With the Icelandic Pirates crushing it in the polls and set to form the next government of a sovereign, carbon-neutral, strategically located nation, it’s worth asking how a party whose two issues — internet freedom and copyright reform — are wonky, minority interests rose to prominence. (more…)
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Why the Pirate Party could end up running Iceland
In 1979, the Duke of Lancaster — a cruise liner turned car ferry — was retired from service and moored at Llanerch-y-Mor, North Wales, where it was made over as a “Fun Ship,” whose car-deck was refitted as a coin-op arcade. (more…)
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Arcade cabinet enthusiasts discover trove of 50+ games in ship, derelict for 30 years
You can’t walk up to the Treasures in the Trash collection in the New York City Sanitation Department’s east Harlem warehouse, but if you’re lucky enough to get an in, you’ll find retired sanitation worker Nelson Molina’s meticulously organized displays of the wonders he rescued from the landfill. (more…)
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East Harlem’s secret museum of gorgeous junk rescued from NYC’s trash
Daniel Rigmaiden was a prolific and talented fraudster who made more than a million dollars filing tax-returns for dead people, using ninja forgery skills and super-tight operational security to avoid arrest for years. (more…)
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How an obsessive jailhouse lawyer revealed the existence of Stingray surveillance devices
Model railroader John Ott has devoted years to creating a fantastically detailed, HO-scale recreation of Arkham, the site of HP Lovecraft’s horror stories, complete with model railroad engines and historically accurate cars. (more…)
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HO fhtagn! Detailed model railroad layout recreates HP Lovecraft’s Arkham
Radical archivist Carl Malamud writes, “Since 2008, Public.Resource.Org has been trying to get the IRS to release the database of the annual reports of nonprofits in a better way. The nonprofit sector in the U.S. represents $1.5 trillion in economic activity and over 9% of jobs.” Read the rest
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IRS finally agrees to do something about its $1.5 trillion nonprofit database
The “Ukrainian lacing” method puts a pair of loops in both sets of top eyelets, cross-laces to the bottom, and anchors the laces with a pair of hidden knots, so that you can slip your foot into a “tied” shoe, then tighten it and tie a perfect bow with no loose ends. Read the rest
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Tie your shoes the Ukrainian way
On The Intercept, Micah Lee follows up on his great primer on NSA-proof passwords with a soup-to-nuts tutorial on encrypting your laptop. Read the rest
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Encrypting your laptop demystified
How do you package a protein bar made from cricket flour? Here’s how . Exo raised $54.9K on Kickstarter last summer, as a pair of Brown roommates took their senior year project to the next level, trying to come up with a sustainable protein source, along with help from molecular gastronomy superstar Heston Blumenthal. The packaging was designed by New York’s Tag Collective .
Martin Vargic has produced a gorgeous mashup of XKCD’s Map of Online Communities and the classic National Geographic Maps, producing a work of art that is a wonder to behold. It’s for sale on Zazzle , as a $37, 34″x22″ poster. I was originally inspired by map of the internet created by xkcd, showing most popular social networks as countries and regions, back in 2010. It was not my original idea, but I extended it to such a scale for the first time. I used photoshop for the majority of drawing. The base style of the map was inspired by the National Geographic Maps, I also used Winkel Tripel Projection and similar border coloring fashion. I created the map in quite a short time, three weeks to be exact. I often worked early in the morning, and I can say I really enjoyed it. I got the data about website sizes mainly from Alexa and similar online services. Currently, I am working on the next versions of the map, which will be even more ridiculously detailed than the previous one, and will encompass all major websites without any significant exceptions, it will be coming in mid-february. The map is divided into 2 distinctive parts; the eastern continent, “the old world” showcases software companies, gaming companies and some of the more real-life oriented websites. Western part, “the new world” is composed from two major continent, northern one showcasing social networks, search websites, video websites, blogs, forums and art websites. All major adult-oriented websites, in addition to varioius warez and torrent sites, are located on the southwestern continent of the map. In the very south of the map, there is located “Great Southern Land” of obsolete websites and online services. Outside the main map, there are also 4 minimaps showing NSA monitoring by country, most used browser, most used social network, and internet penetration by country. Map of the Internet 1.0. ( via IO9 )
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Gorgeous Map of the Internet: XKCD meets National Geographic