spriteleigh

The Winter Olympics offer us a great lesson in GIFs--specifically, the power of a well-made GIF to condense much longer-form content into its highest-impact few seconds. Where you've got weeks of serious content and coverage, the GIF has to focus on what brings you the most oomph. Wipeouts.

4chan's worksafe GIF section has been collecting the best of the wipeouts from the 2014 Winter Olympics for the last week. It's an impressive thread. Not only is it emotionally wrenching to see these athletes try so hard and fail, but the wipeouts highlight the magnitude of what they're trying to do. One big crash puts all the perfect runs and tenths-of-a-second into perspective. Here are some of my favorites.

Winter Olympics wipeouts thread - 4chan.org

Update: How did I miss this gem!?

In 2012 I reviewed Economix, a terrific cartoon history of economics by Michael Goodwin and illustrated by Dan E. Burr. (After reading it, I bought a few copies of the book to give as gifts.)

Today, Michael emailed to let me know that he and Dan have posted an excellent and free 27-page online comic called The Transpacific Partnership and "Free Trade," which describes how the negotiated-in-secret treaty is a "global coup that's disabling our democracies and replacing them with multinationals and Wall Street," and is making the US "police state more extensive, more restrictive, and global."

"The only judge is The Lord, and when I meet him I'll know how he feels."

A rational society would kill George Zimmerman or give him a reality show. [Video Link via Gawker]

A US citizen had government-grade spyware placed on his laptop by the Ethiopian government, who proceeded to monitor his Skype calls, instant messages, and his whole family's Internet use. Finspy, the software the Ethiopian regime used was provided by Gamma Group, a British company that makes and sells spyware exclusively to governments. They attacked the US citizen's computer while he was in the USA.

The victim of the attack -- who is being called "Mr. Kidane" in order to protect his family in Ethiopia -- is suing the Ethiopian government in a US court, and is represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"We have clear evidence of a foreign government secretly infiltrating an American's computer in America, listening to his calls, and obtaining access to a wide swath of his private life," said EFF Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo. "The current Ethiopian government has a well-documented history of human rights violations against anyone it sees as political opponents. Here, it wiretapped a United States citizen on United States soil in an apparent attempt to obtain information about members of the Ethiopian diaspora who have been critical of their former government. U.S. laws protect Americans from this type of unauthorized electronic spying, regardless of who is responsible."

A forensic examination of Mr. Kidane's computer showed that the device had been infected when he opened a Microsoft Word document that contained hidden malware. The document had been an attachment to an email message sent by agents of the Ethiopian government and forwarded to Mr. Kidane. The spyware contained in the attachment was a program called FinSpy, a suite of surveillance software marketed exclusively to governments by the Gamma Group of Companies. In the several months FinSpy was on Mr. Kidane's computer, it recorded a vast array of activities conducted by users of the machine. Traces of the spyware inadvertently left on his computer show that information – including recordings of dozens of Skype phone calls – was surreptitiously sent to a secret control server located in Ethiopia and controlled by the Ethiopian government.

American Sues Ethiopian Government for Spyware Infection

In Frequency, the latest XKCD cartoon, Randall Munroe has assembled a grid of animated GIFs representing various events in the universe, each keyed to blink in the frequency in which they occur in reality. As with the best of Munroe's work, it's a mix of the trenchant and the silly, and the juxtapositions are smart and provocative. There's real genius in putting "50,000 plastic bottles are produced" and "50,000 plastic bottles are recycled" next to each other, the former blinking much more often than the latter -- but the best part is "A Sagittarius named Amelia drinks a soda," just above them, mixing up the alarming and the humorous.

The other juxtapositions are just as delicious -- one birth/one death; China builds a car/Japan builds a car/Germany builds a car/US builds a car/someone else builds a car; someone buys "To Kill a Mockingbird"/someone's cat kills a mockingbird -- and so on. This being XKCD, you can be sure that Munroe has an absurdly well-thought-through process for establishing and documenting his numbers, too.

