Geekstuff

April What? An Open Thread

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by Gary Farber

It's still April 1st on the Left Coast for another two hours and five minutes (when I started this post; an hour and ten minutes when I finished), no matter what date you read above this post. 

Some foolish links are in order!

So, out of order!

Japan is on everyone's mind, but we need to remember than it's not all doom and gloom, and yet in the spirit of helping:

The Tactical Philanthropy Haiku Contest:

Donors want data
Nonprofits measure impact
Experts watch and smile

Hai, ku!  Can you write techie Haiku?  Win $50!

Some past winners I like include:

Chekov in the bay
searching hard for some space fuel
Nuclear wessels
— Jay in Murfreesboro, Tennessee

I bit a zombie.
it was ironic but the
taste was terrible.
— Blake in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Learn from the Jedi.
Discipline, control, respect.
Dangerous muppet.
— Patrick in Anaheim, California

Packets of photons
Streaming by our planet's sky
their address divine
— Michaline in Chicago Illinois

Eat Theobromine.
Drink methyltheobromine.
Heliophobe, I.
–Zach in Tyler, Texas

Why kill Wash and Book?
Are they thinking what I am?
Firefly Zombies!
–Barak from East Brunswick, New Jersey

Advice for commenters arguing with bloggers:  

Don't argue with a
Mobius strip because it
Will be one-sided
–Jimmy from Poughquag, New York

Let there be peace:

Take me to the black
I am a leaf on the wind
My Serenity
–Jennifer in Dallas, Texas

And this speaks to, for, and sometimes it seems to be me:

I am all around,
Yet some can't seem to find me.
I am Internet.
–Terry in San Francisco, California

Read the rest!  Funny!

Did I say "geeks"?  Not yet! Let's read Henry Jenkins talk about gender and game design with James Paul Gee!

There's nothing bloggers like better than catching out the New York Times in embarrassing goofs! 

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do as I say, not as I do

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by fiddler

(not an April Fool’s post, despite the date)

Richard A. Clarke, former counter-terrorism czar for both the Clinton and Bush administrations, had some strong words about the US Chamber of Commerce’s aborted plans for discrediting its critics, which included spying on families, using malware to steal information, faking documents to embarrass its liberal opponents, and creating and using ‘sock puppet’ personas to infiltrate their targets.*

Clarke said of the US Chamber’s plans to hack, impersonate, spy upon and steal from its perceived opponents:

“I think it’s a violation of 10USC. I think it’s a felony, and I think they should go to jail. You call them a large trade association, I call them a large political action group that took foreign money in the last election. But be that as it may, if you in the United States, if any American citizen anywhere in the world, because this is an extraterritorial law, so don’t think you can go to Bermuda and do it, if any American citizen anywhere in the world engages in unauthorized penetration, or identity theft, accessing a number through identity theft purposes, that’s a felony and if the Chamber of Commerce wants to try that, that’s fine with me because the FBI will be on their doorstep in a matter of hours.”

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till the landslide brings it down

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by fiddler

Following up on previous posts (here, here, here, here, and here):

HBGary Federal, Team Themis, Hunton & Williams and the US Chamber of Commerce:

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Snog In The Fog: Science Fiction And Weekend Open Thread

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by Gary Farber

If you happen to be in the environs of the San Francisco Bay Area from March 11th through 13th, I’ll be here:

FOGcon: March 11-13, 2011, at the Holiday Inn Golden Gateway Hotel

Fogcon is this (links mine):

The Friends of Genre Convention (FOGcon) is a literary-themed San Francisco SF/F con in the tradition of Wiscon and Readercon. Each year we’ll focus on a new theme in speculative fiction and invite Honored Guests ranging from writers to scientists to artists. We will build community, exchange ideas, and share our love for the literature of imagination.

Theme for 2011: The City in SF/F

Honored Guests: Pat Murphy and Jeff VanderMeer; Honored Editorial Guest, Ann VanderMeer; Honored Guest (Posthumous) Fritz Leiber

“There is more than one road to the City.”—Ursula K. Le Guin

The theme of this, the first FOGCon is:

Whether a glass-edged utopia or a steampunk hell, the city plays a central role in many works of speculative fiction. It can be an arena for conflicts between cultures, a center of learning or vice, a court of power and corruption. In its gutters and government buildings, the city reveals the values a society claims and those it actually honors. Because the city is open to everyone, it’s a place where new things can happen. No wonder it is such a rich topic for so many writers.

Lots of other kewl people will be there.  There will be programming!

