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A UK weapons company called Drone Defence has sold an anti-drone product to Les Nicolles prison on Guernsey that will use 20 nonspecific "disruptors" to do something to drones that will stop them from overflying the prison and smuggling in contraband. (more…)

"Willpower" began as an element of philosophical/theological arguments, used to explain riddles like how humans could commit sin even though they were created by a perfect, all-powerful god -- but it took on new meanings through the Enlightenment and then the Victorians imbued it with mystical, all-important significance, as a kind of synonym for morality and goodness. (more…)

Chris Notap used a small, cheap vacuum pump to suck the air out of a variety of plastic containers ranging from bread bags to 55 gallon drums.

Artist and animator Katsuhiro Otomo of Akira fame, with collage artist Kōsuke Kawamura, painted this view of the inside of the Tower of Babel, a perfectly fascinating pastiche of Bruegel's original, below.Eric Stimson reports:... Kawamura, who colored the painting to closely match the original. Kawamura says that he used over 25,000 layers in his editing software, "the most I've ever done in my life." He also had to carefully set the correct perspective for each brick. In the end, he doesn't even recognize his own work.Otomo visited the original painting in Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen so he could study it carefully in detail. He even stumped the resident curators with his questions. For instance, they weren't sure where the tower's entrance was, but Otomo thinks he found it. He also noticed a river flowing into the tower and in the background, so he included it in his cutaway.Modeling the Library of Babel in Sketchup.

The Wall Street Journal reports that human error is still a factor in potential cockpit door breaches. (more…)

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra BONUS comics, and much more. GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Arc Symphony is a text-only game about being a fan of an elaborate Japanese Playstation RPG in the 1990s. Designed to evoke an old-timey USENET group and the ancient DOS PC used to connect to it, it's a perfect and mysterious capturing of a long-gone moment. To promote it, the creators commissioned designed jewel cases, complete with glossy booklet (no disk, of course), in perfect imitiation of a PSX game that never existed.At shows, people spot the clever mockup and say, hey, I remember that game. People tell them they remember playing it. People insist they remember. There are fansites. Arc Symphony works because of Park and Evan’s marketing of it—it becomes easier to pretend to be a fan of the game when they’ve managed to slip a little nostalgia for it into your drink. Both Park and Evans were very surprised by the success of their campaign, and how quickly it got away from them.“It’s actually really unsettling when it stops just being indie game devs having fun with each other,” Park said, “and starts being, well, rewriting cultural memory…”Previously: Nomen Ludi, the game you can't quite remember.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Social media apps have conditioned humans to accept vertical video in the way we now accept microplastics in our sea salt. Mashable is the latest to embrace the vertical video genre with Reels, a series of vertical format stories that were designed for viewing on a phone held vertically. (more…)

If otters experience the uncanny valley, this otter-like spycam seems just enough like an otter for them to accept, but not enough like an otter for them to consider a threat. (more…)

Donald Trump's white supremacist peanut gallery is scrambling to deny the reality of today's bombshell revelation the President shared highly classified information with Russian officials during a bizarrely timed White House visit the day after Trump fired FBI director James Comey. (more…)

https://youtu.be/RW7W-OKZBswThe original name for The Beverly Hillbillies was The Hillbillies of Beverly Hillbillies. The core cast in this unaired pilot from 1962 didn't change with the new name, and it also features the amazing customized 1921 Oldsmobile Model 43-A touring car built by car customizer George Barris (who created Black Beauty from Green Hornet, the Batmobile from the 1966 Batman TV series, and the Munster's Koach).

Mainstays Single Burner is a portable electric coil hotplate you can buy for $9 at Walmart (and Amazon). It has a 1m two-prong cord, an adjustable power control (temperatures are not marked) and rubber feet.I tested it with a steel stock pot with 8 quarts of water.After turning up the heat I watched it for a while. It got the water to about 160 degrees but it was only slowly rising and I doubt it would have gotten to a boil. Touching the steel to observe the element, I felt a strange tingling, rippling sensation in my arm.“That’s odd,” I thought, lifting the pot up to look at the element. The sensation left me. Part of the element glowed red but mostly it remained dark. I placed the pot back on the element and the moment it touched it that weird tingle shot up my arm again.“Oh, I’m being electrified,” I said, “because I bought a $9 electric burner from fucking Walmart.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClR9tcpKZecIn movies and television, Hitler's speaking voice is usually depicted as a dialed-back version of his public speaking performances: even in private he's either shrieking or muttering. The reality, captured only once in a secret recording made in Finland, is unnerving. It's deep and commanding, yet with the same maniacal rhythms. You almost forget that he's admitting, in 1942, that he underestimated Soviet productive capability and would have ignored anyone who told him.

