Cory Doctorow: I've just finished "I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!" Paul Karasik's anthology of comics by Fletcher Hanks.

Fletcher Hanks is a mysterious and obscure figure in comics history, the creator of WWII-era strips like "Stardust the Super Wizard" and "Fantomah: Mystery Woman of the Jungle." These strips were beyond terrible, filled with a kind of idiotic energy. Each panel tops the previous panel for freakish goofiness, each strip surpasses the previous strip for mind-croggling ham-fistedness.

Hanks's characters have seemingly unlimited powers (and extremely quirky anatomy), and yet they always seem to turn up after some racial bad guy (these heroes fight Kurds, "slant eyes" and shylock-looking Jews, among others) kills thousands of people. Then they tear them apart limb from limb in bloody revenge.

Here's a typical plotline: Stardust, the Super Wizard, uses his interplanetary eye to spy on "Master-Mind" Destructo, who is "wising up" his troops with their plans for a gigantic "take over" (all scare quotes are per the original). They are going to pull off a scientific grift, starting with the USA. Destructo has an oxygen-destroying ray that he's going to use on every big shot in America, suffocating them all at the same time. The Destructo mob uses astounding efficiency to conceal vials of oxygen-destroying rays all over the world. They release the rays using a radio-cabin on a pine-clad mountain. The president, cabinet, and congress keel over. So do all newspaper and magazine editors, the FBI, secret service, bankers, industrial leaders, doctors, Army and Navy officers, enlisted men, police, etc. Panic sets in.

Stardust bursts out of space, lighting up Destructo's radio cabin. He demolishes the radio with a supersolar disintegrating ray, then releases a powerful counteracting ray throughout the country. The president and a few others are saved.

Destructo conceals himself in a hollow pine tree. Stardust splits the tree in twain and transfixes Destructo with a superiority beam. Then he applies his transforming ray, growing Destructo's head to an enormous size. The giant head absorbs Destructo's body (Destructo: "Stop it!").

Now Stardust takes Destructo's head to the space pocket of living death, where the headless headhunter dwells (Stardust: "He's the hugest giant in the universe!"). He bowls Destructo's head into the pocket. The headless headhunter catches the head and places it atop his shoulders, whence it is absorbed into the giant's body.

Now Stardust uses an attractor ray to round up the rest of Destructo's gang. He converts them all into one person, then destroys gravity around the one person, and applies a revolving speed ray. They spin up and off into space. Then Startdust disappears. (Bystander: "He certainly saved America from an awful fate!")

They're all like this. After the fifth or sixth one, I entered an altered state of consciousness. I scored this book off the recommended table at LA's Secret Headquarters comic shop, and Dave, the proprietor, assured me I'd never read anything like it. He was right. (He's not the only one -- on the back cover, Kurt Vonnegut testifies: "The recovery from oblivion of these treasures is in itself a major work of art.")

He also told me not to miss Paul Karasik's afterword, and he was especially right about that. The afterword is in the form of a Hanks-esque comic, in which Karasik hunts down Hanks's son and interviews him. It turns out that his son, a flying ace, was totally estranged from his father, an abusive alcoholic, and that they'd burned all his art except for one piece. He didn't even know his father had written these comics.

Karasik's maintaining an excellent Fletcher Hanks website with some examples of Hanks's artwork -- especially noteworthy is the page of interviews Karasik has conducted about Hanks's work. Link

David Pescovitz: Hypertalented artisan Kaden Harris, creator of antiques from a parallel universe, just completed construction on this incredible hypnodisk machine for me. This particular device is called The Focus Engine. Click on the image to see the exquisite detail. I cannot wait until it arrives so I can put it through its paces, or rather it can put me through mine. When I close my eyes and step into my dream house, every fixture is a Kaden Harris original.
Link

Previously on BB:
• Dangerous Things on your desk Link
• Tell the Eccentric Genius what to build Link
• Retro bong designed and built in 11 minutes Link

Cory Doctorow: I appear as a minor character in this delightful short-short sf story from Derrik's Short Science Fiction Stories blog:

June 2015
Gucci is announcing their line of DRM-free clothes today. These threads can be worn an infinite number of times, anytime of the year. If you happen to have multiple closets, these DRM-free clothes can be moved to and from your different closets.

