Markku.lempinen

"Salvador Dalek" is a long-running t-shirt gag (here's another variant, one from Threadless, an old Ebay auction... there's certainly many more!). I like it a lot. (via Wil Wheaton)

Artist Li Hongbo produces gorgeous sculptures made from meticulously cut sheets of fan-folded paper, stacked tightly so that the pieces appear to be made of solid composite or stone. But when Li pulls at them, they stretch and slide most gloriously, turning into slinkoid paper-chains that are pure visual hilarity.

A special report on Arrestedmotion showcases some of the best of Li's work, which is on display at the Klein Sun Gallery in NYC.

---

---

---

---

---

Openings: Li Hongbo – “Tools Of Study” @ Klein Sun Gallery [Sleepboy/Arrestedmotion]

(via Colossal)

Quartz' Roberto A. Ferdman and Ritchie King tallies which countries drink the most hard liquor. Surprises: Russia comes in second place to the very hard-drinking Koreans, and the U.S. comes out comfortably ahead of Europe. [via Gawker]

Bonus surprise: Turkey pips Britain & Ireland to take the #1 tea-drinking crown.

Charlotte, who is seven, wrote this devastating letter to the Lego company over the way that girl characters and boy characters are handled in its increasingly gendered toys: "All the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach, and shop, and they had no jobs but the boys went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs, even swam with sharks."

She calls on Lego "to make more Lego girl people and let them go on adventures and have fun ok!?!"

That's a pretty unassailable request. Thank you, Charlotte, for putting it so well.

7yo Charlotte writes an adorable and strongly worded letter to LEGO regarding the lack of adventures for girls.

In Jason Edward Harrington's Dear America, I Saw You Naked, he reveals that he was the anonymous TSA agent who wrote the Taking Sense Away tell-all/whistleblower blog. Harrington's piece is a shocking and eye-opening look into the world of TSA agents, especially the section dealing with the "IO room" where the nude photos of travellers who used the Rapiscan machines were displayed:

Most of my co-workers found humor in the I.O. room on a cruder level. Just as the long-suffering American public waiting on those security lines suspected, jokes about the passengers ran rampant among my TSA colleagues: Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display. Piercings of every kind were visible. Women who’d had mastectomies were easy to discern—their chests showed up on our screens as dull, pixelated regions. Hernias appeared as bulging, blistery growths in the crotch area. Passengers were often caught off-guard by the X-Ray scan and so materialized on-screen in ridiculous, blurred poses—mouths agape, à la Edvard Munch. One of us in the I.O. room would occasionally identify a passenger as female, only to have the officers out on the checkpoint floor radio back that it was actually a man. All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels.

There were other types of bad behavior in the I.O. room—I personally witnessed quite a bit of fooling around, in every sense of the phrase. Officers who were dating often conspired to get assigned to the I.O. room at the same time, where they analyzed the nude images with one eye apiece, at best. Every now and then, a passenger would throw up two middle fingers during his or her scan, as though somehow aware of the transgressions going on.

But the only people who hated the body-scanners more than the public were TSA employees themselves. Many of my co-workers felt uncomfortable even standing next to the radiation-emitting machines we were forcing members of the public to stand inside. Several told me they submitted formal requests for dosimeters, to measure their exposure to radiation. The agency’s stance was that dosimeters were not necessary—the radiation doses from the machines were perfectly acceptable, they told us. We would just have to take their word for it. When concerned passengers—usually pregnant women—asked how much radiation the machines emitted and whether they were safe, we were instructed by our superiors to assure them everything was fine.

Dear America, I Saw You Naked [Jason Edward Harrington/Politico]

(via Sean Bonner)

Jason Edward Harrington, the former TSA officer who revealed the uselessness of the Rapiscan body scanners the federal government squandered $40 million on, has written an article for Politico about his time working at the TSA and his run-ins with the apparatchiks and nomenklatura in charge. Included in the article is a list of code words used by TSA officers he's compiled. Here are a few:

Alfalfa: TSA malespeak for an attractive female passenger.

