Posts Tagged ‘darth-vader’

Gary Goddard tells the story of the near-construction of a life-sized Starship Enterprise replica in downtown Las Vegas. Goddard successfully bid to build the attraction as part of the 1992 competition to revitalized Vegas’s sagging downtown and bring back tourist traffic that had been sucked away by the strip, but the project was scuttled at

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Secret history of the near-construction of a lifesized Starship Enterprise in downtown Las Vegas

A group of researchers at Drexel University have demonstrated a method of recovering credit card details and other sensitive information from used Xbox 360s, even after they have been “reset to factory defaults.” The method is straightforward and uses readily available tools. Ashley Podhradsky, one of the Drexel researchers, says, “Microsoft does a great job

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It’s easy to get credit card numbers off used Xbox 360s

Here’s Kevin Smith discussing his success as an independent, and rebutting critics who say that his go-it-alone strategy for his Red State (which is, by the way, excellent) was only possible because he’d made a name for himself: Anyone that tells you “oh he could do it because he’s Kevin Smith”—tell ‘em horseshit, man. That’s

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Kevin Smith on why you, too can be an indie success

Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao and Dongbai Song from China won Evolo magazine’s 2012 Skyscraper design competition. My favorite, however, is the runner-up (above) which crawls up the side of the Yunnan mountains. Designed by Yiteng Shen, Nanjue Wang, Ji Xia and Zihan Wang, it has the advantage of being neither outrageously science fictional nor horrible:

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Wild skyscraper designs awarded

Watch live streaming video from oreillymake at livestream.com MAKE is livestreaming from SXSW today. Visit MAKE’s Alt.SXSW page for updates and coverage of the festival. Hot on the heels of alt.GDC comes alt.SXSW.

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MAKE livestreaming from SXSW today

For a little over a year now, Tom Whalen has been Mondo’s go-to artist for contemporary movie posters of classic cartoons. Mondo, of course, is the Austin-based gig-style movie-poster publisher whose limited edition screenprints generally sell out within minutes of being offered online—these guys are literally printing money. Whalen, whose work can be seen at

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Tom Whalen Goes Daffy for Mondo

Mike sez, “With the Texas Primaries coming up in May, I thought you would be interested to know that some of the Redditors that were involved in the boycott on GoDaddy.com and ‘Operation Pull Ryan’ (where Reddit raised money for Rep. Paul Ryan’s opponent), have started TestPAC, a non-connected, registered PAC, with the goal of

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Reddit PAC aims to kick SOPA’s daddy Lamar Smith out of Congress

Heidi MacDonald has a great post about a Henry Darger-esque fellow named James Killian Spratt who created a obsessively detailed version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. In a few short hours, I’ll be doing something I’ve dreamed about my whole life — going to see a movie about John Carter of Mars…

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NSFW word-for-word comics adaptation of A Princess of Mars

Last week, I blogged about the Mother Jones investigation into labor conditions in ecommerce warehouses. Now Fair Warning and several California newspapers have an expose on the conditions inside Schneider National Inc., one of the largest warehousing/logistics firms in the country, in California’s Inland Empire. The reports documents outright criminality that subjects workers to unsafe

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Criminal working conditions at megawarehouses in California’s Inland Empire

Writing in the NYT’s BITS section, Brian X. Chen and Nick Bilton describe a disturbing design-flaw in Android: apps can access and copy your private photos, without you ever having to grant them permission to do so. Google says this is a legacy of the earlier-model phones that used removable SD cards, but it remains

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Android lets apps secretly access and transmit your photos

HR437, “the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011″ makes it illegal to protest in the vicinity of anyone who rates a Secret Service detail (even if you aren’t aware of the person’s presence), thus sparing politicians and VIPs the ugly and unseemly spectacle of having to confront voters who disagree with their

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Proposed US law bans protesting near anyone who rates a Secret Service detail

