Mashable:

Grab some popcorn and your laptop. Facebook users on Wednesday night will be treated to a one-night only screening of the classic film Casablanca, which will be streamed from the film’s brand page.Casablanca — the winner of three Academy Awards in 1944 and often heralded as one of the best movies of all time (according to, among others, world-renowned film critic Roger Ebert) — will be complimentary streamed on Casablanca’s Facebook page on May 16 at 7:00 p.m. ET. Only one screening for each Facebook account is permitted.

I’m begging you – don’t do this. Rent the disc, sit in front of your TV on your comfy couch with a loved one and watch it. There’s no magic in watching this wonderful movie on your laptop.

Gizmodo:

If you never attended a shuttle launch, you must watch this perfect video. Watch it with good and big headphones. Or better yet, with an amazing sound system. In fact, this is the perfect video to test your audio setup with gigantic subwoofer.

But beware. It’s loud. Deliciously loud and crispy.

TechHive:

You’re well aware that you can purchase music directly over the Internet—from Apple’s iTunes Store, Amazon MP3, Google Music, and a host of other sites. And these are perfectly fine options if you want to own your music. But, for those who like to listen to—but not necessary collect—a vast library of music there’s an alternative: Music subscription services.Cough up $5 or $10 a month and you can listen to any of millions of tracks in a wide variety of genres, whenever and (within reason) wherever you want. I took a look at the major subscription services—Mog, Rdio, Rhapsody, Slacker, and Spotify—to see how they shake out and which might be the best fit for you.

[caption id="attachment_23296" align="alignnone" width="470" caption=""Finding Portland" video"][/caption] Uncage the Soul:

“Finding Portland” was produced, shot, and edited in 51 days during March and April.Comprised of 308,829 photographs taken from over 50 unique locations, “Finding Portland” tells the story of the city and its many faces.It took an average of 3.8 hours to make each second of this film.

I think this shooting technique can make even the ugliest city look magical.

New York Times:

Hyman Strachman, a 92-year-old, 5-foot-5 World War II veteran trying to stay busy after the death of his wife. And he has sent every one of his copied DVDs, almost 4,000 boxes of them to date, free to American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.“It’s not the right thing to do, but I did it,” Mr. Strachman said, acknowledging that his actions violated copyright law.

Go ahead, Hollywood. Just try to sue this guy.

BuzzFeed:

The Space shuttle Enterprise, mounted atop a 747, flew over NYC today. The shuttle will eventually be put on permanent display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. Unsurprisingly, a space shuttle on top of an airplane is a really cool thing to see.

The Verge:

The Google Drive cloud storage service launched yesterday to much fanfare, but as with any new Google product, there are important questions about how the company will actually use personal data uploaded to the system. Google sells ads against your data, after all, and the more data you give the company, the more opportunity it has to screw up. That means the Google Drive terms of service and privacy policy are critically important, and there’s been a lot of selective interpretation floating around the web in the past 24 hours — and a lot of comparisons to the privacy policies of competitive services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.That’s great — all web services should be subject to harsh scrutiny of their privacy policies — but a close and careful reading reveals that Google’s terms are pretty much the same as anyone else’s, and slightly better in some cases. Let’s take a look.

You might be surprised to see the answer.

Chicago Tribune:

To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as 81 of his fellow members of theU.S. House of Representatives are communists.Facts held on for several days after that assault — brought on without a scrap of evidence or reason — before expiring peacefully at its home in a high school physics book. Facts was 2,372.

A funny, if sad, commentary on our “Post-Facts Era”.

Infowars:

A bill already passed by the Senate and set to be rubber stamped by the House would make it mandatory for all new cars in the United States to be fitted with black box data recorders from 2015 onwards.Although the text of legislation states that such data would remain the property of the owner of the vehicle, the government would have the power to access it in a number of circumstances.Given the fact that the same bill also includes a controversial provision that would empower the IRS to revoke passports of citizens merely accused of owing over $50,000 in back taxes, stripping them of their mobility rights, could the mandatory black boxes or a similar technology be used for the same purpose?

The story gets a little hyperbolic with nightmare scenarios but some will still find this bill worrisome – I do.

New York Times:

On Wednesday morning, three vintage warplanes were trussed up and hoisted over the port side of the ship for a barge ride up the Hudson River to a museum near Schenectady, N.Y. They had to go to make way for the new star attraction: Enterprise, the prototype for the space shuttles that is due to arrive in New York City next week.

Those lucky enough to live in Washington DC saw the Shuttle Discovery fly over earlier this week. The Enterprise will do her own New York City fly over on Monday, weather permitting.

New York Times:

All 32 sports at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London will be streamed live at nbcolympics.com.“The hot topic is always, ‘Why don’t you show all your sports live?’” said Rick Cordella, vice president and general manager of NBC Sports Digital Media. “We wanted to take care of that.”During the London Games, nbcolympics.com will be able to handle as many live streams as there are live events. “Whatever is on schedule that day,” Cordella said, “if cameras are on it, we’ll stream it.”

Great news for those of us who like sports that aren’t considered marque events. I’m a big fan of little or never shown Summer Olympic sports like Fencing, Judo and Velodrome Cycling.

The Next Web:

This video is from the Danish TV show Dumt & Farligt. It takes a Phantom Flex, a camera that can run anywhere from $50k-$150k, and applies it to some of the silliest and most awesome 2500 Frames-per-second slow-motion footage I’ve seen.

Talk about “fun with explosives and a high speed camera”!

The Telegraph:

The 104 residents of the village will cast their votes later this week on whether to alter the name.“People are now willing to discuss changes to the spelling of the name,” Franz Meindl, the village’s mayor, said in a television interview. “But first all Fuckingers have to agree on whether want to change it or not.” For centuries the tiny village in northern Austria lived life in happy obscurity, but life changed when US troops, stationed in the area at the end of the Second World War, discovered it, and since then the village’s name has been a constant source of amusement for tourists and irritation for locals.At least 13 £250 road signs bearing the village’s name have been stolen, and the sight of semi-naked women posing for photographs beside signs has become a common sight.

Brings to mind the “interestingly” named Canadian town of Dildo.