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In 2001, the Bush Administration killed a program that gave security-cleared scientists access to highly detailed satellite images and other information gathered by the intelligence community. Now scientists and spies are re-starting the collaboration, mostly using the data for environmental and climate research. Naturally, this infuriates the sort of senators who dislike science and like to find things to be infuriated about.
Microsoft and HP announced a "Slate PC." It looks pretty cool, with a big touchscreen and svelte design, and the specs suggest an ability to perform. And yet it has a plain air about it: it runs Windows 7, has an enormous bezel, and is a bit chunky. Windows 7 on a tablet? Indeed, the spectacle of Ballmer's effusive keynote fades to sinister string music as the intrepid tech press realizes that Microsoft just rebadged old news with the name of an Apple rumor. Then again, in the absence of iSlate fever, Microsoft could have called it something like "High Performance Ultra Mobile Multimedia Presentation Platform" or "Zing." So count your blessings. Perhaps capacitative touch and better specs will make all the difference. [Gizmodo and Daring Fireball]
Sony's 7" Dash tablet is even chunkier, but that's OK, because it's a new Chumby! As such, it's designed to lounge around at home (there's no battery) as an alarm clock-cum-webTV thingy, not replace a netbook or do much in the way of computer powerhousing. It enters the fray with the original Chumby's open-source software and many existing widgets and apps--but better hardware and an impulse-buy $200 price tag. [Crunchgear]
Kodak's super-slim Slice camera, shot here by Engadget's Tim Stevens, has a 3.5" touchscreen display and looks no thicker than an iPod Touch. But the promise of 14MP images suggests either great new technology or more visual noise than a firework factory explosion.
Nvidia has its own tablet concept: Android, 1080p playback, no fancy design.
Motorola's Backflip runs Android, too, but is a cellphone with a big qwerty keyboard. The most exciting thing about it is the way it opens up: screen and keyboard on the *outside* of the clamshell. This means that it opens completely flat, like a tablet, but can be set on a table (in an inverted 'V') for video and alarm clock use. [Gadget Lab. Photo: Priya Ganapati]
Sony's Bloggie camcorder [Telegraph] is a Flip-like HD pocket camcorder with 1080p recording, a swiveling lends and image stabilization. Alas, no external mic jack, such as Kodak's supreme Zi8 offers. It also announced 13 nearly-identical standard camcorders [Gizmodo]. It's interesting to see the behemoth's two sides in action: one sharply-named and interesting item buried in a swathe of branding business-as-usual, right down to a product list that has all the panache of an industrial adhesives catalog. Make mine the DX-CX150-500N!
Sanyo's pistol-grip Xacti camcorders got an awful lot smaller, offering 1080p recording with a 35mm wide angle lens in a form that'll actually fit in your pocket (unlike the otherwise excellent SD1010/2000). It's wafer thin! [Slashgear]
Sony's F-series laptop is big and heavy, with a 16.4" 16:9 display, Blu-ray and an i7 processor; the 13.3" Y-series is like the Macbook, but $200 cheaper; and the Z-series (pictured) looks like a larger version of the T/TT/TZ models of yore, with a light weigh-in, 13" display, 3G internet, and SSD-only storage. Cuter is the new W, a low-end netbook with a high-end price. [Gizmodo]
Lenovo's U1 touchscreen tablet runs android and clips into a keyboard to become a netbook. [JKKMobile]
Sprint's Overdrive is a Mifi-like portable router, but this time using WiMax instead of standard 3G wireless internet. Great if you live in downtown Baltimore. [Engadget]
Nevermind CES, health care, or Qaeda cells in Yemen, this is the real story of the week. Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams has a piece out about LUKEYWES1234, a chunky, bespectacled 10 year old boy who happily cranked out YouTube videos about playing with Luigi and Mario—until 4chan discovered him. Read: The littlest YouTube sensation
(Image: Claes Andreasson, via American Public Media's "Weekend America" archives)
Boing Boing reader Genise Schnitman says, "Parke Meek, the self-taught steampunk technical wizard who worked in the Eames office and was the curmudgeonly doyen of Jadis, the retrofuturist wunderkammer on Main Street in Santa Monica, passed away at 86."