Google has been caught circumventing iOS’s built-in anti-ad-tracking features in order to add Google Plus functionality within iPhone’s Safari browser. The WSJ reports that Google overrode users’ privacy settings in order to allow messages like “your friend Suzy +1′ed this ad about candy” to be relayed between Google’s different domains, including google.com and doubleclick.net. This

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WSJ: Google caught circumventing iPhone security, tracking users who opted out of third-party cookies

The new OS X Gatekeeper encourages desktop apps to be registered with Apple, with users warned against installing unsigned software unless they disable the prompts. The benefits—and the potential pitfalls—are obvious. It’s intended as as an anti-malware system (with a whitelist rather than a blacklist), and the registration process will be simple and inexpensive. It’ll

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Gatekeeper: Cancel or Allow?

Johannes sez, “Cory was so kind to post my TEDxVienna talk on monochrom’s feature film project SIERRA ZULU. I wanted to give you guys an update. Today we released a short film: EARTHMOVING.

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Earthmoving: a prequel to indie sf feature Sierra Zulu

[Video Link] (Thanks, Gary!) Cute U900 Rabbit and Bear UkesCutest Japanese stopmotion crocheted beachside critter ukelele video everUkulele version of “Walk, Don’t Run”

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U900 plays "Ben" on Ukulele

Researchers from GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania developed software to allow toy-sized nano quadrotors to fly in tight, precise and eerie formation. Gmoke sez, “William Gibson dreams of a mass of these things comprising a flying skyscraper. I imagine them as surveillance and policing drones ready to stop the OWS action or Arab

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Toy-sized quadrotors flying in formation

NYT: “Don Cornelius, the producer and television host who created the dance show “Soul Train,” was found shot dead in his Los Angeles home early Wednesday morning in what appears to be a suicide, the Los Angeles Police Department and the county coroner’s office said. He was 75 years old.”

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Don Cornelius, R.I.P.

This 17-minute mini-documentary introduces Michael Garnier, proprietor of the Out’n'About Treehouse Resort in Oregon. Garnier is a thoughtful and salty woodcrafter who’s put a lot of thought into the right way to build a treetop B&B, and his guided tour of his little hotel with its Ewok-style treehouses is a delight. Over the years, Garnier

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Treehouse B&B proprietor tells all

Kang Duck-Bong is a Korean sculptor who makes pieces from bundled PVC pipes that appear to be in rapid motion. Disguise 1: pvc pipe, urethane paint, 90x28x55cm, 2011 (via Kottke)

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Using bundles of PVC pipes to make motion-blurred sculptures

I already have a lifetime supply of notebooks, but I’ll be buying these Lego Moleskines just in case there’s a mortality cure coming down the pipes.

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Lego Moleskine notebooks

The next installment of San Francisco’s SF in SF reading series, on Jan 28, features Ryan Boudinot (Blueprints of the Afterlife) and Ayize Jama-Everett (The Liminal People). Organizer Rina Wiseman writes, “it’s Debut Novel Drink Night! Join us for an SF in SF Sling…we can’t tell you what’s in it til you get here!” Free

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SF in SF reading series returns

Here’s a great photo of the beaming staff of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, posed with their laptops showing the sites that were blacked out yesterday. Visitors to EFF’s site sent over one million emails to Congress yesterday. Thank You, Internet! And the Fight Continues

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EFF staffers with blacked out sites

The Young Knives – “Human Again” I’ve been eagerly waiting for the new Young Knives album Ornaments From The Silver Arcade to come out in the US. Now I’ve learned that it’s not being released here at all, except for on iTunes. Apparently my nation-mates in the music business these days don’t value cheeky and

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Sound it Out #14: The Young Knives "Human Again"

This short, unsourced video contains 100 percent of your daily allowance of nostalgic paper-tape, punchcard and patch-panel techno-nostalgia. Classic old computers and machines (Thanks, Frycook!)

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Room-sized computers, tended by labcoat priests, narrated in cheerful midwestern tones, with uptempo orchestral music

“Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies, etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.” — Robert Anton Wilson Fnord

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RAW quote: intelligence blocking