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For Video of Helicopter Shooting Fireworks at Lamborghini, YouTube Influencer Faces 10 Years in Prison

8 June 2024 at 11:34
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: A YouTuber who posted a Fourth of July video in which passengers on a low-flying helicopter shot fireworks at a speeding Lamborghini is facing a federal charge tied to the stunt. Suk Min Choi, 24, who runs a YouTube channel under the name Alex Choi, was charged Thursday with causing the placement of an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft, the Justice Department announced. He arranged to have the helicopter fly over the El Mirage Dry Lakebed near Los Angeles in June 2023 for a video titled "Destroying a Lamborghini With Fireworks," according to a complaint filed in the Central District Court of California. The video, released on July 4, shows scenes akin to an action film as Choi laughs while driving the Lamborghini and helicopter-launched fireworks ricochet off the car, enveloping it in sparks... Choi faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, according to the Justice Department. More details from NBC Los Angeles: Federal authorities said radar data from the day of the video shoot showed that the helicopter left an airport in Pacoima, California, around 1:53 p.m. and turned toward El Mirage Lake, a dry lake in California, where the video was filmed. The helicopter's transponder was then turned off, according to the affidavit. The helicopter reappeared on the radar and flew back to the airport just before 9 p.m., the document says. The pilot initially told an FAA inspector that he did not know anything about the El Mirage video, according to the affidavit. In a follow-up call, he told inspectors that he did not want Choi to know he was speaking with them and said "Choi was doing unsafe activities involving cars and aircraft." In January, the FAA issued an emergency order revoking the pilot's private pilot certification, the affidavit says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Making a One Billion Year Clock from Lego

7 June 2024 at 02:44
Building a mechanical Lego clock that keeps time for 1000000000 years. The clock has dials to display seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia, mega-annums and galactical years. It rewinds itself automatically every 2 minutes. The (12 minute) video starts with a simple pendulum and progressively adds gears - and more gears.

A Quarter Century on the High Seas

By: Rhaomi
2 June 2024 at 00:59
At the end of the nineties, technology and the Internet were a playground for young engineers and 'hackers'. Some of them regularly gathered in the w00w00 IRC chatroom on the EFnet network. This tech-think-tank had many notable members, including WhatsApp founder Jan Koum and Shawn Fanning, who logged on with the nickname Napster. In 1998, 17-year-old Fanning shared an idea with the group. 'Napster' wanted to create a network of computers that could share files with each other. More specifically, a central music database that everyone in the world could access. This idea never left the mind of the young developer. Fanning stopped going to school and flanked by his friend Sean Parker, devoted the following months to making his vision a reality. That moment came on June 1, 1999, when the first public release of Napster was released online. Soon after, the software went viral.
Napster Sparked a File-Sharing Revolution 25 Years Ago [TorrentFreak]

Cordcutting.com: The State of Content Piracy in 2024
As streaming services raise prices and crack down on password sharing, one in three Americans say they've pirated TV or movies in the past year.
Billboard: Spotify's Estimated $150M Songwriter Royalty Cuts: Music Industry Reactions Wired: Musi Won Over Millions. Is the Free Music Streaming App Too Good to Be True?
The app's fan base trends young, and it's popular among high schoolers. In one classroom of sophomores that WIRED surveyed at a Chicago high school, 80 percent used it to stream music. When asked why they liked it, they noted it's free, doesn't interrupt the music to play ads as Spotify's free tier does, and has a broad catalog. The app offers an alternative to the subscription-dominated world of streaming entertainment, one especially appealing to people too young for full-time jobs. Yet while Musi has many trappings of a startup success story, a closer look raises questions about its unusual business model, which the company says involves sourcing music from Google's YouTube. Fans on social media have often asked questions like: "Is Musi legal?" and "What is the catch?" And the legality of Musi is now being questioned by record labels and music industry groups, WIRED has learned, over whether it has the rights to distribute and monetize the music users stream on its platform. Musi did not respond to requests for comment.

disquieting images that just feel 'off'

By: Rhaomi
30 May 2024 at 16:30
If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.
So stated an anonymous 2019 thread on 4chan's /x/ imageboard -- a potent encapsulation of liminal-space horror that gave rise to a complex mythos, exploratory video games, and an acclaimed web series (previously; soon to become a major motion picture from A24!). In the five years since, the evolving "Backrooms" fandom has canonized a number of other dreamlike settings, from CGI creations like The Poolrooms and a darkened suburb with wrong stars to real places like the interior atrium of Heathrow's Terminal 4 Holliday Inn and a shuttered Borders bookstore. But the image that inspired the founding text -- an anonymous photo of a vaguely unnerving yellow room -- remained a mystery... until now.

