Feed Roundup - The Essentials

Simply no teddies left in this pram

Wikileaks has released a transcript of a documentary about its history so it can add notes to each section saying "Wrong!", a day before the film debuts.…

phrackthat writes "A UC Berkeley group, in a bid to drive down the costs of 3-D printing, has been focusing on more natural materials such as salt, wood, ceramics and concrete (the last two, while not naturally occurring, are made of naturally occurring components). The use of these materials create new avenues for architecture, such as printing buildings. Professor Ronald Rael, the head of the project, stated that these materials and the designs they enable will require new IP protections — 'This is going to require some IP protection for designs, so if you design architecture in the computer, you're protected, just as music and movies are.' I wonder if he's ever heard of design patents?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In Guatemala City and throughout Latin America today, protests are scheduled to take place condemning the Guatemalan Constitutional Court's decision this week to effectively throw out the trial of Ríos Montt. On May 10, the former US-backed general was sentenced to 80 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity. Just ten days later, the historic trial was overturned when the nation's highest court voted 3-2 to uphold complaints put forth by Rios Montt's attorneys. The trial is basically destroyed; indigenous people throughout Guatemala, and their supporters, are outraged. For the most part, word of the protests is spreading through social networks: Facebook, What's App, Twitter, and the traditional communication networks between indigenous communities that aren't very internet-connected. Text messages, phone calls, and word shared in town squares. From the sound of it, today is shaping up to be a significant day in Guatemala.     

I do not like it, SAM-I-am. I do not like Michael's big plan

Activist investor Carl Icahn will need as much as $7bn to carry off his plan to pull Dell out from under Mike Dell's nose, banking sources have said.…

An anonymous reader writes "A California user of Verizon's FiOS fiber-optic internet service put his unlimited data plan to the test. Over the month of March, he totaled over 77 terabytes of internet traffic, which finally prompted a call from a Verizon employee to see what he was doing. The user had switched to a 300Mbps/65Mbps plan in January, and averaged 50 terabytes of traffic per month afterward. 'An IT professional who manages a test lab for an Internet storage company, [the user] has been providing friends and family a personal VPN, video streaming, and peer-to-peer file service—running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage in his house.' The Verizon employee who contacted him said he was violating the service agreement. "Basically he said that my bandwidth usage was excessive (like 30,000 percent higher than their average customer)," [the user] said. '[He] wanted to know WTF I was doing. I told him I have a full rack and run servers, and then he said, "Well, that's against our ToS." And he said I would need to switch to the business service or I would be disconnected in July. It wasn't a super long call.'"

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Ex-veep lifts lid on homeless fondleslab maker's finances

Apple has been operating practically tax-free in Ireland since 1980, a former exec has claimed.…

Back in 2009, I wrote about Taschen's amazing "Magic 1400s-1950s," which presently goes for about $300. Taschen is reissuing the book in a cheaper edition, which'll cost you $42.22 when it comes out on July 1. Here's a review on Crackajack, providing a timely reminder of what a stupendous book this is. And here's what Boing Boing reader Peacelove said about the first edition:

PeaceLove sez, "Cory's recent post mentioning the 'books as objects' phenomenon compels me to mention the extremely delectable new Taschen book, Magic, 1400s-1950s. It's gargantuan, classy, profusely illustrated and expensive but if you are a magician or magic fan, you've just found the perfect holiday gift (hint, hint). Authors Mike Caveney and Jim Steinmeyer, along with contributor Ricky Jay, are all professional magicians, scholars and historians of the first rank. This is a serious work, as well as a gigantic love letter to the 500+ 'golden years' of magic."

Magic. 1400s-1950s (Thanks, Rene!)     

Shared accounts? #FacebookIsBetter

Security-watchers don't appear overly impressed with Twitter's introduction of two-factor authentication (2FA) to its service.…

Chewbacon writes "Details about the used-game policy on Microsoft's newly-announced Xbox One console have been leaked. The policy explains how used-game retailers can survive Xbox One destroying the used-game market as we know it: they have to agree to Microsoft's terms and conditions to do so. In summary, the used game retailer can still buy the game from the consumer, but they must report the consumer relinquishing their license to play the game to a Microsoft database. They must also sell it at a market price (35£ in the UK), but the publisher will get a cut of the price. The article goes on to explain how Xbox One will phone home periodically to verify a player hasn't sold the game according to the aforementioned database." A big downside is that we're likely going to see the end of cheap, used games. A potential upside pointed out by Ben Kuchera at the Penny Arcade Report is that this would unquestionably boost revenue for game publishers, giving the smart ones an opportunity to step away from the $60 business model and adopt pricing practices seen on Steam and iTunes (neither of which allow the purchase of "used" games/media). Also, it's worth noting that even if the policy leak is 100% correct, it could change before the console actually launches.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The guitar solo from Van Halen's song "Eruption" played by Tina, who is 14. More than 3 million video views in 3 days. She was taught and filmed by Renaud Louis-Servais, and she's playing a Vigier Excalibur Custom.