I’m particularly, given the time-change, and our ability as science fiction people to slipstream, looking forward to these bits of programming:

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Newton’s Third Law #4, the continuing story, with update

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by fiddler

(Previous Newton’s Third Law posts are here, here and here.)

Benjamin Spock de Vries says he is not Commander X, one of the ‘leaders’ of Anonymous whom Aaron Barr of HBGary supposedly found online. Apparently, Barr wrote several memos in which he connected Commander X’s identity to de Vries, all of which are included among the memos leaked by Anonymous. This mistaken identification led to an oddly amusing exchange, when Barr contacted him during the attack on HBGary by Anonymous:

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Newton’s Third Law #1, 2nd UPDATE , 5:30 p.m. EST

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by fiddler

Last Saturday, an article in the Financial Times featured Aaron Barr of cybersecurity firm HB Gary Federal, boasting that he had discovered the identities of key members of the hacking collective that calls itself Anonymous.

Any cybersecurity firm worth its salt should realize that this action would result in a reaction, and should create protocols and take precautions to avoid them.

Hmm. Apparently not.

In short order, Anonymous hacked them, printed “Fail” across Barr’s photo, wrote him a scathing letter to accompany it, and released a compilation of 40,000+ of the company’s files and memos to the public. Some of these concerned a presentation prepared for Bank of America last December on how the bank could protect itself against Wikileaks.

One of HB Gary Federal’s bright ideas? Target Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, who is also a New York Times best-selling author and attorney. Why? On the grounds that because Greenwald wants to make sure Bradley Manning isn’t being mistreated and Manning is accused of leaking files to Anonymous, Greenwald therefore must be part of Anonymous.

Wrong.

 

 

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Don’t Listen To The Douchebags

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by Gary Farber

This is my sign-off post for at least three weeks or so, as a front-pager, as I'm in the final stages of my move to Oakland. (Any help, as described, much appreciated.)

But before I go, some quick parting links, and words from others.  George Takei on Clint McCance:

 

Meanwhile, the Texas Supreme Court has been only logical: Texas Supreme Court Cites The Wisdom Of Spock On Star Trek. 

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A Periodic Table of Blog Commenters

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By guest poster Gary Farber.

I don't have one of those.  Sorry. 

But, hey, it's Labor Day weekend, and so a post of silly or unusual links, and open-threadedness for all!

This first one you just have to trust me on: A Periodic Table Of Visualization Methods.  This sounds incredibly dull, but is immensely cool.  Check out the interactivity that a screen shot could barely hint at.

Don't like that one?  Use The Periodic Table Of Swearing.  (Should not be viewed by anyone offended by naughty words.  Really.)

(UPDATE: link fixed. Originally from Modern Toss.)

How about an actually useful Table Of Condiments and their spoilage?

The Periodic Table Of Candy.  The Periodic Table Of Awesoments.  (Hey, it's not my title.)  The Periodic Table Of Rejected Elements.  And finally, The Wooden Periodic Table Table. 

But we need more visualizations! A metrocontextual science map (original here), which is to say, in the form of a London Underground map.

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The Big Bang Theory

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Guest post by Gary Farber.  Gary’s home blog is Amygdala, and he invites you to read him there. 

For my final guest post at Obsidian Wings, something completely different: a roundup of some recent science, or tech, or just downright weird, sci-tech news, or that’s at least news to me, as well as an item or two of the fantastic.

Green your factories with electron beam particle accelerators:

[…] While environmental applications of particle accelerators have made little progress commercially in the United States in the last 40 years, a number of countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East are actively pursuing the technology.

In Daegu, Korea, an electron-beam accelerator in a textile factory removes toxic dyes from 10,000 cubic meters of wastewater per day. In Szczecin, Poland, the Pomorzany power station installed an electron-beam accelerator in its coal plant to simultaneously remove sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides from roughly 270,000 cubic meters of flue gas per hour. China has started to use electron beams to control air pollution, and a facility in Bulgaria is under construction. Saudi Arabia may soon follow.

All you have to do for more widespread use is ensmall them. 

[…] “We have proven that the technology works,” says Andrzej Chmielewski, director of the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology in Warsaw, Poland. “The size of the accelerators can be huge, though. We need a technological breakthrough” to make accelerators smaller and easier to maintain.

But they’re working on that!  With plasma wakefield acceleration and laser wakefield acceleration! 

Oh, and who do you have to thank for that?

[…] Thanks in great part to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the stimulus package,

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Pwned!

