STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Fantastic Photo Of A F-16 Flying Perfectly Straight Up In The Air

This here is one helluva shot. The F-16 looks suspended in space and time, perfectly perpendicular to the ground and the horizon while shooting straight up to all that is holy. The vertical pose reveals the weaponry on its underside and the super slick manoeuvre shows just how incredible these aeroplanes are. Great, great photo.

[MIKA27]

Introducing the LC500, the Car That Will Change Everything For Lexus

Anyone following the North American International Auto Show this past week in Detroit saw a lot of cool concepts and technology being introduced to the public. But if you were there, there was one car—and one car alone, really—that stole the attention of just about everyone: Lexus’ new LC500 luxury coupe.

Masterfully engineered and wickedly tuned to haul ass, the LC500 was presented to the press as the blueprint for a wide-scale shift in Lexus’ design strategy. The boring luxury car your parents bought for dependability and comfort just birthed a child straight from the depths of Hades, and it looks like it’s here to bring the heat.

The LC500 is based off the design of Lexus’ LF-LC concept, first presented 2012, right here in Detroit. The LF-LC blew everyone away, but many were skeptical that it could ever be built into a real-life production car… Until now.

Before the unveil, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda stood in front of a packed room of journalists, bloggers, and media professionals from all over the world, and explained that the LC500 wasn’t just a fancy concept car or a wild showing of pomp and muscle, but a real-deal production car, and the result of disappointing feedback from critics about how Lexus cars are well-made, but boring to drive.

In his speech, Toyoda made it very clear that, from this moment forward, Lexus would be heading in a new, more “emotional,” direction.

The LC500’s exterior design is bold and aggressive, but smooth and refined, and appears exceptionally aerodynamic. The spindle grill edges out and slopes downward into the front bumper. Then it juts out, almost like a front bumper splitter seen on race or drift cars. The sloped roof slides down into an exceptionally low hood, which curves perfectly into the LC500’s angular, aggressive-looking headlight assembly. Several functional vents also play a key roll in the design and help keep the LC500 headed in the right direction.

Oh, and she sits on beautiful 20-inch forged aluminum wheels.

The interior (which also won this year’s Eye on Design award for Best Interior) is sleek and minimalistic, and according to Lexus Chief Designer Tadao Mori, who sat down with Cool Material after the reveal on Monday, was designed with utility and purpose in mind.

“We wanted to focus more on emotional driving, so the steering wheel has accessible paddle shifters, and the gauges are simple and smaller,” he said. “Sometimes cars have all these screens and tall, big navigation systems. We wanted the driver to be able to focus on the world outside—on driving.”

Mori explained that everything is within the immediate vicinity of the driver, so that he or she can concentrate on what’s most important: driving.

Inside and out, the LC500 was designed to be gorgeous, and offer people a driving experience unlike anything else.

“If you think about the view the driver has outside the front windshield, most drivers only see the hood of the car and the world outside,” said Lexus’ Vice President of Marketing Brian Smith, who also sat down with Cool Material after the reveal. “The team went ahead and designed the front of the car from the driver’s view inside the cock pit, to look exciting and dynamic and aggressive. The car doesn’t just look beautiful to people from the outside, it looks beautiful from the driver seat, too!”

As far as go-fast components are concerned, the LC500 is powered by a high-revving 467-horsepower 5.0 liter V8 motor (the same from the RC F and GS F models), which is mated to a newly developed 10-speed automatic transmission, the first of its kind ever used in any luxury car.

The real-wheel-drive LC500, which starts at around $100,000, can do 0-60 in under 4.5 seconds, and we’ve heard extensive rumors that they’re also testing a twin turbo V8 model, leading into production.

Lexus’ chassis for the LC500 is revolutionary, and according to the LC 500’s Chief Engineer Koji Sato, will serve as the company’s blueprint for Lexus’ future RWD luxury models. The drivetrain is located behind the front axle, and the body is wider and lower to the ground to provide added stability. The redistribution of weight was so carefully considered during the LC500’s design that, as with most race cars and rally cars, the battery in this luxury coupe has been relocated to the trunk. Lexus engineered the stiffest unibody the brand has ever produced, utilizing lightweight, high-strength steel throughout.

But don’t be mistaken: This car still drives and feels like a Lexus. The only difference is that this dog has just as much bite as it does bark.