...turns out it's from a 2003 blog post about renovating for an RC car race track in Oshkosh! Not quite as fun a reveal as for certain other longstanding internet mysteries, but still satisfying, especially since it includes another equally-unsettling photo (and serendipitously refers to a "back room"). Also, due credit to Black August, the SomethingAwful goon who quietly claims to have written the original Backrooms text. Liminal spaces previously on MeFi:
Discussing the Kane Pixels production (plus an inspired-by series, A-Sync Research). Note that as the Backrooms movie takes shape, Kane is continuing work on an intriguing spiritual successor: The Oldest View The Eerie Comfort of Liminal Spaces A Twitter thread on being lost in a real-life Backrooms space Inside the world's largest underground shopping complex A 2010 post about Hondo, an enigmatic Half-Life map designer who incorporated "enormous hidden areas that in some cases dwarfed the actual level" MyHouse.WAD, a sprawling, reality-warping Doom mod that went viral last year AskMe: Seeking fiction books with labyrinths and other interminable buildings
My personal favorite liminal space: the unnervingly cheerful indoor playground KidsFun from '90s-era Tampa -- if only because I've actually been there as a kid (and talked about its eeriness on the blue before). Do you have any liminal spaces that have left an impression on you?

Washing machine chime scandal shows how absurd YouTube copyright abuse can get

30 May 2024 at 14:28
Washing machine chime scandal shows how absurd YouTube copyright abuse can get

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

YouTube's Content ID systemโ€”which automatically detects content registered by rightsholdersโ€”is "completely fucking broken," a YouTuber called "Albino" declared in a rant on X (formerly Twitter) viewed more than 950,000 times.

Albino, who is also a popular Twitch streamer, complained that his YouTube video playing through Falloutย was demonetized because a Samsung washing machine randomly chimed to signal a laundry cycle had finished while he was streaming.

Apparently, YouTube had automatically scanned Albino's video and detected the washing machine chime as a song called "Done"โ€”which Albino quickly saw was uploaded to YouTube by a musician known as Audego nine years ago.

Read 35 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Voices of (Lost) Generations

By: kliuless
29 May 2024 at 08:55
nothing, except everything. - "filmed throughout my last year of high school โ€” to nothing and everything we feel."[1,2]

via Screentime [ungated]: "Have you heard of Wesley Wang? The 19-year-old filmmaker is adapting his viral video into a movie for Darren Aronofsky and Sony. YouTube stars Colin & Samir broke down this story (with a little help from me)." also btw...
  • Master of Make-Believe [archive] - "Zach Horwitz thrived in Los Angelesโ€”where, as one acquaintance said, 'the more you fake it, the more people actually buy it.'"
  • In Horwitz's fantasies, you hear echoes of the long tradition of American artifice: of Napoleon Hill, who wrote in "Think and Grow Rich" that "whatever the mind of men can conceive and believe, it can achieve," and of the clergyman Norman Vincent Peale, who declared, "As you act and persevere in acting, so you tend to become"โ€”a principle impressed on a young real-estate scion named Donald Trump when his family attended Peale's sermons. At times, this tendency still seems strong enough to overwhelm the systems that we've developed to punish it. Even after Elizabeth Holmes was convicted, she voiced a belief that lies are just a stop on the way to truth. Asked what she thought would've happened if she had not courted so much attention, she told an interviewer, "We would've seen through our vision."
  • Movie Monologues That Changed My Entire Worldview - "The famous monologue at the end of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator for example, which was released well over 80 years ago in 1940, may as well have been written yesterday."[3]
  • I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness - not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost... The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish...
  • The Great Flattening - "In short, the analog world was defined by scarcity, which meant distribution of scarce goods was the locus of power; the digital world is defined by abundance, which means discovery of what you actually want to see is the locus of power. The result is that consumers have access to anything, which is to say that nothing is special; everything has been flattened."
  • All of Hollywood, convinced that content was what mattered, jointly killed the linear TV model to ensure that all professionally-produced content was available on-demand, even as YouTube became the biggest streamer of all with user-generated content that is delivered through the exact same distribution channel (apps on a smart device) as the biggest blockbusters.
  • What "Follow Your Dreams" Misses | Harvey Mudd Commencement Speech 2024 - "For those in the audience who don't know who I am, I focus on making videos about mathematics with an emphasis on visualizations. It's a weird job. I do love it though, and it's no exaggeration to describe it as a dream job. And a common clichรฉ is for someone who is lucky enough to land in a dream job, to stand confidently in front of a group of fledgling graduates, and to compel them to follow their dreams. Frankly, on its own, I don't think this is very good advice."[4]
  • I don't know if you felt it yet, but today marks a day in your life when a fundamental goal changes. When you're a student, the fundamental goal is to grow, to learn, to become better. So many institutions and structures around you are there to support you in growing and learning and getting better and to reward you for doing so. In life after college, the goal changes a little, and success hinges on how effectively you're able to add value to others.

