Occasionally, nature’s music of scraped soil and rocks is augmented by a loud creak from the giant gramophone horn. If you must know what that sounds like, check out the surreal 11-minute video.

Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör (2009) from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.

The “Harvest” performance was part of the Volt Music Festival in Sweden. The group wants to bring the terrafon to other croplands soon, so if you hear what sounds like a really loud plough in your backyard, go give the team a hand. That thing looks heavy. [Create Digital Music via Inhabitat]

Oh ED, you’re a lifesaver! A general who lead an infantry division in Iraq recently said that of the 155 men killed in combat, 122 could have lived if autonomous robots were doing the shooting instead. (Strangely, the other 33 would have died whether robots were around or not.) Replacing infantrymen with robots is a no brainer if you want to save your own boys, but Smokey from The Big Lebowski would probably say if nothing did the killing, even more lives would be spared. [Wired]

Am I reading this right? Slashdot says the entire domain .se—a million souls, I mean sites—up and vanished from the internet. Some didn’t deliver successful replies for more than a day. Maybe I need to call Tim Berners-Lee for interpretation, but I don’t get why more people aren’t freaked out that an entire country up and disappeared, even if it was just for a moment. [Slashdot]

Someone did a comprehensive study of 836 people to see how people managed to keep username/password logins straight in their head. The test noted that only 4.4% of people showed no “deviations” from the ideal password rules, deviations including jotting down the password, reusing it time and again, using a deliberately short password or—and here’s probably where most people failed-having no mix of characters and symbols. Having “best practices” that insanely rigid probably upped the failure rate substantially, but I think the important thing here—as Ars points out—is that the username/password system is a joke to begin with. [Ars Technica]

The 23-year-old guy who founded the International Church of Jediism obviously needs to watch Star Wars a few more times. The other day, he wore his hood into a supermarket and got yelled at something fierce. His very Jedi response? To run to the press and cry like a little bitch:

They said: ‘Take it off’, and I said: ‘No, its part of my religion. It’s part of my religious right.’ I gave them a Jedi church business card.

No lightsabers, no waving of the hand in the air, not even “Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!” Just a business card? He continues:

They weren’t listening to me and were rude. They had three people around me. It was intimidating.

“Inimidating”? For a Jedi? Just remember, intimidation leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Don’t look now, but I think someone’s headed for the Dark Side. [Guardian UK]

Apparently, the 18-year-old kid flew into a rage a few months ago when his connection dropped during an online game. He decided that the only remedy was to skip all of the traditional troubleshooting techniques and go right to stabbing an innocent girl walking down the street. Fortunately, this completely insane act of random violence did not end as bad as it could have — the girl managed to escape with wounds that are not life-threatening. As for her attacker, he is currently spending some downtime at a psychiatric hospital with an attempted manslaughter charge in the works.

Clearly, this is one disturbed individual we are talking about here. I mean, a rational person would have yelled at his modem and smacked it around with tears streaming down his face right? [Metro via SK Gaming via Crunchgear]

Even though large parts of Internets and many old and famous trackers have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Ifpi and all the odious apparatus of MPAA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France…[Full version]

You can’t really blame the ISP. Yesterday’s rulings meant it faced $US70,600 in fines if it didn’t yank the cord.

And what of Swedish software outfit Global Gaming Factor? It votes this Thursday on whether or not to go ahead with its Pirate Bay buy out. But between all this, and its chairman stepping down, will it still go ahead with plans for a legal version?

If you’re looking for help to get your torrent on in the meantime, check out the Pirate Bay clone, or our favourite 5 Pirate Bay BitTorrent Alternatives.

A few days ago, amidst talk of how a new, improved, crowd-powered Pirate Bay would work should the sale go through, the trading of Global Gaming Factory shares on the Swedish Aktietorget exchange was frozen. Why? Its administrators found out that the CEO owes quite a few people quite of bit of money, including the government, for taxes. Today, the company’s chairman has stepped down for no obvious reason, and the stock exchange has said that they’re going to keep a freeze on stock trading until they figure out what on earth is going on. Something strange is a good guess!

What does this mean for the Pirate Bay? Well, GGF’s debt-ridden CEO has previously said that the deal to purchase the torrent site—which, remember, hasn’t actually happened yet—would be “rubber stamped” by shareholders by Thursday. That date is pretty much out of the question now and the whole plan is starting to look like it was doomed from the start. So what was the point? Was it some kind of weird share-inflating publicity stunt? An intentional distraction? An earnest bid to buy an illegal filesharing site, by idiots? As much as I like the last one, I don’t think that’s it. [TheLocal via Slashdot]

Eriksson, whose story reaches Mark Sanford levels of ridiculous, is famous for crashing a rare Ferrari, escaping at least one prison sentence, possibly having a movie made about him, leading some sort of mafia in Sweden in the 1990s and making a product nobody ever wanted, ever. Referred to in his native Sweden as “Fat Stefan,” because he’s fat, Eriksson will serve 18 months in prison for his multitude of mafia and gadget-related crimes. Eriksson is a hilarious dirtbag the likes of which we rarely see in the tech world and he’ll be missed, at least theoretically, maybe. [The Local via Engadget, photo credit AP]

Designed by No Picnic, the consonant-heavy name Yggdrasil is actually the name of the “world tree” in Norse mythology, a sort of central holy place. The structure that carries its name presumably was inspired by the arborial myth, and will be erected in 2010/11. [Yanko Design]

The Swedish Pirate Party—Piratpartiet—has got a seat in the European Union parliament. The ballots are still being counted—almost done now—but with 7.1% of the votes, it’s a sure thing. Aaaaaaaarrrrr is all I can say. [Results]

After the Pirate Bay founders were fined $US3.5 million, they swore they wouldn’t cough up a single cent. Instead, they’ve come up with a DDo$ plan of attack that’ll cost the IFPI instead of themselves.

Instead of collecting donations or paying the fee off themselves, Gottfrid Svarholm (anakata), one of the four Pirate Bay founders, has come up with the DDo$—not a DDoS as we know it, but instead, a Distributed Denial of Dollars attack. The plan encourages all people who use the Internet to pay a tiny “internet-a.gift” (Internet fee) of $US0.13, and send it to the Danowsky law firm, which represented the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in the Pirate Bay trial.

Because the law firm only has 1,000 free money transfers, if enough Internet users send a fee to them, it will actually end up costing the Danowsky firm and other music companies to handle and process all the payments. So not only will the Pirate Bay founders not have to pay the fine out of their own pockets, but also it could possibly play a role in the outcome of future pirating cases. [BlogPirate via SlashDot]

Swedish advertising agency Acne assembled this junkyard monster, a bus sculpture assembled from 50 cars, to make a point about C02 emissions.

As you’ll see in the clip below, the sculpture created a bit of a phenomenon, causing traffic jams and a small media sensation. But I included the video for the fun time lapse construction that you can see about a minute in. I just love watching a small army of people complete a several hour project over a matter of seconds. It feels like I’m getting a ton accomplished, just by sitting here. [CR Blog via The Daily What]