Luke.stirling

LEGO builder Doomhandle wasn’t satisfied with LEGO’s official versions of the Imperial Star Destroyer — they just didn’t have enough detail, inside or out. Taking a cue from the official sets, though, he’s created a stellar model of the Imperial Star Destroyer Tyrant with a minifig-scale interior full of various scenes aboard a ship of the Imperial fleet.

Doomhandle tells us he spent over a year constructing it, and the final model is nearly 5 feet in length. It is significantly more accurate and detailed than LEGO’s official Ultimate Collector’s Series model, and it features a full hangar deck complete with TIE Interceptors, a Sentinel Class Imperial Shuttle, and a captured A-Wing. It also has a command deck, conference room, barracks, detention center, supply rooms, canteen, and more.

And if you’re curious about what it takes to design and construct such an impressive model, Doomhandle has documented his build process, so you can see lots of pictures of the hidden frame as a work-in-progress and get a feel for just how large this ship really is.

In many countries it’s accepted that whoever commits a crime or a civil tort in the file-sharing space is the person that should be held directly responsible for it.

For example, if someone shares the latest movie online without permission, that is the only person copyright holders should have an interest in for that particular offense. Certainly, innocent third parties should not be held liable.

In Germany, however, the position is more complex. Due to a concept known as Störerhaftung, a third party who played no intentional part in someone else’s infringements can be held liable for them. This type of liability has raised its head in many file-sharing cases where open WiFi owners have been considered liable for other people’s infringements.

Now, however, this stifling situation is probably in its dying days. According to a Spiegel report, Germany’s ruling coalition have agreed to abolish the so-called ‘interferer liability’.

This means that both private and small scale WiFi operators (such as café owners) will soon enjoy the same freedom from liability enjoyed by commercial operators.
No splash-pages or password locks will be required meaning that open WiFi hotspots will at last become as freely available in Germany as they are already in countries such as France and the UK.

Pressure had been mounting on the German government following a European Court of Justice opinion published in March which held that entities operating unsecured wireless networks should not be held liable for the copyright infringements of third parties.

The case involves Pirate Party member Tobias McFadden who received a claim from music company Sony who alleged that his open WiFi was used to offer an album without permission. Sony demanded that McFadden prevent future infringement by password protecting his network, blocking file-sharing ports, and logging/blocking users sharing copyrighted content. The Pirate objected to Sony’s claims of liability and the case went to the European Court of Justice.

The final judgment from the ECJ is not expected for a few months but in most cases early recommendations from experts are upheld by the ruling judge.

Should all go smoothly, the removal of the liability from German law has the potential to shake up the massive file-sharing settlement letter business. While those accused of infringement already have some means to fight back, the absence of third-party liability for connection owners could remove much of the pressure placed on them to settle, whether they were directly involved in an infringement or not.

According to reports the legislative amendments are set to be passed by Parliament next week and could be in place as early as this fall.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

As if 2016 didn’t already contain a rich enough seam of strategy games, Firaxis announce today that Civilization VI will be released on October 21st. Development duties are in the hands of the team behind Civ V’s expansions, Gods & Kings and Brave New World, and when we spoke to designer Ed Beach and associate producer Sarah Darney last week to learn all the details, they told us that almost every system from the complete Civ V will be included in the sequel: trade routes, religious systems, archaeology…there’ll be no need to wait for expansions, it’s all in the base game.

The game is running on a brand new suite of software, built to be far more mod-friendly than its predecessor, and as well as brand new AI systems, there are a host of new mechanics that will explore and emphasise your relationship with Civ’s greatest character: the map.

… [visit site to read more]

moonry:

let him buy a phone!

Bird prefers android over iPhone

A musical pioneer who played a central role in defining a genre of music that now dominates the airwaves has been accused of child molestation by four men, who say the man abused them when they were boys in the 80s.

Where’s the media outrage?

The answer to that question tells us a lot about the racial divide in the US — and the racial divide in our mass media.

The allegations against Afrika Bambaataa, the hip hop DJ whose early tracks, particularly the Kraftwerk-swiping Planet Rock, helped to define and popularize both hiphop and electro in the early 80s, have been covered on black-oriented radio talk shows, in the hip hop media, and in black-oriented publications like Jet and The Root.