BBC: Bogus Bag Check, or Bullshit Bag Check. What happens when a not-too-bright x-ray operator decides to call a bag search.

Code Red: Officer malespeak. Denotes an attractive female passenger wearing red.

Fanny Pack, Lane 2: Code for an attractive female passenger.

Retaliatory wait time: What happens when a TSA officer doesn’t like your attitude. There are all sorts of ways a TSA officer can subtly make you wait longer to get through security, citing imaginary alarms, going “above the SOP” for “a more thorough screening,” pretending that something in your bag or on your full body image needs to be resolved—the punitive possibilities are endless, and there are many tricks in the screener’s bag.

Xray Xray Xray!: Code for an attractive female passenger, general.

Yellow Alert: Code for an attractive female passenger, yellow clothing.

Ziptop baggie: A magical thing that renders liquids safe for airplanes.

(Cory posted about this article as well, highlighting some other aspects.) Dear America, I Saw You Naked - And yes, we were laughing. Confessions of an ex-TSA agent.

Boing Boing reader RedandJonny shot and shared this photo, "An AT-AT mother feeding her young," in our Boing Boing Flickr Pool. If you would like to submit your images for consideration on Boing Boing, share them in the pool!

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A skirmish over an unpaid bill in CCP Games' spacefaring MMORPG EVE Online escalated to a battle of epic proportions on Monday, costing its participants an estimated $500,000 in real-world cash so far, according to a USA Today report. When a missed ...

It’s tricky to get the timing right. Some people do nothing but update their engine. they have re-factored it so much and re-implemented everything so often that it is a true work of art, worthy of actually putting in books on how to code. These people never ship a game. The other extreme is people who are still using assembly language routines for loading in ini files because they wrote them in 1996. These people have tech support issues galore, and are probably still using Directx3.

In between there somewhere is common sense, if you *are* going to write your own engine and not use someone else’s. I think, from chatting to devs and surfing a lot on developer forums, that people tend to want to redesign their engine after every game. They consider that quite a major compromise compared to their real hidden urge to do it every morning. The thing is, if you are doing that you aren’t really writing an engine, you are just writing a new game from scratch all the time.

I tend to go with a system of marginal improvement. I still have some code from about 5 games ago (non critical stuff like ini file loading, text handling, game timers and some math stuff), but a lot of it is fresher. The graphics stuff, as you would imagine gets a major refresh more often, and my engine only contains some pretty ‘raw’ directx wrapper and vertex buffer / text engine stuff. The actual ‘scene management’ for my games is done in the game itself.

Despite the occasional between-project update and maintenance, occasionally you have to step in and clean things up. The last big update was when I went from Directx7 (Democracy 2, Kudos games…) to Directx9 (GSB,GTB,Democracy 3). This time I’m updating almost everything BUT the directx version.

I recently bought Visual Studio 2013, mostly for the concurrency profiler to enable me to experiment with multi-threading more. This was a good opportunity to take a look at some of the flakier things in my engine. I have a lot of warnings in there for data-conversion and other sloppiness. I also have code I never use (I’m culling it), and the worst and most embarrassing thing is that I can’t decide if I like char* or std::string. I Figure that std::string must be at least a bit better, more robust and safe than char*, so I’m trying to purge all that char* from the engine, and eventually, the game. I’m also planning on re-wiring stuff so that the main game code doesn’t have any FILE* or other old fashioned stuff, but uses my file wrapper more.

Why? Mostly because I can see me heading towards cross platform eventually. maybe not with the next game, but baby-steps and all that… Plus it makes life easier if getting my engine ported is a less messy business. I’m sure after a few days of sorting out this stuff I’ll be climbing the walls and wanting to code some explosions again…

If you've ever dreamed of owning a bank-vault mounded high with shiny coins in which you can bathe like Scrooge McDuck, now is your chance. A Swiss bank-vault filled with 8 million Swiss 5-cent pieces is up for auction. The vault was made in 1913 for the Schweizer Volksbank. The coins -- 15 tons' worth -- were used in a 2013 installation in which they were dumped in a public square, with no security, as an exercise in public trust. The coins and the safe are presently in Basel. You will have to relocate them.

