Jabberwocky writes, "Privacy policies are complicated, and we believe that you should know what's happening with your data when you use a service. In order to help, we've created a set of icons which cover the core components of any policy. We are a group of Yale students taking Control, Privacy, and Technology, and this is our final project. In an ideal world, every website would include these icons."

This is an attempt to use icons to express privacy policies, the same way that Creative Commons licenses express copyright restrictions and permissions. This set is a lot more complex than CC, though the creators have done a good job of narrowing the privacy policies down to the meaningful set of terms:

CHANGES: This website will alert you to material changes/This website may or may not alert you to changes

CONTROL: You, the user, can always access all of your data, export all of your data/You, the user, may or may not be able to access your data, export your data

INFORMATION: This website only collects and uses enough data to provide any necessary services/This website might collect and use more information than is strictly necessary.

SHARING: This website may be collecting data about you. However, they are not selling or trading your data, and they will only share your data with other organizations in order to complete the intended transaction/This website is collecting data about you and may be selling or trading it with another organization, government, or person.

SECURITY: This website encrypts your data/This website does not encrypt your data

LAW ENFORCEMENT: Statutory Process: When an organization receives a phone call, letter, or other legally insufficient request for your data, they don't comply because the law requires the government to take additional steps before getting your data. This website requires the government to comply, at a minimum, with the legal process provided by the law before getting users' data./Compliance: This organization might provide your data to a government that asks for it without following the legally required process.

However, without a compliance mechanism, it's likely that any site that adopts this will only display the icons for their "good" policies and not show the "bad" ones.

Privacy Simplified (Thanks, Jabberwocky!)

Guygadbois sez, "Two years in the making, this one-of-a-kind mechanized miniature Main Street Electrical Parade runs nighttime shows from a display the size of a coffee table."

This guy is the poster child for Happy Mutantism. What a wonderful video. I want to grow up to be him.

Mechanizing a Miniature Main Street Electrical Parade

Tinkertinker sez, "I am proud to have just finished this mechanical cocktail shaker, called The Post-Imperial Shaker. It is loosely based on a turn-of-the-century machine (the 'Imperial Shaker' of course), although mine is built as a horizontal unit so that it can be mounted on a bar-top. I built this machine for The Touring Pop-up Sideshow Saloon event organized by the Peerless Prodigies of P.T. Barnum. The first Saloon event is this Sunday, May 6th, at the General Beverage Co. in San Francisco. The Post-Imperial Shaker will be there and so will I."

The Post-Imperial Shaker (Thanks, tinkertinker!)

Disneyland's "secret restroom" is an isolated, disabled-accessible bathroom tucked away to one side of the castle in the Carnation Plaza. Very easy to miss, it is a refuge when all around the park is chaos. This site is a loving (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) tribute to the toilet that Walt forgot.

The moment you open its door (assume it's unlocked), you will be overwhelmed by just how enormous the Secret Restroom is. As a point of fact, the Secret Restroom is not only larger than the average American home restroom, it's larger than the typical Anaheim apartment that can be afforded on a Disneyland castmember's starting salary.

Because the Secret Restroom is cleaned ever half hour, it is always in a state of perfection and readiness, and even a glance shows the luxuriance of its copious amenities and artistic touches (each of which is detailed elsewhere on this site).

Welcome to the Secret Restroom! (Thanks, dcwaterboy!)

Ethan sez, "The personal archives of legendary Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson -- some 10,000 items -- were abandoned by his heirs and lost in storage facility in Minnesota. Now they've been found and catalogued, and they're being auctioned starting this Sunday. Here's a story about it and an exclusive preview of Sunday's auction."

“It was by pure chance that the new owner attempted to find the meaning of some of the boxes of paper rather than deciding that there was no gold or jewelry to be found, and just tossing it all into the nearest dumpster,” wrote Cox on his company’s website.

Cox contacted Stormberg, whose company specializes in handling and evaluating the collections of RPG game designers and artists. They teamed up to buy and save the collection. Cox made an offer to the local auction company. The company agreed and The Collector’s Trove took possession of the materials for processing and auctioning. In an interview with GeekDad, Stormberg would not put a price tag on the collection, but he did say, “it was a substantial amount of money” — more than Cox had ever paid for an entire collection in 18 years of buying and selling for The Dragon’s Trove, which has had its hands on many of the largest and highest quality collections in the world...

...Stormberg said that “About 30% of the items are what I call product: published games, game accessories, periodicals, and books.” The remaining 70% of the collection is “non-product”: all those letters and scribbled notes, maps, objects, and personal and family items. There is Arneson’s Smith Corona: Mark IV typewriter; a set of lead crystal goblets etched with Arneson’s family heraldry; and a model ship made of metal. “Dave loved the age of sail and all things to do with naval military history. Indeed, one of his first published games was Don’t Give Up the Ship which he co-wrote with Gary Gygax and Mike Carr in 1972.”

Among the highlights: unpublished manuscripts that did not make it into the final draft of Dungeons & Dragons that date as far back as 1973. There are even older items from 1971 and 1972 “dealing with the Blackmoor campaign and the Castle itself,” Stormberg said. These may reveal secrets about the game’s origins. Domesday Book Newsletter, among the rarest and highly sought after collectibles by Dungeons & Dragons collectors.

GeekDad Exclusive: Auction Preview of D&D Co-Creator’s Personal Collection and Archives — Game’s Secrets to Be Revealed (Thanks, Ethan!)

Barry sez, "How awesome is this treasure trove of emails, documents, files et. all placed online by the NY Fed? Some of the emails between Lehman execs are laughable — naive, silly, hubristic, childish. But my favorite piece simply has to be the Morgan Stanley research report from June 30 2008 “Overweight Rating” on Lehman Brothers — 'Bruised, Not Broken, Poised for Profitability'. 60 days later, Lehman Brothers filed what was then the largest bankruptcy in the United States. This is (literally) what the category 'Really Really Bad Call' was invented for. Who was the author of this steaming piece of shit, and where is he today? Why, he is Patrick Pinschmidt, and he is a Senior Policy Advisor at U.S. Treasury Department! (You could not make up stuff this un-fucking-believable even if you tried)."

The Lehman Bankruptcy Docs (Buy LEH!) ()