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Rich New Yorkers hire disabled "guides" to Disney World in order to skip lines (according to NY Post, anyway)

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:15:02 +0000

The (awful and not usually very trustworthy) New York Post reports that rich New Yorkers pay thousands of dollars to an Orlando area service that rents out disabled people to accompany them to Walt Disney World in order to jump the lines. The article says that there's a word-of-mouth underground in New York's priciest private schools, in which parents pass on the details of the service, which is allegedly called Dream Tours Florida:

Passing around the rogue guide service’s phone number recently became a shameless ritual among Manhattan’s private-school set during spring break. The service asks who referred you before they even take your call.
“It’s insider knowledge that very few have and share carefully,” said social anthropologist Dr. Wednesday Martin, who caught wind of the underground network while doing research for her upcoming book “Primates of Park Avenue.”
“Who wants a speed pass when you can use your black-market handicapped guide to circumvent the lines all together?” she said.
“So when you’re doing it, you’re affirming that you are one of the privileged insiders who has and shares this information.”

Rich Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides so kids can cut lines at Disney World [Tara Palmeri/New York Post]

Dazzle-paint bar

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:42:34 +0000

The basement of the Hôtel Americano in Chelsea, NYC has been done over in dazzle-paint reminiscent of the cubist battleship paint used to confound the enemy in WWI (and dazzle makeup used to fake out face-recognition systems). The work is by German artist Tobias Rehberger, who describes it as a re-creation of Frankfurt's Bar Oppenheimer.

The space, which opens May 10 and will remain open until July 14, dazzles the senses with its salonlike atmosphere, tight dimensions and prismatic black-and-white stripes; it’s also a functional bar where anyone can stop in for a drink during the life of the project.

By Design | A Bar That’s Also a Piece of Art [Rocky Casale/New York Times Magazine]

(via JWZ)

(Image: downsized, cropped thumbnail of a larger photo by Matthew Cianfrani, viewable here)

Rumored Statue of Liberty face-recognition supplier harasses and threatens journalist

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:38:13 +0000

Slate's Ryan Gallagher caught wind of a new face recognition software being rolled out at the Statue of Liberty. He interviewed a rep from Total Recall, who were reported to be representing Cognitec, the German company whose product, FaceVACS was going in on Liberty Island. Halfway through the interview, Total Recall's director of business development Peter Millius terminated the call, saying that the project was on hold, or possibly cancelled, "vetoed" by the Park Police.

Then it got weird. Cognitec and its lawyers began to barrage Gallagher with emails and letters warning him that if he wrote about this, they'd sue him. When he asked Total Recall for clarification, they threatened to sue him, personally, for harassment. The National Park Service didn't have much to say about the bid, saying "I'm not going to show my hand as far as what security technologies we have." Go, security-through-obscurity! Hurrah for spending tax dollars without any transparency!

Gallagher reported the whole story, including the threats. Whatever merits or demerits Total Recall and Cognitec have as companies, turning into weird, opaque legal-threat-generating machines in the middle of an interview and harassing and intimidating journalists sounds like the kind of thing that should disqualify them from getting any of the American public's money.

“We do work with Cognitec, but right now because of what happened with Sandy it put a lot of different pilots that we are doing on hold,” Peter Millius, Total Recall’s director of business development, said in a phone call. “It’s still months away, and the facial recognition right now is not going to be part of this phase.” Then, he put me hold and came back a few minutes later with a different position—insisting that the face-recognition project had in fact been “vetoed” by the Park Police and adding that I was “not authorized” to write about it.
That was weird, but it soon got weirder. About an hour after I spoke with Total Recall, an email from Cognitec landed in my inbox. It was from the company’s marketing manager, Elke Oberg, who had just one day earlier told me in a phone interview that “yes, they are going to try out our technology there” in response to questions about a face-recognition pilot at the statue. Now, Oberg had sent a letter ordering me to “refrain from publishing any information about the use of face recognition at the Statue of Liberty.” It said that I had “false information,” that the project had been “cancelled,” and that if I wrote about it, there would be “legal action.” Total Recall then separately sent me an almost identical letter—warning me not to write “any information about Total Recall and the Statue of Liberty or the use of face recognition at the Statue of Liberty.” Both companies declined further requests for comment, and Millius at Total Recall even threatened to take legal action against me personally if I continued to “harass” him with additional questions.

