In StarGate SG1: The Ark of Truth there is JavaScript source code taken from the web site of a Canadian bank. (source @DandumontP)

In the TV series Dilbert (season 1, episode 10: “Y2K”), Wally is fixing… plant code on the mainframe!? Discussion of this code.

Bletchley Park's historical exhibit on cybersecurity will not mention Edward Snowden -- possibly the most significant figure in the world of contemporary cybersecurity -- because its corporate sponsor, McAfee, has prohibited them from doing so. A collection of MPs and other government figures have written to Bletchley Park museum to urge them to reconsider. As the Tory MP Dominic Raab says, "Either it's a history exhibition or it's not."

The omission raises disturbing questions about the integrity of Bletchley Park as an independent historical institution, and of the quality of oversight it receives from its board. If the McAfee sponsorship came with the kind of strings attached that prohibited neutral exploration of relevant, even crucial, factual material, it's a sponsorship that never should have been accepted.

I have a letter from the Friends of Bletchley Park on my desk at the office, and I was planning on renewing my membership when I got back from the holidays. This has made me rethink my support of the institution, and now I'm not so sure. I certainly hope that Bletchley reconsiders this decision and upholds its reputation as an institution committed to integrity and education.

Kelsey Griffin, Bletchley Park's director of communications, said the exhibition was likely to avoid any mention of Snowden. "It is not within the remit of Bletchley Park trust to make political statements," she said. "We are very much a heritage institution and involved with education. So that will be the focus of the cyber-security exhibition – drawing lessons of the past for the future."

The international cyber security exhibition and computer learning zone is the result of a five-year sponsorship from the US anti-virus software firm McAfee.

The content has yet to be decided, but the museum and McAfee are reluctant to acknowledge Snowden's relevance. "McAfee said [it] would not be able to reference Snowden in any activity," a spokeswoman for Bletchley Park said.

Bletchley Park accused of airbrushing Edward Snowden from history [Matthew Weaver/The Guardian]

Who knew the Back To The Future Overture could sound so beautiful. Performed by Gregory Johnson who has posted more in this vein over at his AcousticLabs YouTube Channel.

Jon Evans is incandescent on the subject of the Great Bifurcation, as the economic equality gap yawns wider and wider. He puts into words the thing that has literally kept me up nights for the past year. What is to be done? (via Making Light)

Following on the revelation that RSA broke its own technology to help the NSA, and RSA's craptastic non-denial, F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen has pulled out of RSA's upcoming conference in San Francisco. As a foreigner, he opposes NSA's mission to spy on foreigners like him. (via Interesting People)

These whale-shaped Kujira knives were created by Japanese blacksmith Toru Yamashita, who was asked to make a knife for children to sharpen pencils with. The result is a slightly blunt, kid-friendly tool that's whimsical, hand-forged and gorgeous. And as Core77's Kat Bauman points out, US residents can get this shipped in time for Christmas from Hand Eye Supply if they order by noon today (Dec 21).

Kujira Whale Knives (via Core77)

Freakishly talented Los Angeles artist Elizabeth McGrath, creator of delightfully creepy and strange faux taxidermy beasties, has a beautiful new monograph just out from Last Gasp Books. The hardcover book, titled Incurable Disorder, contains 160 pages (and 200 full-color images) of Liz's dioramas, sculptures, and paintings from 2005 to 2012. If you're in San Francisco this evening (12/18), Liz is doing a book signing from 7pm to 9pm at Loved To Death! Below, several more images from the book and our classic Boing Boing Video interview with Liz from 2008.

Claire’s parents might not have been able to hear her concert, but she made sure they’d enjoy it just the same.

Prepare to melt.

youtube.com

During "Santa Is His Name-O," Claire stood out in the best way possible.

By "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," all eyes were on her.

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thatcutetranscouple:

thebobbu:

Mental health problems are, y’know, health problems. Treat them the same way, or shut up.

YES I NEED FOR EVERYONE TO SEE THIS

Sergio Juárez Correa teaches at José Urbina López Primary School in Matamoros, Mexico -- a violent, terribly impoverished border town. His school is often referred to as "a place of punishment." But when he encountered the educational ideas of Sugata Mitra (who famously installed computers in slums for illiterate street-kids to use, and found that they'd taught themselves to use them and were educating themselves), he rebuilt his teaching around leaving his kids alone as much as possible. His classroom became one of the highest-scoring groups in the Mexican educational system.

Moreover, one of Correa's students, a young girl named Paloma Noyola Bueno, demonstrated extraordinary talent and appears to be some kind of savant with incredible potential. That's pretty amazing and heart-warming, but what gets me as the parent of a school-aged kid (and as a sometime teacher) is the demonstrated efficacy of letting kids drive their own education with their own curiosity and passion.

I hate the way schools are focused on producing high test-scores. It scares me that if my kid walks into a classroom excited about reading and it's time to do math, she'll have to do math, because no one -- not the teacher, nor the school, nor even the kid -- can afford to have her blow the standardized test. Every important thing I know, I learned because I became passionate about it and then the adults around me let me pursue it.