The tool-tip notes that he wanted to include pitch-drops in the chart, but "it turns out the gif format has some issues with decade-long loops." Frequency (via IO9)

A study (pdf) from the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Initiative tracks global driving fatalities. Drive in Britain, Japan and Sweden. Do not drive in Venezuela, Mongolia or Yemen. [via The Atlantic]

A hotly-awaited PlayStation 4 game won't even include playable female characters, "because of the plot," and it's reignited gaming's ever smoldering sexism problem. Brenna Hillier:

Don’t let this answer satisfy you. Capcom wrote the plot. There’s no reason why it had to write a plot that excluded female characters. ... The actual reason why Capcom has apparently chosen not to include women in Deep Down is that it can’t be bothered. ... I’m aware that most of the people likely to comment on this article (go ahead and bleat about misandry, you worms; I’ll enjoy a tasty cup of your male tears) don’t see that, but I’m also aware that the vast majority of people who read this article do see it, and won’t bother to leave a comment because what I’m saying in this editorial seems sensible, practical, and non-controversial. Such is the way of the Internet. So I’m not going to bother writing out a lengthy justification of why we genuinely need female characters in video games for the good of the industry financially and artistically; if you honestly can’t understand it, go forth and educate yourself. If you feel that gaming is the one thing remaining to men and girls should stop spoiling it with political correctness, then please go boil your head because I see no point in debating with people incapable of basic logic and lacking humanity

(YouTube link)

An armadillo was spotted gathering leaves. I don’t know why, maybe she’s building a nest or something. Anyway, theataraxian decided she needed a proper soundtrack to go with her smooth moves. -via Tastefully Offensive

(YouTube link)

When Victor Delgado wanted to propose to his girlfriend Liz, he got a few friends involved. The result was a sci-fi action movie that mashed up your favorite film franchises in all their glory. Participants included the Costumers Guild of Hawaii, The Pacific Outpost 501st, Ghostbusters: Hawaii Division and the League of Shadows Hawaii. It took months to shoot and weeks to edit. Read more about it here. Buried in the comments at YouTube was the crucial information that she said “Yes.” -via Geeks Are Sexy  

Shubham Banerjee, a seventh grader in Santa Clara, California, invented a Lego Mindstorms-based Braille printer called the Braigo. He's declared his intention to release his printer -- which costs about $350, much less than traditional $2000+ Braille printers -- as open source hardware so that it can be improved by a wider developer community.

According to WHO reports, there are estimated 285 million visually impaired people worldwide and 90% of which lives in developing countries. At this moment the cost of a brail printer is more than $2000 for a basic version, thus for many millions of people across the world have limited access. This project uses the Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit costing $349 and some add-ons from Home-depot costing another $5 to prove that its feasible to make a brail printer for education purposes and schools that’s much cheaper. The project uses the base reference model known as Banner Print3r and was redesigned with totally new software to print letters A-Z. The project is named as BRAIGO v1.0 in short for Brail with LEGO. There are endless possibilities to add enhancements in software to make BRAIGO do a lot more. The student wishes to make this project open source, with the design and software readily available for public consumption free of charge. Thus giving a new tool in the hands of blind institutions or even parents with visually impaired children to use this printer at a 80% savings from commercially available products out there in the market.

Background: Shubham Banerjee was born in Hasselt, Belgium to Indian parents. He moved to San Jose, California when he was 3 years old. Later he moved to Santa Clara, Claifornia and completed his elementary schooling at Don Callejon School. He joined Magnolia Science Academy in Santa Clara in middle school for couple of months , before moving to Champion School in San Jose where is continuing his 7th grade. He continues to reside in Santa Clara, California.

Braigo

(via /.)

Here to demonstrate that even a robot could have written scripts for the sitcom Friends is the Infinite Friends Machine, a bot programmed to write an episode of Friends and may be credited as the creator of a sequel series called Frenemies. Okay, that last bit may not be true, but the fact that a bot and a bit of coding is all it takes to write your average sitcom isn’t really earth shattering news.

 Creator of IFM Tom Armitage explains how he used a program called Plotagon to create the strangest episode of Friends ever made:

The machines does a few simple things. First, it scrapes Friends transcripts. For now, it works for most of Series 1. It then parses those scripts and chops them up into episodes, scenes, and lines attributed to individual characters. It also strips out some directions. Then, using all that, it offers ways to generate new scripts.

Is this the future of televised entertainment, with rooms full of sketch writers being replaced with server racks and script writing code? I certainly hope not...

-Via Gawker

The xenomorph from the Alien franchise can terrify any human with its inner mouth. But as Dragonarte demonstrates, Superman isn't human. And for all practical purposes, neither is Batman.