[MIKA27]

YELLOWSTONE SELECT BOURBON

As the bourbon industry continues to grow, it's great to see brands from the past revived. Yellowstone Select Bourbon is a product of Limestone Branch Distillery in Lebanon, Kentucky and is a blend of 4-year and 7-year Kentucky Straight Bourbon. The Yellowstone name was dusted off by the Limestone owners last year after over a century when their great-grandfather sold the brand. That lineage helped inspire the labels as well, with layouts taken from historical Yellowstone illustrations.

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Feel the Adventure of H.G Wells' The Time Machine In This Beautiful New Poster

This is the 24 x 36 inch regular in an edition of 200. It’ll cost about $56.

H.G. Wells has inspired people’s imaginations for a century. There’s not an art form out there that hasn’t been touched by his brilliant, fascinating stories like The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau or, most famously, The Time Machine.

That last one, which is arguably Wells’ most noteworthy work, is the subject of a brand new poster by artist Julien Lois. Printed by Nautilus Art Prints in Belgium, these dynamic, colorful posters will be on sale January 22 at this link. Check them out.

And this is the variant. Also 24 x 36 in an edition of 100. It costs about $84.

Lois’ composition is what makes this poster shine. He takes multiple aspects of the story and seamlessly blends them into a single image, where they all flow together and provide a real sense of adventure.

For more on the artist, visit his site.

[MIKA27]

Southbound - Creepy New Horror Movie

The great thing about a horror anthology film is if you aren’t scared by one segment, odds are the next one will get you. That won’t happen with Southbound though because, as you can see in the first trailer, all four of the segments are ultra creepy.

Directed by Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner and Patrick Horvath, Southbound will hit limited theaters on February 5 and then on demand February 9. It tells four tangentially related stories centered on a nondescript, desolate setting.

There are the guys being hunted by flying demons, the girls who end up in a place they don’t want to be, the driver trying to save a young girl’s life, and the family just enjoying some nice time together. None of those situations turn out particularly well—and over the course of the movie, you’ll continue to be shocked and scared by the places the filmmakers go.

[MIKA27]

Rogue One Could Feature a Star Wars Character We Thought We'd Never See Again

Making Star Wars have further updates on the oft-rumored presence of Darth Vader in the film. They’re claiming that a crack team of designers has been brought together to recreate Darth Vader’s suit as it appeared inA New Hope for the character’s appearance, and that James Earl Jones will be returning to voice the character (as he had done so for recent appearances in Star Wars Rebels). As ever, take rumors like this with an eye for skepticism—but there does seem to be some reason to believe that Vader will play a pretty important role in the background of the film.

[MIKA27]

This May Be The Oldest Human Record Of A Volcanic Eruption

Volcanic eruptions are something of a spectator sport today, with orbital satellites and high-speed connectivity bringing glorious images of the planet’s pyrotechnic power to the comfortable safety of our computer screens. But a fascinating new study suggests people have been chronicling Earth’s powerful outbursts since long before modern technology.

Indeed, it’s possible that we’ve been documenting volcanic eruptions for nearly 40,000 years, according to evidence uncovered in Chauvet-Pont D’Arc, one of the oldest and most celebrated cave art sites on the planet. Best known for its depictions of fierce Neolithic beasts, the cave also contains a series of faint, one-of-a-kind spray-shaped drawings. According to a study published this month in PLoS One, these are likely to be the oldest human records of volcanic activity — by a wide margin.

Left: Spray-shaped lines are faintly visible beneath a much more prominent charcoal deer. Right: A traced reconstruction revealing the possible volcanic eruption in more detail.

The paintings in question reside in Chauvet-Pont D’Arc’s famed Megaloceros gallery, which gets its name from prominent charcoal drawings of a giant deer species hunted by Paleolithic Europeans. Using radiocarbon dating, archaeologists previously determined that the Megaloceros artworks are between 36,000 and 37,000 years old — meaning the fainter eruptions drawn behind them are at least that old. To see whether this age lines up with any nearby volcanic activity, geoscientist Sebastien Nomade from the University of Paris-Saclay travelled to Bas-Vivarais, a now-dormant volcanic field that lies a mere 35km away.