We had a fabulous time last night at Portland's Powell's City of Books and now I'm on the runway to fly up to Seattle for tonight's event at the Neptune Theater with Neal Stephenson (it's not too late to get tickets!) -- then tomorrow I'll be at Bellingham's Village Books before heading to the Vancouver Writers' Festival. (more…)

The Press Democrat posted this video, shot by Tom Bond, of a crash on Highway 101 near Cloverdale, California: a car sheared clean in two lengthwise, the stunned driver still seated, unhurt, inches from the tear. The other driver was ejected but only suffered moderate injuries.According to the CHP, Apol Lansang, 26, of Sonoma, was driving her Malibu south on Highway 101, near Geysers Road when she was struck by the northbound Sequoia being driven by Kevin Fenty, 27, of Huntington Beach, that drifted across the highway into Lansang’s lane.The impact sliced Lansang’s car down the middle, sending the car’s entire passenger side onto the embankment. Fenty was ejected by the impact. Both drivers were taken to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital — Lansang with minor injuries and Fenty with moderate injuries, according to the CHP.“The scene was, it was pretty intense,” said Sgt. Jason Bahlman, who has been with the CHP for 16 years. “It was definitely one of the most severely damaged cars I’ve ever seen.”

Danah Boyd from Data & Society writes, "The report examines why the media was vulnerable to manipulation from radicalized groups that have emerged from a variety of internet subcultures. We're seeing an intentional and systematic attack on institutions and information intermediaries and most folks are unaware of the degree to which they are a pawn in others' gameplay. As a result, we are watching good intentions get twisted around and used to harm people, organizations, and democracy." (more…)

Akal Security Inc is the TSA contractor that screens passengers at Kansas City International Airport under a $108m/5 year contract; earlier this month they began abruptly scanning all paper products in carry on luggage, requiring passengers to pull out their books, papers, even post-it notes for secondary inspection. (more…)

Noncompete agreements have historically been the provision of highly-placed execs and critical "knowledge workers" (and even then, fast-growing economies like California have banned them in the interests of encouraging competition and growth) but now employers are routinely making the "agreements" a condition of unskilled waged labor, from making sandwiches to digging holes for $10/hour. (more…)

Louisiana has always been a backward place for criminal justice, the only state in the union that funds its public defenders' office with conviction fees, leaving a public defender's office that averages $238 spent on each accused. (more…)

Americans who know where North Korea is are more like to favor diplomacy over war in dealing with its regime. Unfortunately, few Americans know where North Korea is.

Keep your desktop clean and free of excess cables with a Charge & Sync dock, available now in the Boing Boing Store. This unassuming design features an s-shaped profile for maximum stability, non-slip feet, and a sturdy mounting point for your phone. With this dock, you can keep an eye on notifications while preventing damage from accidental drops and coffee spills. It comes in both USB-C Android and MFi-Certified iOS variations, ensuring safe charging and syncing for your devices.This charge & sync dock puts a rest to the phantom vibrations in your pocket, keeps lint out of your earpiece speaker, and conveniently charges your phone. You can get one here in the Boing Boing Store for 42% off retail at $19.99.

If you drive daily, especially to new destinations, it's wise to have a smartphone car mount. Aside from making map directions considerably easier to follow, they also keeps your phone in a central location so you can keep an eye on notifications without taking your eyes off the road. While most mounts attach to your dashboard via suction cup, the ExoMount CD inserts into your CD player which you probably aren't using all that much these days.Plugging into the CD drive assures a sturdy mount while the grip is compatible with any kind of smartphone. It can even be rotated 360 degrees, letting you orient your screen however you like.Until automakers start integrating smartphone mounts directly into the dashboard, this ExoMount CD is one of your best bets. You can get one here in the Boing Boing Store.

Yesterday's Walkaway event at San Diego's Mysterious Galaxy was terrific (there was birthday cake) and now I'm flying to Portland for an event at Powell's City of Books tonight with Andy "Waxy" Baio before heading to Seattle for an event with Neal Stephenson at the Neptune Theater, then a stop in Bellingham's Village Books. (more…)

Yesterday, the world got a temporary respite from the virulent Wcry ransomware worm, which used a leaked NSA cyberweapon to spread itself to computers all over the world, shutting down hospitals, financial institutions, power companies, business, and private individuals' computers, demanding $300 to reactivate them. (more…)

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating a tip-off from a current or ex-London police officer that the London Metropolitan Police's National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit asked Indian police to use their hacker contacts to break into the private communications of hundreds of British people and groups, from journalists to Greenpeace. (more…)

...is the wide range of choice it provides.

