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Remember Canada's Bill C-30, the sweeping surveillance bill proposed by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who declared that if you opposed unlimited, unaccountable, secret warrantless snooping on networked communications by the police and by appointed civilians, you "stand with the child pornographers?" The bill that was a sure thing to pass, given the Conservative majority [...]

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Chuck Brown performing at the 20th St. Lucia Jazz Festival, May 8, 2011. REUTERS/Andrea De Silva. The artist widely credited with founding the Go-Go music genre died today. Chuck Brown was 75. Like many punk teens growing up in Virginia in the eighties, I discovered this DC-rooted genre of black American music by accident—a go-go [...]

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Joanna from the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes: If you plan on being in or around San Francisco May 30, come join EFF for a Geek Reading with Barbara Simons. An expert on electronic voting, Simons co-authored Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count? As Simons told us recently 'The way we run our voting system in [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Qi_2yvmM29k/eff-geek-reading-may-30-in-sa.html

A paywalled paper in the Royal Society's journal Interface argues that the world's underground rail systems are all converging on an "ideal" form. The paper, "A long-time limit for world subway networks," shows that subway systems grow "organically," in response to the needs expressed by the cities above them over the course of decades, and [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/CWYqpzj_4Mc/global-subway-systems-converge.html

Watchismo's latest watch is the Mute, a solid-cast red or grey timepiece whose featureless face lights up based on touch or movement. I love all the usability thinking that went into this -- feels like the first inkling of what new materials and commodity capacitance and accelerometers will do for all sorts of devices. You [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/hB-Duiin5xA/mute-watch-capacitive-accele.html

Michael Simmons of Fretboard Journal says: Today is the 59th anniversary of Django Reinhardt's death. To honor him, I posted images of a guitar that I had Robert Armstrong paint for me years ago. The top features Django in heaven, the back has a street scene of Django and the Quintet of the Hot Club [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/iBzo093rBHk/robert-armstrongs-painted-django-guitar.html

Your moment of Commie Zen for the day: a big-band lounge-style cover of "L'Internationale," the hymn of the Communist Second International. Assuming that's not to your taste, how about a trance remix industrial dance version. Tony Babino - L'Internationale (via Making Light)

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I happened upon this mini-library in my neighborhood and am so impressed with the movement that Little Free Library has started that I am getting one together for our street. The concept is simple: put a charming box full of books in a public place, encourage people to share them and to contribute their own. [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/TU5tdmOBfl4/little-free-library-can-help-put-a-library-on-your-corner.html

Iraq Veterans Against the War is bringing veterans to the NATO summit in Chicago on May 20 to ceremonially return the medals they were awarded for serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. The group's statement -- which will be reiterated to NATO's representatives -- is: We were awarded these medals for serving in the Global War [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/fCF1z2RC4m0/iraq-and-afghanistan-veterans.html

Yesterday's Canadian Parliamentary session included a moment of dramatic idiocy, when the Tory Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dean Del Mastro climbed to his hind limbs to declare that wanting to rip your CDs to listen to them on your MP3 player was like buying a pair of socks and then stealing a pair of shoes [...]

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Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode we talk about Junk Jack, a sandbox game that's a lot like a 2D version of Minecraft. It's $2.99 in the iTunes Store. [...]

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NASA's Image of the Day is always awesome, but I particularly love this image from behind-the-scenes of the Pretty Space Photography Industrial Complex. The Soyuz rocket is seen in the monitor of a video camera moments before Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineers Joseph Acaba and Sergei Revin arrived to board the rocket at [...]

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For only 6 British Pounds, you can cure what ails you with Placebo maximum strength sugar pills. I'm a little sad that Etsy user spellingmistakes got to this idea before I could start marketing Placebex, as I've been threatening to do since approximately 2001. Maybe there's an intellectual property lawsuit in there someplace. ;) And, [...]

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Earlier today, David told you about a news story that's everywhere right now: The fact that the Kodak company ran a small nuclear facility at its research lab in Rochester, New York. The facility closed down in 2007, but I can totally understand why this story interests people. It's nuclear! And it is really weird [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/EtuUlluQ0ms/more-detail-on-what-kodak-was.html

Dog Vacay is like Airbnb for canines. This is brilliant because on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)

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In this video, a woman known as Cathy, who is unable to speak or move any of her limbs or torso, controls a robot arm with her mind to take a sip of coffee. This fantastic breakthrough is reported in the current issue of the science journal Nature. Cathy has been implanted with a BrainGate [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/CbdGmoaUL4c/woman-controls-robot-arm-with.html

This week on the always excellent Command Line podcast, Thomas Gideon -- senior staff technologist for the New America Foundation -- describes his journey from programmer to technology wonk (MP3), explaining the relationship between code and policy.