Lady Liberty’s Watching You (via Reddit)

(Image: Statue of Liberty Paris, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from francehousehunt's photostream)

Well-dressed psychoanalyst in NYC

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:07:00 +0000

This wonderfully dressed woman comes from an early February post to the Humans of New York Tumblr, a collection of well-put-together individuals indeed.

“Artist?” “Psychoanalyst.” (via Crazy Abalone)

Issuing an apology on behalf of the New York Post

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:38:47 +0000

Andy writes, "As you guys know, the New York Post made some pretty terrible editorial decisions following the Boston Marathon attacks, including putting two innocent kids on the cover. Someone wrote a fake letter of apology from the paper's editor and inserted it into a bunch of papers around NYC, and ANIMAL made a video about it. Take a look!"

The Apology the New York Post Should Have Issued - ANIMAL (Thanks, Andy!)

American public schools in 9 states sharing every conceivable personal detail of their students with third parties

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 03:03:58 +0000

Update: A PR person who has apparently been retained to represent inBloom strenuously objected to Greg's characterization of her client's practices below. She sent me an email, which I've posted to the comments. I've also made a factual correction, regarding constraints, below (look for the strikethrough)

Greg Costikyan sez,

inBloom, a Gates-funded non-profit to harness data to improve grade school education, has partnered with New York and eight other states to encourage the development of apps to "further education" by using intimate data about students, without parental consent and with no ability for parents to opt out.
Among the data shared are name, address, phone numbers, test scores, grades, economic status, test scores, disciplinary records, picture, email, race, developmental delay... just about everything conceivable, and all specific, none of it anonymized. inBloom has arrangements with nine states (New York, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, Delaware and Kentucky) to do this.
The XML schema used are downloadable here. Anyone can register as a developer and start using "sample" data, but "real" data is supposedly only available to developers with contracts with a school board. But this includes for-profit, third party developers, such as, say, Amplify, a News Corp subsidiary with a contract with New York. ~~And it doesn't appear there are any constraints on their use of this data.~~ Ed: apparently constraints can be imposed by districts and states, though the system can allow unconstrained access if the district/state chooses.

Who is Stockpiling and Sharing Private Information About New York Students? (Thanks, Greg!)

Band puts up Times Square billboard asking for views on piracy

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 02:24:01 +0000

The band Ghost Beach won a promo deal with American Eagle, and spent the money on a prominent billboard in Times Square asking people to tweet their feelings about piracy. Piracy is winning:

Piracy is progress, piracy is freedom, piracy is harmless, piracy is inevitable, piracy is robbery, piracy is evil, piracy is selfish, or is it a fad?
The statements above are displayed on one of the world’s most prominent billboards in Times Square, New York. The billboard displays both positive and negative views on piracy and encourages the public to add their views via Twitter. Thus far the for-piracy side outnumbers the against-piracy side 20 to 1...

“Rather than just put up another advertisement, we decided to open a discussion up with our peers about how they felt about music distribution on the internet and the future of the industry,” the band tells TorrentFreak.

“Piracy Is Progress” Billboard on Times Square Divides Artists [Torrentfreak/Ernesto]

NYPD will arrest you for carrying condoms: the women/trans/genderqueer version of stop-and-frisk

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:57:52 +0000

NYC has a law prohibiting "loitering for the purposes of engaging in a prostitution offense" which lets cops arrest whomever they feel like, on the strength of their conviction that the person is probably a sex-worker, on the basis of flimsy circumstantial evidence like carrying a condom, talking to men, or wearing tight clothes. Like stop-and-frisk, it's part of a pattern of laws that assume that the police have infallible intuition about who the "bad guys" are and lets them use their discretion to harass and bust whomever they feel like. And like stop-and-frisk laws, the "condom" law shows that the much-vaunted cop intuition is really just bias, a dowsing rod that leads officers to poor women, genderqueer people, and trans people.

