Mashup of all 25 top tracks from 2007

DJ Earworm has produced a mashup of Billboard's top 25 tracks for the US for all of 2007. The raw material is pretty poor quality (Top 40 has never been brilliant, but it's at a real low this year) but Earworm spins some gold out of the straw. Link (Thanks, Widgett!)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Jan 2008 | 9:03 am

Introducing Magnet-Responsive Memory Foam

Roland Piquepaille writes "The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently reported that two research teams have developed a new porous foam of an alloy that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field. The NSF states that this new material is able to remember its original shape after it's been deformed by a physical or magnetic force. This polycrystalline nickel-manganese-gallium alloy is potentially cheaper and lighter than other materials currently used in devices ranging from sonar to precision valves. It also could be used to design biomedical pumps without moving parts and even for space applications and automobiles."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Jan 2008 | 8:31 am

Gawker Blasts Into Sci-Fi With New Blog, Io9; a Q&A With Editor Annalee Newitz

Editor Annalee Newitz reveals the inspiration for the futurism-focused site's name, shares her obsession with the scientifically taboo and tells why sci-fi is going mainstream.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 2 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am

Pope snowglobes of Vatican City

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels: religious snowglobes in a Vatican City tourist shop. Link

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Jan 2008 | 6:40 am

New SF blog

My friends Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders have just launched a new Gawker science fiction blog called IO9: it's lewd, funny, smart and irreverent:

What Is an io9?: io9s were marketed as cheap time machines in the 2070s. They were actually just low-grade input/output devices for the brain that tuned tachyon waves and gave users vivid images of possible futures. The things were so addictive, and drove so many people insane, that io9s were eventually outlawed. Today the word is just slang. io9ers are the early implanters who obsessively upgrade themselves with beta tech. People who tweak out on buggy brainware are sometimes said to have "gone io9." Science fiction writer Ken MacLeod has another term for io9ers. He calls them rapture fuckers.

Link (via Oblomovka)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Jan 2008 | 6:39 am

TSA to punish fliers for facecrime

TSA screeners are learning to recognize set of secret, forbidden facial expressions. If your face slips into one of these during a TSA inspection, you will be taken off and given a thorough, secondary screening:

TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program -- called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) -- that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent.
But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions -- a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt, said Carl Maccario, who helped start the program for TSA.
"In the SPOT program, we have a conversation with (passengers) and we ask them about their trip," said Maccario from his office in Boston. "When someone lies or tries to be deceptive, ... there are behavior cues that show it. ... A brief flash of fear."

Making Light's Avram Grumer draws a vivid parallel to Orwell's facecrime:

He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself — anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part 1, Chapter 5)

It's a complicated issue: on the one hand, this beats racial profiling (as the article notes). On the other hand, the penalty for wearing the wrong face is nigh-unlimited. We've all heard stories of screeners detaining people, forbidding them to fly, and so on, in a kind of bottomless expression of authority without oversight. I'd feel a lot better about this if the TSA would publish the forbidden faces (look, if it's peer-reviewed science, that means terrorists can just look it up in the damned journals, and if it's not science, why should we believe it works?) so that we can all verify for ourselves whether this actually works or whether it's just a bunch of hooey; I'd also feel better if the TSA acted as though the Constitution mattered to them, securing us from unreasonable search and seizure, being answerable to us as their tax-paying employers, and maintaining the presumption of innocence throughout our travelling experience. Link (via Making Light)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Jan 2008 | 6:31 am

Best of Bootie 2007 -- mashups galore!

Bootie sez, "Best of Bootie 2007 released today! The best mashups of 2007 selected by Adrian & the Mysterious D, producers of the world's biggest mashup club night. Enjoy Boing Boing. I *think* we have the bandwidth to sustain a hit by you THIS year! (unlike last year, and the year before!) We have more bandwidth than ever... let's do it!"

There were two absolute standout tracks on this one for me: Go Home Productions - Passenger Fever (Peggy Lee vs. Iggy Pop) and Divide & Kreate - Illiterate City (Jackson 5 vs. Guns N' Roses). Both tracks started with really kicky pop songs in very different styles and from very different eras, found their common ground, and exploited it in a way that made my mind ache in a good way. Link (Thanks, Bootie!)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Jan 2008 | 6:22 am

Toy hacking workshop in London Jan 12/13

The H3 Toy Hacking workshop runs in London on January 12-13. It's a two-day hands-on training session in which you'll be taught to strip, reimagine and remake electronic toys, turning them into your own glorious frankentoys. No knowledge of electronics is required.