Deposit Safe

- Year of contruction: 1912
- Swiss handmade craftsman piece of work
- Total of 1619 deposit boxes
- All keys available
- Dimensions: total length: 22.3m; height: 2.2m; width: 0.54m
- Containing 5 Elements
- Current room dimensions: 9.38 x 4.87
- Boxes and lockers are a handmade fabrication of steel and brass
- Plinth elements of marble
- Additional middle corpus is already in the Swiss National Museum in Zurich

Coins

- 8 Million pieces of Swiss 5 cent coins ("Rappen")
- 15 tons of "liquid" money
- Dimension of the money: 6m3
- Alloy: Copper 92% / Aluminium 6% / Nickel 2%
- Caliber: 17,15 mm, Weight: 1,80 g, Thickness: 1,25 mm

Original Swiss Bank Deposit Safe - Money Swimming Pool (via JWZ)

There’s a giant soft spot in my heart for Calvin and Hobbes, some of my best childhood laughs came from his snowman antics especially. When I saw this creation by Tyler Sky (Bricksky), I had no choice but to share it here. Tyler has perfectly captured the characters, as well as the hilarious snowman antics. If you live in Vancouver, it sounds like you can even see it in person, at the Oakridge Mall Lego store.

(click to embiggen)

When you log in to a service with Facebook, the company exposes an enormous amount of sensitive personal information to the service's operator -- everything from your political views to your relationship status. What's more, logging into a service with Facebook also exposes your contacts' personal information to the service: their locations, political views, organizations, religion, and more.

...and here's what a brand knows when you login via facebook (via Dan Hon)

Andy Dahl had suffered his share of delays at the hands of the NonLocal HelpDesk, but usually they were simply a matter of insurmountable language barriers or inexplicable delays. Today the threat was somewhat more sinister...

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:13]: 
regarding your computer slowness issue
share the screen

**SCREEN SHARING INITIATED BY Dahl, Andy** [14:14]

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:17]: 
give me control 

**SCREEN CONTROL INITIATED BY Dahl, Andy** [14:18] 

Dahl, Andy [14:23]: 
S%Topt
S%TOP
%

**SCREEN CONTROL TERMINATED BY Dahl, Andy** [14:23]

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:24]: 
do shift+ delete
i am unable to do it form here

Dahl, Andy [14:25]: 
what are you trying to delete?

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:25]: 
its a temporary files

Dahl, Andy [14:25]: 
You can't delete all those files you selected.
They are not all temp files.

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:26]: 
they are

Dahl, Andy [14:26]: 
No. They are not all temp files. Just because something has the letters 'temp' in it does NOT mean it is a temp file.
MasterOrderTemplate.xml, CoreTemperatureController.cpp, and UpdateTemporaryJobPostings.SQL are resource that I NEED. They are NOT temp files.

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:27]: 
while we run this search
(.*temp.*)
we will get only the temp files

Dahl, Andy [14:27]: 
No. You will get every file that has the letters 'temp' in the file name. Not all of those are temp files.

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:27]: 
No
not like that
what happens is temp files are system generated it should not be the original file that you have on the folders in order to resolve the issue i need to delete it even the next level will do the same

Dahl, Andy [14:30]: 
With all due respect, I'm sorry but I can't allow you to delete those files. Not all of them are temp files.

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:30]: 
alright
i will assign this ticket to next level

Disaster averted, Andy finally took the bathroom break he had fortunately postponed during the beginning of the screen control session.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Patrick Boivin is a stop-motion animation genius who does insanely amazing and expressive things with cheap action figures. I could watch Einstein kicking Vader's ass for hours.

Patrick Boivins' channel (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Carl "Boutros77" BouMansour is a fine artist and modeller in the UK who makes elaborate diaoramas based on science fiction movies, especially Star Wars. These are lavishly documented in his Flickr sets. There's a lot to love here, but I recommend starting with the pictures of the Cantina on Tatooine. It's such an ambitious miniature set, and the attention to detail left me amazed and delighted.