I did not know him, but have peeked in the windows of that wonderful store many times. What sad news. I asked Eames Demetrios (director of the Eames Office, Chairman of the Board of the Eames Foundation which takes care of the Eames House) if he would like to share some thoughts with our readers on Mr. Meek's passing. Eames writes,
I have known Parke all my life, so it is terribly hard to imagine the world without him—without knowing he is there to reminisce with, get an engagingly/irascibly direct comment from, or just to walk through his worlds of treasures. He told me he loved his time at the Eames Office because every day he came in, there was always some new project or task at hand: "you never knew what you were going to do," he said. And he always had that spirit of fun. People sometimes called him a curmudgeon, and you can almost see why, but he was always—even to the end—having way too much fun in life for that ever to be even close to the right word.Snip from the obituary in the Santa Monica local paper:
Meek was born Jan. 1, 1924 in a small town in rural Indiana. During his youth, he would end up selling liquor out of the back of a taxi cab during prohibition, Bloch said, before moving on to the United States Marine Corps. While stationed at Guadalcanal, Meek was put in charge of a cannon at the young age of 18 because of his mastery of physics, able to aim and shoot better than his superiors.The entire obituary is a must-read: Famed Eames design team member dies (Santa Monica Daily Press)
Weekend America produced this radio feature on Meek's Jadis antique store and prop shop in Santa Monica. The photo at the top of this blog post was featured in an accompanying image slideshow. When you enter Jadis, you see "a metallic replica of the robot from Fritz Lang's 1927 sci-fi movie Metropolis flanked by model boats with big motorized flapping wings." Inside, there's all kinds of neat old lab equipment. A magical place, created by a fascinating man.
Flickr user Mark Garland has a set of photos shot inside Jadis.
Our pal Joel Johnson, formerly editor of Boing Boing Gadgets, just emailed me this snapshot from CES of our other pal, Brian Lam of Gizmodo, reppin' hard on the convention floor. Rob Beschizza and I had each planned to head out to Vegas for the yearly cattle roundup, but ended up not going. I'm happy we're represented after all. I think Brian is chewing gum in this photo. He doesn't know we're blogging it. Sssh! Don't tell him. You can still buy those sweet "Get Illuminated" Boing Boing/Gama Go t-shirts for $24, BTW. And you can read Joel and Brian's CES coverage here.
Gareth of Make Online says: "Oh my gawd, this is hysterical. These guys launched their Christmas tree on 32 rocket engines. The launch is glorious."
Hoof shoes from Zagone Studios
Turns out hoof shoes are making a comeback, but for humans. More examples: A Closer Look At The Hoof Shoe Trend: 5 Fashionable Or Freaky Hooves. My faves are the deer ones.
Several studies have indicated that stress resulting from ongoing white noise can induce the release of cortisol, a hormone that helps to restore homeostasis in the body after a bad experience. Excess cortisol impairs function in the prefrontal cortex—an emotional learning center that helps to regulate “executive” functions such as planning, reasoning and impulse control. Some recent evidence indicates that the prefrontal cortex also stores short-term memories. Changes to this region, therefore, may disrupt a person’s capacity to think clearly and to retain information."How does background noise affect our concentration?" (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)
OK, I lied about no more wonky posts. Xeni's Facebook post reminded me of something. I want to float an idea about privacy as a commodity, vs. privacy as a right.Tiger Woods, described frequently as a "very private" person, was unable to keep his private life private. Why? Because he interacted with non-private people. The reason Kim Kardashian and the Jersey Shore denizens have risen to positions of prominence in popular culture is because they each epitomize the non-private person. They have nothing to hide, so nothing that becomes public knowledge can hurt them. Ms. Kardashian can be urinated on in a sex tape and actually be helped in terms of being a public figure. My own ability to be effective as a transgender rights activist is because there's nothing anyone could expose about me that would deter me from my activism. That gives me enormous power over anonymous haters who vent their impotent fury at me to no avail. Their own fear of exposure (loss of privacy) is their greatest weakness. What does this mean for you, dear reader? Read on.