YouTube Becomes Latest Battlefront for Phishing, Deepfakes โ€“ Source: www.darkreading.com

youtube-becomes-latest-battlefront-for-phishing,-deepfakes-โ€“-source:-wwwdarkreading.com

Source: www.darkreading.com โ€“ Author: Dark Reading Staff 2 Min Read Source: Andrea Danti via Alamy Stock Photo YouTube has turned into a new front for malicious actors to deploy phishing, other malware, and bogus investment schemes, according to a report from researchers at security vendor Avast. The researchers specifically homed in on Lumma and RedLine [โ€ฆ]

La entrada YouTube Becomes Latest Battlefront for Phishing, Deepfakes โ€“ Source: www.darkreading.com se publicรณ primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

ciao

By: Rhaomi
24 May 2024 at 08:00
็ช“ใ‹ใ‚‰ใฏๆŸ”ใ‚‰ใ‹ใชๅ…‰ใŒๅฐ„ใ—่พผใฟใ€
[Soft light streamed through the window]
็ช“ใฎๅค–ใงใฏ้ณฅใŸใกใŒๆญŒใ†็พŽใ—ใ„ๆœใซใ€
[Outside, birds were singing on a beautiful morning]
็งใซๆ’ซใงใ‚‰ใ‚ŒใชใŒใ‚‰็œ ใ‚‹ใ‚ˆใ†ใซใใฃใจ้€ใใพใ—ใŸใ€‚
[As I petted her, she passed away gently, as if falling asleep]
้•ทใ„้–“ใ‹ใผใกใ‚ƒใ‚“ใ‚’ๆ„›ใ—ใฆไธ‹ใ•ใฃใŸใฟใชใ•ใพใ€ๆœฌๅฝ“ใซใ‚ใ‚ŠใŒใจใ†ใ”ใ–ใ„ใพใ—ใŸใ€‚
[To everyone who has loved Kabo-chan for a long time, thank you very much]
ใ‹ใผใกใ‚ƒใ‚“ใฏไธ–็•Œไธ€ๅนธใ›ใช็Šฌใ ใฃใŸใจๆ€ใ„ใพใ™ใ€‚ใใ—ใฆ็งใฏไธ–็•Œไธ€ๅนธใ›ใช้ฃผใ„ไธปใงใ—ใŸใ€‚
[I believe Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world, and I was the happiest owner]
Kabosu, the beloved Shiba-Inu behind the globally popular Doge meme, has passed away peacefully at home today at the age of 18.

This sweet girl, abandoned by a shuttered puppy mill, had ended up in a kill shelter before being rescued and nursed back to health by kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato in 2008. She was named "Kabosu" after the round fruit that her furry head resembled. Photos of a wary Kabo-chan from Sato's blog formed the basis for the popular Doge meme circa 2013, which spread into a whole series of Shiba-centric lore, the mascot of an ironic cryptocurrency, and even got her a lovely statue (and a manhole cover) in her hometime prefecture of Sakura. Sato gamely documented Kabo-chan's charmed life (and her feline friends) on her blog and YouTube channel; a brush with leukemia and liver disease in 2022 (previously) elicited a wave of support and love from around the world, and she soon made a "miraculous" recovery and lived happily and well for another 18 months. For locals, a farewell gathering is planned for Sunday, May 26th, from 1-4pm at dog-friendly hangout spot of Kaori Flowers in Narita, with a larger event planned for the beautiful Sakura Furusato Plaza when the weather cools later in the year. Sato's obit post closes:
ใ‹ใผใกใ‚ƒใ‚“ใฏไปŠใ‚‚ใพใ ใซใ“ใซใ“็ฌ‘ใฃใฆใ‚ทใƒƒใƒใ‚’ๆŒฏใฃใฆ [Kabo-chan is still smiling happily and wagging her tail] ็งใซๅฏ„ใ‚Šๆทปใฃใฆใใ‚Œใฆใ„ใ‚‹ใจๆ€ใ„ใพใ™ใ€‚ใใฃใจใ“ใ‚Œใ‹ใ‚‰ใ‚‚ใšใฃใจ [I believe she is still staying close to me. Surely, from now on and forever.]
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