tech@vedella

David Weinberger does a great job summarizing a paywalled report by Benoît Felten and Herman Wagter, who investigated ISP usage patterns in five-minute-increments to see if "bandwidth hogs" were really a problem for ISPs. They found that there is indeed a set of users who download a whole lot: “The top 1% of data consumers…account [...]

A global coalition of activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation have created "Global Chokepoints," a worldwide initiative to monitor censorship arising from copyright enforcement. Global Chokepoints will document the escalating global efforts to turn Internet intermediaries into chokepoints for online free expression. Internet intermediaries all over the world—from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to community-driven [...]

This 1943 ad for humongous cigars enumerates all the high-status trades of the day, a strange mix that includes "metallurgist" "dramatist" and "munitions maker." Who IS that man with the huge ... cigar?

Today, London design firm Berg announced Little Printer, a "printer connected to the Web." Little Printer generates a hardcopy, customized news-ticker. It grabs stuff from sites based on your parameters, and you can send it stuff from your phone to read later. When you get home, you tear off the tape and have a little, [...]

Behold, the fearsome Japanese War Tubas, used as "acoustic locators" by the Imperial Army. War Tubas

[Video Link] Then and now. Go, Mick!

Police feel safer in Stockton, California, after they successfully subdued a big, scary 5-year-old boy, cuffing him with cable straps and charging him with "battery on a police officer." In it, the officer, Lt. Frank Gordo, says he placed his hand on Michael's and, "the boy pushed my hand away in a batting motion, pushed [...]

My friend Craig Yoe (a designer and comic book historian whom I interviewed on Gweek a while back) has has edited over 30 books about comic books and illustration, including Krazy Kat & the Art of George Herriman, Amazing 3-D Comics, Archie: A Celebration Of America's Favorite Teenagers, The Golden Collection Of Klassic Krazy Kool [...]

James Smith's entry to the Stockholm Green Hackathon was a Minecraft mod that adds carbon emissions to the game, which revolves around resource extraction and use: When you burn some wood in a furnace, the mod calls out to AMEEconnect to do a calculation, and adds the result to a tracker in-game. As the carbon [...]

Jesse Dimmick is suing Jared and Lindsay Rowley, whom he was convicted of kidnapping, for breach of contract. Dimmick argues that because the two won his trust when he invaded their house at knifepoint (while fleeing a murder charge which led to him driving over a police spike-strip in front of their house), and then [...]

Here is a lovely cover of The Jesus & Mary Chain's "Just Like Honey" played on two pianos!

Orlando's new 4River Sweetshop sports dessert-like semi-edible object made by combining iconic junkfood in unthinkable ways, such as "Coke and Ruffles cupcakes, Mountain Dew and Doritos cupcakes, Cheerwine cupcakes and, still in the works, Nehi grape soda cupcakes." Rivers tells us that the baked goods will be available for online purchase – just in time [...]

I'm going to bookmark The Debunking Handbook, a quick-read pdf with all sorts of great advice for effectively countering misinformation. It's put together by the same people behind Skeptical Science, my go-to source for detailed, easy-to-understand debunkings of pretty much every climate-science-related myth you can rattle off.

I love unintentionally funny email spam so much. Sadly, it's been a long time—like, years—since I got any that wasn't just a boring re-tread of now-standardized routines. Then, this morning, a wonderful change of pace. In my in-box I found a strange hybrid of the Nigerian prince scam + the foreign lady looking for love [...]

The US Senate's Defense Authorization Bill redefines America as a "battlefield" and authorizes US troops to conduct military arrests of civilians on US soil, and to indefinitely detain citizens without charge or trial. The ACLU wants you to write to your senator and demand that this insanity not pass. The Senate is going to vote [...]

Alejandro De La Cruz from Turnstyle News tells Boing Boing, Our reporter out of Egypt, Shadi Rahimi, has completed an online post with video on a Tahrir Square protester who was in the middle of Monday's clashes. The demonstrator, whose name is Saleh, says he was battered, arrested and later released. He says he considers [...]

A Canadian oil company called Paramount Resources has changed its name to Pixar. Seriously. Previously known as Paramount Resources, I guess the executives got tired of being named after one of Hollywood’s has-been brands. As far as I can tell, this is not a joke, there’s even a serious sounding press release composed without a [...]

The excellent Soundway Records label continues its musical exploration of Colombia with another huge compilation, The Original Sound of Cumbia. To promote the release, they've created a really fantastic interactive "Musical Map of Colombia." Browsing the map is a fascinating experience whether or not you intend to buy the new compilation. That said, I'd wager [...]

This is a small thing now, but could become more interesting in the future. American Public Media (the people behind a lot of the shows you hear on NPR) have a project called the Public Insight Network, which connects journalists with average people who want to share information about their hobbies, passions, or areas of [...]

There are lots of alphabet books out there. Matching a letter to an object and pairing them with a little bit of cute poetry is a conceit that goes back to the days when alphabet books were printed on a single sheet of paper protected by a thin layer of animal horn. What makes the [...]