One day Juárez Correa went to his whiteboard and wrote “1 = 1.00.” Normally, at this point, he would start explaining the concept of fractions and decimals. Instead he just wrote “½ = ?” and “¼ = ?”

“Think about that for a second,” he said, and walked out of the room.

While the kids murmured, Juárez Correa went to the school cafeteria, where children could buy breakfast and lunch for small change. He borrowed about 10 pesos in coins, worth about 75 cents, and walked back to his classroom, where he distributed a peso’s worth of coins to each table. He noticed that Paloma had already written .50 and .25 on a piece of paper.

“One peso is one peso,” he said. “What’s one-half?”

At first a number of kids divided the coins into clearly unequal piles. It sparked a debate among the students about what one-half meant. Juárez Correa’s training told him to intervene. But now he remembered Mitra’s research and resisted the urge. Instead, he watched as Alma Delia Juárez Flores explained to her tablemates that half means equal portions. She counted out 50 centavos. “So the answer is .50,” she said. The other kids nodded. It made sense.

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses [Joshua Davis/Wired]

(Image: Peter Yang)

This 2012 video from Politizane does an excellent job of illustrating the massive, well-documented gap between the wealth-distribution that Americans believe they have, the distribution they would favor (regardless of political affiliation), and what America actually has: a system that rewards CEOs at 380 times the rate of their average employees.

Wealth Inequality in America (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

"Bollywood Steampunk" -- created by DeviantArt's MakeupSiren and photographed by Andrew Williams . There's loads more, all great.

Bollywood Steampunk : Salkcity Photo Shoot (via Pipedream Dragon)

My friend, former NPR colleague, and longtime journalism mentor Alex Chadwick has an incredible new radio documenting hitting the public radio airwaves this week. We're sharing it here on Boing Boing before it hits the radio-waves. I asked Alex to tell us a little about 'Rising Seas.' He explains:

The Rising Seas project grew out of an encounter at an MIT energy seminar almost a year ago. I met an Americanized Brit, Dr. Len Berry, from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He's been speaking forcefully and clearly about the threat that rising seas present. At the end of his talk, I asked if Miami is a viable city. He smiled and answered, 'well, it is right now'.

And then I asked about the end of the century. He smiled again, but said nothing.

I've been talking to him ever since, and through him I met two other FAU scientists -- both much younger -- early to later 30's, both moms, both troubled that hardly anyone in south Florida seems aware of what they are facing.

I got fascinated with this place, and with this story, and spent more time on it than I usually do -- and then found it very difficult to write. I knew too much, and I couldn't leave out parts that I liked.

Finally, I wound up building there piece around these two scientists, and their and my own bewilderment that we are going to lose a city like Miami (which I came to like much more than I thought I would), and that people simply don't know.

Here is a soundcloud link to the hour.

Here's our site.

And here is our Tumblr blog.

(Images courtesy of BURN)

I want to hire this little guy to check my kids' heads for lice. (Via Neatorama)

With admirable clarity and brevity, Princeton's Ed Felten explains why Lavabit's owner was right to design his email service to be resistant to court orders. The whole piece is good and important, but here's the takeaway: "At Lavabit, an employee, on receiving a court order, copies user data and gives it to an outside party—in this case, the government. Meanwhile, over at Guavabit, an employee, on receiving a bribe or extortion threat from a drug cartel, copies user data and gives it to an outside party—in this case, the drug cartel. From a purely technological standpoint, these two scenarios are exactly the same."

As Felten goes on to point out, insider attacks are brutal -- just look at what happened to the NSA when insider Edward Snowden decided to go after it.

Insider attacks are a big problem. You might have read about a recent insider attack against the NSA by Edward Snowden. Similar but less spectacular attacks happen all the time, and Lavabit, or any well-run service that holds user data, has good reason to try to control them.

From a user’s standpoint, a service’s resistance to insider attacks does more than just protect against rogue employees. It also helps to ensure that a company will not be tempted to repurpose or sell user data for commercial gain without getting users’ permission.

In the end, what led to Lavabit’s shutdown was not that the company’s technology was too resistant to insider attacks, but that it wasn’t resistant. The government got an order that would have required Lavabit to execute the ultimate insider attack, essentially giving the government a master key to unlock the data of any Lavabit user at any time. Rather than do this, Lavabit chose to shut down.

Had Lavabit had in place measures to prevent disclosure of its master key, it would have been unable to comply with the ultimate court order—and it would have also been safe against a rogue employee turning over its master key to bad actors.

A Court Order is an Insider Attack

thecharlemagnecatastrophe:

Transgender Teenage Couple Transition Together (via The Huffington Post)

A pair of teenagers from Oklahoma might seem like your typical young couple, but their love story is unlike many others. The transgender couple actually transitioned together.

Just two years ago, Arin Andrews and Katie Hill hadn’t transitioned yet. The two had struggled with their identities throughout childhood; Hill had struggled with bullying. Then one day they met at a trans support group, after each had begun the transitioning process, and they fell in love.

Found this ridiculously sweet story today and wanted to share it with my followers.

lalalayeah:

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Más info en: Third Wave Feminist (3WF)