We had a great Walkaway tour stop last night in Scottsdale, AZ, and now I'm headed to San Diego to help the legendary Mysterious Galaxy store celebrate its birthday, closing out a fantastic day of speakers, readers and signings at 4PM. (more…)

As Donald Trump's FCC gets set to kill Net Neutrality, lobbyists for the country's telcos and cable operators are tucking in their napkins and picking up their cutlery, getting ready to feast. (more…)

Pay $7,500/year and $2,700/flight and you can use can use the new "private terminal" at LAX where you are waited on hand-and-foot, including a personal sit-down with the TSA guard who "searches" you before you're put in a BMW and driven across the tarmac to your flight -- best of all, you can watch a live video-feed of normal humans in the public terminal, captioned "Here is a glimpse of what you’re missing over at the main terminal right now," and featuring "travellers hauling bags through packed terminals, queuing in long lines, looking harassed and being swallowed into pushing, shoving paparazzi scrums – routine hazards for the 80 million people who pass through LAX each year." (more…)

Today, activists will gather in Cambridge, Mass to march to the offices of W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee to urge him to keep DRM out of the standards for the open web. (more…)

Ever since he became leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn has faced bitter attacks from the "left-wing" establishment, the press, and his own party, despite his repeated, unprecedented landslide victories in party leadership races. (more…)

Looking to break into the rapidly growing world of drone racing? Maybe? Just looking for a solid remote-controlled camera quadcopter to shoot aerial footage? Either way, the Aerix Black Talon 2.0's friendly controls and stable flight make it a great option for novice and intermediate flyers.The Aerix Black Talon drone is able to fly at 15 mph for up to 7 minutes straight. It streams real-time POV flight footage to its companion phone app in 720p HD, and is compatible with Google Cardboard to give you an immersive pilot experience. Operating the Aerix is easy with the included joypad controller; it provides a selection of pre-set maneuvers and an automatic return-to-pilot function.This drone includes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and a 4GB SD card for saving footage and still shots. You can get the Aerix Black Talon 2.0 Micro FPV Beginner Racing Drone here in the Boing Boing Store.

I bought a pair of these magnetic clip lights a few years and they've proven to be incredibly useful when I have to do repair work. The light has 8 LEDs and it throws a pretty wide beam of bright light. It sticks securely to any ferrous metal surface and has a clip so you can attach it to your pocket. I used it when I was installing a new safety switch in a washing machine. I stuck it on the side of the washing machine cabinet and it gave me plenty of light to attach the ground wire and route the cable. I haven't had to change the batteries yet, either.I keep one on our fridge and the other in my toolbox.The price is right, too. A set of 2 costs $9 on Amazon.

The Loop-a-Lot is described by this YouTuber as a "crummy toy." Is it really crummy? Well, it probably didn't keep kids amused for more that 45 seconds. So, it probably is crummy. The purpose of the toy is to balance pennies on points inside cutouts of a paddle while you spin it around your finger. You could make one out of a piece of cardboard in a couple of minutes. The manufacturers knew this toy would be a hard sell, so they resorted to the desperate ploy of incorporating a suit-wearing, roller skating monkey into the commercial.

Much to the delight of sick and twisted people everywhere the Amazing Johnathan is touring again! Next weekend he'll be in Riverside, California at Beyond Brookledge!Magician Johnathan Szeles is one of the most talented, brilliantly funny, brutally ascerbic, fantastically creative people alive -- and boy are we glad he still is! In 2014 Johnathan retired from magic and gave up performing. Poor circulation led doctors to give him 18 months to live. Here we are 36 months later, and every time I've seen Johnathan over the last few years he looks better and better.Johnathan and his absolute rockstar wife Anastasia both love performing at Beyond Brookledge, which is perhaps the greatest 3 days of magic and variety planned in any calendar year. You'll be wowed by both their performances next weekend!

Rapper Bow Wow recently posted a photo a photo on Instagram of the private jet he was about to board. Unfortunately, someone spotted Bow Wow Wow sitting on his commercial plane:Very soon after, the #bowwowchallenge commenced![via]

25 NHS trusts and multiple doctors' practices in England and Scotland (but so far, not Northern Ireland or Wales) report that they have had to effectively shut down due to a massive Wcry ransomware infection that has stolen whole swathes of the English healthcare system in one go. The infection appears to exploit a bug that the NSA discovered and deliberately kept secret, only to have it revealed by the Shadow Brokers. (more…)

