With Illinois planning to appeal the Michael Allison case, in which the state wants to put Allison in jail for 75 years because he recorded an interaction with the police, it’s worth pointing out that this is not the only such case in Illinois. A few … Continue reading →

We’ve discussed this a few times in the past, but the FBI’s main counter-terrorism initiative these days appears to be centered around creating its own terrorist plots to thwart. First, they find clueless, easily manipulated people (frequently young a… Continue reading →

This isn’t much of a surprise, given our earlier stories. As we noted when the Justice Department indicted five people for their roles in the Ninjavideo community, they appeared to have a pretty strong case against them. So it really wasn’t a surpris… Continue reading →

With the Justice Department believing that it can get all sorts of data from telcos without any oversight or without a warrant, it seems rather important to know what kind of info your mobile operator is keeping — and for how long. The ACLU, via a Fr… Continue reading →

Via betajames, we learn of some research being done on a computer system that’s trying to predict political unrest by looking at press coverage.

In a recently published paper, Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-scale Human Behavior Using Global News M… Continue reading →

Aaron DeOliveira alerts us to a wonderful presentation by writer/artist/poet Austin Kleon called Steal Like an Artist. It’s a little less than 8 minutes, but worth watching:

There’s a lot in there that will sound familiar if you’re a regular reader… Continue reading →

A few years ago, we noted a study that suggested “counterfeit” goods weren’t nearly as big a “problem” as many made it out to be. That’s because in a very large percentage of cases, the buyers knew they were buying a counterfeit and did so on purpose … Continue reading →

The real estate market hasn’t recovered from the financial crisis, and it looks like lots of folks are asking themselves whether or not owning a home is really that important anymore. Cheaper housing options could offer some answers, so here are just a… Continue reading →

Thanks to European data privacy rules, some folks have successfully requested and received a detailed list of all the data that Facebook has kept about them. They’ve released a redacted version of the document for one person, which comes in at a hefty… Continue reading →

Cross-posted from ninapaley.com

Dear Internet,

You know what should be really easy to find online? Good quality, Public Domain vintage illustrations. You know, things like this:

I found this on Flickr, where someone claims full copyright on it…. Continue reading →