High school teacher faces discipline for Informing students about their rights —

Reason Hit & Run: "A high school social studies teacher in Batavia, Illinois, faces disciplinary action for informing students of their Fifth Amendment rights in connection with a survey asking about illegal drug use." — Mark •

Ars Technica has a beautiful, mouth-watering gallery of the stuff for sale at Silicon Valley's Weird Stuff Warehouse, a high-tech surplus store of epic proportion:

"There is a need for a place you can walk around and get parts and older technology―or even newer technology," said Chuck Schuetz, the man behind the Weird Stuff Warehouse. Schuetz runs the store with his brother and his colleague, Dave McDougall. He let Ars take a tour of the place and snap a few photos, so come take a walk through the warehouse with us to check out the "weird stuff." Welcome to where technology goes to retire.

The Weird Stuff Warehouse is where old tech goes to retire [Florence Ion/Ars Technica]

The trial of Bradley Manning begins on June 3, 2013, and will have profound impact on press freedom and the rights of future whistleblowers throughout the world. The Freedom of the Press Foundation (I'm a board member) is crowd-funding donations to hire a court stenographer to record trial transcripts. The US has refused to make the government's taxpayer-funded transcripts available to the public, but we believe it's important that an open record of this trial be freely available to the world.

Read the rest

German railway operator Deutche Bahn is to target graffiti artists with surveillance drones: "The idea is to use airborne infra-red cameras to collect evidence, which could then be used to prosecute vandals who deface property at night."

An anonymous reader of Dave Farber's Interesting People list has discovered a glaring flaw in the TSA's protocol for secondary screening:

today at newark airport i used a paperless electronic boarding pass on my cell phone (as i usually do). i got through the id check, stripped down to my skivvies (almost), and as i was about to walk through the magnetometer (they still have those at united newark), they were yelling out that they were checking boarding passes, take them along through the mag.

i said, it's on my phone, you really want i should take my phone through the mag?

they said "no, only take your paper boarding passes".

huh? sure enough, if you said you used a mobile boarding pass, they believed you (anddidn't even look at it (of course, only another scanner could really verify its authenticity.)

so after a bit of conversation, i found out that they were checking the paper boardingpasses to check for the dreaded four esses, meaning "secondary screening". if you are randomly selected for secondary screening at checkin, they currently won't issue you an electronic boarding pass, you have to do a manual check-in.

so now they have created a situation where someone selected for secondary screening can get through the id check with their paper boarding pass showing the SSSS, and then, when they reach the mag where the screening would occur, simply lie, saying they are using an electronic boarding pass to avoid secondary screening.

the latest in TSA improved stupidity equips people to avoid a secondary search

(Image: ssss.JPG, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from jcortell's photostream)

Rotem Shefy (vocalist) and Leat Sabbah (cellist/arranger) describe this as "Our very own Middle-Eastern version" of Radiohead's 1997 hit "Karma Police."

"What seemed at first a satirical cover transformed into a full-blown middle-eastern version, recorded with oud player Yaniv Taichmann and percussionist Ori Dekel," says the duo. "Video made possible thanks to the donations we received through a successful Kickstarter campaign!"

The video was released about a month ago. Thanks to Boing Boing reader Alex Rozenfarb of Tel Aviv for sharing this one some weeks back on our Facebook page. Sorry I missed it then, glad I found it now.

From November 2011, a set of photos documenting the creation of a sugar skull-and-bones set that can be served with macabre beverages, designed by Snow Violent and made by DR.HC.

Skull Sugar ― from sketch to prototype. Part 1 (via Crazy Abalone)

"Revenge porn"-style fraudsters target sex offenders —

We all know about mugshot and "revenge porn" sites, which publish compromising photos and target the victims for "removal fees". Here's a new twist: mining the public record for less sympathetic victims, threatening to publicize sex offenders' personal info if they don't cough up cash. [AZCentral] — Rob •

The last man born in the 19th century —

Last Thursday, Doc Sisnett of Barbados died at 113, leaving Japan's Jiroemon Kimura as the last living man to have been born in the 19th century. Twenty-one living women share the honor. [Sydney Morning Herald] — Rob •

FDA clenches down on fecal transplants —

An effective cure for a brutal bacterial infection is gaining popularity, but there is a price to recognition: the FDA is clamping down on the procedure while researching it as an "investigational new drug." Now that doctors have to do a mountain of paperwork, will it result in a black market for backstreet blendastools? — Rob •