Don’t know what to do with those spare toys lying around post-Christmas season? This workshop just might be the thing for you. After a successful Pimp my Gadget workshop in Budapest, we have the pleasure of having Adam Somlai Fisher and Massimo Banzi lead his 2 day fun workshop during which you will be doing some wire bending, learn about basic electronics and hack toys!

Link (via Geekdad)

(Image: Winter Toy Assault, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Jurvetson's Flickr stream)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Jan 2008 | 6:17 am

Wiki-inspired "transparent" search-engine

Wikia Search is a new, wiki-inspired search-engine project that attempts to create a transparent set of ranking algorithms that fight spam and promote good stuff to the top. This is in contrast to Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, where the ranking algorithms are treated as trade secrets and high-risk tactics that have to be guarded from spammers.

The idea of a ranking algorithm is that it produces "good results" -- returns the best, most relevant results based on the user's search terms. We have a notion that the traditional search engine algorithm is "neutral" -- that it lacks an editorial bias and simply works to fulfill some mathematical destiny, embodying some Platonic ideal of "relevance." Compare this to an "inorganic" paid search result of the sort that Altavista used to sell.

But ranking algorithms are editorial: they embody the biases, hopes, beliefs and hypotheses of the programmers who write and design them. What's more, a tiny handful of search engines effectively control the prominence and viability of the majority of the information in the world.

And those search engines use secret ranking systems to systematically and secretly block enormous swaths of information on the grounds that it is spam, malware, or using deceptive "optimization" techniques. The list of block-ees is never published, nor are the criteria for blocking. This is done in the name of security, on the grounds that spammers and malware hackers are slowed down by the secrecy.

But "security through obscurity" is widely discredited in information security circles. Obscurity stops dumb attackers from getting through, but it lets the smart attackers clobber you because the smart defenders can't see how your system works and point out its flaws.

Seen in this light, it's positively bizarre: a few companies' secret editorial criteria are used to control what information we see, and those companies defend their secrecy in the name of security-through-obscurity? Yikes!

The Wikia Search project has assembled the basic technologies for a search engine, including a search application, search algorithm and Web crawler. The project will allow technology enthusiasts to help filter sites and rank search results, using a community model akin to that of Wikipedia.
The idea is to challenge the established players by offering a search service that is more transparent to end users, meaning they can see how search results are arrived at. Wales has described Yahoo and Google as opaque services that don't explain how results are arrived at.

Link (via /.)

(Disclosure: Jimmy Wales and I are writing a book together about a related subject)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Jan 2008 | 6:09 am

Steampunk fashion: zeppelin sky-hat

Molly "Porkshanks" Friedrich's Ludiculous Skytop Zeppelin Hat is a sky-blue, cloud-decorated leatherette top-hat, featuring a miniature zeppelin on its brim. Link (Thanks, Jake!)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Jan 2008 | 5:58 am

Office 2003 Service Pack Disables Older File Formats

time961 writes "In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disabled support for many older file formats. If you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are 'less secure', which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some untrustworthy source. Naturally, they did this by default, and then documented a mind-bogglingly complex workaround (KB 938810) rather than providing a user interface for adjusting it, or even a set of awkward 'Do you really want to do this?' dialog boxes to click through. And of course because these are, after all, old file formats ... many users will encounter the problem only months or years after the software change, while groping around in dusty and now-inaccessible archives."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Jan 2008 | 5:29 am

CES Preview: Huge LCDs, Wireless Dominate Home Entertainment

At CES 2008, home entertainment will be dominated by a move towards various forms of wireless connectivity -- and, of course, enormous TVs. This year, LCD technology appears to have definitively won out over plasma and rear-projection, even for very large displays.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 2 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am

Jan. 2, 1860: 'Gentlemen, I Give You the Planet Vulcan'

Urbain Le Verrier, respected mathematician and astronomer, errs this time when he trusts the calculations of an amateur and declares the existence of a planet orbiting closer to the sun than Mercury.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 2 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am

