tech@vedella

Megaupload is still fuming that Universal Music Group made repeated false copyright claims to YouTube about a video that major recording artists made in support of the service, which the major labels have branded "rogue" and have cited in their fight to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act. Megaupload is suing Universal and will devote [...]

Salon's "Ask the Pilot" column has a nicely nuanced take on why airlines have you shut off and stow electronic devices during takeoff and landing. In a way, this reminds me of the way doctors tell pregnant women to not drink any alcohol at all, when what they really mean is, "It's not totally clear [...]

Writer and comedian John Knefel reaches for his glasses as police pull him away during an Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City yesterday. This really great photo was taken by Jessica Lehrman in the lobby of Winter Garden, a building owned by Brookfield Property, the same company that owns Zuccotti Park. To get [...]

Reuters' David Gray explored Wonderland, an unfinished Disneyland clone outside of Beijing. Here, a farmer tends crops in a field now encompassing the abandoned Cinderella Castle-style building that was to be a centerpiece. Construction work at the park, promoted by developers as "the largest amusement park in Asia", stopped around 1998; disagreements over property prices [...]

Though a judge tossed a lawsuit filed against Sony for removing the "Other OS" feature from the Playstation 3, even he could not let it pass without a note of disbelief: "As a matter of providing customer satisfaction and building loyalty, it may have been questionable." [Ars Technica]

Tomorrow, the Stop Online Piracy Act goes for markup. The bill argues that the Internet is full of "rogue companies" and that the only way to save the entertainment industry is to let the studios have the say-so over who can display advertising, process payments, or have DNS. Using YouHaveDownloaded, a Russian site that indexes [...]

UMG claims that several artists appearing in Megaupload's music video did not give their consent. The video, in which famous singers praise the file storage site, was removed from YouTube after Universal issued DMCA takedown notices to the service. In response, Megaupload sued the company, claiming that it fraudulently abused the DMCA to delete content [...]

The government's website seizure program is already a mess, with one judge refusing to play along and the authorities forced to relinquish a domain in another case. Ars Technica's, Timothy B. Lee asks "Does the government really have the power to seize a domain name, hold it for a year, and then return it without [...]

The lawmaker behind SOPA introduced amendments that dramatically water it down, reports Wired's David Kravets. Unfortunately, the amended plan "still gives legal immunity to financial institutions and ad networks that choose to boycott “rogue” sites," among other problems.

I just finished watching particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti on CERN's live webcast, talking about the hunt for the Higgs Boson. I'll be writing more about this later today or tomorrow, but I know a lot of you are really curious to find out what this public announcement was all about. Shorter version: The public announcement [...]

Robbo sez, "The Cambridge Digital Library has posted Sir Issac Newton's notebook which he used as an undergraduate at Trinity College in the 1660's. It can be viewed, page by page, in its entirety and is a fantastic glimpse into the scribbling and doodling thought processes of the man." Sadly, these images are licensed under [...]

You can't copyright an idea, even if the idea is grotesquely disproportionate images of young women. A court recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by Brooklyn photographer Bernard Belair against the company behind the Bratz dolls, despite its admission that the toy's design was directly inspired by his work. "Although the Bratz dolls may indeed bring [...]

Just look at it. Just an alien sculpted in a banana. How should we call it? Just look at these other amazing bananasthings. (Thanks, Kritika!)

Watchismo's badass new multicolored Keypad watches are the followup to the equally badass (and be-dipswitched) Click Watches. Animated blinkenlights on each of the chunky keypad buttons tell the time in a fashion that is delightfully impractical. Click Keypad

Remember the now-fired RIM executives whose behavior forced a Toronto-Beijing flight to land in Vancouver? After being handcuffed by crew members, they chewed their way out. One of them then "lay belly-down in the aisle during the ordeal, and began kicking the floor." [CBC]

Here's a mesmerizing Gabion machine, a massive loom that weaves chicken wire fencing out of wire. Machine grace ahoy. Chicken Wire Fabrication - Video (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

The FBI disclosed this weekend that it uses data gathered by Carrier IQ software for "law enforcement purposes", but refused to give any details of exactly how it has done so. Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Muckrock, the FBI said that it held relevant records but that their release could [...]

Reason's Hit and Run: "Mistaking her back brace for its more dangerous cousin, the money belt, the Transportation Security Administration removed an octogenarian’s support device in a private security screening, breaking its own rules."

Occupy protesters and their kids made 5,000 paper hearts, one for each of the arrests at the Occupy Wall Street protests. They made a mosaic of these at the gates of New York's City Hall, only to have the police literally rip down and shred them. Parents for Occupy Wall St. March against police brutality. [...]

The Cure playing their 1980 tune "A Forest" at the recent Bestival 2011 festival. The track is included on their new album Bestival Live 2011. All proceeds of album sales go to the Isle of Wight Youth Trust.