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 It's official! Hybrid's I Choose Noise will be out September 4. Check out some of the new tracks on the streaming player at their updated site. A full-featured computer the size of a credit card. Stuff like this makes me giddy about the future of tech. [via digg] There is no plan if parts of the Internet crash. Stuff like this brings me back to reality. [via digg] People act more honestly if there's a set of eyes watching them, even if it's a black and white photocopy. [via bb] Farecast is now in public beta. It helps you figure out when the best time to buy your plane ticket is. [via kottke] Google bought 79 billion billion billion IPv6 addresses. The Google is coming. Its dark fiber will begin to glow and its data centers will slowly fill until... [via reddit]
According to Progressive Sounds, Hybrid's third full-length LP entitled I Choose Noise will be out the first week of September. No word yet whether that's for the world or UK only. Hybrid's myspace has pictures from Coachella and some of the recording sessions for I Choose Noise with Harry Gregson-Williams on the baton.
UPDATE Hybrid's new website just went live about an hour ago.  Waltz 57 by ABC is 2.5 or 3 or 3.5 dimensions of transcendant beauty. Watch at Newstoday. Overplot organizes Overheard In New York entries and puts them on a Google Map of New York. [via waxy] Ever wondered what's been up with Candace Cameron from Full House? No? Fine. But I thought she was the only child from the show who turned out sane. Not so, according to her headshoteriffic website: "After reading a book my brother gave to me, now called The Way of the Masterit changed my walk with God forever! It talked about the 10 commandments, and showed me my sin in it’s true light... As I went through every commandment, I saw that I’d broken all of them..." Whoa. Maria questioned: "Candace? Does your husband know about #5 and #6-the ones about killing and adultery?" Yikes. Candace is one bad motherfucker. Well, a repentant Christian motherfucker. She continues: "I can’t help but share the Good News with everyone! ... that without Christ, the eternal consequences are devastating." Fabulous! See you on the cruise. New regulations for government laptop security to prevent data from being stolen are shamefully useless. From Wonkette: "Look: 'agencies would have to begin keeping detailed records of any information downloaded from databases that hold sensitive information…' You hear that? Detailed records. Then they have to delete the information. Unless they don’t want to." A German publisher is attacking a site that makes copyright-free books available to blind people free of charge, run by a Stranger Than Fiction will be out in November from Sony Pictures. It stars Will Farrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, and Emma Thompson. Kevin Smith is going to release a free podcast of the commentary for Clerks II so you can listen to it on your iPod in the theater. It's not only cool, but it's a great business idea because it encourages multiple viewings. Why hasn't anyone done this sooner? [via waxy] Flex Your Rights has produced a video about what to do when you're pulled over by a cop, and what they're allowed to do. The ACLU also has printable pamphlets to keep in your glove compartment for easy reference. The U.N. says that worldwide marijuana use is "out of control." Really? It seems pretty in control. At least they explained why it's dangerous: "Marijuana, also known as cannabis, is a danger because it contains THC, a banned substance, Costa said." Allyson responded: "So the only real reason marijuana is dangerous is because it's banned. I have a solution for that." It turns out the real reason they're going after pot is that they've done so well in all the other areas: "While governments around the world generally have succeeded in containing use of heroin, cocaine and amphetamines...." Right. [thanks Allyson] According to rumors, John Mayer should stick to writing his first album (the good one) and not ever do stand-up comedy again. "Mayer gets on stage. He's wearing a unibomber sweatshirt, and has long, scraggly hair. He's pretty tall and skinny. He's pacing around stage, leaning on the walls, slurring his words. It's pretty obvious the guy's drunk or stoned, maybe both. And he proceeds to give the most awkward, offensive, unfunny 15 minute comedy act I've ever seen. And I've been to amateur night. This was way worse. Mayer must have been the lucky recipient of some sort of Comedy Affirmative Action program." Ouch. [via Gawker] This has to tie the grape stomper for the funniest video online I've ever seen, in that it gets funnier and funnier every time you watch it. There's a lot to take in. Behold, the teacher who gets socked in the face. [via waxy]  The Mermaid Parade on Coney Island was today. The Pride parade and festival is in Manhattan is tomorrow. Big weekend in NYC. The United States embassy in Iraq is the size of 80 football fields