Mother Jones is taking donations "to get to the truth on the Trump team's connections to Russia." The magazine plans on raising $500,000 through a crowdfunding campaign "to make sure truth prevails over power."According to Mother Jones:To be clear: We can't, and shouldn't, assume that where there's smoke, there's fire. But at this point, that doesn't matter. What Trump or any of his associates did in 2016 may or may not have been a scandal, but blocking the public from finding out most definitely is. Trump may turn out to have overreached with the Comey firing, prompting the kind of independent inquiry he was so desperate to avoid. But it's evident that Republicans on Capitol Hill—terrified of what such a probe would do to their agenda and their electoral prospects—will do everything they can to avoid going there.That means it's up to the public—all of us—to make sure truth prevails over power. There are many ways of doing that, from showing up at town halls to calmly reasoning with friends or relatives. For us, as journalists, the call to action is an especially urgent one: We need to deploy every skill we've learned, from shoe-leather reporting to data dives. We need to go deep, stick with the story no matter where it leads, and resist getting tangled in conventional wisdom or distracted by sideshows.The campaign just started and they've already received a $200,000 grant from the Glaser Progress Foundation, who will donate an additional $50,000 once Mother Jones reaches their goal.Mother Jones admits that this digging up this story – if there is one – will be a time-consuming task. "It's going to require going down a lot of rabbit holes and spending quality time with stacks of documents—day after day, month after month. So please help send us down those rabbit holes." Image: FolsomNatural

In the spirit of 100 Year of Beauty, here's the "Evolution of Douchebag Style."[via]

Some New Yorkers had an entertaining Friday morning as Melissa McCarthy took to the streets of Manhattan impersonating Sean Spicer on a motorized podium. She ends up in front of cameras, perhaps taping for this weekend's Saturday Night Live?

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA)'s Instagram account is a real hoot, featuring weird, ridiculous, and sometimes helpful images of items that are prohibited and permitted to bring on flights. Apparently Jeremy Bentham's mummified head, above, "is allowed in carry-on as long as it's properly packaged, labeleled, and declared..." Also, who knew that Batarangs and Krull Glaives were so popular. From National Geographic:“It almost looks like we’re in the entertainment business at times,” says Bob Burns, lead social media specialist with the TSA Office of Public Affairs and the man behind the account’s cheeky posts. After leaving his rock band in 2002, Burns originally joined TSA as a screener and later started the Instagram account in 2013—his idea to educate the public in a more engaging way.“Everyone’s had that teacher where you’re afraid to ask questions because you’ll get criticized or yelled at. The human tone of our Instagram account makes us more approachable,” Burns says. “The majority of our photos are prohibited items and strange things … we try to use that as a teaching moment: A chainsaw is not allowed in your carry-on bag.” Talk about deadheading... This crusty ol' chap is actually a prop from the #TexasChainsawMassacre movie. He was brought through a checkpoint at the Atlanta (#ATL) International Airport, where as you can see, he was screened and sent on his jolly way. #TSAOnTheJob A post shared by TSA (@tsa) on May 15, 2016 at 3:41pm PDT Some might find this nanner knife appealing. I’m guessing you have a bunch of them? Yes, you can take bananas on the plane. This is a screenshot of a tweet sent to the @AskTSA account on Twitter. Have you ever wondered whether or not you can pack a certain item? Fret no more! Now you can simply snap a picture and tweet it to @AskTSA or send it via Facebook Messenger and our team will get back to you promptly with an answer. If you're a regular follower of this account, I'm sure you can think of many situations where it would have behooved somebody to send us a picture first. And that's not all. Contact us about any TSA related issue or question you might have. We can even help you with TSA Pre✓® issues. We look forward to answering your questions, 8am-10pm ET weekdays; 9am-7pm weekends/holidays. #AskTSA #TSATravelTips A post shared by TSA (@tsa) on May 10, 2017 at 5:00pm PDT #TSATravelTips - Don’t pack your homemade replica suicide vest. The traveler who packed this vest in his checked bag at Richmond (RIC) stated it was a prop intended for use in a live-action role-playing game (LARP). TSA explosives experts raced to the checked baggage room and the airport police were called immediately. Fortunately, the explosives experts determined the vest posed no danger. It has yet to be determined if the officer who searched the bag needed a change of clothing. A post shared by TSA (@tsa) on Oct 27, 2016 at 2:58pm PDT