Lo and behold, Nomade found something very interesting. When his team sampled rocks from three different volcanic centres and used argon isotope dating to determine their ages, they uncovered evidence for repeated volcanic eruptions, occurring between 19,000 and 43,000 years ago. If people were living in Chauvet-Pont D’Arc when Bas-Vivarais erupted, they could hardly have failed to notice. “Our work provides the first evidence of an intense volcanic activity between 40 and 30 ka [40,000 and 30,000 years ago] in the Bas-Vivarais region, and it is very likely that humans living in the Ardèche river area witnessed one or several eruptions,” the authors write.

If correct, this would be the oldest human record of a volcanic eruption by tens of thousands of years, the closest rival being a 9,000 year old Turkish cave painting. Fascinating? Yes. Surprising that our planet’s most epic outbursts have been fuelling our creativity since long before the dawn of civilisation? Not really

[MIKA27]

Hawaii Reports The First Case Of Zika Virus In The US

Just days after the Center for Disease Control recommended travel warnings to pregnant women headed to Latin America, the Hawaiian Department of Health has confirmed a Zika “virus infection in a baby recently born with microcephaly in a hospital on Oahu.”

The release stressed that this case wasn’t acquired in the United States: the mother was pregnant in Brazil in May 2015, when the virus was transmitted. Neither the infant or the mother are contagious.

“In this situation, an astute Hawaii physician recognised the possible role of Zika virus infection, immediately notified the Department of Health, and worked with us to confirm the suspected diagnosis,” said Dr. Park. “We rely on our exceptional medical community to be our eyes and ears in the field to control and prevent the spread of illness in Hawaii.”

This case helps to reinforce that there is some link between infants suffering from microcephaly and the Zika Virus. While there’s no chance of transmission from this case, the dramatic spread of the virus throughout Central Africa and Central America is worrisome. [Hawaii Department of Health ]

[MIKA27]

This Plan To Turn Stockholm Into A City Full Of Sky Ways Looks Incredible

We know that cities will need to get taller and denser in the next few decades. Yet it’s not easy to convince residents to build skyscrapers. This Swedish proposal for Stockholm’s downtown incorporates light, greenery and public space into its tall buildings. It makes density look beautiful.

The plan named Klarastaden, “clear city” in Swedish, would revitalise the city’s waterfront by building dozens of buildings atop existing train tracks. But the key to this attractive plan by Anders Berensson Architects is that as much attention is paid to the top floors of the buildings as the ground-level real estate. So not only are there plenty of rooftop gardens and terraces, there are also pedestrian connections from building to building via a series of sky walks.

There are actually three different “zones” offered by the plan, which grow increasingly more residential as you move away from the central business district. And since the entire neighbourhood is adjacent to Stockholm Central Station, there are direct transit connections via sky ways. Imagine travelling from your 15-storey apartment to your train without ever stepping foot on the street.

The trick here is the diversity of the buildings — the fact that they’re not all similar height and size — which allows them to pack more units into a city block without sacrificing views or green space:

About 90% of all apartments will receive a lake view and the sun will shine through the lower parts of the blocks to reach down to street level during the afternoon. The new city area will host about approximately 5800 apartments, 8000 work places and about 300 shops.

That’s a fantastically impressive amount of housing units! The architects break down the benefits even further with this cute illustration that shows how shadows — which are the kiss of death for most tall developments — would be mitigated by the variable heights and use of transparent materials.

Sky ways and rooftop gardens are certainly not a radical invention but I haven’t seen them so well-coordinated in a way that creates true public space 10 storeys above the streets. Most urban gardens and passageways between skyscrapers are private, and don’t actually beckon the average citizen to explore. This is creating what’s essentially an elevated greenway that offers another way to experience and travel through the city. And those rooftops can offer some pretty substantial parks if ground-level real estate is in short supply.

Of course, most cities already don’t have enough space to build dozens of networked towers from the ground up like this. But I think these architects are onto something when it comes to convincing Stockholm that adding more housing doesn’t mean a life of shadows and supertalls. I don’t know about you, but this certainly looks like somewhere I’d want to live.

[MIKA27]

Driving Norway’s Atlantic Ocean Road, One of the Most Dangerous Roads In the World

Norway’s Atlanterhavsveien (“Atlantic Ocean Road”) extends just a bit over 5 miles and is filled with some of the most amazing views you’ll find. It’s also incredibly dangerous. Connecting the island of Averøy with the mainland, the road is constantly battered with gusts of wind and water. But if you’re up for conquering your fear of strong mist, you’ll find four viewpoints, plenty of restaurants, a series of fishing spots, and some of the finest views you’ll ever see. You’ll also get a free car wash. Here’s what it looks like to drive it.