and will be occupied by 8,000 people. Construction is being kept secret and no photographers are allowed in close distance. What the fuck? [thanks Steven] Giant little girl marionette on YouTube. She's massive. [thanks Alexis] Alexis frequently needs strange things for props in films and videos and videofilms. Perhaps she may need a corpse sometime. This link is for her. [via metafilter] The Principality of Sealand, an offshore abandoned military station that now houses countless servers for sites that want to be crazy private with their data, has suffered a huge fire. They vow to rebuild, but their ability to hang onto nation status may be in peril now that all occupants have left. The Pirate Bay is among the top 500 web sites, according to Alexa. [via digg] Watch the full episode of Frontline "The Dark Side" on PBS.org for free. "Amid revelations about faulty prewar intelligence and a scandal surrounding the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff and presidential adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the intelligence community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most powerful vice president in the nation's history." A scale model of a hyrdrogen atom on your screen. (From 2004, long before Population : One)  13 new episodes of Futurama are scheduled for production for Comedy Central! The network probably paid $30 million to air the whole catalog when their deal with Cartoon Network expires in 2008. Wedding gifts can be tough to identify, and though the recipient is most certainly grateful, a concise note might be warranted. This asshole who beat up a group of kids, even a girl, gets socked in the face on video. Beat that, Sunday New York Times. Sesame Street is so cool that Stevie Wonder was on it performing "Superstition" in 1973. He also did his own version of the Sesame Street theme song that's unbelievable. If only kids today had it so good. Instead they get this. [via metafilter] Who Came 2 Serve was evidently a kickass breakdancing competition in Chicago in 2005. Highlights are on Google Video. How-to: grill chicken successfully. The United States government has been able to look into bank records of people globally. It's "'absolutely essential' to protecting the country from further attacks, Vice President Cheney said yesterday." Fantastic. Now seems like a good time to mention that Halliburton's government contracts have increased 600% since Cheney took office. [via digg] Some states are coming to their senses and banding together to reject the Electoral College as it stands and throw their votes behind the national popular vote winner in Presidential elections. "Established by the US Constitution in 1787, the [Electoral College system] has occasionally awarded the presidency to candidates who couldn't muster the most votes nationwide, as happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000." In an era of instant communication, I see no reason why popular vote shouldn't rule, and rule swiftly. No more swing state bullshit. [via metafilter]  Distinctive Records put up a tune from Hybrid's new album for download FREE on the home page. Are physicists wasting their time on string theory? Stereogum links to a new Radiohead tune on YouTube that they debuted in Chicago. Americans have fewer close friends now than they did 20 years ago. It seems that people are conversing with their families more, talking with the outside world less, and depending almost entirely on themselves. It's a neocon's dream, but it's not good for a healthy society. The San Andreas fault in California looks to be long overdue for an adjustment, and the pressure has built to its highest levels ever, apparently. The quake could be between a magnitude of 7.5 and 8. This is what happens when your company is bought by a corporation.  In 1939, women weren't considered for the Disney training school because they weren't allowed to do creative work on the cartoons. They had to be tracers. [via BB] According to a new book by Steven Miles based on 35,000 pages of documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, doctors have been helping to torture people at various detention centers under the Bush administration. Techniques include "beating, punching with fists, use of truncheons, kicking, slamming against walls, stretching or suspension to tear ligaments or muscles to cause asphyxia, external electric shocks, forcing prisoners to abase and urinate on themselves, forced renunciation of religion, false confessions or accusations, applying urine and feces to prisoners, making verbal threats to a prisoner and his family, denigration of a prisoner's religion, force feeding, induced hypothermia and exposure to extreme heat, dietary manipulation, use of sedatives, extreme sleep deprivation, mock executions, water immersion, water boarding, obstruction of the prisoner's airway, chest compression, thermal burning, rape, dog bites, sexual abuse, forcing a prisoner to watch the abuse or torture of a loved one." All in