Like most laughably cruel tricks of the justice system, you probably wouldn't know that you could be arrested for carrying condoms until it happened to you. Monica Gonzalez is a nurse and a grandmother. In 2008, Officer Sean Spencer arrested her for prostitution while she was on the way to the ER with an asthma attack. The condom he found on her turned out to be imaginary. Gonzalez sued the city after the charges were dropped. But if the condom were real, why should she have even been arrested at all?
Arrest is always violent. The NYPD may or may not break your ribs, but the process of arrest in America is still a man tying your hands behind your back at gunpoint and locking you in a cage. Holding cells are shit-encrusted boxes, often too crowded to sit down. Police can leave you there for three days; long enough to lose your job. If this seems obvious, I say it because the polite middle classes trivialize arrest. They talk about "keeping people off the streets." They don't realize that the constant threat of arrest is traumatic, unless it happens to them or their kids.
Prostitution is only a misdemeanor in New York, but a conviction will knock you off food stamps and out of subsidized housing. While society feigns wanting sex workers to change their profession, it does everything it can to keep them where they are. Most prostitution defendants plea bargain. Too broke and scared to fight, men and women agree to charges that will follow them for life.
There are two types of prostitution arrests. For "prostitution," the officer has to witness you making an offer, but "loitering for the purposes of engaging in a prostitution offense" requires only circumstantial evidence. On the supporting depositions, officers answer a checklist. Were you standing in an area known for prostitution? According to Karina Claudio, a lead organizer at the community group Make the Road, these areas can be anywhere. Were you dressed provocatively? Did you speak to a guy? Were you standing next to someone who has been arrested for prostitution? Were you carrying condoms?

New York Cops Will Arrest You for Carrying Condoms | VICE United States (via Amanda Palmer)

(Image: Molly Crabapple)

Ralph Bakshi's Kickstarter-funded documentary on Coney Island in the 1960s

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:37:35 +0000

A reader writes, "Revolutionary animation director Ralph Bakshi just started a Kickstarter for shorts about Coney Island in the 60s. Looks like it'll have some pretty heavy themes. Might be worth looking into! Looks like an important reflection of American cultural revolutions."

In my films I have always discussed America: who we are, what we are, for better and worse, and the ridiculous. I’m here on Kickstarter asking for your support for my newest project, Last Days of Coney Island.
It’s a series of shorts set against the strange backdrop of Coney Island and all its weird characters: crooked cops, broken hearts, jaded strippers, and singers.

Be sure and check out the rewards -- lots of extremely sweet Bakshi one-of-a-kind stuff.

Last Days of Coney Island

Gygax Magazine: Dragon reborn

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:45:32 +0000

Jayson sez, "Gygax magazine is a quarterly adventure-gaming magazine, created in the spirit of such iconic '80s journals as Dragon, White Dwarf, Adventure Gaming, and Pegasus. At the helm are Gary Gygax's two eldest sons, Luke & Ernest Gary Gygax Jr., along with Jayson Elliot, and Dragon magazine founder Tim Kask. The first issue includes an article by Cory Doctorow on DMing for toddlers, as well as new comics from Phil Foglio (What's New With Phil & Dixie) and Rich Burlew (The Order of the Stick). Gygax will launch its first issue this Saturday at The Brooklyn Strategist. The event, which is open to the public, will also have lots of gaming (including a massive AD&D 1E dungeon delve with the founder of Dwarven Forge) and a video Q&A with the staff. The whole event will be live-streamed at GygaxMagazine.com."

Gygax Magazine

Aaron Swartz memorial in NYC this Saturday

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:20:12 +0000

Aaron Swartz's New York friends are planning a memorial service and tribute to him this Saturday at The Great Hall of The Cooper Union. Use the link below to RSVP.