Some privacy concerns have arisen from these new clothes. It seems that Gucci embeds your full user name onto the tag of whatever article of clothing is bought DRM-free. Some say this is to identify the clothes, should knock offs start to arise in the black market.

Current presidential candidate for the American Pirate Party, Cory Doctorow, has this to say, "Technology giveth, technology taketh away. Just as radio destroyed the vaudeville paradigm and the internet destroyed the old record industry, nano-fabs are turning the design and clothing market on its head. They (Design companies) should be creating a service model for their designers, instead of suing high school girls."

Link

Cory Doctorow: The Neuros community just released a major cool new feature for the OSD: playback of any YouTube video on your SD or HD TV set, along with keyword searching and other YouTube features.

The Neuros OSD is a sweet little Linux-based set-top box that can record from any device (cable box, game console, DVD player, etc) and can play back Internet video from USB drives, memory cards, your local area network and what have you. The best part is that the whole thing is open source, and Neuros owners are encouraged to come up with cool new features for it and distribute them. Other manufacturers threaten to sue you when you do this.

I love my OSD -- and I love that it is designed to make my life better, not to turn me into the "business model" for some net-hating entertainment giant. I'm not your countable eyeball! I'm a human being! Link

See also:
Neuros OSD: a set-top box that treats you like an owner
Open PVR from Neuros: cash money to owners who hack it
Neuros to AppleTV hackers: hack our set-top box!

Cory Doctorow:
Kevin's grandmother received this rejection letter from Walt Disney Productions in 1938, telling her that she wasn't welcome at animator training school because she was a girl. The sting seems to have been mitigated somewhat by the excellent stationery they sent the note on. Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

Nom du Keyboard writes "According to this article in The Inquirer and this Microsoft Knowledge Base article, a fix for some significant problems in many of Intel's most recent processors has been quietly released — by whom is not clear. Patches are available on Microsoft's site. Affected processors include Core 2 Duo E4000/E6000, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core 2 Xtreme X6800, XC6700, and XC6800. Details on just what has been fixed are scanty (it's called a 'reliability update'), however, it's probably more important than either Intel or Microsoft is openly admitting." There is no indication that Apple users are affected.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cory Doctorow: Podcasting legend Mur Lafferty has just launched "Earth," the third series in her "Heaven" podiobook. I was privileged to have Mur as a writing student at the Viable Paradise workshop last year (applications for this year's workshop are due on the 30th!), and I was impressed by her writing. Turns out, she's also a great performer, creating engaging, funny, and engrossing podcast-native fiction.

Heaven is a series of existential stories that recount the afterlives of two friends who die at the final trump on Earth, and are carried to heaven, then hell, and now -- Earth again. The characters are extremely likable, their problems engaging, and the scenarios are inventive, strange and compelling.

Podiobooks are free audiobooks, delivered as weekly podcasts to your podcatcher. Podiobooks creates a unique feed for you, starting with the first episode, so that it doesn't matter when the book started podcasting, you get to begin with part one. They solicit donations to pay the authors and their staff. There's plenty of great stuff there to enjoy, and Lafferty's books are a great entree to the concept. Link

See also:
Mur Lafferty's Heaven: free audiobook of existential comedy
Eastern Standard Tribe is a podiobook (and banned in Boston!)
Anthology of podcast sf stories launches