-via Daily of the Day

Viewers are obsessed with the latest incarnation of that most famous of detectives- Sherlock Holmes as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, and since audiences can’t get enough Benedict’s face is starting to show up in all kinds of unusual places, from Sesame Street to fun photo shoots to classical works of art.

Let’s Draw Sherlock is a Tumblr site dedicated to art featuring Benedict's beloved mug, with various projects like replacing the subject of many famous works of art, like Modigliani’s “Franz Hellens” and Lempicka’s “The Blue Scarf”, with Mr. Cumberbatch's face, and drawings featuring Sherlock and Watson attending historical moments, just to name a few.

Whether Mr. Cumberbatch's fifteen minutes of fame extend ad infinitum, or he ends up shying away from the spotlight, these remixed artworks bearing his instantly recognizable face will live on.

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

15 Pictures of Adorable Cats In Hats (Scribol)

This Mario-Themed Wedding Pretty Much Rocks (Offbeat Bride)

Cosplay? Why Not Zoidberg? (Geek Girls)

15 Awesome LEGO Tattoos (Flavorwire)

Image: Oscar Nominated Movies in LEGO (Laughing Squid)

(YouTube link)

On second thought, it might not have been such a great an idea to equip the cat with adamantium claws. He’s obviously having a little trouble getting used to them. Still, I’d go see this movie!  -via Tastefully Offensive

Myles Power, a debunker who goes after junk science and conspiracy theorists, has gone after AIDS denialists and a terrible, falsehood-ridden, dangerous documentary called "House of Numbers," which holds that HIV/AIDS isn't an actual viral illness, but rather a conspiracy to sell anti-viral medication. The AIDS denial movement encourages people who are HIV-positive to go off the medication that keeps them alive.

The producers of "House of Numbers" have used a series of bogus copyright takedown notices to get Youtube to remove Powers's videos, in which he uses clips from the documentary as part of his criticism, showing how they mislead viewers and misrepresent the facts and the evidence. It's pure censorship: using the law to force the removal of your opponents' views.

Google and Youtube have some blame to shoulder here. They should not be honoring these takedown notices, as they are not valid on their face. However, the buck doesn't stop there. The DMCA's takedown procedures have no real penalty for abuse, so it is the perfect tool for would-be censors. What's more, the entertainment companies -- who are great fans of free speech when defending their right to sell products without censorship, but are quite unwilling the share the First Amendment they love so dearly with the rest of us -- are pushing to make censorship even easier, arguing that nothing should be posted on Youtube (or, presumably, any other online forum) unless it has been vetted by a copyright lawyer.

The first DMCA filed against me was from Liam Scheff who starred in part 5 of my video series. Liam believes that my videos are not protected under fair use because they are not made for educational purposes, but instead for propaganda. Over the last week, Liam has been constantly posting on my Facebook and has called me a retard, a cunt, a little bitch and, of course, a paid shill. Yet at the same time believes that I have been slandering him. What is also bizarre is that even though Liam has made it clear of his intentions to drag me through the courts, at the same time he does not think I am a real person but part of Myles Power inc. Liam later went on to remove his DMCA, but by filing it in the first place he has left himself open to legal action.

As soon as part 5 was restored, it was taken immediately down by Martin Penny and the people at Knowledge Matters, who then decided to file 2 more DMCA takedowns against part 1 and 2. I want to take this time to remind people that there are multiple copies of House of Numbers uploaded to YouTube. If Martin Penny and the people at Knowledge Matters truly thought I was infringing copyright, then why are they not going after people who uploaded the entire movie? It is very clear that these people are trying to silence my criticism. For those who don’t know, Martin Penny is the Executive Producer of House of Numbers and a multimillionaire from Leeds who used to be the CEO of GHD. What’s interesting is that Martin is now a chairman at OHS Ltd – one of the leading health, safety and environmental consultancies who have worked for the NHS.

AIDS Denial Crazies Go All DMCA On Videos Educating People Of Their Craziness [Timothy Geigner/Techdirt]

The DMCA Situation [Myles Power]

Jeff writes, "Featuring a brand new soundtrack from Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Massive Attack and Elbow, and narrated by Dominic West (The Wire), journalist Marke Donne has put together a riveting documentary exposing the tax avoidance 'industry' operated by the highly secretive, centuries old institution, The City of London.