---

---

Boutros77 (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Representatives of the MPAA and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency confirmed that they worked together to yank a Google Glass wearer out of a movie theater, detain him in a small room against his will, confiscate and inspect his electronics (including his phone) and coerce an interview out of him with legal threats. They believed, incorrectly, that their victim had been recording the movie with his gadget. The Google Glass set he wore had been fitted with prescription lenses and he was watching the movie through them because they corrected his vision.

The MPAA's and ICE's statements are bland and anodyne (ICE says that the interview was "voluntary," though the man's account contradicts this). Neither of them explain how it is that a movie theater employee can call an MPAA hotline, and how the MPAA can then command ICE law-enforcement officials to drop everything and rush down to a multiplex to roust a potential camcorderer and treat him like a presumptive criminal.

The problem for the MPAA of camcordering is that they would like to stagger the release of their films -- first to the theatrical exhibition channel, then to airplanes and hotel rooms, then to pay-per-view and streaming services and DVD, etc. This makes them more profitable, but only if they can keep each channel discrete. Lots of businesses struggle with their profit-maximization strategies, but only the MPAA gets to command the forces of federal law-enforcement in the service of their business-model, putting the cost of that strategy onto the tax-payer.

Even so, it seemed incredible that ICE would take direction from the MPAA on something as small as a guy in a movie theater, rushing to the theater to help with the interrogation of someone there, but we underestimated the willingness of ICE to say "how high" when the MPAA says "jump." Yes, we should know better by now, but we thought we'd actually give the MPAA and DHS the benefit of the doubt here. Our mistake.

We find it difficult to believe that there aren't more important things for ICE to be doing than hassling a guy out attending a movie with his wife. Hollywood has gotten ICE into trouble in the past with its over-aggressive claims about websites. You'd think that ICE would have learned by now that the RIAA and MPAA are not exactly trustworthy when they insist someone is a "filthy pirate" who needs to be investigated. There is simply no reason for federal investigators to be involved at all, let alone called in to interrogate some guy wearing a new piece of technology that the MPAA has overreacted to.

MPAA & ICE Confirm They Interrogated A Guy For Wearing Google Glass During A Movie [Mike Masnick/Techdirt]

Graham Henderson, the chief spokesjerk for Music Canada -- the voice in Canada for the big US labels represented by the RIAA -- wants Parliament to regulate the Internet, creating a regime of censorship and surveillance in the name of protecting Canadian musicians (whose worst enemy, it must be noted, are the labels who pay Henderson's handsome wages, and not the fans he wants to attack). Henderson wants to control search-engine rankings because, he claims, the first seven pages' of results for Canadian musicians are pirate sites. Only one problem: he's lying. (via /.)

Bullet hell shooters are as much about dodging as they are about shooting things. In Atomic Fusion: Particle Collider for Android and iOS, Bytesized Studios has lifted that idea of dodging waves of doom out of the bullet hell genre, given it a quantum physics themed wrapper, and optimized the controls for touchscreens. To top it off, the game is easy enough for anyone to pick up and play but also designed such that skilled players will always have more to strive for.

Quantum physics is an area about which I know little, so I can't vouch for how well the game does or does not follow scientific principles, but the player is a quantum physicist tasked with creating the elements of the periodic table by controlling an atom and absorbing plasma waves into it. Plasma waves come in matter and antimatter varieties, and since the atom being controlled can only absorb one kind at a time, the player must switch back and forth between being able to absorb the two kinds of plasma.

In a lot of ways it feels like playing Ikaruga minus the need to destroy other things. The more waves the player successfully absorbs, the closer they get to finishing the current element so they can move on to the next one. Hitting a wave of the wrong type reduces progress towards finishing the element. Getting hit by the wrong type of plasma too many times means game over.

