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Elephants, monkeys, and the Holy Spirit can’t claim copyright in the US

A new paper from the US Copyright Office has been published to clarify what can and what cannot be copyrighted. Novels written by human beings are covered. What’s not covered? Photos taken by monkeys, murals painted by elephants, and songs written by ghosts. Things that can be copyrighted: Photos taken by a human Songs written…

What do China’s online censors fear most? Citizens discussing mass protests and other forms of collective action, according to Harvard University researchers. Their findings also flout the conventional wisdom that the censorship apparatus is primarily designed to squelch criticism of the Communist Party or its leaders.

Report: Apple Will Begin Making a Jewelry-Classified Gadget This Month

We’ve been following the emergence of Apple’s sapphire production plant in Arizona closely this year, since it tells us a lot about the products coming down the line. Now, Mark Gurman reports, filings from Apple indicate that not only is the company manufacturing a new sapphire product this month—it’s being classified as “jewelry.” And no,…

Free Movie Tickets with Xbox Credit, Kitchen Gadgets, SSDs [Deals]

If you own an Xbox, here’s a no brainer for you. $45 gets you a $50 Xbox gift card, plus two free movie tickets (up to a $26 value total) to use through Fandango. [$50 Xbox Gift Card Plus Two Free Movie Tickets, $45 with code EMCPBHW24] Update: The movie tickets part of the offer…

Ask A Marine Biologist All Your Questions About The Lives Of Sharks!

Biologists Lisa Natanson and Cami McCandless are here to take all our questions about sharks, their biology, their environments, and their behavior. Natanson and McCandless are both fisheries biologists with NOAA’s Apex Predators Program. Natanson specializes in shark life history studies, which look at shark age, growth and reproduction. She focuses especially on coastal and…

Sprint’s New Unlimited Plan Only Costs $60

It’s quite the day for new phone plans—first T-Mobile offered up a year of free LTE for people who convince a friend to abandon one of the other big three carriers, and now Sprint has announced an unlimited talk, text, and data plan for just $60/month. https://gizmodo.com/you-can-get-free-unlimited-data-if-you-convert-friends-1625048349 Sprint’s new plan is open to both new…

You Can Get Free Unlimited Data If You Convert Friends to T-Mobile

I think we can safely label T-Mo a meddler. Helmed by the mildly eccentric CEO John Legere, the Uncarrier announced today that it’ll offer a free year of unlimited data to current subscribers who successfully coerce a family member or friend from Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon to join T-Mobile. This offer comes in response to…

These screen graphics are so cool they transport you directly to 3014

Kristoffer Brady is a San Francisco based motion graphic designer with a great hand for futuristic screen graphics. This video is a montage of his work for Simian, an upcoming independent film. Check out Brady’s website where he explains in detail the role these graphics play in the movie. SPLOID is a new blog about…

Set a Video as Your Desktop Wallpaper With VLC

Since the demise of DreamScene with Windows Vista, users have been denied the option of having moving pictures as their desktop backdrop, but the hugely useful VLC Media Player provides something of a workaround. Open up a movie then choose Video and Set as Wallpaper to place it behind your program windows, audio and all.…

This Film Could Help You Understand How Some People Experience Autism

Autism is a spectrum disorder, encompassing a wide range of conditions, symptoms, and experiences. But this short animation may help you understand, and empathize with, certain specific sensory and perception differences that some people with autism experience. Marisabel Fernandez and Alexander Bernard produced and directed Listen as their senior film at Ringling College of Art…

Addictive App Lets You Compose And Arrange Music With Shapes

Geometric Music is a free app (download here, or fiddle online) that takes sounds recorded from your environment and assigns them on-screen geometric shapes. Manipulating the shapes and arranging them relative to one another allows the user to build looping, layered musical pieces. Here’s Liz Stinson for Wired: The app works like ultra-simple sample-production software,…

Everything You Need to Know about the 5th Edition D&D Player’s Handbook

At last, a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook has been released. This version of the world’s first RPG wants to satisfy old-school gamers and draw in newcomers at the same time. With its classic feel, combined with buffed and polished rules, it just might succeed. It’s been six years since the polarizing…

What Android Fragmentation Looks Like

This seemingly random assortment of colorful rectangles, reminiscent of a terrible paint swatch accident, actually represents the state of Android fragmentation in 2014. OpenSignal, a website dedicated to mapping all things mobile, pulled together this data and saw 18,769 distinct devices downloading its app on Android. And we thought last year was bad. How bad…

The Latest Humble Book Bundle Includes Bujold, Gaiman And Harrison

It’s not every day that you get to buy ten books for just $10 and support the incredibly worthy cause of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at the same time. But that’s what the latest Humble Book Bundle will let you do. Including Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and tons more. There are five basic…

Of Course the First Object Ever Recovered From Orbit Was for Spying

In the early days of the U.S. satellite surveillance program, our orbital cameras employed state-of-the-art technologies to get the physical film back to Earth for development and analysis. They shot it back into the atmosphere like 300-pound bullets, and tried to catch the falling canisters by their parachutes using a passing plane armed with a…

The NSA Is Scaring People Away From Tor

It makes sense in a backwards sort of way. Last year’s NSA revelations scared people into seeking more privacy online, and so they turned to Tor, the anonymous web browser. Then, we learned that the NSA is actually targeting people that use Tor, sending users running in the opposite direction. Understandably, this has Tor worried.…

Which Lucky State Will Get a Useless $4 Billion Defense System?

At the urging of Congress, military officials have begun considering East Coast sites for an anti-ballistic missile system that doesn’t work and the Pentagon doesn’t want. But members of Congress can’t let such details stand in the way. Now states are vying to score the $4 billion allocated for this dubious effort. The missile defense…

We’ll Never Be Tired of Auroras From Space

Take this moment to be furiously jealous that the excellent view the astronauts on the International Space Station have of Earth can somehow get even more gorgeous with the addition of auroras. At least the astronauts are well-aware that they have the best view in the solar system. Of course Reid Wiseman was the photographer…

Why Your Next Smartphone May Not Cost a Fortune

Wanting to own the very best—the fastest processor, a display packing the most pixels, a professional-grade camera—made sense in the days when nearly every smartphone was terrible. A raft of new devices, though, has cemented that cheap price no longer means cheap quality. And they’re going to save you a whole lot of money. Just…

Evangeline Lilly’s Hairdo For Ant-Man Is So Perfect For Wasp It Hurts

Arrrrrgggghh. Evangeline Lilly took to Instagram to reveal the new hairstyle she’s sporting for her role as Hope Van Dyne in Ant-Man. I think we can safely assume that regardless of Lilly’s character’s name, she will be the de facto Janet Van Dye/Wasp of the Marvel cinematic universe. Here’s another shot of Lilly’s ‘do: Obviously,…