Alt-music interrogator Russell Porter has quite a following in the UK; his Porter Report videos chronicle culture with aggressive wit and offbeat charm. Today, the "professional chancer and well known layabout" joins us on Boing Boing TV, for an on-the-street and in-the-club exchange with Dockers MC, a freestyle poet who does not like Barry Manilow one bit.

(special thanks to Jolon Bankey).

Xeni speaks with author and Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson, and "airplane geek" Jordi Munoz, about the quest to create the ultimate sub-$100 aerial drone. One design involved the use of a Nintendo Wii controller. UAVs are often associated with military combat or police surveillance, but what "friendlier" uses might we put them to, in civilian hands? Shot at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, California. Here's more on their Minimum Blimp.

Boing Boing Gadgets editor Joel Johnson says,

We finally had a chance to put the Krups Heineken BeerTender through a battery of rigorous tests, such as "Will it allow beer to escape its nozzle?" and "Hey, the beer is gone." If you perused the unboxing spread I put up last week you can probably guess my eventual purchasing advice, but let's just say that $300 is a lot of money for a tiny refrigerator that can only serve Heineken.

Also, we didn't labor it in the video, but the little sensor that shows you how much beer is left in the proprietary DraftKeg? You know, one of the only things that the BeerTender adds over a regular refrigerator? Totally did not work on ours.

Link to post on BB-Gadgets, with discussion thread.

Today on Boing Boing tv, GOOBEES, an animated short that reveals the horrific reality behind contemporary candy production:

Candy canes glisten, green frosted hills sparkle, and battered steel weapons glint in the setting sun. Tensions flare on both sides of the battlefield. Gumdrops glare with hatred at the Chocolates. Chocolates wait with confidence, eager to slaughter their opponent. High above in the crimson sky candy corn vultures circle in anticipation of the devastation to come. On a far away hill bright white eyes wait. They wait...

Created by four graduate students in the Texas A&M Viz Lab: Seth Freeman, Michael Losure, Patrick O'Brien, and P. Antonio Piedra. For more on "the making of" -- Link.

Please to be watching. BBtv's invizibul Soviet bureau telexes report:

Soviet Unterzögersdorf is last existing republic of USSR. The enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with surrounding so-called "Republic of Austria" or with the Fortress "European Union." The downfall of her motherland -- the Soviet Union -- in the early 1990s had a particularly bad effect on the country’s economic situation. It is a great challenge to secure survival for the small but proud confederation. External reactionary forces put the country in danger.

His Excellency Ambassador of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, Nikita Chrusov, is entering the Marriott Hotel in San Diego, during O'Reilly ETech conference, to attend a corporate afterparty sponsored by Disney.com.

After four weeks of sea travel on a cargo ship and two weeks of journey in a Greyhound bus, the Ambassador is eagerly awaiting a meeting. He wants to confront Disney executives with a couple of questions, especially talking to them about their "sugar-coated bullets", that threaten the very existence of his country by brutal cultural force.

But then -- he is forcibly ejected from party, like cosmonaut from spaceship escape hatch. Commissar Chrusov calls this act "an unbelievable act of political shortsightness" and complains about mysterious green "poisoned pudding."

Special thanks to Johnannes and monochrom, who had absolutely nothing to do with this, and to cameo guests Eddie Codel of Geek Entertainment TV; Scott Beale of Laughing Squid (who covered this incident here); and John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder.

Shot by BBtv segment producer Russ Gooberman.

Update: Soviet Unterzoegersdorf is not amused.

In 2005, Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, brought to public attention documents which showed that the National Security Agency had obtained copies of Internet traffic flowing through an AT&T facility in San Francisco and through several other AT&T locations across the country.

This led to public outcry over the US government's warrantless wiretapping program, and a lawsuit against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation .

At the 2008 EFF Pioneer Awards ceremony during the O'Reilly ETech conference, the EFF honored Klein's whistleblowing efforts. In this interview at the awards ceremony, Klein and EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn speak with us about efforts to persuade lawmakers not to grant legal immunity to telecoms that may have broken the law while helping the government in anti-terrorism efforts.

On March 6, 2008, another whistleblower came forward with similar claims. Computer security consultant Babak Pasdar said he'd discovered a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" while working for an unnamed major wireless carrier.

He believes this circuit gives the U.S. government direct, high-speed access to customers' voice and data transmissions.

For more information: EFF.org.

Update: Wired's Threat Level blog posted about this BBtv episode just now, and reminds us...

And just to toot our own horn, although Wired wasn't the first to write about the Klein documents, we did acquire them while they were under court seal (from a party not subject to the gag order) and publish them for geeks of the world to analyze. (Explanation here.)