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Lifestraw Steel

Lifestraw Steel is an award-winning personal water filter developed to ensure that wherever you are outdoors, you´ll be able to get life´s most important substance: water. With a double steel case and built like a fat straw with a special 2-stage filtration process, it features an activated carbon capsule which will remove bacteria, protozoa and reduces organic chemical matter and chlorine, letting the user drink water safely from contaminated water sources. It requires no batteries or power supplies, each filter charge can deliver up to 100 liters of pure water. Its steel case ensures it´ll prove its worth for years to come. Plus, the company has a social side to its policy, for each Lifestraw Steel they sell they will provide one year of drinkable water for one person in a developing country. So if you´re an outdoors fan get water worries free with Lifestraw Steel and help someone with your purchase.

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1990 RIVA FERRARI 32 SPEEDBOAT

One of only 30 ever built, this 1990 Riva Ferrari 32 Speedboat is a rare example of the collaboration between the Italian racing and boat-building firms. The Formula 1-styled hull is painted in Ferrari's signature Rosso corsa hue, with a black carbon fiber spoiler adding a flourish to the top. As you'd expect, it has plenty of power, with two 390hp V8 Vulcano 400 engines pushing it to a top speed of 62 mph, as well as a cuddy cabin in the bow, and an automotive-style helm.

[MIKA27]

SIXPOINT CREAM BEER

The Mad Scientists at Sixpoint are at it again with their latest offering Sixpoint C.R.E.A.M. The new release is brewed with a blend of pilsner and two-row pale and crystal malts. It's then stored cool and blended with cold-brewed coffee from the good folks at Stumptown Coffee Roasters. It's a blonde ale but exudes all the aromas you'd expect from a great cup of Joe. Packaged in the signature Sixpoint slim 12 oz. cans at 7.2% ABV.

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AMPWARE HAND CRANK IPHONE CASE

Ever thinner devices mean ever smaller batteries. You can extend your phone's life with a battery case, but at the end of the day, it's just another gadget to charge. TheAmpware Hand Crank iPhone Case gives you an alternative. Using an on-board generator, five minutes of cranking can deliver a full hour of normal use or five hours of standby juice, guaranteeing you'll have power when you need it most while keeping your iPhone 6 or 6S safe from drops and bumps.

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GARMIN TACTIX BRAVO GPS WATCH

For a watch that would impress the most hardcore Navy Seal, look no further than the Tactix Bravo GPS Watch from Garmin. It's not only equipped to track whatever workout you have in mind, it's also prepared to assist you, should you find yourself dropped into a war zone. It tracks elevation data, can mark up to 1,000 waypoints, and even has a mode that acts like a trail of breadcrumbs - guiding you back to your starting point. And it's all achieved with a battery that's built to last from 20 hours to three weeks depending on the mode. It comes packaged in a stainless steel casing with a scratch-resistant sapphire lens that's even readable using night vision goggles. It's hard to imagine a more complete timepiece for your next special ops mission behind enemy lines.

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This Silicon Chip Will Monitor Your Brain And Dissolve In Your Body

Well folks, we’ve finally arrived at the long-anticipated future of brain-implantable chips. How many hundreds of science fiction novels have led us to this moment? No matter: the chips are here, and we’re getting a good look at ’em today thanks to a study just out in Nature.

Now, before you start panicking about government mind control, know that these chips were built with a benevolent purpose: helping doctors to monitor patients who recently suffered traumatic brain injury or underwent brain surgery.

Smaller than a grain of rice, the chip pictured here is composed of thin, biodegradable silicon sheets. For several weeks after implantation, it floats around inside your skull taking continuous measurements of swelling, intracranial pressure and temperature. All the while, it’s being slowly dissolved by cerebrospinal fluid, until eventually, all of those juicy silicon atoms are reabsorbed by your body. Convenient!