But the story has barely made a ripple in the mainstream — that is, white-dominated — media, with the notable exception of the New York Daily News, which has broken key elements of the story.

The details of the allegations are certainly troubling enough. Vulture — one of the handful of other outlets in the mainstream media to cover the story — sums up what we know so far:

Last month, Ronald Savage, a former New York State Democratic Committee member,accused Bambaataa of sexually abusing him in 1980, when Savage was 15 years old.

Since then, three more men have come forward with similar allegations: A man named Hassan Campbell told the New York Daily News that Bambaataa repeatedly sexually abused him when Campbell was 12 and 13, calling the DJ a “pervert” who “likes little boys.” Two other men whose identities were not fully disclosed also say Bambaataa abused them when they were minors — a former bodyguard also claims Bambaataa abused “hundreds” of young boys since the early 1970s. Bambaataa has denied all of the allegations.

[NOTE: The reference to the early 70s is puzzling. Elsewhere in the interview quoted in the NY Daily News, the apparent former bodyguard simply referred to “the 70s,” so I’m assuming he was misspeaking when referring to the early 70s. Bambaataa was born in 1957; he started his career as a DJ in 1977.]

The leaders of the Universal Zulu Nation, a sort of hip-hop advocacy group that Bambaataa founded in the 80s, first responded to the allegations by dismissing Savage, the first accuser to step forward, as “mentally challenged,” and denouncing the Daily News as a propaganda organ “compromised and controlled by U.S. government intelligence.”

But on Friday the group reversed itself, issuing a statement announcing that

ALL accused parties and those accused of covering up the current allegations of child molestation have been removed and have stepped down from their current positions.

If the allegations against Bambaataa are true — especially those coming from the man who says he was the hip hop producer’s former bodyguard — we’re talking about abuse on a Jimmy Savile scale. So why isn’t this story getting written about in the New York Times or talked about on CNN? Because the alleged victims were black boys? Because white people see Bambaataa more as a one hit wonder than a cultural icon?

Maybe Hannibal Buress needs to start talking about Bambaataa in his standup. That might get this story the attention it deserves.

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I really thought i had been productive this weekend. that counts, right?

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danismm:

Airport Orly, Paris 1960s

Hovertext: I totally agree with you, Zach. And that's how I know the moon landing was fake.

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Thanks to Marie for the diction suggestion. 

If you’ve seen the movie with Matt Damon or read the book by Andy Weir, then this scene from The Martian should be instantly recognizable. Builder Paul Trach perfectly captured the scene where Mark Watney, the story’s main character, seals the NASA habitat in plastic and cultivates soil to grow potatoes. I love the way Paul used the backside of those masonry bricks to create lined soil for planting. Also, Paul used actual LEGO bags as the plastic for his build. Now that’s some truly epic nice parts usage (NPU)!

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Canadian couple, the Stephans, who were convicted of letting their two year old son die of meningitis because they were so committed to their willful ignorance.

Because sitting back and doing nothing while your child dies of meningitis is considered unacceptable in most civilized societies, a jury in Canada just convicted a mother and father of failing to provide for their 2-and-a-half-year-old son when he became deathly ill four years ago. Maybe you remember this story: David and Collet Stephan are religious fundamentalists who own a company called Truehope Nutritional Support, which sells natural, homeopathic remedies and nutritional supplements. Not surprisingly, the Stephans favor homeopathic remedies over ones that, you know, actually work, and when their son Ezekiel came down with meningitis they tried to cure him by feeding him “water with maple syrup, juice with frozen berries and finally a mixture of apple cider vinegar, horseradish root, hot peppers, mashed onion, garlic and ginger root.” This nonsense cocktail was supposed to boost his immunity. Needless to say, it didn’t work.

That’s right. It didn’t work. Ezekiel died. Their defense at trial consisted of pleading ignorance — they didn’t know how sick their feverish, rigid, screaming child was — and, unbelievably, that it was the fault of the ambulance that finally picked up their dying child. They haven’t learned a thing. David Stephan was whining on facebook about it.