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by hilzoy A couple of days ago, Michael Goldfarb wrote on the John McCain blog: “It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories … Read more

Comment Junk

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If you are still getting problems with the spam filter, let me know.  I’ve been trying to work with Typepad about it, and they assure me that it is doing better.  Otherwise, open Christmastime thread. 

BSG Blogging: Exodus, Part I

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by Andrew

Someone asked that I move the Galacticablogging over here. If the consensus is that this doesn’t really belong at ObWi, I’ll discontinue the experiment.

A week after I suggested Moore and company might have finally found their niche by changing from ‘humanity on the run’ to ‘humanity resists the Cylons,’ it appears I spoke too soon. Surprise. Last’s night’s episode, starting with the title, suggests that New Caprica will be only a brief way-station on the way to Earth, although I’ll concede that all could changed based on what happens next week. Continued below the fold to allow readers to avoid spoilers.

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Shhh…No One Knows I’m Blogging

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You have to read this awesome publication (pdf file) put out by Reporters Without Borders helping folks set up anonymous weblogs and avoid censors in places where blogging can be dangerous to one’s employment or even health. There’s lots of info about how or why to blog, but a chapter titled "HOW TO BLOG ANONYMOUSLY" by Ethan Zuckerman (fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School), outlines the following 6 steps:

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Evolving Personalized Information Construct

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It’s easier all the time to imagine a future where MSM organizations are irrelevant. Quality will suffer of course, but if quality were a priority for news consumers, this would look very different: Constant reader crionna pointed me to this hypothetical scenario by which the future behemoth Googlezon (Google + Amazon) defeats the New York … Read more

Quick Question

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Someone spilled a martini into my laptop at the gallery last weekend. That person has "mysteriously" not been heard from since (just kidding, he’s still screaming where I tied him up behind the brick wall in the basement…just kidding). It was an accident, and the person was genuinely sorry. The shop said it can’t be … Read more

Click ‘n Sniff

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File under "Engineers with wa-a-a-a-y too much time on their hands." A new service being tested by Tokyo-based NTT Communications Corp. sends out smells according to data received over the Internet. Users attach a device to their laptops that resembles a crystal ball with a nozzle. The device receives aroma data from the central server … Read more

My Passed-Out Friend Here is Buying…Here’s His Arm

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Imagine you’re out for a night of drinking. Somewhere between breakdancing in the Irish dive and being kicked out of the uppity martini lounge, you realize you’ve lost your wallet. No more cash, not even an ATM card…your night is over. &-( Fear no more, my sobrietyphobic friends; science has come to the rescue: Imagine … Read more

More Important Things in Life, Part I

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Spent half the night dreaming of “brilliant” metaphors for political situations, and woke up convinced that I’m way too overworked about all of this stuff. There are political issues I’m working on for future posts, but here I want to discuss something much more important: pinewood derbys. Pierogi, a gallery in Brooklyn, is celebrating its … Read more

I wanna be George Jetson

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I want a machine that safely shaves my face while I’m still waking up. I want a sassy maid who’s happy to be compensated in WD40. But mostly, I want a flying car. OK, so not really, but who didn’t expect we’d have them by 2004 while watching cartoons as a kid? Apparently, we’ll still be waiting for decades, but the technology is getting there:

In 10 years, NASA hopes to have created technology for going door-to-door. These still wouldn’t be full-fledged flying cars — instead, they’d be small planes that can drive very short distances on side streets, after landing at a nearby airport.

In 15 years, they hope to have the technology for larger vehicles, seating as many as four passengers, and the ability to make vertical takeoffs.

It will probably take years after these technologies are developed before such vehicles are actually on the market. And Moore says it will take about 25 years to get to anything “remotely ‘Jetsons’-like,'” a reference to the futuristic cartoon that fed many flying car fantasies.

So what’s the hold up?

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The Sagrada Familia is finished, sort of

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Continuing with Moe’s excellent choice of lazy-Sunday-suited subjects…

Visiting the great cathedrals of Europe you can’t help but marvel at the dedication represented by a construction project that would not see completion for possibly hundreds of years after the architect and original engineers and financiers were long dead. Off-and-on construction on my very favorite European cathedral, the Duomo in Milan, lasted from 1386 to 1813, for example.

My “second favorite” cathedral has always been somewhat of a dodgy choice because it’s still not complete and most likely won’t be for at least another 30 years. Who knows if I’ll actually like the end result (or if I’ll be here to see it)? But having visited the “in-progress” Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, I can say no other building in the world has so powerfully fired my imagination or captured what I feel 20th Century Christian spirituality had achieved and/or aspired to than this particular vision. “Masterpiece” seems an understatement for something that seems so otherwordly.