If you knew Aaron and are interested in speaking, please email rememberaaronsw@gmail.com with "NYC memorial service" in the subject line.
The Great Hall of The Cooper Union has stood for more than a century as a bastion of free speech and a witness to the flow of American History and ideas. When the hall opened in 1858, more than a year in advance of the completion of the institution, it quickly became a mecca for all interested in serious discussion and debate of the vital issues of the day.

Aaron Swartz NYC Memorial Service

How Internet copyright laws let Big Content get away with paying less to artists

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:00:21 +0000

I've written an essay on how copyright enforcement laws let entertainment companies get away with paying less to artists for the O'Reilly Tools of Change blog. The ToC folks asked to to contribute something related to the keynote I'll be doing at their annual conference in NYC next month, as part of my tour for Homeland, the sequel to Little Brother.

In other words, by asking governments to ascribe liability to these “intermediaries” (services that sit between creators and audiences), the entertainment industry is demanding that the Internet be scaled back to something that’ll fit in cable TV’s bathtub. Something where only people with a lot of capital and clout can speak and be heard. Something where big entertainment companies can use their money and power as a wall to stop anyone from challenging their pride of place.
When a big star goes into a record-company negotiations, she isn’t limited to saying, “Sorry, that deal’s not good enough, I’ll see what I can get across the street at your competitor.” Now she can say, “That’s not good enough, I can do better on my own, like Trent Reznor did.” Or, “That’s not good enough, I can hook up with a new kind of music business,” like Madonna did. But only if the intermediary liability is small enough to allow all these different kinds of companies to clamor for artists’ attention and products.
When a successful beginner like Amanda Hocking or EL James comes before a big publisher who wants to take her from indie to pro, the worst deal they can offer her has to be better than the best deal she could get for herself, or from one of the new startups.
Put it another way: There’s never been a time when tight controls over distribution were good for artists: fewer labels always means worse deals for musicians; fewer studios always means worse deals for filmmakers, actors, and other film professionals; fewer publishers always means worse deals for authors.

Liability vs. leverage

NYC's new parking signs are great information design

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:43:24 +0000

The NYC Department of Transport has revamped its notoriously complex parking-rules signs, so that they're slightly less cryptic. It's a very nice example of good information design!

NYC DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan, City Council Speaker Quinn and Council Member Garodnick Unveil Newly Designed, Simplified Parking Signs in Midtown (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Gun Machine: Warren Ellis's brutal, hard-boiled cop novel never stops for breath

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:23:20 +0000

Happy New Year! Warren Ellis's second novel, Gun Machine, ships today, and it's the kind of grim, mean hard-boiled fiction that is just the right tonic for your hangover from 2012: the booze, the Mayan apocalypse, the austerity, the misery and revolutions betrayed and horror and bile and pain --

But I digress.

As with his first novel, 2007's Crooked Little Vein, Ellis manages to transition the kind of grotesque madcap action that makes his graphic novels so memorable and enjoyable into prose. This isn't a novelisation of Transmetropolitan by any means, but it enjoys a similar kind of density, largely thanks to interludes in which Ellis enumerates all the awful crimes announced on a police-radio that his protagonist, a NYC detective named Tallow, is addicted to.

Gun Machine is a hard-boiled cop story that opens with Tallow and his doomed partner confronting a deranged nude man with a shotgun who spatters the partner's brains all over Tallow before Tallow blows him away. But losing a partner is just the start of Tallow's problems. By chapter two, he's checked out the seemingly empty apartment next-door to the killer's, and discovered an enormous cache of mouldering guns, arranged in a kind of patterned tapestry on the walls. What's more, each of these guns is from a seemingly related, unsolved murder on the streets on New York, stretching back decades.

Tallow has just discovered the trophy room of the most prolific, most successful serial killer in New York City history. And now his troubles have started. Because while Tallow should technically be sent off for mandatory leave while he gets over the death of his partner and his own killing of the deranged slayer, he is instead sent to the bowels of One Police Plaza, charged with solving hundreds of crimes, some of them decades old. The only help he has in this is a pair of misfit CSU investigators, and in their way stands some of the richest and most powerful people in New York -- some of whom seem to have benefited from the killer's convenient removal of their rivals at key junctures in their stellar careers.

