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- Righthaven copyright troll loses domain
- Facial Flex infomercial is somehow both classy and weird. Mostly weird.
- Model files for a working 3D-printable clock
- Interview in which Russell Brand is clever, likable, and well-spoken
- HitchSafe Key Vault
- Least-efficient search-engine use ever
- Knotted cog from a 3D printer
- Algorithmic pricing loop sends book prices into orbit
- Alfred Kahn's brave 1977 bid for clear corporate prose
- How the new Haunted Mansion hitchhiking ghosts work
| Righthaven copyright troll loses domain Posted: 23 Apr 2011 10:23 PM PDT Righthaven is the copyright trolling outfit created by the Las Vegas Review Journal to blackmail alleged newspaper copyright infringers with baseless threats of domain seizure and huge cash judgements. When they created righthaven.com as a home for information related to their indiscriminate bulk-litigation campaign, they neglected to supply the registration information required of them, and it appears that they declined to provide the info when requested to do so by their registrar, GoDaddy. So GoDaddy's taken away their domain: RightHaven.com Taken Down for Invalid Whois (Thanks, Clifton!) |
| Facial Flex infomercial is somehow both classy and weird. Mostly weird. Posted: 23 Apr 2011 03:21 PM PDT Just in case you're sold, it's available on Amazon. [found at Reddit] |
| Model files for a working 3D-printable clock Posted: 22 Apr 2011 10:25 PM PDT  After a season of intensive, public experimentation and iteration, Thinigverse user Syvwlch has completed and uploaded a design for a working, 3D-printable clock that can be output from a cupcake Makerbot printer (these being DIY, open source 3D printers that can output things about the size of a cupcake or smaller). Syvwlch's work on a printable clock has been one of the most exciting ongoing projects on Thingiverse. He's just upload what might be a final version of his work. This version includes the escapement, pendulum, gears for the seconds, minutes, and hours, and a set of nested concentric gears to provide the corresponding second, minute, and hour movement. And, let's not forget he's made this entire clock parametric in OpenSCAD - in case you need to print up a grandfather clock or a teeny-tiny watch.Syvwlch's Printable Clock - ready for printing! |
| Interview in which Russell Brand is clever, likable, and well-spoken Posted: 23 Apr 2011 10:38 AM PDT I'm not a huge Russell Brand fan (I'm don't dislike him either, but most of his media came out after my daughter was born and I essentially embarked upon a half-decade adult TV and movie fast), but this is a remarkable interview. Brand gets some tough questions from the interviewer, and while he gets excited and even rants a little, he is consistently cogent, intelligent, and well-spoken. This is practically a master class in how to talk about celebrity while being a celebrity without sounding like a knob. |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2011 02:50 PM PDT  I do a lot of outdoor stuff like fishing, hunting, diving, etc and when I leave my car I am always trying to figure out what to do with my keys. In the past I had three places I hid the keys but I never felt really comfortable about it. I never liked taking keys with me because I worried too much that I might lose them. I used to be able to take them diving, but now that most keys have electronics attached, it has made it impossible. I recently discovered the HitchSafe, an attachment that slides into my tow hitch that has a compartment that can hold credit cards, drivers licenses, keys, etc. The hitch has four dials on the drawer allowing you to create a custom unlock combination. And it comes with a cover that conceals the HitchSafe.  I recently bought a second for my wife as she is always getting locked out of her car and so she now keeps her spare key in there. In the past she has tried those magnetic boxes that stick to the underside of the car, but they kept falling off and it was hard for her to find it, let alone reach underneath and grab it. This is exactly the kind of tool I wish I had thought of. -- John Davis HitchSafe Key Vault $65 Don't forget to comment over at Cool Tools. And remember to submit a tool! |
| Least-efficient search-engine use ever Posted: 23 Apr 2011 10:12 PM PDT I knew an executive assistant who used to print out her boss's emails and then reply to them on his behalf based on his dictated responses; I thought that was a pretty inefficient way of using the net. According to Nicole Laporte's The Men Who Would Be King (a book about the history of Dreamworks), Jeffery Katzenberg used to get an assistant to run search queries for him and video record the results so that he could review them later. |
| Posted: 22 Apr 2011 10:21 PM PDT  Shapeways user Henryseg created this 3D-printable, cog-adorned, eye-drawing knot: "This steampunk style knotted cog was procedurally generated using 3-dimensional spherical geometry, then stereographically projected into our (mostly) Euclidean universe." |
| Algorithmic pricing loop sends book prices into orbit Posted: 23 Apr 2011 07:45 AM PDT Say two Amazon merchants start using an algorithm to reprice their books based upon the prices set by rivals. Fine. Now say that two merchants pick one another's prices and a recursive repricing loop begins. What happens next? Perhaps you assume that the automatic price war would send prices spiraling rapidly down. In the case of Peter Lawrence's The Making of a Fly, you would be mistaken. [Michael Eisen via Hacker News] |
| Alfred Kahn's brave 1977 bid for clear corporate prose Posted: 22 Apr 2011 10:32 PM PDT  The recently deceased (2010) Alfred Kahn was an economist and academic who was beloved for his notorious memo on clear corporate communications. Kahn wrote this while serving as chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, sending it around to his staff and fellow board members. He implored them to abandon phrases like "we deem it inappropriate" and to try out other such pomposities on their children to see if they passed the giggle test. He also railed against "data" as singular, the overuse of the passive voice, and the use "herein," "hereunder," "heretofore" and other archaic flourishes. Early on in my career someone returned a paper I had written along with a copy of what was known as "the Kahn memo" which he had circulated in 1977 to his colleagues at the Civil Aeronautics Board. In it, Kahn railed against the artificial and hyper-legal language favored by bureaucrats and urged his employees to use "straightforward, quasi-conversational, humane prose." The key word here is "humane." It was our duty as public servants to write clearly, yes, but also with compassion and sympathy for our readers. Every now and then when I found myself lazily falling back on horrible bureaucratic gobbledygook, I could snap out of it by rereading Kahn's memo.Alfred Kahn, 1917-2010 by Stacey Harwood (via Beth Pratt) |
| How the new Haunted Mansion hitchhiking ghosts work Posted: 22 Apr 2011 10:13 PM PDT Disney has posted a tantalizing behind-the-scenes look at the technology behind the new Hitchhiking Ghosts finale at the Haunted Mansion in Walt Disney World, in which ghosts in the mirror playfully swap heads with your reflection and play other pranks. There's not a ton of technical info here, but the sharper pictures really show how great this effect must be in person. On the other hand, I still worry that once everyone can do this in their living room with something like this via Kinect-style systems, it will lose its lustre. Of course, Disney can continue to try to come up with stuff that's two years ahead of the state-of-the-art to continue surprising, but that's an expensive and fraught treadmill to get aboard. Behind The Scenes: New Ways to Experience the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World |
Now it appears that GoDaddy, the domain registrar for the domain Righthaven.com, has taken down their domain for an invalid whois. According to ICANN rules domain owners are required to maintain valid whois information. Anyone can report an invalid whois record via the WDPRS system, which then passes on the complaint to the sponsoring registrar of the domain. The registrar would then attempt to contact the domain owner and ask them to verify/update their contact information. Should they not do so, the domain can be suspended or even deleted. 
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