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/yME1MQ-zhtA/from-hacker-to-wonk.html

Matt sez, "Hey, it's Matt at the Disinformation Company, and I thought that you'd enjoy the lengthy interview I did with Warren Ellis for the DisinfoCast. We talk about aliens, space travel, the singularity and more. We even squeeze in a second or two for talk about comic books." Warren Ellis on The DisinfoCast with [...]

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Support Tom the Dancing Bug and receive BENEFITS and PRIVILEGES by joining the INNER HIVE right now! "My only argument with Ruben B. here is his apologetic tone for asking you to pay money for early access to his very good comics —- that is to say, something that YOU LIKE AND WANT.  DO NOT [...]

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For three decades, camera company Kodak had a secret deep inside an underground lab in its Rochester, New York research facility: weapons-grade uranium and a californium neutron flux multiplier. (No, not a flux capacitor.) They stored 3.5 pounds of the uranium, apparently not enough to make a nuclear weapon but still not something you'd expect [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/XBS3Kju7xPs/kodak-had-weapons-grade-uraniu.html

Our own Ed Piskor's Wizzywig -- a graphic novel that is a fictionalized account of a Kevin Mitnick-type hacker and his run-ins with the law -- will shortly be available as a beautiful hardcover from the good folks at Top Shelf Comix, who put together the excellent book trailer you see above. Here are my [...]

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Photojournalist Alexander Arbuckle, arrested while covering Occupy Wall Street protests, was acquitted Tuesday after a short trial. Moreover, footage shown in court suggests that police lied about what happened. Arbuckle was charged with disorderly conduct when police rounded up New Year's Day protestors near Sixth Avenue. The arresting officer claimed that he was blocking traffic [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/4guRTVYXz9c/occupy-footage-exonerates-jour.html

Jason and I were just revisiting the bizarrely fascinating story of Dan Rather getting assaulted in 1986 by an attacker who kept asking the newscaster "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" as he beat him. Of course, that led us to REM's 1994 song "What's the frequency, Kenneth?," culminating in Rather singing the song with the [...]

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Yesterday, Byron Sonne was acquitted of all charges against him. Sonne is the Toronto-area security researcher who pointedly demonstrated the inadequacy and incoherence of the heavy-handed, $1.2B security arrangements for the G20 summit in 2010. Denise Balkissoon has done some of the best reporting on the bizarre trial that followed (after Sonne spent nearly a [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/RX782HV8aDg/reflections-on-the-acquittal-o.html

A game development outfit took $75m from the state of Rhode Island to move there and hire 450 locals. Two years later, there's only half the jobs, questions over the company's solvency, and no game to show for it. Maybe Lotus can quickly bang something out for them to stuff a lawnmower engine in!

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/zwryFwvTsbE/the-delorean-of-game-deve.html

Sony's tiny but powerful pocket game console has 3G, but no phone app. Skype to the rescue. [Ars]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/cO_N86olaBU/the-playstation-vita-as-a-cell.html

There are 11 Ways You're Annoying On Twitter, reports Buzzfeed's Katie Heaney. And not a single one more!

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Fract is a bizarre-looking game described as "Myst meets Rez meets Tron" in a world "inspired by synthesizers." Sold. Jim Rossignol interviews the creators. [Rock Paper Shotgun]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/_VMeTrMpSNE/puzzle-adventure-fract-takes-s.html

Having just finished a year of math and science heavy coursework, I am confident in stating that the Cambridge Quad Wirebound Notebook is one of the best tools I've used all year. Notebooks may seem like a silly thing to get worked up about, but having used this day-in and day-out for a year I [...]

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Details: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/MENlrz8CYis/cambridge-quad-notebook-the-b.html

Photo: Jasmina in a former prison. "Despite the scale of the facility, it was densely crowded once." Shot by Bruce Sterling. This morning, The Hague tribunal commenced the trial of Ratko Mladic, ex commander of the army of the Serbian republic in Bosnia. Mothers of the slain gathered in front of the court. Twenty years [...]

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