our name. [via Rachel Maddow] The Shake Shack Widget shows the new Shake Shack webcam on your OS X dashboard. [via Eyebeam] XHTMLized is a service that you can send a design to and they'll turn it into xhtml / css for $149. This looks like a tremendous time saver for non-experts like me. [via plasticbag] What do you get when you mix AJAX with Flash to let Flash grab all the information that's usually dependent on the browser? FJAX. It's lighter, more platform independent, more browser independent, and cleaner than traditional AJAX. Stephen Colbert interviews anti-feminist nutjob Caitlin Flanagan with jaw-dropping results. If you have a Wacom tablet, now you can use it for music production too. This looks really exciting. NY1 argues that viewers aren't stupid. In the user-selected news program on the network, the most chosen stories were about terrorism and transit, not Brangelina. Check out these Back to the Future 2 replica Nikes. I'm pretty sure Allyson will need these. Pitchfork presents 100 Awesome Music Videos, complete with YouTube links. There are so many awesome videos here, I'd recommend grabbing a Firefox extension that will allow you to save these. Just sayin'. They're out there.  Files are not for sharing is a great little book on the dangers of sharing files. [via waxy] Joe Lieberman is campaigning to be more out of touch than ever. Well played, Senator. "One thing about bear cubs: they always do what they're told." Are gay men trying to contract HIV? Not really. In fact, not really very much at all, Snacksby is pretty cool. You tell it what you have in your kitchen and it gives you recipe suggestions. It's like those great mixed drinks sites but for food.  Freitag's new store in Zurich is made out of shipping containers. It's great environmentally and totally on brand. But why are their bags still so fucking expensive? [image via Game Over] Download the Royal Sapien June 2006 promo mix and several sections of my birthday party set. I was pretty retarded while I was spinning, so I'm happy I was able to do this well. Penn Jillette has changed my viewpoint for the better on dozens of issues. If you haven't subscribed to his show yet (free! on FreeFM), you should. Not only is it funny, but really worth your time, every episode. "There are three guys on the steps of a courthouse. One guy is burning the flag, one guy is trying to stop the guy from burning the flag, and the other guy is defending the first guy's right to burn the flag. Which guy is the real patriot?" Lee Burridge says he's going to stop playing breaks because the genre is no longer interesting. He'll now focus on house because that is truly innovating. I... huh? Why does the Pentagon think homosexuality is a disease? I was not aware that dogs were a human invention. The breeds are designed based on human needs. .9999 = 1. I had never really considered this before, but yep. It does. There are a lot of things the human brain can't conceptualize and must accept, and I'm pretty sure this is one of them. Plan your visit to Shake Shack in Madison Square Park (NYC) by checking the Shake Cam, an updated-every-5-seconds image of the queue. [via Allyson] There are some decent tips in CA's 50 ways to become a better designer. Most are either obvious or taught in school, but there were enough good ones that it's worth checking out. 181,000 people pay $50 a year for TimesSelect, the New York Times subscription program that gives access to past articles and premium content. I think I would consider it if they also nixed the ads. Advertisements in the newspaper don't move and blink. Phil Toldedano has some beautiful new photos of people wearing suits of all sorts to represent themes. Extortr. [via waxy] I haven't seen the BODIES exhibition down at the South Street Seaport because the corpses on display weren't donated, but are unidentified Chinese people that were found, but now I'll be sure to avoid it -- this poster claiming that they are "respectfully posed" is a disgrace. Kazakhstan launched a satellite. Is that niiiiiice? Not really. Kazakhstan sucks. But maybe they'll use their techno powers for good.  It turns out that when the sun is angled just so and ice crystals in the sky align, multi-hundred-square-mile rainbows like this happen over places like Idaho. [via digg] BusinessWeek presents the top 10 goofs that interns usually make. I think this could apply to most entry-level (and even some upper-level) workers. I made several of these mistakes when I started my current job, but fortunately my boss is very forgiving and a good teacher. Rumors about Apple's desire for $9.99 movies in iTunes took off so fast the plane skidded off the runway and into a few homes next to the airport. Ars Technica wonders if people would even pay that much for a 320x240 movie, and whether Apple would begin selling movies without first introducing the new full-screen iPod. Not to mention the DRM bullshit that will undoubtedly restrict plays. I hadn't been to Joshua Davis's site in a couple years. If