James Joyce and Virginia Woolf copyrights expire tonight — sadly, no published U.S. works will enter the public domain until 2018 #

The Verge's best tech writing of 2011 — any list that starts with Paul Ford is solid, in my book #

Why Notch isn't hiring more Minecraft developers — concerned more hands will dilute the game's unique voice #

Shot-by-shot comparison of Raiders of the Lost Ark intro to vintage adventure movies — two years of editing, with scenes from 30 different films (via) #

Daniel Sinker's best hacker-journalism of 2011 — some really amazing work, and nearly all of it open-source #

Instant webserver for the current directory — with some handy alternatives in the comments (via) #

Wikipeetia — the mispelled misspelled encyclopedia (via) #

The Ramsey Brothers' Home Video Commentaries — "looking back, I feel I really did embody the role of little brother" (via) #

Marvel lawyers insist mutants aren't humans — to avoid getting taxed as "dolls," rather than lower for "toys"; story starts at 2:50 in the audio (via) #

imgur's best images of 2011 — also, MLKSHK's most liked images of the year #

New Yorker's profile of Carrie Brownstein's double-life — splitting time between music and comedy #

College professor seeds Internet with fake term paper to catch plagiarists — hilarity ensues #

Augmented Reality with Processing — great tutorial #

Tim Minchin's Woody Allen Jesus — ITV refused to air it (via) #

NYT on fair use and appropriation in the art world — more shifting attitudes on copyright and reuse #

It's A Wonderful Life, As Told By TV Sitcoms — and Back To The Future II #

Remaking famous artworks with photographs — the Dali remake won (via) #

Dissecting misogyny on a Reddit /r/atheism post — related: YouTube's reaction to the Gamer Girl Manifesto #

Penny Arcade destroys scumbag marketing firm — don't miss the questionable apology, just posted #

Said the Gramophone's Best Songs of 2011 — as always, thoughtful writing and selection (via) #

Stamen's Angry Birds time tracker — Mike open-sourced the code #

Metafilter backgrounder on the O Brother, Where Are Thou? soundtrack — song-by-song breakdown with supporting videos; watch Down from the Mountain on YouTube #

Fireplace beta — a pixelized fireplace for PC/Mac #

Hitler reacts to SOPA — "Don't cry, Disney owns the rights to that emotion." (via) #

Technology Review profiles Jason Scott and Archive Team — great feature on the all-volunteer preservation effort (via) #

#DearInventor — brief open letters to unnamed inventors (via) #

Creative Applications' top 10 projects of 2011 — tons of inspiring stuff in here; related: their top 10 iOS projects #

Bradley Manning Had Secrets — six-minute pixelized animated short using transcripts from the Manning/Lamo chats (via) #

ARTorNOT — the copyright notice is a nice touch (via) #

The Lives They Loved — NYT highlights stories of lost loved ones from its readers #

Wired Magazine feature on Ian Bogost and Cow Clicker — still, one of my favorite games about games #

Frank Chimero on the shame in Louis C.K.'s comedy — related: David Carr's interview with Louie on his web experiment #

The Verge's in-depth feature on Kickstarter's impact on product development — fascinating to see how different industries have been affected, from board games to comics #

Amazon Web Services is excited — love the comment from Amazon's Jeff Barr #

NYT's obituary for Christopher Hitchens — his final essay reconsidered "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" (via) #

Twitter by Post — Giles Turnbull takes @replies, RTs, and favs offline #

Louis CK on the success of his $5 video sales experiment — $200k in profit in the first three days, $500k sales so far #

Ed Piskor's Nostalgic Memories of the NES — loving his series for Boing Boing #

The Single Lane Super Highway — new project by Aaron Koblin #

Flight Plan — I love this guy's work; also: reality show teams waiting #

Sony, Universal, Fox, Google employees caught pirating — Googlers should know how to use a proxy by now #

Give Me Something to Read's 2011 Highlights — some of the year's best long-form journalism #

FAA approves iPads in cockpits — I'm guessing pilots won't be forced to turn them off during take-off and landing #

Megaupload sues Universal over fraudulent DMCA takedowns — I don't particularly trust Megaupload, but this is clearly an abuse of the DMCA #

The pr0n Index — safe for work, estimates what percentage of Google Images results for a phrase are NSFW (via) #

Google Shoot View — Street View as a first-person shooter (via) #

Louis CK's Live at the Beacon — $5 DRM-free, money goes directly to him; he did a great IAmA #

Michael Robertson on the record labels' demands on streaming services — he argues that they'll never be profitable, as a result #

Future Drama — Tumblelog tracking visions of technology's future #

You Have Downloaded — search public BitTorrent downloads by IP address; TorrentFreak interviewed the creators #