop denied reward Ken Layne, writes that the authorities have denied the rewards promised to those who helped them find cop-killer Christopher Dorner. [The Awl] Three brave heroes who survived their encounters with Dorner have since claimed the reward, but the stingy governments and groups who offered the money now refuse to pay because Dorner somehow didn't survive an army of cops roasting and demolishing the mountain cabin he holed up inside for his last stand. After the LAPD's gung-ho public rampage in search of Dorner, a final insult to the people they ostensibly serve seems entirely appropriate. Update: Commenter Ethan points out, though, that the LAPD itself is planning to honor reward offers: "It's the city of Riverside that withdrew the reward. Irvine is still planning to pay it out as is LA. The LAPD Deputy Chief said it would be disingenuous to deny the reward because Dorner was killed."
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| 11:42a | Fifteen Years After A School Shooting Buzzfeed's David Peisner writes about the aftermath of a 1998 school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas, that left five dead and ten more wounded. To this day, the small town feels the pain—a pain shared by Newtown and many others. 
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| 11:58a | Attack of the copyright trolls Online, torrents of failed movies linger mysteriously, waiting to net downloaders in shakedown settlements which seem to have little to do with preventing piracy. John Biggs covers the details of a copyright trolls' legal and wildly profitable scam. [TechCrunch] Previously. 
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| 12:19p | Policy Laundering: how the US Trade Rep is trading away America's right to unlock its devices Some of America's worst copyright laws were passed through a profoundly undemocratic process called "policy laundering." This is what happens when an administration can't get Congress to pass a bad copyright law, so the US Trade Representative instead signs the US up to international treaties requiring America to pass the unpopular law. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act is one of the policy-laundered laws that has done enormous harm to the country. Now the USTR is busy again, signing America up to treaties that undermine attempts by Congress to make phone unlocking and jailbreaking legal. America's official representative is going to other countries and telling them, "If you want to do business with America, you must ban jailbreaking and phone unlocking, and in return, we promise to keep those activities on the banned list, too." In other words, America's trade reps are cramming a massively unpopular, harmful policy down the throats of its trading partners, while simultaneously locking America into the same policy, undermining Congress at the same time. The Electronic Frontier Foundation wants you to take action on this. Maira Sutton and Parker Higgins have written a good article explaining policy laundering in depth.
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| 12:30p | Save Noisebridge! A reader writes, "Noisebridge, San Francisco's Hackerspace, is having some hard times, so we're throwing an epic benefit and party this Saturday, to include eclectic performers, interactive art, a raffle and more! For more details, if any BBers want to put on demos or ideas share them. 
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| 12:48p | What could a library do with a gigabit Internet connection? Marijke Visser from the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy writes with this provocative question:
Well?
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| 1:32p | Cerama Bryte Cooktop Cleaner
It’s not that I haven’t tried to keep it clean. The Windex/409 combo that I tend to use on every other surface in the house at least removes the loose stuff from the cooktop, but at best it’s only passable. Even if I did manage to get the thing really clean, every solution I’ve tried leaves some form of unsightly haze on the surface, which prevents it from ever looking truly clean. So the other day when I was shopping for appliance parts for an unrelated kitchen catastrophe, I was pleased to discover Cerama Bryte on the store shelf. Wary of the descriptive yet unfortunate name, the friendly sales associate assured me that products like this tend to work well. So I bought it, used it and loved it. The starter kit I purchased consists of three parts used in a three-step process. Part one is a standard razor blade scraper, used as step one to easily remove any cooked-on mess. (Any razor blade scraper would do the trick, I’m sure.) Part two is the Cerama Bryte liquid cleaner, used in conjunction with part three, a Cerama Bryte cleaning pad. The cleaning solution itself is similar in consistency to liquid car wax. It goes on in much the same way too — spread in circles via the cleaning pad (step two), then left to dry before buffing with a soft cloth or paper towel in step three. I’ve found that the “quarter sized” dollop recommended on the back of the bottle is almost sufficient, and that a heavy hand with the stuff only makes for longer drying times and more challenging buffing. Cerama Bryte works wonderfully, creating a spotless, haze-free, factory-fresh shine in just a few minutes. It’s easy to apply, cleanup is fairly simple, and the cleaner itself is biodegradable and phosphate free. (I still wouldn’t rub it in my eyes, though.) I can’t imagine anything cleaning my stove better than Cerama Bryte. If you’re searching for a cleaning solution for an unsightly glass-ceramic cooktop, this is probably it. -- William Sawalich Cerama Bryte Cooktop Cleaning Kit $8 
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| 2:04p | Science Hack Day Ambassador Program 2013 
Science Hack Day Ambassador Program Science Hack Day is coming to your city! (Top: "Syneseizure," the hack that won the "People's Choice" award at the 2011 Science Hack Day SF, photo by Matt Biddulph. Ariel photo by Matt Nuzzaco). 
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| 2:24p | Frank Zappa reads the dirty bits of Naked Lunch Here's a bit of audio of Frank Zappa reading some of the dirty parts of William S Burroughs's Naked Lunch, taken from a rare double LP called "The Nova Convention."
Frank Zappa Reads NSFW Passage From William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1978) (via MeFi)
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| 2:52p | Dinner in the Haunted Mansion There was a dinner inside the Disneyland Haunted Mansion. And I didn't get to go.
Dining in Disneyland: Marc Davis Centennial Dinner INSIDE the Haunted Mansion (Thanks, Thomas Valley!)
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| 3:12p | Municipal codes of DC, free for all -- liberated without permission
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| 4:27p | Hyper-macho, super-busy old body-building ad
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| 5:41p | Dead words that want reviving Here's Death and Taxes's collection of 18 obsolete words that would be handy (or at least funny) to use today, compiled by Carmel Lobello from a book called The Word Museum and a blog called Obsolete Word of the Day. Some of my favorites:
18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style
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| 7:24p | Band puts up Times Square billboard asking for views on piracy
“Piracy Is Progress” Billboard on Times Square Divides Artists [Torrentfreak/Ernesto]
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| 7:35p | Kalashnikov made of bones
KALASHNIKOV - AK47 (LIFE-SIZE REPLICA) Brand new item (Thanks, Bruce!)
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| 9:28p | Why security awareness training is a waste of time Bruce Schneier presents a very cogent and convincing argument that "security awareness training" is a waste of money -- specifically, because the benefits of "security" are intangible, while the benefits of getting your work done are apparent.
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| 9:46p | Short sf film about future augmented reality graffiti Tim Maughan and friends produced a short film based on his excellent story Paintwork, which is about graffiti and augmented reality (see my earlier review). It was a project for New Scientist's Arc Magazine. (Thanks, Tim!)
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Artist 
The highly theatrical Estonian punk/metal/WTF band 
I literally squealed with delight. It was the most amazing table setting I’ve ever seen. Fresh flowers, gorgeous vases, elegant table ware, goblets to drink from — it was very overwhelming. 
The latest bone gun by New Zealand bone artist – Mahalski – is a life-size AK47 machine gun(330mm x 940mm) featuring found animal bones from rabbit, stoat, ferret, sheep, hawk, pheasant, wallaby, snapper, snake, blackbird, tarakihi, hedgehog, broad-billed prion , shear water, thrush, seal ,cat and possum (plus part of a skull from the extinct moa ). The gun is made entirely of bones mounted on an invisible wooden frame and is displayed standing upright on two rods on a piece of recycled matai timber (1130mm x 2000mm). You can see more pictures at - www.mahalski.org 
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