Once a new element has been unlocked, the player can start again from that level at any time. But what happens when all of the known elements are unlocked? Well, that's where algorithms take over to make the game increasingly harder with the discovery of each new element. Starting with element 119, the first person in the world who finishes forming each element gets to name it for all other players to see, giving the best players something to strive for no matter how long they keep playing the game.

There are two control schemes besides the default which allow the player to skip the multitouch requirement to switch absorption types, but at the cost of disallowing the ability to use either hand to move. That basically means that there are two control schemes, with the non-defaults being right- and left-handed versions of the same thing. Most players will probably find the default control scheme easy and natural to use.

I see only one problem with this game, which is that its gameplay is reliant on being able to see the difference in color between blue and orange. Colorblind players may be at a disadvantage when playing because that is the only difference between the two plasma types, both for the atom and for the waves. To compound this problem, some waves change color and type, going back and forth, and the indicator is subtle even for those who can see all colors without a problem.

The game is free to download for both iOS and Android. A download gets you access to the first ten levels, after which the full game can be unlocked for $1.99. The first ten levels should be plenty to give you a good idea of whether or not you'll like the full game.

[Atomic Fusion: Particle Collider for iOS | for Android]

(click for full)

Despite the valiant efforts of the motley opposition in Ukraine, the tame Ukrainian Parliament has passed a brutal law that slides the country into full-on dictatorship. Forbidden under the new law on penalty of high fines and imprisonment: driving cars in columns that are more than five vehicles long; setting up an unauthorized sound system; distribution of "extremist opinion"; "mass disruptions" (10-15 years imprisonment!); collecting information on police or judges; and more.

The new law also demolishes the trappings of democracy: you can be convicted in absentia based on unsubstantiated hearsay; MPs can be arrested during plenary sessions; the state can order arbitrary Internet censorship; and legal service of documents now consists of signatures or "any other data."

(click to embiggen)

(Thanks, Bob!)

Well, that didn't take long -- an impromptu game jam has sprung up in response to news that Candy Crush Saga creator King has had its trademark on the terms "Candy" and "Saga" approved for publication.

The Candy Jam was thrown together by developers Caribou (@caribouloche) and T-Wave (@uuav) today because, according to the jam's Tumblr page, "trademarking common names is ridiculous and because it gives us an occasion to make another gamejam."

Developers are encouraged to submit links to their games, along with images and a description, through the Candy Jam Tumblr page before the February 3rd submissions deadline.

No word yet on how the entries will be showcased or judged, though the rules of the Candy Jam suggest that bonus points will be awarded to games that are able to incorporate notoriously trademarked terms like "saga" or "scrolls" in interesting ways.

Me & @uuav are *hosting* #candyjam if anyone is interested in making games about candies & scrolls you are welcome http://t.co/Bhq1vZTUJ5

— caribou (@caribouloche) January 21, 2014

[Alex Wawro wrote this article for sister site Gamasutra]

It turns out that if you remove the cowling from a CT scanner, you get something that looks like a cross between a Stargate and a whirling Katamari Damacy. It's pretty mesmerizing to watch.

This post-apocalyptic shot by Clemens Kern has an atmosphere of abandonment and impending doom. Don’t forget to check out the main model.

Spending three months and using 3500+ tiles, this stunning 144×96 stud mosaic by Brickmoc makes me want to crank up some Black Sabbath.

HP, the world's second largest PC maker, has begun emailing customers that "Windows 7 is back" as an option for those looking to buy new PCs.

The new promotion comes along with "$150 in savings" and the PC maker claims the operating system is "back by popular demand."

By heading over to the HP desktop PC section, all computers are set to Windows 7 by default, with Windows 8.1 only available through customization. Under the all-in-one section, HP's Android device is positioned favorably over Windows 8 models.

The move is a huge blow to Microsoft, which has tried to make Windows 8 more popular after a rough launch. In the past, when the failed Windows Vista launched, manufacturers made similar "back by popular demand" promotions for Windows XP.

