The Latest from Boing Boing

EFF's copyfighter's crossword EFF's annual crossword puzzle is a roundup of news stories from the world of digital civil liberties from 2014. Can you get 'em all without googling? Read the rest... TX SWAT team beats, deafens nude man in his own home, lies about arrest; judge declines to punish cops or DA A well-meaning friend of Chad Chadwick called the Missouri City, TX police to say that he was afraid that Chadwick was having emotional difficulties; the cops lied to a judge to say that they had reason to believe Chadwick was heavily armed, then they sent a SWAT-team to his house (where he was asleep in the tub), beat 11 kinds of shit out of him, gave him permanent hearing loss, held him in solitary confinement, fraudulently accused him of resisting arrest, and tried to have him imprisoned -- he was acquitted, but a judge wouldn't punish the cops or the DA, because "There is no freestanding constitutional right to be free from malicious prosecution." Chadwick was bankrupted by the process of defending himself against the multiple felonies that the DA and the police manufactured to justify the violence. Read the rest... Outfit a game-designer's toolkit for Game designer Rick Marazzani did an under-$20 raid on his local dollar store and built himself an incredible game-designer's toolkit with everything he needs to create an infinite variety of games in just as many styles; his reasoning for each piece is an especially telling glimpse of the game-designer's mindset: Kit * Markers and paper. Read the rest... Telcos' anti-Net Neutrality argument may let the MPAA destroy DNS The telcos' ongoing battle against Net Neutrality have led them to make a lot of silly legalistic arguments, but one in particular has opened the whole Internet to grave danger from a legal attack from the entertainment industry, which may finally realize its longstanding goal of subverting DNS to help it censor sites it dislikes, even if it makes life much easier for thieves and spies who use DNS tricks to rob and surveil. Read the rest... Musical time-machine to Walt Disney World in the late 1970s The amazing Foxxfur has spent 3.5 years assembling a new installment in her "Musical Souvenir of Walt Disney World" series, pulling together audio rarities from WDW in the late 1970s to create a six-hour soundscape that faithfully recreates the incidental music, cast member spiels, and ride narration from one of the golden ages of Disney themeparks. Read the rest... World’s oldest African penguin gets cancer surgery Tess, a 40 year old African penguin who lives at the Pueblo Zoo in Colorado, has an aggressive skin cancer on her face. Read the rest... Western fairy tale characters as traditional Korean characters Korean games illustrator Na Young Wu has an amazing series of illustrations called "Korean Western Fairy Tales," in which she redesigns familiar characters from western fairy tales (including several that have been adapted by Disney) and remakes them as traditional Korean characters. Read the rest... Cops cancel "let us search your house for guns" program Police in Beloit, WI planned to fight gun-violence by asking citizens to let them come into their houses and search for guns, but not many people were interested in this offer. Read the rest... LISTEN: Wil Wheaton reads "Information Doesn't Want to Be Free" I've posted the first chapter (MP3) of Wil Wheaton's reading of my book Information Doesn't Want to Be Free (which sports introductions by Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer!), which is available as a $15 DRM-free audiobook, sweetened by samples from Amanda Palmer and Dresden Dolls' "Coin-Operated Boy." In sharply argued, fast-moving chapters, Cory Doctorow’s Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free takes on the state of copyright and creative success in the digital age. Read the rest... Sony Hack: Could secretive group of ethnic North Koreans in Japan be to blame? "A group of ethnic North Koreans residing in Japan known as the Chongryon are critical to North Korea’s cyber and intelligence programs, and help generate hard currency for the regime. " Read the rest... Oklahoma and Nebraska ask Supreme Court to return legal weed to the black market Too many Oklahomans and Nebraskans are buying weed in Colorado and bringing it back home, and it has made the attorney generals in those states sad. Read the rest... FBI is investigating #Gamergate Muckrock filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI for documents related to Gamergate. The request was refused. The bureau said that while they have responsive documents related to the loose coalition, those files are part of an ongoing investigation, and release "would interfere with law enforcement proceedings." Who or what is being investigated? Read the rest... Usbdriveby: horrifying proof-of-concept USB attack Samy Kamkar has a proof-of-concept attack through which he plugs a small USB stick into an unlocked Mac OS X machine and then quickly and thoroughly compromises the machine, giving him total, stealthy control over the system in seconds, even reprogramming the built-in firewall to blind it to its actions. Read the rest... Minecraft creator buys $70 million house in Beverly Hills In September Markus "Notch" Persson, the 35-year-old creator of Minecraft, sold his game company to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. This month, he spent 3% of it on a $70 million house in Beverly Hills. Read the rest... Obama on hack: "Sony made a mistake" in killing 'The Interview' Citing increased cybersecurity threats, President suggests "more rules about how the internet should operate" Read the rest... Mystery over square-shaped fire that started on sofa inside closed shop No one can explain how this square-shaped fire started on a sofa in a closed shop in London. A passer by noticed it and called it on. Read the rest... FCC seems to have lost hundreds of thousands of net neutrality comments Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "The Sunlight Foundation released a study based on data that the FCC had released to the public about the most recent batch of net neutrality comments. Read the rest... WATCH: Man allegedly faked heart attack so friend could allegedly steal toys Two men in Florida were arrested after police examined a surveillance video that showed one of the men leaving a Walmart with a shopping cart loaded with toys while another man laid on the floor near the exit clutching his chest. Read the rest... A ghostly view of Horsehead nebula in new image from Spitzer Space Telescope A gorgeous infrared image sheds new light on a famous nebula. Read the rest... Kenya's Parliament erupts into chaos as government rams through brutal "anti-terrorism" law MPs shredded their papers and threw them, and got into fistfights with one another over the new law, which allows the government to imprison suspects for 360 days without charge, and to fine press outlets millions for publishing articles "likely to cause fear or alarm" (this term is not defined in the statute). Read the rest... Street Angel Comic: Meet CosMick! When an Irish astronaut crashes in Wilkesborough, people are not happy!  Street Angel 009 is byJim Rugg and Brian Maruca. Read the rest... FBI: North Korea is responsible for Sony Pictures hacks. We have proof. A statement released by the FBI today blames the government of North Korea for the devastating Sony hack, which appears to have been motivated by offense taken at "The Interview," a film about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Read the rest...