As if that wasn't enough, Tallow is also being hunted, by -- who else? -- the serial killer whose trophies he has just discovered and seized. The most remorseless killer in New York's history is after him with a literal vengeance, and now his problems are really kicking off.

Gun Machine is a novel that never stops to draw breath. It's a monster of a book, bowel-looseningly scary in places, darkly uproarious in others, and remorseless as the killer who hunts in its pages. Ellis never disappoints, but this is particularly good, even by the high standards of a Warren Ellis tale.

Gun Machine

Hand-drawn maps of New York

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 04:00:06 +0000

Illustrator Jenni Sparks has released a very beautiful hand-drawn map of NYC:

Hi everyone, so here is the Hand Drawn Map of New York that I've been working on for what seems like FOREVER! It was once again commissioned by the lovely Evermade.com and was just as hard as the Map of London, if not harder... Anyway, I'll let the images speak for themselves as I have lost the ability to think about anything other than buildings. I hope you like it, New York is a super cool city, and if you wanna buy one you can pick one up HERE.

The image above is just a section -- go see the whole thing:

Hand Drawn Map of New York (via Kottke)

New York in the dark: photos

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:54:26 +0000

Dan Nguyen sez, "During the Hurricane Sandy aftermath, I was luckily spared any real hardship except for the power and heat being out. Everyday I walked to work and back in pitch darkness and I brought my camera to document what the city looks like when the only illumination is headlights and emergency lights. All the photos are available as Creative Commons."

These are beautiful and striking shots.

Eye Heart New York (Thanks, Dan!)

Anti-drone NYC street artist arrested

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 17:10:29 +0000

Essam Attia is NYC street artist who posted fake NYPD posters "reassuring" people about the ubiquitous surveillance of the department, especially via drones. The NYPD surveilled him, tracked him down and arrested him. Heck of a way to prove a point.

The NYDN reports that he's charged with "56 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, grand larceny possession of stolen property and weapons possession," the last (and possibly worst) charge coming because cops found an unloaded .22 pistol under his bed when they arrested him. On a practical level, Attia was not the most careful art criminal. He signed his work "ESSAM;" and he told Animal that he was a "a 29-year-old art-school grad from Maine, who served in Iraq as a 'geo-spatial analyst.'" It probably did not take an incredible amount of police work to narrow down the possibilities.

NYPD Proves Street Artist Right by Tracking Him Down and Arresting Him (via JWZ)

Occupy Sandy doc screened at secret cinema

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:00:46 +0000

A documentary about Occupy Sandy was screened at a secret location in NYC last night; it made the connection between Sandy and climate change. People wanting to see the movie were directed to a building whose wall was used as a screen for the premiere.

Now, in what may be the quickest turnaround for a movie in recent memory, the group, Occupy Sandy, will show a documentary Wednesday about its efforts and the contention that the storm was tied to climate change and the fossil fuel industry. In classic Occupy fashion, the screening will not be in a traditional theater, but rather on the side of a yet-to-be-disclosed building in the East Village.
The screening of the film, “Occupy Sandy: A Human Response to the New Realities of Climate Change” (see trailer above or click here), will be at 6:30 p.m.

‘Occupy’ Movement’s Next Guerrilla Effort: A Film Screening [NYT]

OCCUPY SANDY TRAILER IS UP! WORLD PREMIERE NEW SHORT FILM! NYC. NOV. 28th. [Vimeo]

#climatecrime [Twitter]

Pokertox: freezing the face-muscles implicated in your poker tells

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:10:58 +0000

NYC's Dr Jack Berdy offers a botox treatment called "pokertox," which freezes parts of the face implicated in poker "tells" -- nonvolitional expression-changes that signal your opinion of your cards to your adversaries.