Members of the San Francisco Giants are using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in an effort to improve their performance on the field. According to SF Giants sports scientist Geoff Head (real name!), "some big-name players" are using the Halo Sport device, resembling Beats headphones, to deliver a small amount of current to the wearer's motor cortex. From KQED:Head decided to try the headset, called Halo Sport, during spring training last year—he gave them to some minor leaguers to wear as they sprinted 20-yard dashes. After two weeks, Head analyzed the results and found that the players who wore the equipment had shaved off a few one-hundredths of a second compared to a control group....Even though a lot of the data is conflicting, the most positive results do support using tDCS to improve motor control. Hence the slew of startups targeting athletes.The Giants’ Head says even a tiny advantage can help win games at the major league level. An improvement of two-hundredths of a second can be “the difference between safe and out sometimes,” he says."The SF Giants Are Zapping Their Brains With Electricity. Will It Help?" (KQED)

Thanks to everyone who came out to last night's Walkaway tour-stop at Houston's Brazos Books; I'm just arriving at the airport to fly to Phoenix for tonight's event at Scottsdale's Poisoned Pen Books with Brian David Johnson. (more…)

The organizers of the disastrous Fyre Festival— which charged $12,000 a ticket, splurged the proceeds on celebrity endorsements and other bullshit, failed to prepare the site in time for the rich kids flying there, then delayed the event as they went feral at the half-finished event site in the Bahamas, then flew them all home—has informed staff they will not be paid. But if they want to, they can volunteer!On Friday, Billy McFarland, the 25-year-old founder of the disastrous Fyre Festival, told his shell-shocked employees that their paychecks covering the past two weeks would not be coming. Nor would he be firing them, a prerequisite for unemployment benefits in most states. Instead, McFarland offered to allow his dozen-or-so employees to stay on in unpaid roles, where they could work to grow the business to a place where they might get paid again.The meeting, audio of which was obtained by VICE News, wrapped up weeks of uncertainty for the employees of Fyre Media, the company behind Fyre Festival, whose primary job had been building a celebrity and talent booking app the festival was intended to promote. Rapper and Fyre Media co-founder Ja Rule was on the grim conference call, but his role was that of a listener.“I’m on the phone but I can barely hear you all because of this fucking hum,” Ja Rule said.The organizers are millionaires and can obviously afford to pay their staff, and the reputation immolation of Ja Rule and McFarland is already complete, so the obvious opinion to take is that they're at the fuck all of you stage, where every last penny represents a tiny fragment of their narcissistic egos and will be pinched.For anyone on the books, the "offer" of volunteer status would avoid layoffs and unemployment benefits. For any being paid in cash off the books, it perhaps offers a paperwork opportunity to save them from the brutal ministrations of the IRS.Previously: Already regretting assigning J.G. Ballard to cover the Fyre Festival, Fyre festival organizers hit with $100 million fraud and breach of contract lawsuit

Racist, perjuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions has issued guidance to federal prosecutors, ordering them to charge the people they will face in court with "the most serious offense you can prove," paving the way for a surge in America's already-shameful record of racially biased, family destroying, community-devastating, private-prison-enriching mass incarceration, which already outstrips the rates of incarceration in Apartheid-era South Africa, China and the USSR. (more…)

Buying a phone on Craigslist or eBay or some other shady venue? Get the device's ESN or IMEI number from the seller and post it to the Stolen Phone Checker, a single-serving website set up by industry trade group CTIA. If the seller won't give you the number, assume it's stolen. [via]

Vlad Savov went on a tour of the Band & Olufsen Museum in Struer, Denmark—a wonder closet of cool audio gear.The very earliest Bang & Olufsen product was actually a component rather than a full-fledged radio. The Eliminator, as it was called, made batteries unnecessary and allowed you to plug your radio directly into the mains. A couple of years after the Eliminator’s introduction, Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen moved their work out of the Olufsen family farm and into a factory in the nearby town of Struer in northwest Denmark. This is where the main B&O manufacturing facilities remain to this day.In terms of their design inspiration, these first B&O radios were like the original skeuomorphic iPhone OS of their time. They adapted the styling of familiar pieces of home furniture to their technological purposes.

From @LRO_NASA: "A huge payoff from the longevity of the LRO mission is the repeat coverage obtained by the LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC). The WAC has a very wide field-of-view (FOV), 90° in monochrome mode and 60° in multispectral mode, hence its name. On the one hand, the wide FOV enables orbit-to-orbit stereo, which allowed LROC team members at the DLR to create the unprecedented 100 meter scale near-global (0° to 360° longitude and 80°S to 80°N latitude) topographic map of the Moon."See also NASA Goddard's Tour of the Moon, especially if your love for it was formed in the last century:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iSZMv64wuU

In McSweeney's, Dan Cluchey plumbs the depths of Poe's law with an indistinguishable-from-satire article analyzing the "winners and losers of the recent nuclear holocaust." (more…)

"Hm. That's kinda gross." [via]