A New DNA Test Can ID a Suspect's Race, But Police Won't Touch It

Tony Frudakis, a molecular biologist, says he can determine a suspect's race by analyzing his DNA. The test, called DNAWitness, has been used nationally in nearly 200 criminal investigations, but its success hasn't made the technology popular with law enforcement.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 2 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am

Q&A: Michael Bloomberg on Free Wi-Fi, Crime and Higher Office

The New York mayor has two years left in office, and he says he plans to spend his retirement as a philanthropist, doling out the billions he made as a tech executive. But he might have another job in mind, too.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 2 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am

CES Preview: Huge LCDs, Wireless Dominate Home Entertainment

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 2 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am

CES Preview: Home and Portable Audio To Gain Wireless Features

At the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, audio manufacturers -- of both home and portable devices -- are expected to be adding a variety of wireless features. We take a look at this and other top trends in audio electronics.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 2 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am

CES Preview: Home and Portable Audio To Gain Wireless Features

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 2 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am

Wikia Search Engine to be Launched on January 7th

cagnol writes "The Washington Post reports that Jimmy Wales, the founder of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has announced the launch of a new open-source search engine, Wikia Search, on January 7th, 2008. The project will allow the community to help rank search results, in a model close to Wikipedia. However the company is a for-profit organization. This new search is supposed to challenge Google and Yahoo."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Jan 2008 | 2:01 am

LANCOR v. OLPC Case Continues In Nigerian Court

drewmoney writes "According to an article on Groklaw: It's begun in a Nigerian court. LANCOR has actually done it. Guess what the Nigerian keyboard makers want from the One Laptop Per Child charitable organization trying to make the world a better place? $20 million dollars in 'damages,' and an injunction blocking OLPC from distribution in Nigeria."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 1 Jan 2008 | 11:40 pm

27 Billion Gigabytes to be Archived by 2010

Lucas123 writes "According to a Computerworld survey of IT managers, data storage projects are the No. 2 project priority for corporations in 2008, up from No. 4 in 2007. IT teams are looking into clustered architectures and centralized storage-area networks as one way to control capacity growth, shifting away from big-iron storage and custom applications. The reason for the data avalanche? Archive data. In the private sector alone electronic archives will take up 27,000 petabytes (27 billion gigabytes) by 2010. E-mail growth accounts for much of that figure."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 1 Jan 2008 | 10:02 pm

Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game

crush writes "The Linux Game Tome notes that the final team to produce a fully Open Source 3D game using the CrystalSpace engine and Blender has been chosen. The project (known as Apricot) aims to produce a cross-platform, 3D game with completely Free (CCA) graphics, music and code. An important side-effect of the project is to improve open source tools for the professional game development industry." I look forward to more 3D games on my desktop, even if this one won't be the first. (And where is the open-source bus-driving counterpart to the under-rated FlightGear?)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 1 Jan 2008 | 8:33 pm

New Years Resolutions - An Engineering Approach

Hugh Pickens writes "Four out of five people who make New Year's resolutions will eventually break them and a third won't even make it to the end of January says the NY Times. But experts say the real problem is that people make the wrong resolutions. The typical resolution often reflects a general desire. To engineer better behavior, it is more productive to focus on a specific goal. '"Many clients make broad resolutions, but I advise them to focus the goals so that they are not overwhelmed," says Lisa R. Young. "Small and tangible one-day-at-a-time goals work best."' Here are some resolutions that experts say can work: To lose weight, resolve to split an entree with your dining partner when dining out. To improve your fitness, wear a pedometer and monitor your daily activity. To improve family life, resolve to play with your kids at least one extra day a week. To improve your marriage, find a new activity you and your spouse both enjoy such as taking a pottery class. On a lighter note: What was Steve Jobs' New Year's Resolution?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 1 Jan 2008 | 7:12 pm

What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007?

chrisd writes "The Edge 2008 question (with answers) is in. This year, the question is: 'What did you change your mind about and why?'. Answers are featured from scientists as diverse as Richard Dawkins, Simon Baron-Cohen, George Church, David Brin, J. Craig Venter and the Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees, among others. Very interesting to read. For instance, Stewart Brand writes that he now realizes that 'Good old stuff sucks' and Sam Harris has decided that 'Mother Nature is Not Our Friend.' What did Slashdot readers change their minds about in 2007?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.