Boing Boing Submitterator » NEWS

The Internet Defense League will launch the same night as the batman movie, with giant cat-signal spotlights

holmesworcester — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 17:59:38 +0000

http://internetdefenseleague.org/images/launch/cat_signal.jpg

The Internet Defense League is a post-SOPA network of sites that use their reach to defend and improve the web. Because it can sound the alarm quickly to millions of people, people are calling it a “bat-signal for the internet”.

The league is launching on July 19th, the same night that the new Batman movie. And the plan is to have actual spotlights beaming actual “cat-signals” across buildings and clouds in cities around the world.

We just launched a crowd-funding campaign. Help plan a party or pitch-in to make them happen.

View Link [internetdefenseleague.org]

EFF’s new patent project

hughillustration — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:32:28 +0000

from EFF: Today, EFF launched a new campaign against software patents (https://defendinnovation.org). In this campaign, we outline seven proposals that we think will address some of the greatest abuses of the current software patent system, including making sure that folks who independently arrived at an invention can’t be held liable for infringing on a software patent. But our campaign isn’t just about our proposals — we also want to hear, and amplify, the views of the technical community. Many engineers, researchers, and entrepreneurs have suggested that reform is not enough and that software should not be patentable, period. We want to record these views, which is why our Defend Innovation campaign is designed to solicit comments from all of the stakeholders. We’ll incorporate what we learn into a formal publication that we can take to Congress that reflects the views of innovators, academics, lawyers, CEOs, VCs, and everyone else who is concerned about the software patent system.

View Link [defendinnovation.org]

Hundreds of Arrests in Montreal after Emergency Law Enacted

montrealreader — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:14:46 +0000

Thousands of Montrealers have taken to the streets after the contentious bill 78 was passed by the Quebec legislature last friday, and hundred have been arrested. Among other harsh stipulations, this bill forces demonstrations of 50 or more people (originally it was 10 or more) in a demonstration to report their numbers, route, and mode of transportation to police lest their group be automatically considered illegal. Essentially intended to gag protestors, law 78 comes as months of student demonstrations against a provincial tuition hike merge with Occupy Montreal and a general protest movement being dubbed the “Printemps Erable.”

View Link [cbc.ca]

Somebody Arrest Me

montrealreader — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:14:46 +0000

Quebecers who vow to disobey the Charter-of-Rights-an-Freedoms-defying Law 78, passed through the Quebec Legislature last Friday. Je désobéis = I disobey

View Link [arretezmoiquelquun.com]

Live Stream of Nightly Protests in Montreal

montrealreader — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:14:45 +0000

View Link [livestream.com]

Crowdfunding a real skyscrapper

barkach — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:14:40 +0000

A way to turn common people into real skyscraper’s investors and to get the building built without the help of tycoons, corporations or government.

An idea from Colombia

View Link [vimeo.com]

Inventor of Wireless TV Remote has Died

mtdna — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:14:33 +0000

Eugene Polley, inventor of the wireless TV remote, has died at the age of 96. Couch potatoes ’round the world would salute you Sir, if only they didn’t have to stand up.

View Link [nytimes.com]

The Secret Court of Harvard in 1920 Expels Several Students

ChinggizKhan — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:14:32 +0000

A long since forgotten set of documents found by accident at Harvard chronicles the steps taken by university to remove several “homosexual deviants” from the school.

View Link [goodmenproject.com]

Choose Your Reading and Pronunciation Adventure – Kickstarter

James Salsman — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:14:31 +0000

I’ve been working for decades on a free speech recognition-based game to teach English reading and pronunciation, and this year it is going to happen, thanks to Google’s Summer of Code and the One Laptop Per Child contributors’ program. But to make it really useful (and on as many mobile devices as possible) we need to raise just a little more money. We have secured funding for two of the three other engineers who want to help finish the project, but we still need to money for the third and to collect sufficient exemplar pronunciation recordings and create engaging graphics, animations, and game content to support English learners of all ages and experience levels. Please help!

View Link [kickstarter.com]

Copyright Board to Collect Royalties for Music Played in Bars / Weddings – Double Fees if There is Dancing!

mcgillican — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:00:24 +0000

From CBC: “The reporting process works on the honour system — it’s up to the businesses to tell Re:Sound how much music they’ve used — though Fortier said his organization has a team of licensing professionals across Canada to ensure the rules are being followed.

The fees vary depending on the size of the audience and the type of event.

For weddings, receptions, conventions, assemblies and fashion shows, the fee is $9.25 per day if fewer than 100 people are present and goes up to $39.33 for crowds of more than 500 people. If there’s dancing, the fees double.

Karaoke bars will pay between $86.06 and $124 annually depending on how many days a week they permit the amateur crooning. “

View Link [cbc.ca]

We didn’t have a lot of Money to do this, but I still love how it turned out

felixtosh — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:00:19 +0000

We needed a low-budget movie to present our websites new topic system. Even tho we all have a more technical background it turned out “wundervoll”

View Link [youtube.com]

Creative-Commons Tabletop RPG On Kickstarter

sage — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:00:15 +0000

Dungeon World, a CC-BY RPG, has gone to nearly 300% funding in under a day. It’s a huge win for openness in the tabletop RPG scene.

