Claudia, a Dublin-based reader of Sociological Images, clipped this image of a flier for an Irish shop that sells crappy fake toy laptops in gendered versions, with the blue male version getting twice as many "functions" as the pink female version. Gwen at SocImg says, "Also, it looks more like a packet of birth control pills than a laptop."
Girls' crappy fake toy laptop is pink, and half as powerful as boys' crappy fake toy laptop
Cory Doctorow at 8:53 am • 
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TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Evolutionary Leap from Domestic Cats to Lolcats
Ruben Bolling at 8:30 am • •
Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the memetic evolutionary leap from domestic cats to lolcats is revealed
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Chore Monster: Keep track of chores and set up rewards
Mark Frauenfelder at 8:17 am • •
Chore Monster is a website and iPhone app that encourages your kid to do chores around the house. Parents set up a list of chores for their kids to do, such as making the bed, setting and clearing the table, taking care of pets, taking out the trash, etc. Each chore gets assigned a certain number of points. These points can be redeemed for rewards, such as cash, screen time, iTunes gift cards, and so on. They also earn random pet monsters as they complete chores.
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Dog was band's lead singer
Rob Beschizza at 8:11 am • •
Until her death last year, the lead singer of deathgrind metal band Caninus was a dog. Enjoy "No Dogs, No Masters", a popular cut from their album "Split w/ Cattle Decapitation". Previously.
Welcome to Boing Boing Family!
Mark Frauenfelder at 8:10 am • •
"Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself." -- George Bernard Shaw
When we started Boing Boing, our mission was to make a zine and a blog that we wanted to read ourselves. And when we launched the Apps for Kids podcast, the idea was to review apps that kids and parents could both enjoy.
When we started thinking about a Boing Boing website for kids, we planned to call it Boing Boing Kids. But we wanted it to be interesting to kids and their parents, so we changed our mind and called it Boing Boing Family instead.
Launched today, Boing Boing Family covers entertainment, technology, and culture, with a focus on the parent/child experience. From DIY activities like "How to make a stop-motion cartoons" or "Building your own jug band instruments," to reviews of products and apps that keep families connected through technology, Boing Boing Family is a launch pad for parents and kids to have a great time together -- learning, exploring, playing, and being creative.
Jerry Seinfeld once famously quipped, “There’s no such thing as ‘fun for the whole family.’” Boing Boing Family proves him wrong.
Visit Boing Boing Family
In Finland, piracy fines are orders of magnitude higher than fines for rape, torture and murder —
Thierry sez, "Hey, remember the scandal last week about the girl whose laptop was confiscated for downloading a album from Chisu? Well, here's another shocking story about the same company, with a staggering €400,000 fine to a young man aged 21. According to this, piracy is worse then rape or murder in Finland, i.e. a fine for murder is up to €11,000 and rape/torture €2,000. The fine for downloading is a whopping €800,000 to a couple. Moral of the story? Learn to use a proper peerblock." — Cory •
DIY Lego key holder
Mark Frauenfelder at 7:00 am • •
Kate of Minieco made this cute key holder from Legos that she raided from her son's Lego box. It would be fun to make a set for the entire family.
DIY Lego Key Holder (Via Nerdstink)
Slayer's heavy metal Christmas sweater
Cory Doctorow at 6:46 am • •
Sadly, Slayer's holiday jumper has sold out. This is the perfect evolution of the black heavy-metal t-shirt, something for an aging headbanger cohort. I hope they do pajamas and hot water bottle cozies next.
Slayer Christmas Holidays Jumper (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Darrell Issa proposes 2-year ban on Internet legislations, will appear in Reddit AMA today to discuss
Cory Doctorow at 6:00 am • •
Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA) has pretty good credentials as a friend of the Internet, being one of the early Congresscritters to stand up to SOPA and PIPA (though there's the little matter of sponsoring a corporatist bill to limit open access for state-funded research). He's introduced a bill called the "The Internet American Moratorium Act (IAMA)" which proposes a two-year moratorium on Internet-related legislation. Presumably, this would give Internet freedom activists a couple years to prepare an offense game, rather than having to always be reacting to pro-surveillance and pro-censorship proposals from Hollywood and the DHS.
Issa's appearing in a Reddit AMA today at 1030h Eastern to discuss the bill.
Subcompact publishing —
Craig Mod on the rise of small, tailored publishers unencumbered by mainstream media's addiction to bloat: "You shouldn’t have to hire a famous actor to show readers how to use the app with his nose. Much like a printed magazine or book, the interaction should be intuitive, effortless, and grounding. The user should never feel lost." — Rob •
Gift Guide 2012
Boing Boing at 5:00 am • •
Welcome to this year’s Boing Boing Gift Guide, a piling-high of our most loved stuff from 2012 and beyond. There are books, comics, games, gadgets and much else besides: click the categories at the top to filter what you’re most interested in—and add your suggestions and links in the comments.
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Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, the Adrian Chen profile
Xeni Jardin at 4:39 am • •
Weev. Photo: Gawker
Adrian Chen at Gawker has a must-read profile on Weev: so-called "iPad hacker," founder of the anti-blogging Internet-trolling organization "Gay Nigger Association of America," and born-again Mormon troll. Snip:
For Auernheimer, the AT&T breach was one of his finest works as a troll. He personally didn't hack anything—the program used to collect the email addresses was written by Spitler—except the media. He was the hype man for Goatse, and he claims blew the breach up far beyond its actual significance. "The bug that I'm indicted over isn't a big deal," he says. "What made it big is the way I presented it." He boils down his success at promoting the AT&T job to three bullet points: "Rhetoric, persuasion, and meme reference."
But was collecting the email addresses actually a crime? "If somebody mistakenly puts information out there on the web and somebody mistakenly gets that information, that's not illegal," says Jennifer Granick, a lawyer and the director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford. This is why Auernheimer decided to fight his charges instead of take a plea deal, as Spitler did last year.
"I contend there is no crime in telling the truth or using AT&T's, or anybody's, publicly accessible data, to cite it to talk about how they made people's data public," he told CNET.
Auernhemier's jury disagreed.
Read: The Internet's Best Terrible Person Goes to Jail: Can a Reviled Master Troll Become a Geek Hero?.
Interactive laser-cutter
Cory Doctorow at 8:05 pm • •
Constructable is an experimental laser-cutter from the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam. It uses a light-pen to direct the cutting beam, so that you can draw the cuts freehand, in realtime, rather than designing a pattern that is fed to the cutter. Basically, it transforms the cutter into a hand tool, rather than a programmable plotter.
Personal fabrication tools, such as laser cutters and 3D printers allow users to create precise objects quickly. However, working through a CAD system removes users from the workpiece. Recent interactive fabrication tools reintroduce this directness, but at the expense of precision.
Constructable is an interactive drafting table that produces precise physical output in every step. Users interact by drafting directly on the workpiece using a hand-held laser pointer. The system tracks the pointer, beautifies its path, and implements its effect by cutting the workpiece using a fast high-powered laser cutter.
Andy Stott's "Numb" (music video)
David Pescovitz at 7:32 pm • •
"Numb," from haunted house/dub producer Andy Stott's glorious new record Luxury Problems. On this release, Stott collaborates with his childhood piano teacher, an opera singer named Alison Skidmore.