Some players look at their cards and ‘‘might raise their eyebrows or raise one eyebrow’’ if they do or don’t like what they see.
“Some squint, or furrow their brows,’’ Berdy said.
“We can inject Botox appropriately’’ so the other player doesn’t get the message that they’re angry, disappointed or happy.
“What someone sees across the table is no movement,’’ he said.

Remember the TSA's plan to turn mall-cops into mind-readers by teaching them to read semi-mythical "microexpressions" and so detect terrorists? Even if it worked, anyone wanting to foil it could presumably plump for some terror-tox injections and pass through the TSA look-into-my-eyes-and-swear-you're-not-a-jihadi checks smoothly and without batting an eyelash.

Botox poker face [NYPost/Rita Delfiner] (via Neatorama)

Shredded confidential police documents discovered in Macy's parade confetti

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:03:08 +0000

Students from Tufts University who attended this year's Macy's Parade were showered with confetti made from shredded, confidential Nassau County police files. The shreds revealed the identities of undercover officers, including their SSNs and bank details.

"It landed on her shoulder," Finkelstein said, "and it says 'SSN' and it's written like a Social Security number, and we're like, 'That's really bizarre.'"
Finkelstein, a Tufts University freshman, said he and his friends were concerned and picked up more confetti that had fallen around them.
"There are phone numbers, addresses, more Social Security numbers, license plate numbers and then we find all these incident reports from police."
The documents were apparently from the Nassau County Police Department.

Police documents found in parade confetti [UPI] (via /.)

(Image: IMG_2528.JPG, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from supa_pedro's photostream)

MakerBot opens a NYC store with a 3D photo booth

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 02:19:15 +0000

MakerBot has just opened its first retail store on Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan -- a great neighborhood, by the way, and a perfect place for a 3D printing store. The store includes many wonderments, including a 3D photo booth, where you get your head scanned and then printed out.

MakerBot and ShapeShot have joined forces to provide a 3D Photo Booth experience for the 21 st century – a chance to capture and create a 3D image, but not just any image, but a 3D portrait and replica of your face! In a few minutes, a scan is made of your face and displayed on a screen. Serious or funny expressions are immediately captured using ShapeShot’s 3D face data that can then be used to print out a 3D replica of your face! The 3D portrait is a cool souvenir, preserves your loved ones face forever, and is the perfect gift for birthdays, bar or bat mitzvahs, and holidays. Customers can also get a 3D bust of their baby, friends, and the whole family.

Introducing The MakerBot 3D Photo Booth!

World's oldest hacker radio show under threat

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:57:13 +0000

2600's Emmanuel Goldstein writes,

In the midst of the biggest natural disaster to hit the New York metropolitan area in modern times, most of the staff of community radio station WBAI was prevented from broadcasting - not because of a power outage, but due to management decisions that put prerecorded programming over the airwaves instead of the usual live broadcasts. The hacker/technology program "Off The Hook" has been kept off the air for an unprecedented three weeks, making it impossible to help listeners deal with the technological challenges of losing communications and connectivity throughout the crisis. While a small group of broadcasters was allowed to put live programs on the air during daylight hours, a 6 pm on-air curfew was imposed, effectively locking out the majority of the station staff, including "Off The Hook." This has led the members of the world's longest running hacker radio program to start searching for another broadcast outlet, as it doesn't seem that technology-based programming is taken seriously or considered a priority, based on these actions.

AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR LISTENERS FROM THE STAFF OF "OFF THE HOOK" (Thanks, Emmanuel!)