View Link [kickstarter.com]

China blocking search results like “today,” “tomorrow,” “yesterday,” “35″

Ryan Kiefer — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:00:14 +0000

On the heels of Google announcing they would begin notifying Chinese users when they searched for terms likely to cause problems (read:censored results), China is blocking simple words like “today,” “tomorrow” and “35″ from search results on the government-run Weibo microblogging service. This is evidently in response to the upcoming anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.

View Link [npr.org]

Japanese Baseball: Incredible Catch

misscongenia — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:00:11 +0000

Possibly greatest catch ever?

View Link [youtube.com]

Robocalls in Wisconsin

Jim T — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:00:09 +0000

Wisconsin is having a recall election to get rid of governor Scott Walker. Big turnout is expected.

But apparently somebody who wants Walker to stay in office has been robocalling people that signed the recall ptition and telling them they don’t need to vote because their signature was enough. Pretty scuzzy.

View Link [salon.com]

More body parts found in Canada

Wild Rumpus — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:59:58 +0000

At 4:15 today, Vancouver Police Department will do a live press conference online announcing that severed body parts were mailed to a Vancouver area school. No word on if it is related to Luka Magnotta, but suspicion is that it might be a copy cat killer.

Tune into the livestream at 4:15 for more!

View Link [livestream.com]

Canadian Bear Euthanized After Eating Murderer

Preston Sturges — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:59:57 +0000

Further carnivorous highjinks from the great white north

View Link [wral.com]

Ray bradbury Died

Mushimatosis — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:59:53 +0000

Today, Famed Author Ray Bradbury Died

View Link [io9.com]

Will Smith – Save Us!

sneakyzebra — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:57:56 +0000

The year was 2002, we found water on Mars, Brazil won the world cup” and the final movie tie in song from Will Smith was released!

View Link [youtube.com]

Pefias web ID plan ‘one of the most dangerous schemes of the past decade’

sickkid1972 — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:57:47 +0000

A leading privacy campaigner has described an upcoming EU electronic identification system as “one of the most dangerous schemes of the past decade”, after it emerged the scheme will require website owners to register their identity.

“By establishing an identity framework the Commission is inviting a free-for-all on the privacy rights of all users,”

View Link [zdnet.co.uk]

FULL ANNULAR SOLAR ECLIPSE FROM RENO NEVADA ON MAY 20TH, 2012.

gamer9921 — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:57:45 +0000

FULL MAY 20TH, 2012 SOLAR ECLIPSE FROM RENO NEVADA!

View Link [youtube.com]

RIAA sues Limewire for creators for 120% of all the money in the world

Pedge — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:57:40 +0000

RIAA is suing the developers behind filesharing program Limewire for $72 trillion dollars

View Link [zeropaid.com]

Dudepins – Pin board for Men – Launched Beta

dudepins — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:57:39 +0000

Dudepins is a website to discover and share the coolest stuff for dudes. We at dudepins don’t discriminate between dudes, sirs, dukes, bros gentlemen and other men of honor. Dudes like sharing stuff. Man up. Sign up. Pin up. http://dudepins.com/a

View Link [dudepins.com]

Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian & Fight for the Future present the Internet Defense League

Talia — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:50:30 +0000

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian is joining forces with Fight for the Future to launch a program he describes as “a bat-signal for the internet.” Website owners who sign up can add a bit of code to their sites that will automatically display relevant information whenever a dire bit of legislation like SOPA rears its ugly head. It doesn’t officially launch until next month, but EFF, Imagur and a few other sites are already on board.

View Link [forbes.com]

Spaceventure Struggles

jfrisby — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:50:30 +0000

Webcomic Kris Straub on the Space Quest series and the Two Guys from Andromeda’s struggling Kickstarter campaign:

“Of the Space Quest series though, the pinnacle was Space Quest IV. Look at all the nourishment it contained for a growing Kris! A plot making heavy use of time travel! Over-the-top meta humor I had never encountered before that! Roger Wilco knows where he is by looking up at the status bar, for Chrissakes. And the smell and taste interface itself was a goof on Sierra’s new UI. The design of the time pod was reminiscent of the Workbee from Star Trek! How I pored over those technical manuals as a child! (You can see the same side vents in some of Starslip’s scuttlepods.)

“Via a mutual friend, I actually got in touch with the Two Guys from Andromeda, Mark and Scott, a few days ago. We talked about their Kickstarter [www.tgakick.com] (which I just did some art for) and just riffed for an hour.

“All I could think was that 13-year-old Kris would have wanted to live to see this day. It’s too bad he died at age 20, after a long battle with youth.

“I was very excited to learn that the Two Guys were back in the saddle and I hope it works out for them. I hadn’t really thought about what an impact those games had on me until I heard about the potential for another one.”

http://starslip.com/2012/05/25/space-quest-memories/

View Link [starslip.com]