In the new Nature paper, engineers at the University of Illinois tested the performance of the chip in rats, and found that it is comparable to modern brain-monitoring technology — bulky equipment that requires hard-wired access to the head. The team is hopeful their technology will offer doctors a far less invasive brain-monitoring tool; one that reduces the risk of post-surgery infection. Eventually, they say, the sensor might be modified for monitoring deep brain tissue, or for different organs entirely.

So it’s probably time to start saying goodbye to your silicon-free body, if you haven’t already. Chips are coming, and they’re here to stay.

[MIKA27]

The Five Bright Planets Are Set To Align From Tomorrow Morning

Somewhere in the world, right now, an intrepid hero is racing against the clock to stop a dark magic ritual from taking place. Or so I assume, because the planets are aligning. From tomorrow morning, the five planets that are visible to the naked eye will be aligning in an impressive spectacle for early risers.

The last time the planets aligned like this was in 2005, and after this year they won’t assume the same formation again until late 2018. The five bright planets — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter — will be visible in a line stretching from the horizon to the moon as of tomorrow morning, and will continue to be visible until February 20, so there’s no rush to get out and see it. Viewing the alignment will still require a bit of careful planning, however, as you only have a ten minute window between 5:30am and 5:40am (AEDT) to see it before the sun comes up and ruins the picture.

The biggest challenge in viewing this five planet astronomical event is going to be Mercury. The closest planet to the sun also hangs closest to the horizon, which means there is a very short period between it appearing and the sun rising. To ensure you have the best chance of catching this rare event, try and find a viewing area with good visibility on the horizon such as a large, flat field, or somewhere with a high vantage point. As with all astronomical events the less light pollution you’re dealing with, the more you’ll be able to see, and you should always give yourself five to ten minutes for your eyes to adjust to the low light — yes, that means not checking your smartphone.

If you miss this month-long window of opportunity, you’ll get the chance to see this formation again in August of this year, after which it won’t be seen again until 2018. Still, there are plenty of opportunities before then, so if you don’t see it on your first go (or if you sleep through your alarm) you can always try again.

For those who have problems spotting the right points of light in the night sky, it might be worth downloading an astronomy app to help you locate the planets. Check out SkySafari 5 ($0.99 on iOS), Night Sky Pro ($1.99 on Android), Star Chart (free on Android and iOS) or SkyMap Free (free on Windows Phone).

[MIKA27]

This Is What A Ferrari Will Look Like 25 Years Into The Future

Ferrari’s Design School Challenge was a competition for artists and designers around the world to envisage the Ferrari of the future: a vehicle that Maranello would be proud to stamp the prancing pony on in the year 2040. The Manifesto is the winner of that challenge, from France’s ISD-Rubika design school.

Taking the top Gran Premio Assoluto honours in the competition, Manifesto is a fully fleshed-out concept, with running gear and interior modeled — not just an exterior shell like some of its competitors. And it’s gorgeous.

Personally for me, as much as I like concept cars, it just doesn't look very Ferrari to me....

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How Aaron Swartz Caught The FBI's Attention

In May 2006, Aaron Swartz wrote a blog post titled “The Book That Changed My Life”. The book in question, Understanding Power, is a series of transcribed discussions with the MIT linguist Noam Chomsky in which Chomsky analyses and explains the ways in which political power is wielded, acquired and guarded. “Reading the book, I felt as if my mind was rocked by explosions. At times the ideas were too much that I literally had to lie down,” Swartz wrote. “Ever since then,” he continued, “I’ve realised that I need to spend my life working to fix the shocking brokenness I’d discovered.”

After leaving Reddit in 2007, Swartz began to do so in earnest. He had come to believe that free, unimpeded access to information was an inherently political issue, not just a slogan to be monetised. “The system”, in all its incarnations, that vague authoritarian stronghold of imprecise menace and organisational inefficiency, had long been Swartz’s primary antagonist. If “the system” relies on institutional opacity to conceal its aims and to consolidate its grasp on power, one way to buck that system is to reveal the information that it actively keeps hidden. In July 2008, Swartz put his name to a cri de coeur dubbed the “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto”, in which he urged people of good conscience to “take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world”. He evangelised on these topics like a man touched with ideological tinnitus, unable to escape the sound of social dysfunction and desperate to make others hear the ringing in his ears.

Swartz had developed several methods of acquiring large data sets. Sometimes he’d purchase them. Sometimes he’d request them directly from government agencies under the Freedom of Information Act. Sometimes he would use scripts and download the material automatically. This last method was quick and easy — especially for Swartz, who so disliked having to ask other people for help — but it also had the potential to greatly annoy the database providers.