Six strikes event in NYC, Nov 15

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:07:42 +0000

Joly from the Internet Society writes,

As Boing Boing readers will know, the Copyright Alert System, the result of a deal between big content and big ISPs, is a graduated response program - popularly known as the six strikes - that escalates from nastygrams, to copyright school, to Internet throttling. Just like SOPA/PIPA, enforcement targets will be arbitralily selected by the content owners, but unlike SOPA/PIPA there will be no appeal via the courts - only to an arbitration firm hired by the program. There is no question that the plan will have a chilling effect on the Open WiFi movement and thus impede speech. In other countries such plans, arguably ineffective, have only been implemented after a lengthy public process - but in the USA, none.
With the plan due to kick in on November 28, on Thursday November 15 2012 the Internet Society will present 'INET New York: An Open Forum on The Copyright Alert System' at the New York Law School, with speakers representing the MPAA, RIAA, Verizon, and Time Warner, plus advocates of the public interest. The forum is open to the public, free, and will also be webcast live. This is the only opportunity for Internet users to speak up. If you are in NYC show up and let your voice be heard, if elsewhere there is an online backchannel.

INET New York: An Open Forum on the Copyright Alert System – Nov 15 @ New York Law School #6strikes #copyright #inetny (Thanks, Joly!)

I still love New York, the t-shirt

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:51:16 +0000

"I Still Love NY" shirt by Sebastian Errazuriz. Available at Grey Area. 100% of proceeds go to Sandy Relief. Photo by Clayton Cubitt.

Solar chargers for Sandy aftermath -- donations and deep discounts

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 01:41:42 +0000

Limor and Phil at Adafruit are still baling out their lower Manhattan factory and living space after Sandy, but they're also using the Adafruit site to pass on information about relief efforts to public-spirited makers. Here's one: Voltaic systems (makers of solar chargers) are offering deep discounts and donations to people who are struggling with no/intermittent power.

Glad to hear you guys are back up and running. If you come across any specific individuals that have need for small-scale solar and/or battery power, we are happy to help with deep discounts and or direct donations. Our warehouse in NJ got power back Friday and we are trying to be helpful where we can. Jeff Crystal http://www.voltaicsystems.com/

Phil adds: "They have deep discounts they can do direct donation as it makes sense. Please write to sandy@voltaicsystems.com for details if you’re still in need of power."

Voltaic systems looking to help folks still in need #sandy

Miguel Bloombito: the incredible Spanish of Michael Bloomberg

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 01:33:34 +0000

After consultingo con el Runner de Calle club, los advisoros, y Captain Obviouso, yo decidero to que cancelo elmarathoño
— Miguel Bloombito (@ElBloombito) November 2, 2012

The @ElBloombito Twitter account is a running -- and hilarious -- sendup of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's terrible Spanish. Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams profiled Rachel Figueroa-Levin, the mastermind behind the account.

In the past two days, El Bloombito’s pidgin Español Twitter stream has been a balm to disaster-scarred New Yorkers, a bracingly funny respite from the ravages of Sandy. Prior to the storm, it was Bloombito who warned New Yorkers, “Cuidado! El stormo somos about to que vamos el lañdfall! Batteño los hatches!” and “Por favor to remaiño insidero until notice de furthero. Peligroso!” Afterward, it was Bloombito who reminded, “El floodo agua esta still todos los everywhere. Necesitos los gearo de scuba y el flipper!”
Speaking to Salon while her toddler daughter takes a post-Sandy afternoon nap, Figueroa-Levin says El Bloombito originally “gave me something to do while I was stuck inside” during Irene. As it happened, the account attracted an instant following — and the attention of Mike Bloomberg himself — who admitted last year that “Es difícil para aprender un nuevo idioma.”
“I don’t know why he does it,” Figueroa-Levin says. “Not that my Spanish is that fantastic, but I live in a neighborhood where it’s common. I grew up hearing it. I’m Puerto Rican. And I don’t know who he thinks he’s talking to. In fact, last year I had an elderly Dominican neighbor tell me he thought Bloomberg was Italian.”

Meet the woman behind “El Bloombito” (via Making Light)

Helping to get deep cycle batteries, chargers, etc to disabled couple on 12th floor of dark Manhattan apartment building, to run survival necessities

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:53:39 +0000

Rob writes,

My childhood friend and dedicated humanitarian, Crystal, is helping coordinate an effort to source deep cycle batteries, chargers, inverters, and other supplies to meet the urgent needs of a disabled couple, Nick and Alejandra, living on the 12th floor of a Lower Manhattan apartment building that's without power. Nick is on a series of electronic medical devices, including a ventilator, necessary for his survival. The committed group of folks involved in meeting their needs in this emergency continue to need financial help and also in-person assistance of those within driving range of Manhattan. Portlight Strategies, Inc. is coordinating donations.