Just a couple weeks ago we were writing about a patent holding company that was claiming a patent on location-based search, with plans to sue just about everyone. Apparently, they're not the only one. A company called Local.com put out its own press release today claiming it now has a location-based search patent. While the company doesn't announce that it's going to sue everyone, you don't put out such a press release for no reason. Also, the CEO of the company claims: "we believe the methods covered have subsequently become the de-facto standard for information retrieval in the local search industry." Of course, in saying that, he's basically admitting that the idea was pretty obvious, because everyone moved in that obvious direction. Won't stop them from demanding licensing fees though. The patent itself was filed in 2005 -- by which point just about everyone in the space had already begun investing heavily in local search offerings. While the patent supposedly explains one method of doing local search, as you read through it, it does seem like a pretty damn obvious way of doing local search. There must be some prior art on this. In the meantime, though, if you were wondering what a patent thicket is, now you know.

Find out about tonight's dinner by listening to my latest TwitterGram.

Always a quickie, guaranteed to be 200K or less. A bite-size podcast.

BTW, the blogger whose name escaped me is Berkeley neighbor Scott Rosenberg.

Does Peter have an iPhone? We'll let you know.

You can spy on the festivities through the KitchenCam!

WSJdpatton writes "Walt Mossberg tested the iPhone for two weeks, in multiple usage scenarios, in cities across the US. His verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is on balance a beautiful and breakthrough hand-held computer. Its software especially sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though the lack of physical buttons can be a hindrance." Digital Daily has a roundup of early iPhone reviews.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For years, there have been lawsuits over state regulations that ban the sale of certain products from "unregistered" vendors outside of the state in question. The products regulated are often things like wine, contact lenses and cigarettes -- with the state often arguing that the laws are there to protect minors from getting easy access to potentially troublesome products. However, online sellers of those products argue that it's really just the state trying to keep a limited monopoly on sellers to protect local businesses from outside competition -- and that they take the safety issue very seriously and already protect children from getting access to these products. Some courts have ruled against the states (and in favor of the commerce clause of the constitution), while others have ruled in favor of the regulations. The Supreme Court ruled against the states two years ago -- but in a limited way. It said, effectively, that states could not ban shipments from out of state if it allowed shipments within the state. However, it could ban all such shipments. Apparently that didn't clear up enough, as the Supreme Court has now agreed to hear a different, but somewhat similar case, dealing with Maine's law preventing online sales of cigarettes, which claims that shipping companies need to carefully inspect any package that has tobacco in it before delivery -- which the shippers claim violates federal laws, saying the states can't force laws on shipping companies.

Several readers let us know that the University of Washington has announced that it will pass on RIAA settlement offer letters to students identified, presumably by IP address, as suspected file sharers. "The notices say offending students have 20 days to settle with the association by paying it about $3,000 to $5,000 or be taken to court without possibility of a settlement." The Vice Provost for Student Life sent an email to all students saying, "The University has been notified by the RIAA that we will be receiving a number of these early settlement letters. After careful consideration, we have decided to forward the letters to the alleged copyright violators."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Pogue, the New York Times: The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype.

Steven Levy, Newsweek: At Last, the iPhone.

Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal: Testing Out the iPhone.

Edward C. Baig, USA Today: Apple’s iPhone isn’t perfect, but it’s worthy of the hype.

All reviews are positive on balance. The negatives mainly coalesce around AT&T and EDGE as well as getting used to the keyboard. The keyboard gets better, EDGE does not.

The most surprising thing to me was how they all said the iPhone seems virtually scratch-proof. They’ve all tossed in their pockets, knocked it with change and keys, and keep it unprotected during the duration of their tests. And virtually no marks. That’s impressive. Some funky new materials or treatments perhaps?

Come on Friday!!!

It seems to be Spring season for rich-interface technologies. Most trying to blossom with a story about how they’ll rescue developers from the perils of web programming and its dirty tech of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These stories are told with a shadow assumption that the only reason developers put up with this trinity of web specs is because of what they get back in form of ubiquitous distribution.