Dear Jury,

I deeply Love each one of you and appreciate the tremendous sacrifice that you have made over the last 8 weeks. I only wish that you could’ve seen how you were being played by the crowns deception, drama and trickery that not only led to our key witnesses being muzzled, but has also now led to a dangerous precedent being set in Canada. The flood gates have now been opened and if we do not fall in line with parenting as seen fit by the government, we all stand in risk of criminal prosecution. Remember what the crown prosecutors closing remarks were to combat the fact that the ill equipped ambulance resulted in Ezekiel’s brain death. She communicated that this was not about him dying, but rather about whether or not his life was endangered at any point due to our actions. How many parents have lost children for various reasons, all of which could be concluded that the child’s life was endangered and that the parents should have been able to foresee it? How many parents have had close calls to losing a child, wherein it could be concluded that the child’s life was endangered and the parents should have been able to foresee it? Whether medical attention is sought or not and your child lives, it is of no consequence. It is only about whether or not it can be proven that at some point your child’s life was endangered, and if so you may find yourselves in the same boat as us.
The flood gates have now been opened and my main concern is no longer for Collet and I, but rather for Canadian’s as a whole.

May Heaven help us all!

Aww, you can’t blame them for not being able to foresee that Ezekiel’s condition was deadly dangerous! Except, of course, that they did know that he was extremely sick with severe symptoms — so sick that they were stuffing him with every magic herb they could find on the shelf, and they drove him to a naturopathic clinic to get him a dose of…echinacea. Jebus.

I’ve been in Ezekiel’s shoes, roughly. When I was 8 or 9 years old, I came down with what my parents thought was the flu…only it kept going, and it kept getting worse, with my fever going up and up. I remember it was so bad that I started drifting in and out of consciousness, which was weird — to be lying down in the house one moment, then next thing I’m lying down on a car seat, and then I’m at my grandparents’ house (the other kids were being dropped off), and then my mother holding me while Dad was doing some white-knuckle driving. I also remember how terrified my parents looked.

I’m sure the Stephans were also terrified and wanted the best for their painfully ill son.

But here’s the difference: my parents weren’t rushing me to the naturopathic clinic, but to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with acute appendicitis and immediately trundled into surgery (well, almost immediately — I also remember vomiting explosively all over the hospital lobby, which may have helped expedite a response).

Another difference: I lived. Ezekiel died.

But the difference wasn’t that my parents loved me more than Ezekiel’s parents did him: loving someone harder and wishing them well with all the fervency in the world doesn’t help. It’s what you do with that love that matters, that you use that love to do what is right and good for others, that you use reason and rational action to keep the love alive.

So I was lucky to have parents who tried to do what was objectively best for me, and weren’t more interested in propping up their ideology or their religion or their pseudoscience with my life — which is actually a rather low bar for someone to hurdle, but it’s obvious that there are quite a few people who can’t manage to clear it.

Thanks, Mom, for being both caring and sensible.

Except for a few men trying to spoil it all. They have a woman-majority city council–which voted against buying a plot of land for a sports arena. I approve — sportsball is fine, but let the fans and teams pay for it, instead of letting wealthy team owners mooch off the public teat. But guess how some people reacted?

In hundreds of email messages and social media posts, the female Council members were attacked by people — practically all apparently men — who said they lacked intelligence and an understanding of the importance of sports because they are women. One Twitter poster simply used a four-letter graphic insult to define them. Another man, in a signed email, suggested they should all kill themselves and “rot in hell.” Other critics, in less violent but equally demeaning terms, addressed them as “ladies,” who should “go back to the kitchen.”

Disappointingly, I am totally unsurprised.

Someday, I could imagine myself retiring to somewhere near Seattle, but it won’t be the sportsball teams that draw me there…and the sportsball fans are likely to repel me.

Chris McVeigh proves once again that he’s the master of technology nostalgia with this perfect recreation of an 80s/early-90s workspace.

The desk and chair are nice work, but it’s the details on the desktop which make this brilliant — the phone, the lamp, the stapler, the computer itself, all good. But best of all? The floppy disk storage box — a long-departed office fixture which remains immediately identifiable.