you're not already familiar with him (you probably are), he's a tech-art-design fusion genius. Nothing but respect. In short, green tea has all kinds of incredible subtle and overt health benefits, so drink about a liter a day if you can. The outrageously funny video of Stephen Colbert with the congressman who wants the Ten Commandments in courthouses. Against School by John Taylor Gatto. "School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues." [via reddit]  This completely excellent teddy bear mod will adapt it to store information in this fast-paced hyper-stuffed world. Hope Is Emo is a new podcast from the Ask a Ninja people. It's wonderful. The top 10 hybrid animals. I felt really weird reading this, but a lot of this happened naturally, so I guess it's all in good fun. A guide to robot ethics is going to be published. Could robots really evolve to rule humans? The more I learn about the human brain, the more I realize we could replicate it if we don't kill ourselves first. A really cool 3-year-old had a NewsHour themed birthday party. I wanna be his friend on MySpace. [via waxy] This Folgers commercial is really, really good. Vitamin C might be able to help cure and treat cancer in high doses. The problem is that the trials can't get funding from anyone because it doesn't seem that profitable. The MySpace spam seed has finally bloomed. Spammers are offering to buy popular MySpace profiles. [via waxy]  I'll be spinning at Korova Milk Bar in NYC tonight from 9-11pm if you want to come down and say hello.  Stuff On My Cat should brighten anyone's day, and they have calendars coming soon from Chronicle. Stephen Hawking and I share a hypothesis, though I'm sure I formed mine with much less information than he did. "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of." [via BB] The MTA is now doing podcasts. How to successfully cheat. Tips for not being completely stupid.  Amnesty International's new ads are spectacular. Is high fructose corn syrup as bad for you as I think it is? Turns out, we're not really that sure, but there's some compelling evidence that it sucks. Sufjan Stevens is releasing a companion album to Illinois with outtakes and alternate versions that are, apparently, wonderful. I haven't heard it yet but I can't wait to get a copy. It's out July 11. Big.com is a search engine that features giant text for the hard-of-seeing. Absolutely, totally awesome. [via core77] A government agency in the UK installed cameras in the office to see what employees were up to. People were having sex in the bathrooms. "There were also break-dancing contests and brawling in the reception area." Unreal. [via Rachel Maddow] Make a 160-degree wide angle lens for your digital camera for $11. MySpace gets almost 30 billion pageviews a month. It has 75 million members and is growing by 240,000 a day. And according to their terms of service, they can take anyone's content and do whatever they want with it. The London Underground is testing out liquid-cooled stations to beat the summer heat. In NYC, I'd be happy with fans just to move the air around. [via plasticbag] Google is building a massive computing center in The Dalles, Oregon, where electricity is cheap and fiber cable is plentiful from the previous dotcom boom, but they're being very quiet about it. They also have put those massive amounts of dark fiber they've purchased to use in making a gigantron supercomputer with an estimated 25 locations and 450,000 servers. Could they be using all these extra services to distract their rivals like Yahoo, who is spending an unanticipated $2 billion this year just to attempt to catch up? A new HIV drug in trials looks to be potentially groundbreaking. "A small human trial of the drug, reported last August, showed that when given on its own it rapidly clears most HIV from the blood, driving down the levels tenfold in a matter of hours." [via plasticbag] These super cute and beautiful Beluga whales blow air rings. [via plasticbag] Apple is investigating the claims that its iPods are made in sweatshops. Readers also wrote in to Wired saying the working conditions may not actually be sweatshops. [via BB] The world's largest camera is an airplane hangar. The new issue of Spin magazine is comically bad. "And really we’d be remiss if we didn’t address the horrid “25 Hottest Stars Under 25” bit. Seriously? We already have one New York magazine. That’s more than enough." Been following this story all day. Bush apologized to the vision-impaired reporter he accidentally made fun of during a press conference earlier today. And this whole incident may encourage Bush to be a little more formal on the world's stage. The tiniest LED flashlight ever could sit comfortably with 12 others on your fingernail and only costs $2.99!
My new Royal Sapien album, Strip Poker Slot Machine (that big graphic to the right), is out TODAY on Beatport! It's priced at a very reasonable $9.99 so pick up your freedom-loving non-drm-having 320kbit MP3s before they're all gone!
