Tag: var-scpt

Kickstarting a "libre" recording of all of Bach’s fugues

Robert Douglass writes, “You have graciously covered the Open Goldberg Variations and the Open Well-Tempered Clavier projects on Boing Boing in the past, and it has resulted in these works being the most discoverable and obtainable examples of Bach’s work on the internet (reading Wikipedia? You’ll find these recordings. Searching Google or YouTube because you’re curious about Bach? You’ll find these recordings. Both recordings have also received lavish critical praise from the classical music industry’s leading reviewers, eg Gramophone magazine.” (more…)

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Kickstarting a "libre" recording of all of Bach’s fugues

Beautiful chart displays native speakers of world’s languages

Spanish designer Alberto Lucas López created this gorgeous infographic that shows the proportion of native speakers of each major language. (more…)

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Beautiful chart displays native speakers of world’s languages

Man sues Los Angeles for parking ticket, gets $650K

In 2015 Cody Weiss got a ticket for parking longer than the posted time limit. He says the ticket was wrongfully issued, and decided to contest the ticket. He learned that the City of LA doesn’t directly review tickets; it outsources the job to a private company. That didn’t sit well with Weiss, so he sued the city and won. Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council approved a $650,000 payout. From the LA Times : Weiss argued that his ticket, which he received for parking longer than the posted time limit, was wrongfully issued. The court found a problem with the fact that the initial review was handled by a company called PRWT, a subcontractor for Xerox. An investigation by NBC4 found that PRWT automatically denied most ticket appeals, even when strong evidence was presented that someone was wrongly ticketed. Image: Charleston’s TheDigitel

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Man sues Los Angeles for parking ticket, gets $650K

Twelve Americans were enslaved in Africa after an 1815 shipwreck

In 1815 an American ship ran aground in northwestern Africa, and its crew were enslaved by merciless nomads. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the desperate efforts of Captain James Riley to find a way to cross the Sahara and beg for help from Western officials in Morocco. We’ll also wade through more molasses and puzzle over a prospective guitar thief. Show notes Please support us on Patreon!

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Twelve Americans were enslaved in Africa after an 1815 shipwreck

Link Rot: only half of the links on 2005’s Million Dollar Homepage are still reachable

In 2005 a young man from England created a website called The Million Dollar Homepage and sold advertising space on it. The page is a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid (1,000,000 pixels) and he sold the pixels for $1 each. The page has 2,816 links in it. A recent analysis of all the links reveal that only 1,780 are still reachable. From Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab : Over the decade or so since the Million Dollar Homepage sold its last pixel, link rot has ravaged the site’s embedded links. Of the 2,816 links that embedded on the page (accounting for a total of 999,400 pixels), 547 are entirely unreachable at this time. A further 489 redirect to a different domain or to a domain resale portal, leaving 1,780 reachable links. Most of the domains to which these links correspond are for sale or devoid of content. The 547 unreachable links are attached to graphical elements that collectively take up 342,000 pixels (face value: $342,000). Redirects account for a further 145,000 pixels (face value: $145,000). While it would take a good deal of manual work to assess the reachable pages for content value, the majority do not seem to reflect their original purpose. Though the Million Dollar Homepage’s pixel canvas exists as a largely intact digital artifact, the vast web of sites which it publicizes has decayed greatly over the course of time. [ via Clive Thompson ]

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Link Rot: only half of the links on 2005’s Million Dollar Homepage are still reachable

Parisian canals now open to swimmers

Paris, France is making good on its promise to reopen long polluted waterways to bathers. Up to three hundred people at any time can use the lifeguard-protected pools, although the pools only have locker space for 80. Located in a part of Paris already popular as a place to stroll in fine weather, the new bathing spot is likely to prove a major hit in an already hotter-than-average summer. Early reports suggest that the water is indeed delightful, though a small residuum of green algae does make a post-bathe shower a good idea. How did Paris pull this off? The city’s been working on cleaning up the waters here for decades. Paris’s canals here were once unsurprisingly filthy, running as they do through a former industrial area once packed with cargo barges and polluted by sewage. Since the 1980s, however, regulations managing industrial run-off have tightened substantially, while Paris has invested heavily in wastewater treatment and in preventing sewage from being discharged into the canal during periods of high water. Two years ago, following a concerted clean-up, bacteria levels dropped below safe levels, and rogue bathers have been jumping in the water here for a while. Meanwhile, the Canal Saint Martin, which runs downstream from the basin down to the Seine, was entirely drained and cleaned in 2016, a process that sent a powerful visual message to Parisians that the area’s historic filth was being swept away. Via CityLab

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Parisian canals now open to swimmers

For twelve years, this family has let bees nest in their living room

In addition to benefiting from excellent feng shui, the family harvests about 15 kilograms of honey each year from their bee housemates , who showed up on the day of a wedding. (more…)

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For twelve years, this family has let bees nest in their living room

Hackers compromised smart fish tank at casino

An unnamed North American casino was hacked through an on-site fish tank connected to the Internet, reports CNN. “Someone used the fish tank to get into the network, and once they were in the fish tank, they scanned and found other vulnerabilities and moved laterally to other places in the network,” Justin Feir, director for cyber intelligence and analysis at Darktrace, told CNN Tech . Image: example of a smart fish tank (not the kind the casino had) by Duncan Hull .

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Hackers compromised smart fish tank at casino

Fender custom shop re-uses Hollywood Bowl bench boards to make $12k guitars

$12k for a guitar made of the boards where people sat and listened to historic concerts. What kind of pick-up does this fantastically expensive beauty come with? Best I can tell: Black. I hope it sounds really, really good. This is especially the case with Fender’s new, limited edition Front Row Legend Esquire line. Made in Fender’s Custom Shop by Master Builder Yuriy Shishkov, these special Telecasters are built to order using 100–year–old Alaskan yellow cedar from the Hollywood Bowl’s original bench boards. Since its official opening in the summer of 1922, the Hollywood Bowl has spent almost 100 years hosting some of the biggest acts of every decade. Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys, and Black Sabbath are just a smattering of the talent that has graced the Bowl’s stage, and now, you can own a functional piece of its history. Shishkov maintained the characteristics of each piece of bench board that he used, with all of its original scratches, cracks, and bolt holes. The top of each guitar will also feature the original seat number. Via Reverb ( Thanks, Jason Mancebo! )

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Fender custom shop re-uses Hollywood Bowl bench boards to make $12k guitars