And of course, everyone who works with technology deserves to get the occasional upgrade…

The TSA gambled on millions of wealthy Americans opting out of its pornoscanner-and-shoe-removal process and signing up for its Precheck policy, which allows travellers to pay for the "privilege" of walking through a metal-detector with their shoes on, while their laptops stay in their bags. (more…)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IFLScience: A new paper published in the journal Psychological Science has attempted to define and investigate the subject of free will. By asking participants to anticipate when they thought a specific color of circle would appear before them, something determined completely by chance, the researchers found that their predictions were more accurate when they had only a fraction of a second to guess than when they had more time. The participants subconsciously perceived the color change as it happened prior to making their mental choice, even though they always thought they made their prediction before the change occurred. They were getting the answers right because they already knew the answer. "Our minds may be rewriting history," Adam Bear, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at Yale University and lead author of the study, said in a statement. The implication here is that when it comes to very short time scales, even before we think we've made a conscious choice, our mind has already subconsciously decided for us, and free will is more of an illusion than we think.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hovertext: If not a single sparrow falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge, why doesn't he catch the damn thing?

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Finally starting to feel human again. 

Airport has been one of the coolest subthemes of LEGO Town sets since the 90s. But while planes have become bigger and better, airport buildings have become more crowded and basic. Andrew Tate rectifies the situation with an outstanding luxury lounge right from the 1950s.

Sharp lines and plain colors are the most memorable features of architecture from that golden age of flight, and Andrew recreates that style perfectly with basic and curved lines. Even the minifigures in this scene fit right in: notice two charming flight attendants in their chic uniforms, taking a break before their next flight.

A Texas eighth grader who used a $2 bill her grandmother gave her to buy school lunch last year found herself in the police's office.

Danesiah Neal only wanted to buy some chicken nuggets at Christa McAuliffe Middle School in Houston, but the school confiscated the $2 bill, told her it was fake and turned her into the authorities, according to ABC.

Neal, who has never had any problems with the school before, said that police told her she was in big trouble. The school then called Daneisha’s grandmother, Sharon Kay Joseph, who told them the bill was real and that it was given to her at a convenience store.

Police then went to a bank which verified the authenticity of the bill. Since the bill was made in 1953, the school's counterfeit pen didn't work.

No charges were filed against the middle schooler but her grandmother is outraged and says she had to go hungry that day because the school took her money. The police finally gave Joseph her bill back. 'He brought me my $2 bill back,' Joseph told ABC. 'He didn’t apologize. He should have, and the school should have because they pulled Danesiah out of lunch, and she didn’t eat lunch that day because they took her money.' 

Houston schoolchildren have been known to photocopy money and try to spend it, but this is not how incidents should be handled.

As reported by U.S. Uncut:

Rick Friday, an editorial cartoonist who worked at a local Iowa newspaper for 21 years, has been fired for a cartoon that criticized Monsanto and other major figures in Big Agriculture...

However, the following day, Friday received an email from his supervisor at Farm News, informing him that he would be fired, citing he was “instructed” by a superior to not accept another cartoon from Friday. The supervisor told Friday that “in the eyes of some, Big Ag cannot be criticized or poked fun at.”..

After he was fired, Friday posted the controversial cartoon with a defiant Facebook status, standing by the research he conducted for the cartoon and protesting his sudden dismissal after 21 years and nearly 1,100 cartoons for the paper. As of this writing, the post has been shared over 3,000 times.

“Hopefully my children and my grandchildren will see that this last cartoon published by Farm News out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, will shine light on how fragile our rights to free speech and free press really are in the country,” Friday wrote.

More at the link.  TYWKIWDBI is pleased to contribute to the Streisand Effect.

Congrats to Andrew from Wakefield for winning this month’s raffle – a signed, dedicated copy of Wrong Again, God Boy.

Join the fun and support J&M on Patreon here.

the-future-now:

Watch: Earlier in the clip, Kimmel roasted Sarah Palin for her “offensive and dangerous” climate nonsense.

Follow @the-future-now

Not a huge fan of Kimmel, but this is fucking glorious and important.