(images via WikiMedia Commons)
Although the US government has taken steps to protect privacy as a right since Louis Brandeis formalized the concept in 1890, there is always a clash with commercial interests who view privacy as a commodity. What we have seen is that those who want privacy are going to have to pay a lot for it, a trend that will continue to trickle down from public figures to the general public. Gated "communities," "identity theft protection" rackets, etc. are symptoms of the commodification of privacy.
At last year's Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, there was a lot of debate about industry self-regulation vs. government regulation. "Wireless Advertising Messaging" (WAM) is something you'll be hearing a lot more about in coming years. The Nexus phone introduced yesterday is the clearest sign that marketers know that the future of advertising is on the mobile web and through local search. Heng Xu, John Bagby, and Terence Melonas of Penn State presented a paper at PETS on whether Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPP) compliance should be by policy or by design. This great theoretical paper lays out a good summary of the right vs. commodity debate:
"The first camp views privacy as a fundamental human right, like the right to liberty or life. Such fundamentalist position holds that privacy is tied to a cluster of rights, such as autonomy and dignity. The second camp holds privacy to be of instrumental rather than fundamental right; that is, the value of privacy comes because it sustains, promotes, and protects other things we value. In this view, privacy can be traded off because doing so will promote other values (e.g., personalization)."
The question then becomes this: what is the value of our privacy, and for what are we willing to trade our privacy? What will we pay to keep it? We are already seeing a cottage industry for people who pay to DELETE F***ING EVERYTHING, such as Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and Seppukoo.com. Both were blocked by Facebook this week for violating their terms of service. This arms race is going to escalate as businesses continue to maximize effectiveness of their messaging through more and more personalized messages and technologies. The amount of money at stake is enormous, which means the rights at stake are enormous as well.
Short of going off the grid, what do you think we should do to protect our right to privacy? Or if you see it as a commodity, what can we do to maximize its value so we can make more in trade (vs. bartering it to businesses like Facebook in exchange for using their service)?
It's almost creepy to watch.
For comparison's sake, there's a video of a real meat-based grass snake swimming in a pool after the cut.
(Thanks, Hugh Clare!)
My friends Russell Bates (l) and Kirk Anderson (r) are modeling the new Backwards Beekeepers T-shirts, which are available for $15. Backwards Beekeepers is the name of the organic beekeeping club in Los Angeles I belong to.
From the blog:
We're a group of organic beekeepers in Los Angeles, quickly becoming a worldwide phenomenon. We're "Backwards" because we rely on observation and natural practices rather than pesticides and other chemicals to keep our bees thriving.Backwards Beekeepers T-shirts!
Advanced dough tossers can perform multiple tosses (tossing the dough repeatedly before it rests in the chef’s hands). In multiple tossing, the scientists found that the optimal motion is a semi-elliptical trajectory, in which the disk flies through the air at an angle rather than flying perfectly flat. Multiple tossing is more complex, as it risks entering chaotic and chattering regimes, emphasizing the disk’s sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Generally, dough tossers use the helical motion for the first toss, and change to a semi-elliptical motion for subsequent tosses."The Physics of Pizza Tossing" (Physorg, via Smithsonian)As the scientists explain, multiple tossing shares similarities with standing wave ultrasonic motors, since both convert reciprocal input into continuous rotational motion using the same mechanism. The electric motors operate by using friction from the ultrasonic vibration of a stator to spin a rotor. Engineers who design these motors generally give the stator an elliptical motion, in accordance with the findings from the researchers’ pizza tossing analysis. However, the researchers found that the reason for the preferred elliptical motion is different than motor engineers have assumed. This insight and further investigation might help designers improve the operation of the motors in new ways.
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