Change Is A Sound

explore-blog:

Forget the jetpacks, researchers at Virginia Tech have developed an interactive 3D-printing vending machine and the future has officially arrived.

explore-blog:

The fastest white rapper tackles a quintessential grammar pet peeve – the difference between “your” and “you’re” – via a Gotye parody. Very, very NSFW, very, very educational. 

The best things since The Elements of Style rap.

(↬ Quipsologies)

bakeanddestroy:

Where to eat when you don’t eat meat: Chicago’s Best Veggie Eats

(Source: arcaneimages)

I spent a long time doing tech-related work. I was never an engineer, but I was the guy who translated engineer to English - in short, the person who explained technical stuff in ways non-technical people could understand it.

And simply put, the writing has been on the wall for decades. For networked technologies, the text has been projected on the screen or monitor for over 20 years. Phil Zimmermann, the developer of Pretty Good Privacy, knew. He saw the writing on the wall when he began distributing PGP in 1991.

Avi Rubin knew. He was part of the team that developed Publius, an encrypted peer-to-peer file-sharing program that stored bits and pieces everywhere.

Librarians know. I saw a librarian presenting the LOCKSS concept at USENIX more than a decade ago. It’s brilliant and simple - Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe. No more Library Of Alexandria losses - make lots of copies and distribute them widely.

It isn’t just these people - there are tens of thousands of engineers and developers who have given us tools to preserve privacy and individual liberty in an increasingly digital world which leaves fingerprintseverywhere.

And yet we consistently surrender our privacy and anonymity and so voluntarily, for the sake of convenience, because someone waves something shiny at us and says it’s new. Think of it as Reverse Social Engineering - social engineering being a term for manipulating people through use of information to gain access to their knowledge and more secure systems.

Instead of being convinced of someone’s need to get information and believing they have clearance for it, we’re throwing information at people who have repeatedly shown that they have no respect for us, that they will not protect our information and instead will actively abuse it, and that they will give it to anyone who says please or waves money in their face.

CISPA is avoidable. Stop thinking Facebook is private or secure or a protector of your rights - email people. Encrypt your communications. Delete your Facebook account entirely - Facebook’s support of CISPA is irrelevant if it has no users.

But here’s the troubling part - Facebook is noteworthy for its continued privacy gaffes, including changing settings, restoring settings to defaults, etc. If you are actually naive enough to continue to believe that Facebook offers some measure of privacy or security after the truly astonishing number of security and privacy problems that are the direct result of Facebook changing its policies, then you are part of the problem.

CISPA sucks. It’s a poorly considered and debated piece of legislation and I don’t think it will hold up in court. But the more important consideration is that there are ways to secure your communications which are much stronger and that exist independently of whether Facebook decides to roll over and show its belly. If you’re sending encrypted emails, it doesn’t matter whether Mark Zuckerberg has a spine. The only concern is how long it will take to crack the key using brute force methods.

Clearly, we must fight legislation like CISPA, and we must protest and we must tell elected officials that they are acting in ways directly counter to democracy. But we also need to stop assuming that corporations have anything resembling our interests in mind when they act.

Got a problem with CISPA? Encrypt your emails and delete your Facebook account. That’s a good place to start.

Twenty-some years ago, I devoured pretty much anything Henry Rollins produced - music, writing, spoken word. I saw myself in it, in the idea of someone who just wouldn’t quit. And one offhand interview answer about fans and sheep in some magazine was all it took to make me find another source of inspiration.

And that was pretty much that. I’ve never forgotten that interview or that comment, because I had valued what he did so much because so much of it described how I felt, and his comment about his fans being sheep led me to trade in a box of Rollins records at the local CD shop and I never looked back.