Below, Eddie Van Halen performing the same, live.

    

Reckons DoJ can prove Cupertino 'knowingly participated in... conspiracy'

The US judge who will decide the ebook price fixing case has suggested the government will be able to show that Apple was part of the conspiracy, before the trial has even begun.…

The troublesome thing is that only about half of what's in this video is made up. From Sourcefed. Background: Apple, like many other large US corporations, does interesting things with money overseas to minimize the amount it must pay in taxes, and maximize the amount it can keep as profit.     

Bill sez, "Husband-and-wife Berkeley filmmakers Jason Cohn and Camille Servan-Schreiber won a Peabody award for their documentary about design pioneers Charles and Ray Eames, 'Eames: The Architect and the Painter.' Now they want to make a film about Jerry DeWitt, a former Pentecostal preacher who went public about his loss of faith, then lost his wife, yet remains in a town described by its mayor as 'the buckle of the Bible Belt.' Robert Worth profiled DeWitt's pain in the Sunday NY Times Magazine last August - whereupon Jason and Camille headed to rural Louisiana to interview him. As their Kickstarter page shows, they need to raise $30,000 in order to convince bigger funders that the project is viable. Sam 'End of Faith' Harris donated this week, and they're more than halfway to the goal."     

photonic writes "The BBC is reporting on a possible collision between Ecuador's first satellite (a small cubesat) and debris from an upper stage of an old Russian rocket. If confirmed, this might be the third case in recent years, after a high-speed collision of an Iridium satellite with a dead Russian satellite in 2009 and a collision earlier this year between a Russian laser reflector (which can be tracked very accurately) and a tiny piece of a debris from a Chinese weather satellite that was destroyed in a missile test."

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No damages, no tears, just a shedload of paperwork to fill

US managed services provider ServiceKey has walked away from legal action brought by Oracle over an alleged "grey market conspiracy" without having to cough a bean in compensation.…

[Click to enlarge]. Mikeal is making an incredibly labor-intensive scale model of the Game of Thrones Westeros map, and you can watch him build it at his tumblr: myownprivatewesteros.tumblr.com. 3D-printed castle models, walls of putty, hand-painted rivers and hills. This guy is serious.

(Thanks, Tom Osborn)

    

The Spanish firm Arbore offered these custom Escher-inspired floor tiles back in 2011; from the looks of things, they're still available. It's a very well-executed conceit, done in hardwood.

Diseño geometrico inspiración Escher (via Geekologie)     

Revealed: The digital monster that ate Shepherd's Bush

The BBC has suspended its chief technology officer on full pay - after it spunked almost £100m on a "tapeless" digital content management system that didn't deliver.…

During Obama's national security speech yesterday, the president unexpectedly mentioned the AP and Fox News press freedom scandals. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs,” he said, adding that he is “troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.” Trevor Timm from Freedom of the Press Foundation asks why, then, Eric Holder is in charge of reviewing Justice Department policy, when he is "the same man who has overseen the Justice Department prosecute leakers to the press at a record rate."    

guttentag writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T Mobility, the second-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., has added a new monthly administrative fee of 61 cents to the bills of all of its contract wireless lines as of May 1, a move that could bring in more than a half-billion dollars in annual revenue to the telecom giant. An AT&T spokeswoman said the fee covers 'certain expenses, such as interconnection and cell-site rents and maintenance.' The increased cost to consumers comes even though AT&T's growth in wireless revenue last year outpaced the costs to operate and support its wireless business. The company has talked of continuing to improve wireless profitability. Citigroup analyst Michael Rollins noted that the new administrative fee is a key component for accelerating revenue growth for the rest of the year. He said the fee should add 0.30 of a percentage point to AT&T's 2013 revenue growth; he predicts total top-line growth of about 1.5%. Normally, consumers could vote with their wallets by taking their business elsewhere. AT&T would be required to let customers out of their contracts without an early termination fee if it raised prices, but it is avoiding this by simply calling the increase a 'surcharge,' effectively forcing millions of people to either pay more money per month or pay the ETF."

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