In a blog post published in January 2013, the librarian Eric Hellman recalled how, upon meeting Swartz, he took him to task about “how some of his mass-downloading was getting people really upset and could have negative consequences for the things he was trying to accomplish. If he would just ask, I told him, he could have an account for an API that DIDN’T crash to smithereens when asked for millions of records. And people were working really hard to make the information he wanted free, it just needed some years to make sure the machinery wouldn’t collapse. Aaron sounded embarrassed.”

Embarrassed though he may have been, Swartz had no intention of changing his ways. He had made himself into a freelance idealist, one who was uninterested in waiting around for systems to gradually reform themselves. Years after Chomsky’s book first sent him reeling with the vertiginous power of its transgressive political ideas, Swartz was surer than ever that systems existed to be overturned. “We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access,” he wrote in 2008. He was ready to lead the charge.

In 2008, Swartz set his sights on a US federal database called Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER. The database is a comprehensive online archive of federal court documents. It’s an invaluable resource for researchers, who, rather than having to rummage courthouse archives for the files they need, can access that material from the comfort of their own homes. This convenience comes at a cost, though: PACER users must pay ten cents for every page they access. (The fee is only assessed if more than $US15 worth of charges is accrued in a given quarter.)

At the end of 2007, the US Courts announced that, for a limited time, it would offer completely free access to the PACER database. (At the time, PACER only charged eight cents a page, not ten.) This trial program was made available at sixteen federal depository libraries across the United States, and researchers would have to physically visit these libraries to take advantage of the offer. Swartz sensed an opportunity.

He joined forces with the legendary archivist and public-data activist Carl Malamud, who had enjoined volunteers to visit the depository libraries, download PACER records to portable thumb drives, and then “recycle” that material by uploading it to Malamud’s website resource.org, where it would live in perpetuity as a free alternative to PACER. “Is this legal?” Malamud asked, before answering his own rhetorical question. “You betcha! These are public documents.”

Swartz enthusiastically signed onto Malamud’s thumb drive corps. But he figured that, rather than sit at a library terminal all day, it would be simpler to deploy a computer program that would download the PACER data remotely and automatically. This plan complicated his collaboration with Malamud. Throughout his long and successful career as a data liberation activist, Malamud had always taken care to work strictly within the bounds of the law, both as a means of self-preservation and as a way of underscoring a broader point: public data, by law, belonged to the public, and there was nothing illegal about making it public. Taking care to comply with every federal database’s terms of use often proved time-consuming and inefficient. But by doing so, the downloader retained the high ground.

The terms of the PACER access initiative did not explicitly authorise remote downloading, and this made Malamud nervous. “do you have your library’s permission/tacit agreement to drain pacer?” he asked. “no”, Swartz replied. “sigh. this is not how we do things.” Malamud emailed Swartz on 4 September 2008. “we don’t cut corners. we belly up to the bar and get permission.” If Swartz wanted to collaborate with Malamud, he would have to play by the rules.

Swartz gave his assent and then, without telling Malamud, ran the program remotely anyway. He persuaded a friend in California to visit the library in Sacramento and surreptitiously download an authentication cookie that Swartz could use from home to fool PACER into thinking he was at the Sacramento library. In Massachusetts, Swartz ran the program, and then sat back and watched the files roll in. “we’re going to have fun with this,” Malamud told Swartz in late September, after Swartz had estimated that he would be able to capture approximately four terabytes worth of PACER records. “awesome. :-),” Swartz replied.

On 20 September 2008, Swartz revisited the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto in a blog post promoting the launch of a website called guerillaopenaccess.com. “I realised that the Open Access movement simply wasn’t enough — even if we got all journals going forward to be open, the whole history of scientific knowledge would be locked up,” he wrote by way of explanation. “I realised what must be done. If we couldn’t get free access to this knowledge, folks would have to take it.” A week later, the government noticed the unusually high number of downloads purportedly originating from the Sacramento County Public Law Library and severed Swartz’s access to PACER. When Malamud learned that Swartz had been running his crawler remotely despite instructions to the contrary, he told Swartz that “you definitely went over the line, even after I specifically told you I didn’t want that to happen on my resources.” Then, worse came to worst: fearing a security breach, PACER suspended the trial-access program entirely.