That assumption then leads to the fallacy that if only someone could come along and give us a competitive distribution story using more “advanced” and “rich” interface technology, they’d surely be golden. That all web developers are waiting on is someone to save them from the browser mess and deliver them the clean desktop-development experience of yester-century.

In the immortal words of Eric Cartman: Bullcrap.

As a web developer, I’d like to confess my deep appreciation of the restricted canvas that we get from the basics of the web. We’ve entered an era where the browsers are good enough, compatible enough, and, most importantly, our understanding of how to use what we got has been raised to a level where things are finally looking pretty good.

I actually find the development experience between a modern web-application framework, Firebug, and current JavaScript libraries more than just bearable, I find it downright pleasant. Even more so because it’s born out of the pragmatism of not needing to be perfect. It has evolved over a decade of experimentation.

On the user experience side of things, we’re not even close to tapping out the potential of HTML. The majority of web sites and applications still suck. And if most developers and designers can’t make a clean run with the training wheels and constricted playground of HTML, then we probably are in no rush to start playing with a Ducatti on the Autobahn.

Mark Frauenfelder: Rev. Keith A. Gordon has been reviewing old issues of bOING bOING, the print zine that Carla and I started in 1988.

With issue #6 bOING bOING continues to grow both in size and stature, this issue including an interview with Robert Anton Wilson (by Antero Alli), Rudy Rucker on James Gleick's Chaos: The Software, an interview with comic artist Daniel Clowes and some high-falutin' high-tech articles about subjects that are still miles above my head (and, believe it or not, I have an above-average IQ...allegedly). Still, it was always good to see bOING bOING on the newstand, if only because their coverage of new media (books, zines, software) was second to none and always satisfied this young man's craving for fresh sources of information.

VITAL STATISTICS:
• Issue #6
• 1991, no month given
• B&W, 48-pages (including covers, spot color)
• Style: cyber zine

ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS
Robert Anton Wilson (prophet)
Daniel Clowes (cartoonist)
Brigitte Mars (herbalist)
"Passport To Invisible Utopia"
"Confessions In A Drug-Free Zone"
"Accessing Alternity With Consciousness Technology"
--> also reader mail, book & zine reviews

Volume: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Note: PDFs of Volumes 1 and 2 of bOING bOING are available for $2 each.

Mark Frauenfelder: RU Sirius has a great interview with blogger Josh Wolf, who was jailed for 228 days for refusing to comply with a government order to turn over video he'd shot of a G8 protest in San Francisco.

RU: The big mainstream media question is "Can bloggers be journalists?" In fact, you wrote an essay with that name. And I think the counter-argument would be that nearly everyone could become a blogger, and then everyone would be protected from giving evidence. So a group could conspire to break laws and members who blog could be protected. Karl Rove could become a journalist and make the same kind of claim!

JOSH: That argument's flawed, because if you are involved in a criminal activity, you don't have to testify because you're protected by the Fifth Amendment.

RU: Good point!

JOSH: But it's true that in Grand Juries they like to get rid of the Fifth Amendment. They say, "Here's a waiver. You no longer have the Fifth Amendment." But I've been reading the Constitution over and over again, and I can't find any section on giving waivers to the Fifth Amendment. And consider the First Amendment -- freedom of speech. Why doesn't that include freedom of silence? Why does the freedom to speak not include the freedom not to speak? And so, yes -- journalists should be protected in order to protect the act of journalism. But in a larger context, why do we have coercive custody to force people to testify? I mean, it's really a form of very low-grade torture -- we're going to hold you in custody until you break down and speak.

Link | MP3 of full interview

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Josh Wolf on Colbert Report
• Free Josh Wolf: update on jailed San Francisco video-blogger
• Josh Wolf remains in jail, dad starts "nonstop" vigil
• Vlogger Josh Wolf breaks jail time record for subpoena refusal
• Videoblogger Josh Wolf returns to prison today
• Court rejects Josh Wolf's appeal, return to prison possible
• Josh Wolf released on bail from SF Bay Area jail