But this is is still pretty great, and it’s definitely worth sharing. Especially if some kid hears it and realizes, like I did, that there’s more out there and it may take a lot of work, but it’s worth it.

calamityjon:

The Avengers opens in theaters in the US on May 4th, and it’s going to do blockbuster business. The individual films featuring these characters have already  grossed more than $2.2 billion dollars - that’s greater than the Gross National Product of almost half the countries on Earth - and it’s not unlikely that The Avengers will earn a hundred million dollars on its opening day alone.

This represents a pretty big payday to a lot of people - the actors, obviously, will take home pretty big paychecks. The director and the writers are well-compensated, and certainly the executives who greenlighted this project get to sit back and rake in large bonuses and healthy salaries.

Well, you know where this is going; shamefully, the people who aren’t making a big profit from these movies are the people (and the families of the people) who did the essential work of creating them in the first place. It’s not just Jack Kirby, either, or (Black Widow and Hawkeye co-creator) Don Heck, but also Steve Engelhart, Peter David, Herb Trimpe, Jim Steranko, Roy Thomas and dozens more - the artists and writers who refined and defined the characters appearing in this movie, who fleshed out the original creations and molded them into the figures we cheer for when we see them on the screen.

Some very sensible people are calling for a boycott of this film on those grounds, but I think it’s fairly obvious that a boycott of idealistic comic fans isn’t going to accomplish much - it’s not only comic book fans who’ll be dropping a collective billion dollars over the next eight weeks to see this movie, it’s going to be a lot of movie-goers who haven’t read a comic since they were kids, much less know anything of the controversy.

Plus, of course, you - the collective “you”, representing comic book fans all over the world - want to see this movie. And you’re going to, most likely, right? Even though you know of the morally shady practices of Marvel towards its creators, they’ve got you hooked. Don’t be ashamed, they’ve had you hooked for years. It’s what they do.

So how about this: You’re probably going to go see The Avengers and, judging by the early reviews, you’ll probably enjoy it. How about - as a thank you to the creators who brought you these characters in the first place, who gave you something to enjoy so much - you match your ticket price as a donation to The Hero Initiative? 

THI is a charity which provides essential financial assistance to comic book professionals who have fallen on hard times; for decades, the comic industry provided no financial safety net to its employees, most of whom it regarded only as freelancers and journeymen, meaning they were offered no health insurance, no unemployment insurance, no retirement plans - none of the financial support most of us enjoy from our jobs and careers. A small donation will help this agency provide a valuable safety net in times of need to these beloved entertainers.

I don’t plan on seeing The Avengers, but I’ve donated $15 - the price of a 3-D ticket - to Hero. If every concerned comic fan - every superhero aficionado who learned to live by the lessons of altruism and sacrifice taught by these comics - donated the price of their ticket, well, it may not hit a billion dollars but it’ll bring in a lot of money for a good and relevant cause.

One last note: Remember what Spider-Man always says? “With great power comes great responsibility”. The lesson in that is that everyone has great power. Spider-Man’s great power is being able to lift a bus. Your great power is the ability to help good causes do good work for good reasons - so why not go be a superhero instead of just watching them on the screen…

(PS: “Liking” this post is nice, thank you, but reblogging/retweeting it helps get the message out and would be even more appreciated)

This is a good idea. I don’t need to say anything else.

eve-barlow:

Question:

WHEN THE EFFING JEFFING HECK DID IT BECOME SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE TO STAND IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROAD AND TELL THE WOMAN ON THE OTHER SIDE THAT SHE REMINDS YOU OF “AN UGLY ABHORRENT HORSE” YOU ONCE “ACCIDENTALLY” HAD SEX WITH.