UnconVENTional Aid: Helping Nick Dupree, Social Networking Style (Thanks, Rob!)

New York City in post-storm darkness: photos by Randy Scott Slavin

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 20:57:37 +0000

NYC UNPLUGGED, a series by photographer Randy Scott Slavin documenting the darkness in New York City after Hurricane Sandy caused widespread power outages:

New York City is always bright. Street lights, business marquees, light from apartments and car headlights merge to light every corner of the city streets, even on the darkest nights. It is the night after NYC was decimated by Hurricane Sandy, downtown NYC is in the midst of a power outage that has plunged it into complete darkness. I felt the call to hit the eerily dark streets and show New York as it is rarely seen. Trekking around with my tripod I was able to get the long exposures necessary to see in the dark.

View the rest [Facebook.com].

(HT: Hesta Prynn)

Video from flooded NYC: East 8th Street and Avenue C before the blackout

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:38:52 +0000

Video published by NY Daily News on YouTube, shot by Sean Blackwell. "Looking down at flooding from Hurricane Sandy on East 8th and Avenue C before the blackout."

Children of tech executive slain in New York; nanny accused of murder and attempted suicide

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:02:03 +0000

Two of the three children of CNBC Digital senior vice president Kevin Krim and Marina Krim, a mom who maintained a blog about their family life, were apparently stabbed to death by their nanny last night in NYC.

Nanny Yoselyn Ortega (50) is accused of attacking Lulu (6) and Leo Krim (2), shown in the family photo at left; then trying to kill herself.

The details of how the mother (38) encountered her children are in the NYT story, CNN, and the tabloids. A third child was with Mrs. Krim when the attack happened at their home, and did not witness it.

From posts on the family blog [update: which is now offline] the nanny appears to have worked with the family for more than a year.

The Krim family visited Ms. Ortega's home and family in the Dominican Republic with her on a 9-day vacation this February.

The family LiveJournal contains thousands of photographs of the children, whose lives were chronicled there in loving detail by their mom. Marina Krim published an entry about her son just three hours before the attack.

Leo speaks in the most adorable way possible. Firstly, he speaks super clearly, so you can understand every word is he is saying. And he does things like, "(I) want a fresh bagel" and "Dito (what he calls himself) wants cold milk" and most adorable of all, "No thank you" - he never uses "No" alone, it's always paired with "thank you".

Overnight, the post filled with about a thousand comments from strangers who'd read the news.

Mr. Krim held positions formerly with Yahoo, Bloomberg, and LiveJournal. The family relocated from SF to NY 3 years ago.

He was flying home to his family from a business trip to San Francisco when the killings happened. He was met at the gate by police, who escorted him to the hospital where paramedics tried to revive his children.

It makes no sense.

The shock and horror of this news hit close to home for young, NYC-based professionals whose lifestyles require them to entrust their kids to the care of a helper sometimes, like the Krims did.

The Krim family are known and loved by various Boing Boing readers who work in the technology industry in New York and San Francisco, some of whom pinged me when this story broke last night.

Tweets from some friends of the family, below.

lulu krim
— Scott Heiferman (@heif) October 26, 2012

@heif just tears in my eyes. Remember Kevin proudly showing off his newborn like it was yesterday.
— Anil Dash (@anildash) October 26, 2012

@xeni Xeni, Kevin is an old friend—I'm in shock, so many are in shock right now. Good people. Darling child I'd met, murdered.
— nina alter (@ninavizz) October 26, 2012

@xeni They really are that nice and good, though. No airs, no pretension, the exact opposite. Everything described in the news—just, numbing
— nina alter (@ninavizz) October 26, 2012