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Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm • 
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Slowing down the Seinfeld theme by 1200% turns it into a David Lynch soundtrack, full of nightmares and menace, as Gorge Catanda demonstrates with this 8 minutes youtube. You may recall that Inception pulled the same trick, massively slowing down the film's Edith Piaf themesong to produce a grinding, subliminally identifiable soundscape.
What if the senfeld theme was slowed down 1200%? (via Kottke)
Cory Doctorow at 12:10 pm • •
At long last, here's video of the Cambodian bamboo railroad I wrote about in 2006; this being a homebrew railroad running at 40km/h off an electric motor, along decrepit and degenerating rails that only see one scheduled train per week. It's a pretty amazing ride.
床が竹、壁も天井もないカンボジアのバンブー・トレイン: (Thanks, Francesco!)
Cory Doctorow at 7:20 am • •
Brazil is up in arms. Hundreds of thousands are in the streets. The capital building in Brazilia was surrounded, then stormed. Here's some pictures of last night's goings-on, and above, a video explaining some of the reasons for the uprising.
Cory Doctorow at 7:56 pm • •
John sez, "Last fall, you guys ran a story about 'Backyard Blockbusters,' my feature documentary on fan films (such as 'Troops', 'Hardware Wars', 'Star Trek: Phase II", or the 'Raiders of the Lost Ark" adaptation) and fan filmmakers. At the time, the focus was on helping the film get into the Arclight Documentary Film Festival, which was successful - we got in and screened there, and the film has been playing festivals and conventions since. While the film doesn't have a distribution deal yet (backup plans for self-distribution are still being considered), I've put the first 12 minutes of the film online to give people a taste of what the film is, and hopefully generate some interest."
Backyard Blockbusters - First 12 minutes (Thanks, John!)
Cory Doctorow at 9:16 am • •
Richard sez, "The Swiss riot police have taken a page out of the Turkish authorities' book. After occupiers ('critics'?) responded to the 'irony' of Tadashi Kawamata's cafe/boutique in the form of a favela by occupying it, moving in and throwing a down-home favela house party, the Swiss police forcibly evicted them from the art installation using real, unironic tear gas and batons."
Cory Doctorow at 12:00 pm • •
Between Syria, Turkey and the G8, it's hard to keep track of popular resistance to oligarchy and corruption, but please don't forget São Paulo, where the police are treating public anti-corruption demonstrations with all the bedwetting cowardice of a tinpot dictatorship. Here's Feridos no protesto em São Paulo, a multilingual tumblr devoted to covering the protests, and above, an excellent video from Change Brazil explaining what's at stake.
Cory Doctorow at 6:12 am • •
It's Father's Day and time for my annual re-posting of Groucho Marx singing the greatest song dedicated to that occasion of all time. Happy F-day to all the dads out there -- especially my own dad and my brother Neil; to Mark and Pesco and Jason, and to your own old man. This morning, I was serenaded with this selfsame song, given a box of my favorite chocolates, taken for a slap-up breakfast and a swim, and given a deluxe card with a World's Best Dad badge. Popular Mechanics interviewed a bunch of people about their fathers; including me:
My dad was really good at making me think everything through. The scientific method is a totally counterintuitive thing because it begins by saying: You can't trust your memory or your senses. You have to measure things empirically and write them down because otherwise everything you remember and everything you know is colored by your biases and experiences and hopes and aspirations. And essentially your brain lies to you all the time. This is a very hard thing to get a 5-year-old to understand.One thing my dad was quite good about was giving me enough rope to hang myself and leaving me alone in front of a computer. When we got an Apple II Plus in 1979 there was virtually no software on it. Basically, we got two floppy disks' worth of demos, none of them super exciting. I remember there was a simulator for running a lemonade stand and a Mad Libs program. But there were magazines like Byte that had thousands of lines of BASIC, which you could type into a computer and use it to make programs—that is, if you could type thousands of lines without making a typo (not easy for a 9-year-old.) He provided me with the technology and handed me an issue of Byte and he turned me loose.
Bonus track: Everybody Works In Our House (Except My Old Man)
Cory Doctorow at 6:23 pm • •
Unlocking the Truth is an an awesome heavy metal band made up of 12-year-old schoolkids who've been playing together since they were five. They totally, utterly rock.