Anyone? PLEASE. GO ON TELL ME, I BEG YOU I AM LOSING MY RAG AND I’VE HAD A MIGRAINE FOR 96 HOURS AND I THOUGHT WE LEARNED ABOUT THIS SORT OF THING WHEN WE WERE CHILDREN AND I’M STRUGGLING WITH THE WILL TO LIVE. I need someone to EXPLAIN this to me because frankly I’m now thinking it’s all game, I mean EVERYTHING is game. Total anarchy, I can just walk out my front door right now, go into Budgens and start spilling out the bile that’s (not) in my head at everyone I come across. They made a film about this; it’s called Liar Liar with Jim Carrey and it’s not funny. WHY? Because this saying things uncensored at random individuals shtick is juvenile. Because in life it’s still sensible to bite your tongue every now and then and have some bloody manners. Believe it or not, not every single thought that comes out of our human heads is a diamond-encrusted, Eureka winner that needs to be broadcast out a megaphone and shared with every man and his dog (and dogs have more manners than internet trolls). Actually, the real skill is being able to tell which are the kerching thoughts and which are the thoughts that belong beneath a pile of manure in the furthest away farm on the Land of Zog. 

Oh shut up, Eve… this is Twitter, it’s different, it’s online, it’s not in the street, it’s not real life, you’re taking it all too seriously, wahwahwahwahwah. You’re right. It’s online, it’s not happening in the street (it wouldn’t happen in the street because that would involve looking someone in the eye). It’s unlikely that right now on your high street there’s a selection of politicians, journalists, authors, popstars, actors, talking animals and Star Wars bots. Absolutely, it’s not your street… IT’S YOUR DREAM STREET THAT YOU NOW HAVE ACCESS TO DUE TO THE BEAUTIFUL TWITTER INVENTION (something else fun and wonderful you can all start DESTROYING for all of us who were having a perfectly nice time). It’s the street where you can converse with all the people you’d never meet in your life and tell them exactly what you think about them (because that’s your human right to do that, isn’t it?). What’s more, the Twitter street is an even more public place than your street because it’s a street everyone in the whole world can fit on AND the surveillance on it is like nothing CCTV has ever seen. Everything you say publicly on Twitter can be viewed around the world for the rest of time by anyone. So, yeah you’re right; it’s not like going out in your street and spewing obscenities at passing strangers (or specific people you’re trolling down with an @), it’s infinity times worse than that (I.D.S.T. IF DESTROYED STILL TRUE).

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Y’know, generally speaking, not acting isn’t a terrible option. Not saying something is much better than behaving in ways that can lead people to believe that no one ever stressed the importance of manners and politeness.

This is another example of why I stress the importance of making good decisions when I talk to my little girl.

Also, if the dude doesn’t get canned for his comment, perhaps the police should look into whether he confessed to a criminal act. Because, y’know, molesting a horse? That’s not right either.

So according to Forbes, the Better Business Bureau weighed in on complaints about “Mass Effect 3” and found that Bioware made at least one false statement in its advertising about “Mass Effect 3.

Here’s the link to the BBB’s opinion: http://www.bbb.org/blog/2012/04/mass-effect-3-is-having-a-mass-effect-on-its-consumers-for-better-or-worse/

uninhibitedandunrepentant:

[WARNING]

Spoilers! Do not read if you have not finished ME3 or wish to avoid spoilers for the ending.

Alright. I’ve been toying with the idea of the Indoctrination theory for the ending of Mass Effect 3 that has been floating around the internet. And I have discussed many points with my housemate, who has also studied literature extensively. She knows how invested I am in the story, and has given me a seed of hope that has blossomed into a razor-sharp flower of abject disbelief. She has also been researching this purely to ease my troubled mind, because living with me when I am in the throes of anguish or the grips of rage is pure hell.

And I can safely say that this is either the most dick move that Bioware could have pulled, or pure. Fucking. Genius.

So, yes. I have been won over to the indoctrination theory, and I’ll share with you some of the reasons why.

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This is a very compelling argument. I hope the author is right. And they’re definitely right on one point - if the actual end is yet to come, it had BETTER be a free download. If it isn’t, then I think people have a legitimate complaint against Bioware … at that point, it isn’t about the ending, it’s that Bioware would have deliberately released an unfinished product and expected people to pay more to complete it. That ain’t gonna fly.