"Windows 7 – back by popular demand!" pic.twitter.com/tANB7joTGJ (via @jackbrewster)

-- Cabel (@cabel) January 19, 2014

Permalink | Comments

---

A city councillor from Britain's right-wing UKIP says that recent rough weather is divine retribution for the legalization of gay marriage.

"The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war," wrote David Silvester to his local newspaper, the Henley Standard. "I wrote to David Cameron in April 2012 to warn him that disasters would accompany the passage of his same-sex marriage bill."

He assailed the Prime Minister David Cameron for his arrogance "against the Gospel" and said "It is his fault that large swathes of the nation have been afflicted by storms and floods."

An unusual shot of old-timey religion in the arse of Britain's smarmy, well-groomed political scene, Silverster was initially supported by his party. After news reports appeared, however, he was suspended by the UKIP, which released a statement condemning his remarks.

“We cannot have any individual using the Ukip banner to promote their controversial personal beliefs which are not shared by the party,” said Roger Bird, the party's regional chairman.

Nigel Farage, leader of the UKIP, said he was working to remove anyone with “extremist, nasty or barmy views” from the party. "Of all the candidates we fielded, only about half a dozen have caused us any embarrassment," he told The Sun newspaper.

Farage later added, however, that the sudden row over Silvester's longstanding beliefs proves that the mainstream political parties are "scared witless" of UKIP's message.

"I think it is very interesting that, when Mr Silvester was saying these things in 2012 and 2013 as a Conservative town councillor in Henley, it was not a news story," he was quoted as saying in a Press Association report.

Many UKIP members are former Conservatives unhappy with that party's centrist and authoritarian leanings, in particular its assent to gay marriage and its hesitant opposition to immigration and continuned European Union membership. Though the uneasy marriage of libertarianism and right-wing traditionalism appears to be running out of steam in America, Britons are fresh to it and remain bemused: the UKIP, despite having no members of parliament, was yesterday voted Britain's "favorite" political party.

Earlier this week, EFF published a scorecard for rating Obama's NSA reforms. Now that the reforms have been announced, it's time to measure them up. They don't fare well, I'm afraid. Here's a roundup of commentary from privacy leaders around the world, expressing disappointment (if not surprise) at Obama's half-hearted reining in of the surveillance state.

3. No data retention mandate.

Score: 0

Obama’s review group recommended that the telephone metadata surveillance program be taken away from the government, suggesting that a third party or even telecom companies themselves be responsible for maintaining a searchable list of our calling records. This approach—mandating companies act as Big Brother’s little helper—won’t alleviate the serious privacy concerns with maintaining a digital record of every call we make. We had hoped that Obama would make clear that he would reject any form of mandatory data retention. Instead, Obama acknowledged some of the concerns with a data retention mandate but called for “options for a new approach that can match the capabilities and fill the gaps that the Section 215 program was designed to address, without the government holding this metadata itself.” He never specifically rejected the idea of forcing companies or a third party to hold this data, and so he does not receive a point in this category.

...

5. Stop undermining Internet security.

Score: 0

The NSA’s systematic efforts to weaken and sabotage the encryption and security technology make us all less safe. But in contrast to his review group’s recommendations to stop those practices, Obama was silent on the issue. That silence is disappointing, as this is a critical problem that has not just undermined the privacy of millions around the world, but poisoned our collective trust in institutions that depend most on it. Zero points.

Rating Obama’s NSA Reform Plan: EFF Scorecard Explained

Apologies for my month of blogging malaise. Miro78 built this great Trench run.

It’s not the first time we’ve blogged a WALL-E, and it probably won’t be our last either. After a slight diversion with BURN-E in Nov, the movie’s adorable main character is back this week as three different builders given us their take on this little fella:

First up, is the largest from David Hensel (Legonardo Davidy):

Evan (Lego Junkie) chimes in with his mini version:

And finally the one that started this week’s WALL-E bandwagon, Tyler (Legohaulic) gives us his rendition:

And a bonus link – Evan also has a fun Microbe Obliterator; M-O to clean up after his WALL-E.