 Population : One is an online illustration I created that explores the ratio of one person to everyone else on earth. The image comprises over 6.5 billion pixels, the population of Earth right now. The first pixel is bright white, symbolizing you at your computer. The rest are various colors of the spectrum and sectioned off by millions. I'd like to make it dynamic and quick-loading in an AJAXy kind of way, if anyone would like to help out.  Zarqawi portrait sets record price for photography. "[T]he US Government paid a record-setting $286 billion--plus $240 for framing--for this portrait of the dead Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (Note: Sale price also does not include KBR's premium of 17.5% on the first $200 billion and 10% thereafter or the 2,485 US soldiers killed as of press time.)" [via kottke] Gawker slings David Wain and Ken Marino from The State around NYC forcing junk food into them. It's all fun and games until someone loses their cheese sauce. The Brooklyn Pride Festival is on Prospect Park SW between 15th st. and 9th st. June 10th from noon-6pm. The parade is on Fifth Ave. and starts at 9pm. On the heels of the Opus 22 shooting, NYC clubland has been getting even more, well, nerve-wracking. In my opinion, clubbing should never be dangerous, and most bouncers agree. Clublife gives you advice, from a bouncer's perspective, on what not to do after being thrown out of a club. It's probably best not to fight or do something dumb in the first place, just out of respect for everyone else. But you, as a WA reader, totally already knew that. Parent Hacks: a collaborative weblog for keeping small human-like creatures under control. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't like the behavior of most children, so I will help you however I can to make them tolerable for actual humans to be around. Taste of the New York Subway is a listing of restaurants in NYC based on subway stop. This is what I've been waiting for since I moved here. Thank you!! [via kottke]  The trailer for the new Disney Pixar movie, Ratatouille, is now available. Looks really cute and pretty funny from the short clips. I'm so conflicted. On Simple Human Decency wonders what is acceptable to say in America today. "Am I allowed to write that I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands?" At a UK games summit, some guys (probably the most excellent Yes Men) "gave an increasingly provocative, funny and weird deadpan PowerPoint presentation (Coral Cache mirror) on McDonald's putative interactive strategy. The presentation focused on the way that corporate practices contribute to global climate change." Etsy, one of the coolest sites on the web (you can buy and sell handmade anything, and drool over the Flash), just got a bunch of funding from the founders of Flickr and Delicious. Well done!  Boston Macy's, in one of the dumbest moves ever, took down their gay pride mannequins because some people felt they were offensive. Way to piss off the people who design your clothes and shop at your stores. Bridesmaid catfight video. Hehe. The 100 best corporate citizens from Business Ethics Magazine. The results may surprise you, and may also change your buying habits. Should I start buying... Nikes? What's going on? Google Spreadsheet, just launched, along with Calendar, GMail, and soon-to-be-rebranded Writely, really are eating into Microsoft Office way more than I had ever imagined they could. The user base isn't there yet, but the basic technology certainly is, and that's exciting. Combined with Google Talk, Notebook, and their server machines, this could make lots of IT managers happy. (Are Google products available yet to run on their machines?) Senator James Inhofe, (R) OK, is a dumbass. We've known that for a while, and we don't need to go into specifics, but he did say this a couple days ago: "I’M REALLY PROUD TO SAY THAT IN THE RECORDED HISTORY OF OUR FAMILY, WE’VE NEVER HAD A DIVORCE OR ANY KIND OF A HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP." That sounds pretty incredibly unlikely. Could someone from his family please come forward expressing same-sex love? I will pay you $20.  The next Toyota Prius might get 100 miles per gallon! I don't much care for cars, but that's quite an achievement. Convert the liquid fuel processor into an alternative fuel processor (once we have the infrastructure) and you have a pretty awesome car. [Photo from romkey's Flickr stream.] A 37-inch HDTV that's 2 centimeters thick and weighs 2 pounds. Ohmygod. [via digg] Eating pizza is good for you! Eating pizza is good for you!  Royal Sapien's classic "Triple Nine" and its new slutty sister, the Body Shot remix, are both out on Olaris Records TODAY, June 6, on Beatport.com. 999 on 6/6/6. We're very proud of ourselves.  This legendary mural of Ed Ruscha in LA was painted over without warning, destroying it permanently. [via kottke] A guy in Kiev declared that God would save him from the lions, just before the lions killed him when he jumped into their cage. "The board of governors of the American Bar Association voted unanimously yesterday to investigate whether President Bush has exceeded his constitutional authority in reserving the right to ignore more than 750 laws that have been enacted since he took office." Leonardo's last invention has been found. Ten products Google should develop. My favorite is Google Travel, which just makes way too much sense. There's dance music, then there's dance music. The Onion A.V. Club reviews some dance tunes about dancing with special dance moves. Groups in the UK are fighting for labels to be put on DRM restricted products. Brilliant! Simply amazing Flash vs. Figure animation.  The Pirate Bay is online after a US-encouraged raid. One of the many problems with Canada's Captain Copyright is that he's infringing on and committing goatse. Dale Chihuly is suing some of his former employees for copyright infringment. The work that comes out of his studio is just breathtaking, but one can't copyright influences. Not only that, suing another artist in the community is one of the easiest ways to be loathed. Hot 97 vs. Power 105.1. A DJ expressed his desire to pee on his rival's daughter because she called his mom a ho. Very mature, guys. This has been around for a while, but it's expertly done. Wile E. Coyote Sues the Acme Corporation. |
   
July 2004
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