Videos - Unlocking the Truth (Thanks, Lachlan!)
Cory Doctorow at 8:59 am • •
Spocko sez, "In this commercial for a cell phone screen protector product, a quadcopter flies up to some fruit, sodas and a cell phones and shoots them with a remote controlled handgun. The company, Clearplex, has many videos of it's screen protector products being shot at, so this one is a natural, although creepy, extension of that series. The video is edited so it's hard to know how accurate the quad-copter is, but consider how apparently easy creating this one was,what's the next step?"
Drone vs Phone: Samsung Galaxy S IV - GunDrone (Thanks, Spocko)
Cory Doctorow at 8:23 pm • •
Joly sez, "On March 4-5 2013 the Internet Society's North America Bureau webcast the Freedom to Connect 2013 conference in Washington DC. One keynote speaker was Glenn Greenwald, who has recently come to international attention as the journalist who broke the NSA surveillance story. In his hour long speech, he talks about Aaron Swartz, the imbalance of justice, the growth of the surveillance state, the nature of power in the digital age, and its implications for Internet freedom. There are a couple of small glitches in the recording, for which we apologize."
VIDEO: Glenn Greenwald keynote at Freedom to Connect 2013 #f2c #netfreedom #prism (Thanks, Joly!)
Cory Doctorow at 9:08 am • •
From Sao Paulo, where the the cops are violently attacking protesters, a video of a cop smashing his own police-car window, presumably to blame it on the protesters later.
Policial Quebra Vidro da Própria Viatura - São Paulo 13/6/2013
And here's a glimpse of the Sao Paulo police's advanced media strategy.
Cory Doctorow at 6:06 am • •
Laina, AKA "Overly Attached Girlfriend" (a YouTube comedian and memestar who trades on her ability to stare intensely while monologuing hilariously about her terrifying romantic attachment) has outdone herself with an Uncle Sam edition, commenting on Prism
Cory Doctorow at 10:25 pm • •
Michael sez, "In response to a breaking scandal the head of the Australian Army gives a textbook example on how to respond to sexual abuse in the military, hell, misogyny in any organisation: blunt, unambiguous, drawing on both institutional policy and personal ethics, and frankly a bit terrifying in a Tywin Lassister kind of way. I quailed and I'm not even a soldier. I also think there should be more of this."
If you become aware of any individual degrading another, then show moral courage and take a stand against it. No one has ever explained to me how the exploitation or degradation of others enhances capability or honors the traditions of the Australian army. I will be ruthless in ridding the army of people who cannot live up to its values and I need every one of you to support me in achieving this.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. That goes for all of us, but especially those who by their rank have a leadership role.
Chief of Army message regarding unacceptable behaviour
(Transcript: Skepchick)
(Thanks, Michael!)
Cory Doctorow at 7:13 pm • •
TRAQ is a senior project from a group of Northeastern University engineering students; it's a quadcopter that seeks out and homes in on radio signals. As they write, "The quadcopter's potential applications include disaster relief, surveillance, search-and-rescue, and stolen goods recovery."
I'm interested in the technology as a way to get cameras automatically directed to hotspots in places like Gezi Park -- the drones could automatically focus on police based on their emergency radios, ensuring that the cops were always in shot.
TRAQ Quadcopter (via Engadget)
Cory Doctorow at 8:57 am • •
Diego sez, "Protestors - mainly students - are taking the streets of Sao Paulo. The problem: the government just raised the bus fare from R$3 to R$3,20. The protests are getting a really violent reception from the police. You can see a video of the police action. The problem isn't the 20 cents. I think the real problem is that we are having so many issues of inflation, very high taxes, corruption - 2014 World Cup stadiums being built with public money, costing about $1 billion each pop - so future looks really bleak here. Everything seems to be boiling after this 20 cents. If you ask me, Brazilians are getting tired of being treated as clowns. Tonight (6/13), there's going to be a new protest. People won't stop until they get what they want. Hopefully, with some international attention, Sao Paulo's police may stop hitting students with their batons and tear gas."
