David writes, "Inspired by classic pulp novels, old-time radio broadcasts and Saturday morning cartoons, Harvey Award Winning Creators David Gallaher and Steve Ellis have created the young adult webcomic The… Read the rest of the article: Only Living Boy: pulp-inspired YA webcomic

The Walt Disney Company has acquired Maker Studios — a successful Youtube channel focused on millennials — for $500M, with an additional $450M potential performance-related payout in the future.

Four more books have been added to the final week of the third Humble Ebook Bundle: John Scalzi's Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novella The God Engines; Dia Reeves's Bleeding Violet; Mercedes… Read the rest of the article: Complete Humble Ebook Bundle lineup revealed!

Prisoners in America's notorious communication management units (called "CMUs" or "Little Guantánamos") are making great strides in their legal action against the US government over the prisons' illegal status, the… Read the rest of the article: Inside America's illegal "Little Guantánamos"

I'm immensely proud and honored to once again be shortlisted for the Prometheus Award, for my novel Homeland. The Prometheus is given by the Libertarian Futurist Society, and I've won… Read the rest of the article: Homeland shortlisted for the Prometheus Award

I've just finished listening to the entire, three-year run of Oh No Ross and Carrie, a podcast hosted by two former Evangelical Christians turned skeptics, who join cults and fringe… Read the rest of the article: Oh No Ross and Carrie: podcasting investigative journalists join cults, try woo, and get prodded — for science!

Scott sez, "Privacy and security has been a huge problem since the Snowden revelations, and midwest SF/open source software convention Penguicon [ed: near Detroit!] wants to be part of the… Read the rest of the article: Michigan's Penguicon will focus on crypto and privacy this year

In Florida, District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro has dismissed a suit brought by notorious porno-copyright trolls Malibu Media on the grounds that an IP address does not affirmatively identify a… Read the rest of the article: Judge tells porno copyright troll that an IP address does not identify a person

The Obama administration will unveil a plan to sunset the bulk collection of US telephone data by American spies. Instead, it will plunder data that the carriers are required to… Read the rest of the article: Obama administration will make tiny, nearly meaningless changes to illegal bulk phone spying

There are 28 official state-approved haircuts in North Korea, and there is renewed emphasis on the official coiffure parameters under its new leader, Kim Jong Un. Ironically, Kim's own haircut… Read the rest of the article: Official haircuts of North Korea

Two of my friends contributed afterwords to my novel Homeland: Aaron Swartz and Jacob Appelbaum. In this outtake from the independently produced Homeland audiobook (which you can get for the… Read the rest of the article: Jake Appelbaum reads his Homeland afterword, with bonus Atari Teenage Riot vocoder mix

Writing to us from the distant future, Ian "Cow Clicker" Bogost describes our modern games industry and the role it will play in the coming downfall of civilization: "Working long… Read the rest of the article: Game developers as brutalized industrial attention-farmers: a look back from tomorrow

One year ago today Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense: chart of woo: Crispian Jago has compiled a handy Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense. Five years ago today G20 Welcoming Committee… Read the rest of the article: This Day in Blogging History: Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense; G20 Welcoming Committee Gets Ready; Lessig's Free Culture, free online

AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of Legislative Affairs James Cicconi has written a monumentally stupid attack on Reed Hasting's call for Net Neutrality. Cicconi says, "there is no free lunch,… Read the rest of the article: AT&T to Netflix: if you don't bribe us to do our job, you're asking for a "free lunch"

Deviant Art's Kasami-Sensei has produced a series of illustrations that mashup The Walking Dead with Disney characters, recasting the familiar lighthearted animated figures as post-apocalyptic zombie-hunters. The Walking Disney (via… Read the rest of the article: Disney characters as zombie hunters

I have never heard my daughter laugh as loud or as long as she did when I read her James Kochalka new kids' graphic novel, The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a… Read the rest of the article: James Kochalka's "The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza"

Here's a Make HOWTO for converting a set of wind-up novelty chattering teeth to an electronic tooth-brushing timer and toothbrush holder — take your toothbrush out, start it running, and… Read the rest of the article: HOWTO make a chattering-teeth tooth-brushing timer

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to figure out what the LAPD is doing with the mountains (and mountains) of license-plate data that they're harvesting in the city's streets without… Read the rest of the article: LAPD says every car in Los Angeles is part of an ongoing criminal investigation

In The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis [PDF], published in Science, researchers try to understand why Google Flu (which uses search history to predict flu outbreaks)… Read the rest of the article: Big Data Hubris: Google Flu versus reality

William Campbell Powell is a new young adult author whose debut novel, Expiration Day due out on April 1. Powell's book was bought out of the "slush pile" — the… Read the rest of the article: Talking YA, dystopia and science fiction with William Campbell Powell