Swartz had downloaded almost 20 million pages from PACER, which constituted about 20 per cent of the entire database. Automatically downloading PACER wasn’t illegal, as far as Swartz and Malamud believed, but it was certainly unusual, and federal agencies tended to be suspicious of unusual things. In a report dated 6 February 2009, the Washington field office of the FBI noted that, thanks to Swartz’s actions, “the PACER system was being inundated with requests. One request was being made every three seconds.” Wondering exactly what Swartz and Malamud had been up to, the agency initiated an “information gathering phase”.

The file that the FBI started on Swartz contained a précis of his recent activities. It noted Swartz’s stated ambitions of “pulling all information about politics, votes, lobbying records, and campaign finance reports under one unified interface”. Swartz’s personal website, the FBI observed, “includes a section titled ‘Aaron Swartz: a lifetime of dubious accomplishments'”. In February, the FBI sent a car to surveil Swartz’s parents’ house in Highland Park, Illinois. On April 14, an agent called Highland Park hoping to talk with Swartz in person. Swartz wasn’t at home, but the FBI agent spoke with his mother, who was spooked enough to send Carl Malamud a frantic email and Twitter message informing him of what had happened. (“tell your mother that twitter is *not* the right way to reach me on this stuff”, Malamud told Swartz.)

Swartz eventually returned the call. “I’m sure you can guess what this is about. PACER,” said Special Agent Kristina Honeycutt, in Swartz’s telling. “We’re interested in sitting down and talking to you about it, more so to just find out exactly what happened, so we can help the US Courts get their system back up.” Honeycutt asked if Swartz would be willing to meet at some point soon for a face-to-face conversation. “If it was something bigger than that,” she said, “we wouldn’t have called you to ask.”

Swartz’s lawyer eventually called the FBI and said that his client would agree to meet only if the agency could guarantee that doing so would not work to his detriment. The FBI couldn’t make that promise, so Swartz never met with them. The investigation was eventually closed on 20 April 2009. Later, Swartz requested his FBI file and posted the contents online.

Swartz had spent two years downloading and uploading various data-sets in a flurry of shotgun activism: spreading his shot wide, not caring particularly about which target he hit. Now, his tactics had backfired. But far from convincing Swartz to curb his ambitions and proceed with more caution, the PACER experience, if anything, just encouraged him to reload. Swartz’s guerillaopenaccess.com website linked to the website of a group called the Content Liberation Front, self-described “guerillas of the open access movement”. The Content Liberation Front’s website was a simple list of projects, the first of which was the acquisition of expired journals.

“Many online journal sites, like JSTOR, even charge for articles which have entered the public domain,” the site said. “If you have copies of such articles, please upload them to archive.org and let us know.” Uploading public-domain articles was only the beginning: “If you have a bit more skills or time, we suggest liberating entire journal archives from these sites and uploading them to file sharing networks. If anyone does so, let us know we’ll post about it here.”

The site urged visitors to send hard copies of databases to its mailing address:

The Content Liberation Front

c/o Aaron Swartz

950 Massachusetts Ave., #320

Cambridge, MA 02139

USA

That was Swartz’s apartment, between Harvard Square and Central Square, just down the road from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This post was adapted and excerpted from The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet, by Justin Peters. Out now from Scribner.

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Apple, Samsung And Sony Linked To Child Labour Claims In Cobalt Mines

A new report by Amnesty International claims that Apple, Samsung and Sony are consistently failing to perform the basic checks which are required to ensure that mining operations for essential minerals do not take advantage of child labour.

The report focuses on cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — the origin of 50 per cent of the mineral that’s used heavily in li-on battery production. Based on interviews with 87 people, the report explains that cobalt is mined by children as young as seven in the country, before it is sold on to large mineral firms such as Congo Dongfang Mining, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Ltd and Huayou Cobalt.

Those companies process the ore, before selling it on to companies in China and South Korea where it’s used to make batteries. Amnesty International claims that large manufacturers, including Apple, Sony and Samsung, use parts which contain the cobalt mined in these operations.

Speaking to the BBC, Apple explained that it was “currently evaluating dozens of different materials, including cobalt, in order to identify labour and environmental risks”, while Sony said it was “working with the suppliers to address issues related to human rights and labour conditions”. Samsung claimed that “contracts with suppliers who use child labour will be immediately terminated”.

