The Latest from Boing Boing

Fellowships available in security usability The Open Technology Fund and Simply Secure are offering fellowships to researchers who seek funding to work on usability in privacy and security technology. Read the rest... Star Trek red shirted crewman dog toy The red shirts never get a break on Star Trek. Now you, and your dog, can play fetch with one. Read the rest... Museums and the future history of the information age Last spring, I gave the keynote address at the Museums and the Web conference in Florence, Italy, speaking in the glorious confines of the big room at the Palazzo Vecchio; the organizers were kind enough to put my talk online. It was very well-received at the time and lots of people have since asked where they could get it -- and here it is! Read the rest... Buy your own TSA-surplus pornoscanner for $8K Remember when the TSA spent $113K on Rapiscan pornoscanners that turned out not to work? Now they're selling them off for $8,000. Read the rest... JOHN WILCOCK: The Day I Turned Down The Beatles An early opportunity at publishing the first American magazine on The Beatles is thwarted by a moment of bad judgement. From the John Wilcock comic (see previous installments here andhere.) Read the rest... Launch Jane Harrison tells the story of man's voyage to Mars—and the dating troubles that ensue. Read the rest... High court rules that English/Welsh prisoners should be allowed to read books Tory justice secretary Chris Grayling enacted a ban on sending reading material for prisoners as a way of throwing red meat to his base, who bay for maximum cruelty to "bad people" -- but a high court judge agreed with English PEN and the John Howard society and struck down the ban. Read the rest... Irish government retroactively legalizes GCHQ surveillance revealed in Snowden docs As reported by The Irish Times on Saturday, 6th December; "Foreign law enforcement agencies will be allowed to tap Irish phone calls and intercept emails under a statutory instrument signed into law by Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald." Colm adds, The "statutory instrument" also allows telecoms companies to be sued in secret court sessions if they refuse to comply with requests for assistance from intelligence agencies, and to be barred from revealing that such proceedings took place. Read the rest... National Response Center: now THAT's a logo via Bruce Sterling Read the rest... Jewelry made from fake food It's an idea whose time has come: combine the hyper-realistic plastic molded food you see out front of some Japanese and Korean restaurants with jewelry to make it look like you're wearing glistening, perfect meals. Read the rest... SF Bay Area: Sunday December 7th, 2014's final Give Me Fiction prose reading show This Sunday, come down to Lost Weekend Video for the year's last Give Me Fiction, the prose reading series hosted by Ivan Hernandez. Read the rest... Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins play Crisco Twister "In which Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic strips down to briefs and gets a full body Crisco massage from Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl, before playing slippery Twister with Smashing Pumpkins." (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!) Read the rest... Massive Millennium Falcon rug It's 79" x 59", made from polyester, and runs $100 at Thinkgeek, where they guarantee that it will "instantly makes any room 1138% more awesome." (via Oh Gizmo) Read the rest... Mexican auto insurance for tourists If you are driving from the United States of America into the United Mexican States, you need Mexican auto insurance. Regardless what you think, your USA based policy will not be accepted if you are involved in an accident in Mexico. Read the rest... Man flies from London to Australia to meet toddler who shares his condition 1 in 50,000 people have Treacher-Collins syndrome. It affects in-utero facial bone and tissue development. Jono Lancaster, age 30, has it. Read the rest... Adventure Time's BMO coffee mug I love this BMO coffee mug! "Bow to your sensei." -- BMO Read the rest... Cat loves Slayer “This is my cat Buddy. I was watching Slayer perform from the Big 4 concert and caught this little guy chillin' and watching as well.” Read the rest... Orion spacecraft's sweet splashdown, as seen from the U.S. Navy recovery ship “NASA, the U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin recovery crews aboard the USS Anchorage witnessed the Orion spacecraft as it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.” More about today's“perfect flight” in our previous post, and don't miss our live report from Cape Canaveral. Read the rest... Restaurant wants you to also tip its kitchen staff If other restaurants follow Alimento's lead, you'll soon start tipping the servers and the kitchen staff. Next time I dine at Alimento, I'll just fill in the TOTAL amount and then let the servers and kitchen staff fight it out. Read the rest... Angela Merkel calls for end to net neutrality The German Chancellor -- whose party is closely aligned with the telcoms sector -- says she wants a two-tier Internet; on the "fast" Internet, carriers will be allowed to slow down access to services that haven't paid bribes for "premium" carriage; on the "regular" Internet, ISPs will just give you the data you ask for. Read the rest... Interview with Queen Over at Cuepoint, Alan Light talks to Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen about their signature operatic rock sound, the band's chemistry, and the final days of Freddie Mercury. Read the rest... The big book of big of psychedelic fantasy posters There's a new book out about Big O Posters, which grew out of the graphic design vision of Peter Ledeboer, the charismatic art director of the U.K. Read the rest... Pareidolia of the day: Rocky Bellboa [via] Read the rest... 87 chokehold complaints filed against NYPD in 2014 It may be a banned police maneuver, but it sure is popular. Analysis and infographic at Vocativ. Read the rest... Apple nuked rivals' songs from users' iPods, say lawyers in class-action suit From 2007-2009, Apple deleted music that some iPod users downloaded from competing music services without telling those users, say attorneys in a class-action antitrust suit against Apple. Read the rest... The Eric Garner video you might not have seen is even more disturbing On MSNBC, Chris Hayes examines a portion of the Eric Garner video that has received less attention: the tense moments before he had a heart attack on the way to the hospital. Read the rest...