Architect Antonio Gaudí died* when his greatest work was only 15% complete, and his notes and designs were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War. It’s still only about 40% complete (and finishing it is not uncontroversial) but thanks to technology, some contemporary imagination, and an impatient advertising executive and film producer named Toni Meca, we can now see how it will/might look when finished:


Virtual Sagrada Familia

The technology it took to accomplish this—The degree of detail in computer models is measured in units called polygons; the finished Sagrada Familia model required 35 million polygons, more than 10 times the number used to create the model of the ship in the film “Titanic.”—is described in more detail on the website http://www.tmdreams.com/.

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A-Ha!

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So this is why I saw a kid wearing a black T-shirt with the words “Neutral Evil” written across the front when I stepped out to lunch. It’s not just geek chic — the D&D people are in town! Having once been one of them, I’ll raise my First Edition Player’s Handbook and say: Happy … Read more

“MORTIMER! Prepare the orichalcum electrocannon!”

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Err, just practicing. Turns out that apparently Ireland was just that locale’s secret identity: DUBLIN (Reuters) – Atlantis, the legendary island nation over whose existence controversy has raged for thousands of years, was actually Ireland, according to a new theory by a Swedish scientist. (snip of paragraph: everybody here bloody well knows what Atlantis was, … Read more

100K Hit Pre-emptive Memorial Thread

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…because I have to be up in six hours and counting to drive the girlfriend to the airport – oh, yes, honey, me finally getting a driver’s license is turning out to be such a convenience* – so watch the SiteMeter tick, tick, tick. We’ve already informally passed 100,000 – but what the heck, a … Read more

Let’s see…

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…I’m back from a tour of the American History Museum, the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial and the Albert Einstein Memorial, the lingering endorphins from the unexpected walk are in full Old Star Trek combat music mode with the fever engaged by my mild sunburn, I’m … Read more

The Universe has retained its Equilibrium.

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Primarily A Cappella has finally deigned to send to me the Da Vinci’s Notebook CD (The Life and Times pf Mike Fanning*) that I had ordered, like, weeks ago. I was starting to think that I might have gotten stiffed, but it arrived. Guess that I had better call off the ninjas, huh? I mention … Read more

Arrr.

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I’ve been meaning to link to this site – Safety Sign Builder – as it’s a great way to while away rainy afternoons. Like this one, tanjit. The site requires registration, but it’s free, so why not? Wi’ a curse. Remember, the next International Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19th, sink and scupper … Read more

I’m back…

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…at 12:50 PM this afternoon, just after we found out that the one remaining RPG session left that a) we were interested in and b) wasn’t sold out was a game that required us to be at a prior session in order for us to play (a piddling little detail that should have been on the description), I slump down and start to massage my aching feet. My girlfriend looks at me, I look at her, she pulls out her cell phone and cancels the last night of our stay and we head for our hotel. One fifteen minute walk later (normally five, but there was a gay pride parade going on in Columbus that was paralleling our route*), we’re going through our hotel room like a NSA sanitation squad covering up that unfortunate complication for the Senator; by 2 PM we’re on the road, having discovered the way out of Columbus, City of the Shifting Streets, with only a minimum of SAN loss. Eight hours and three states later, we have arrived and I can begin to decompress from my blipping vacation.

Loopy? Disjointed? Rambling? Who, moi?

Anyway, I’m sure that the news I’ve read so far will seem far less surreal tomorrow. Well, no, I’m not, but a man can dream.

Moe

UPDATE: Got some sleep and cleaned up some of the babbling, but the news is still all surreal. Alas, alack.

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Greetings from Origins.

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…eventually. The directions to get here, and to the hotel, were not all that could have been desired*. Non-Euclidian dimensions belong in Call of Cthulhu, not the map.

There. I feel much better now. See you all Sunday…

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Generic Geekpuzzle title.

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The trick behind this is fairly obvious, once you figure it out, but watching other people scratch their heads until they get it ought to have its own amusement value. There’s a strong possibility that this might be my last post until after Origins, so everybody have a good weekend. (Via Michael Totten)

Little bit grumpy tonight…

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…so I’ll turn this into an open geek thread and be done with it. Fun geekstuff information always good for making Moe less grumpy. Moe PS: Firefox loads sites up fast. PPS: Anybody going to Origins?