This atmospheric building by Pete Strege is called the Monotone Motel and almost seems like a black and white image until you spot the coloured minifigures near the staircase. The neo-gothic inspired architecture has some great brickwork detail near the base using old dark grey tiles against the dark blueish grey bricks. I particularly love the use of Thor hammers across the central area to add texture and detail to the stonework. The mix of old greys and the newer blueish grey LEGO colours allow some contrast within the grey-scale colour scheme.

It’s worth taking a closer look at the clock to see the details and clever parts used, a foil, a short spear with Pin Hole and a sword blade with bar. The builder mentioned that he searched for weeks for just the right parts, I think it’s a great combination.

You can see more photographs, including the monochrome interior, in Pete’s Flickr album.

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I’ve been actually pretty much brain-ok for the last few months but something this week feels like I’ve been hit with a sledgehammer. I actually thought I had the flu for a few days until I realized that my body felt fine enough, I just hate everything and everything hurts and I’m tired all the time and – oh. Right. This again.

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so anyway there’s a kickstarter to make three different fully-articulated 1/6-scale scientifically-accurate raptor action figures and i figure if this doesn’t fund dina will leap out of your screens and murder every single damn one of you so here’s a link

and if dina leaping out of your screen to murder you sounds enticing, then she will NOT do this if the kickstarter does not fund

dina is canny

I don’t get the logic. The American Patriarchy Association is going to prove that these transgender-tolerant restrooms at Target are a problem, by sending fundamentalist men into them.

In an interview this morning with “Breitbart News Daily,” the American Family Association’s director of governmental affairs, Sandy Rios, said that activists have been “testing” Target’s policy by sending men into women’s rooms at the retail chain.

That makes no sense. Shall I test the problems with American gun laws by putting guns in the hands of toddlers and pointing them at Mommy? Shall I prove that the security at big banks is inadequate by robbing a few of them?

This is like the story of the self-appointed civilian bathroom police, or the cops harassing a lesbian woman for using the women’s room. There wasn’t a problem until these assholes created one.

“Men shout in righteous rage, but women who raise their voices are still often seen as losing control or, heaven forbid, ‘shrill.’”

This column by Mary McNamara for the Los Angeles Times explores how some women are pushing back against the old double standard and refusing to hide their deeply justified anger.

the-future-now:

NASA has released a full high-res map of Pluto

Follow @the-future-now​

The artist is Joe Vollan.

As reported in the Miami Herald:

A recent International Monetary Fund report that Venezuela will reach a 720 percent inflation rate this year — the highest in the world — has drawn a lot of media attention, but what I heard from a senior IMF economist this week was even more dramatic.

Robert K. Rennhack, deputy director of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere department, told me in an interview that Venezuela is on a path to hyperinflation — the stage where the economy reaches total chaos — and could reach a “total collapse of the economic system” in 12 to 18 months if there are no changes in economic policies...

Many Venezuelans believe the country will explode much sooner than in 12 to 18 months. Prices go up daily, supermarket shelves are near empty, there are growing electricity shortages — Maduro has declared every Friday in April and May a non-working holiday in order to save energy — and crime statistics are skyrocketing...

Here are two comments from a Reddit thread:
And this from the Washington Post:

Venezuela, a country of 30 million that despite holding the world’s largest oil reserves has descended into a dystopia where food, medicine, water and electric power are critically scarce. Riots and looting broke out in several blacked-out cities last week, forcing the deployment of troops. A nation that 35 years ago was the richest in Latin America is now appealing to its neighbors for humanitarian deliveries to prevent epidemics and hunger.

The regime that fostered this nightmare, headed by Hugo Chávez until his death in 2013, is on the way out: It cannot survive the economic crisis and mass discontent it has created. The question is whether the change will come relatively peacefully or through an upheaval that could turn Venezuela into a failed state and destabilize much of the region around it.

Finnish AFOL Eero Okkonen created the most amazing street corner ever and we all love modular buildings at The Brothers Brick, especially when they have a distinct taste in architecture! So a mix of art-nouveau buildings inspired by the dream-like city of Prague definetely catches our eyes. Luckily, Eero went to further lengths to name each of the five houses, wrote brief explanations on building techniques and also provided some photographs of inspiring places. Read them all on his personal blog.