With a permanent office in Parliament, a budget of $1.2 billion and the media-avoiding tactics of the super-rich, the City relies on lobbying and silence to carry out it's offshore tax avoidance, robbing the state of tens of billions in revenue every year."

The UK Gold is a vital insight into the shady, inner workings of one of the world's financial hubs, and how the rich exert their power and influence to maintain their self-serving status quo.

From the Guardian: "This is the kind of film to get the blood boiling and the steam hissing out of your ears. Campaigning journalist Mark Donne has constructed an ambitious and admirably clear assault on the UK's lamentable record in the tax avoidance industry, zeroing in on the unsavoury role played by the City of London and its institutions -- not just in this country, but in far more desperate international territories too."

“The UK Gold” a new documentary by Brass Moustache Films

Robert Sharp writes, "A group of readers have launched a legal challenge to Penguin, saying: 'You're not using your copyright responsibly - please turn it over to us'! They're angry that Penguin is no longer defending a legal dispute against fundamentalists and will pulp remaining copies of the book 'The Hindus'."

The readers are represented by Lawrence Liang and the Bangalore-based Alternative Law Forum.

Liang also writes that by Penguin acceding to the demands of a minority in pulping the book, they have discriminated between different readers by “conveniently choosing to acknowledge the claims and allegations of one particular class of readers who claim that their religious sentiments have been hurt by this book while ignoring the rights of many others who have found the book to be informative, enjoyable and insightful”.

Give up your copyright, Penguin-Chicken! Lawrence Liang, readers serve legal notice on Doniger publisher (Thanks, Robert!)

Arthur Buxton writes, "Here's a tribute to three classic children's books - The Snowman, Where the Wild Things Are and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Using custom software, I've reduced each page in all three books to its main five colours proportionally according to size, then arranged each resulting chart in sequence."

As well as the dramatic difference in each illustrator's palette narrative information such as day and night times are revealed - if you look closely you can even tell what kind of fruits the Caterpillar ate for breakfast.

(Thanks, Arthur!)

(YouTube link)

One little change in the sport of curling would guarantee high TV ratings and a full house for each match. It’s a simple matter of replacing the stones with cats. It would be an instant hit, especially at the international level. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

The Netherlands' Rijksmuseum encourages the public to download and remix its 150,000 artistic masterworks. Now, it's sponsoring a contest. Use their art to create new art and you could win €1,500 and a chance to sell your work in their museum shop.

In fantasy art, women's body armor is often depicted in ways that may appear unrealistic. This may come as a shock to some of you, but in the opinion of some critics, the popular chainmail bikini is designed to appeal to male visual taste, not practical protective abilities.

This is, of course, a great misunderstanding. Artist Stjepan Sejic explains the science behind this popular trope. Read the whole piece here and get educated.

-via Geek Art Gallery

Rand Paul has launched a class-action suit against the US government over the NSA's warrantless bulk telephone metadata surveillance. Ars Technica has good analysis of the legal dimension of the suit: basically, Senator Paul isn't really advancing any new arguments, but the suit will put the pressure on the government. Techdirt has reports of outrage from other Republican congresscritters, especially noted shitweasel Rep Peter King (R-NY), who accuses Paul of aiding terrorists.

Gamification is a buzzword that gets tossed around all the time, but the basic idea is simple: if you turn your life into a game, with digital rewards for real life achievements, you'll be more motivated to do something—or so the theory goes. Does it actually work? Let's take a look at what we know.

Read more...

Gamers were blown away by the surprisingly detailed pixel art graphics created for the intros and cutscenes used in Nintendo Entertainment System games, especially the adaptations of movies and TV shows.

Players weren’t staring at an abstractly arranged pile of pixels, they got high quality 8 bit art with their updated console gameplay, and the crowds went wild. But how close were those pixel art masterpieces to the actual movie footage?

Technologically advanced duo Brother Brain and Low Interest have created some scintillating morphing image GIFs as a futuristic form of side-by-side comparison.

The conclusion- game artists in 1985 were really good at replicating the original source with a limited color palette and a handful of pixels, and these morphing images would make totally rad wall art pieces.

You can see ten of these amazing morphing NES screen GIFs here.