The report claims that as many as 40,000 children work in the cobalt mines of the DRC. Some of the children interviewed for the report claim to work up to 12 hours a day, earning between $1 and $2 in the process. They work above ground, washing and carrying heavy loads of rocks. Amnesty International claims they often face physical abuse and exposure to dangerous gas and dust.

It’s not the first time these companies have faced complaints over the use of child labour. Both Samsung and Apple have been accused of exploiting underage workers in the past.

“Millions of people enjoy the benefits of new technologies but rarely ask how they are made. It is high time the big brands took some responsibility for the mining of the raw materials that make their lucrative products.” explained Mark Dummett, Amnesty International’s business and human rights researcher, in a press release. “Companies whose global profits total $125 billion cannot credibly claim that they are unable to check where key minerals in their productions come from.”

[MIKA27]

The First Justice League Concept Art Has Been Revealed

DC Films has revealed the first concept art for the upcoming Justice League movie, in the lead up to DC Films presents: The Dawn Of The Justice League, a TV special airing on The CW.

Here’s Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, Ben Affleck’s Batman, Henry Cavill’s Superman, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and Ezra Miller’s The Flash together for the first time.

DC Films Presents: The Dawn Of The Justice League, hosted by Kevin Smith and Geoff Johns, will reveal the new Suicide Squad trailer along with more details of all the upcoming films in the DC cinematic universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx0ljG26jEo

[MIKA27]

China's Enormous Derelict Shopping Mall Does Not Bode Well For Humanity's Future

China is known for building ambitious infrastructure projects, and finding humans to populate them after the fact. Sometimes, it doesn’t go according to plan. This is one of those times.

Meet the Pentagonal Mart, a gargantuan, $US200 million shopping complex inspired by the US Pentagon, which has the dubious honour of being the largest vacant building in Shanghai. According to the People’s Daily News, the 70-acre mall was completed in 2009 and remains virtually empty to this day, “mainly because of its location and confusing inner structures”. Hmm, minor planning details.

Only in small sections of the shopping mall/business centre/human maze will a person occasionally be spotted pushing a lonely shopping cart down an aisle lit by endless fluorescent lights. Canned foods and packaged goods gleam untouched on shelves; museum pieces in an exhibition of superfluous development that needs no signage to explain itself.

If modern society were to collapse under the weight of egregiously unsustainable resource consumption, our dystopian swan song would probably look something like this.

[MIKA27]

Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Motörhead Edition

Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Select is a good enough whiskey, but when it’s a special bottle specifically picked by the barrel by Motörhead, it’s a whole different story. Described by the Atlantic City Bottling Company (the exclusive sales rep for these 288 bottles) as “dark, oaky, but still some corn and sweetness with that signature Jack smooth charcoal smoky finish” this Motörhead bottle of Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel is something that can be raised and celebrated for rock n’ roll, Lemmy or just for a good, old-fashioned cocktail. Unfortunately, this particular limited edition bottle of 288 sold out almost immediately, so keep your eyes peeled for the next release in one to two months.

[MIKA27]

Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood has been a best seller in Scandinavian countries for the past year, a book about the wisdom of chopping, stacking, and drying wood the Scandinavian way. The beautifully illustrated book provides useful advice, practical tips, interesting facts and anecdotes, but also dives into the history of our relationship with wood and fire. This US edition is a fully updated version of the Norwegian original, but with an appendix of US based resources and contacts.

Available for purchase in Europe here

[MIKA27]

2017 FORD F-150 RAPTOR SUPERCREW TRUCK

Ford's Raptor is able to get you pretty much anywhere you want to go. Problem is, with a limited backseat, it's likely going to be just you — and maybe a single friend — making the trip. The 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor Supercrew Truck fixes this problem by giving your rear passengers full doors for entry and exits, far more legroom, and actual seats to sit in. The extra room comes from a wheelbase that's a foot longer than its Supercab cousin. Otherwise, it's the same super-capable offroader you already know, with signature features like a 3.5L EcoBoost engine that bests the prior model's 6.2L V8, a 10-speed transmission, LED lighting, 17-inch wheels, and a high-strength steel frame and a military-grade aluminum alloy body that makes it over 500 pounds lighter than its predecessor.