Deviant Ollam runs a physical security penetration testing company called The Core Group; in a flat-out amazing, riveting presentation from the 2017 Wild West Hackin' Fest, Ollam -- a master lockpicker -- describes how lockpicking is a last resort for the desperate, while the wily and knowledgeable gain access by attacking doors and locks with tools that quickly and undetectably open them. Read the rest

Philadelphia's Mutter Museum (previously) is one of my favorite museums in the world: built from the private collection of pathologist Dr Thomas Dent (who aggregated the collections of many other pathologists), it is a solemn and moving place to see the incredible breadth of human physiognomy and pathology. Read the rest

CNC Kitchen's 18-minute video on nozzle wear in 3D printing involves sending abrasive filaments (the abrasiveness comes from pigments and additives like carbon fiber, etc) through a variety of nozzles (mostly cheap ones from China), then measuring the results with a micrometer and by taking castings of their interiors -- but the best part is when the nozzles are clamped to the business end of a CNC mill and milled down into cross-sections. Man, I love cross-sections. (via Four Short Links) Read the rest

Hashimoto Baku ("a Tokyo based video director/visual artist/developer") digs into fascinating depth on the "slit-scan" technique: "[imagine] a quite thick flipbook that all frames of a video are bound page by page. If you just rifle through it, the original video will be just played. Slit-scan intrinsically means slicing the flipbook diagonally." Read the rest

Competition scholar Tim Wu (previously) is one of the most cogent, accessible voices in the antitrust debate; his recent book on the subject is a must-read; this week, he debated George Mason University scholar Tyler Cowen, proprietor of Marginal Revolution and one of the leading voices for the expansion of unfettered, unregulated capitalism -- he's the face of the notorious Mercatus Center, where rich donors choose the faculty and out pop arguments against universal health care and Net Neutrality. Read the rest

Juice Media's Honest Government Adverts are some of the best, most biting political satire being produced today -- they're so good at afflicting the comfortable that Australia basically banned their style of humour -- and now, on the eve of (yet another) critical Australian election, they've produced a "season finale" that recaps the parade of horrors that a succession of bumbling, oligarchic, racist, climate-denying, torturing, confiscatory, planet-destroying Australian governments have bequeathed to the nation and the world. I laughed, I cried, I laughed again. Now I'm crying. Read the rest

Software developer Chris Harris is experimenting with machine learning to remove cars from video footage; while the software isn't quite seamless, the results are pure, glorious glitch aesthetic. Read the rest

French singer Cecil L. Recchia's 2018 album The Gumbo is a tribute to New Orleans jazz; I found it while searching for an online stream of Tootie Ma is a Big Fine Thing, the track that Tom Waits and the Preservation Hall Band released in 2010 as a limited-edition 78RPM album that came with its own gramophone (!); and while Waits's rendition is amazing, Recchia's is spectacular, with just the most amazing vocals. I bought it yesterday and have listened to it at least 50 times since. Read the rest

Kaitlyn Reed created a Twitter thread of videos of (mostly Chinese) workers performing manual tasks with incredible acrobaticism, dexterity and flair; the videos were ganked from Tiktok, the massively popular China-based video platform that is mostly know in the west as a place where tweens make and share elaborately choreographic lipsync videos augmented with a suite of skillfully applied video effects. Read the rest

Neuhaus.world is a music video for Rotterdam artist Jo Goes Hunting in which the hyperdelic landscape in the video is generated by photos contributed by visitors to the site.

"The video is made by Moniker in conjunction with Neuhaus, a temporary academy for more-than-human knowledge at Het Nieuwe Instituut."

Neuhaus.world (via Waxy)

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[I've been in love with Negativland since their legendary copyright battle with U2 and they've been a part of Boing Boing since 2001; it's a pleasure beyond words to be able to debut More Data, their characteristically trenchant video about data privacy and surveillance; see below for notes from Negativland. -Cory] Read the rest

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada funded Screening Surveillance project: a trio of Creative Commons licensed short science fiction films about "everyday issues around big data and surveillance." The movies run about 10 minutes each, and come with classroom materials. Read the rest

Time 4 Machine is a Ukrainian design shop led by Denis Okhrimenko; their latest project is "The most beautiful construction set in the world", a set of thin steel parts that you bend together to make (yes) beautiful mechanical models: a business-card case, a tractor, a working clockwork timer, a vintage sportscar, a springpowered cabriolet, a sedan, a Hercules eight-motor aircraft and a dieselpunk steamliner engine. Read the rest

The bitter, yearslong debate at the World Wide Web Consortium over a proposal to standardize DRM for web browsers included frequent assurances by the pro-DRM side (notably Google, whose Widevine DRM was in line to be the principal beneficiary) that this wouldn't affect the ability of free/open source authors to implement the standard. Read the rest

Last week's NYC book launch for Radicalized took the form of a fantastic conversation with the journalist Julia Angwin; the Strand folks were kind enough to video it and they've posted it to Youtube. Julia is incredibly smart and a wonderful interviewer, and we had some great Q&A as well. Read the rest

As Theresa May continues to pilot the United Kingdom toward a catastrophic, epochal collision with the Brexit iceberg -- even as her ministers are busy slashing every available lifeboat -- Politics Joe have released a flat-out brilliant video casting the PM and her Minister for Ghastly Cosplay Jacob Rees-Mogg (that is, "Snoop Mogg") as the stars of a very Brexit version of Straight Outta Compton. Read the rest

Every 90 minutes, the office phones of all five FCC Commissioners rings and John Oliver's voice comes out of it, demanding that they take action on robocalls, reversing FCC Chairman (and former Verizon exec) Ajit Pai's policy of relying on carriers to self-police their anti-robocall measures, and heading off his plan to gut the existing, weak protections. Read the rest