Boing Boing

This Tasty video turns the art of making grilled cheese into, well, art.

Seth Meyers has quietly become one of the stronger political voices on late night TV. In this “Closer Look” segment from his Monday show, Meyers digs into short-lived national security advisor Michael Flynn’s offer to testify in exchange for immunity. He uses Flynn and Trump’s own words about immunity to put Flynn’s situation in perspective. And he highlights some truly terrifying footage of Trump forgetting to sign executive orders at an executive order signing ceremony.

From Sunriver Nature Centre. (more…)

Ben the dog, looking adorable. (more…)

'Alto and Apache vs Gravity,' from Alto's YouTube channel. (more…)

Nailed it. (more…)

This image of Russian leader and purported Donald Trump kingmaker Vladimir Putin as a gay clown is now illegal in Russia. Whatever you do, do not share this far and wide so that everyone sees it. (more…)

GMUNK has done a lot of cool video work, but he says his trip to Alaska to shoot infrared stills was one of his most inspiring projects of all. Below are a couple of examples. (more…)

A poster talk at last year's European Conference on Computer Vision introduced "Deep Warp," a machine-learning based technique for "photorealistic image resynthesis for gaze manipulation" -- that is, you hand the algorithm an image of a face, and tell it where you want the person in the face to look, and it moves the gaze realistically to have the person look in your desired location. (more…)

When the old Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante stepped down from the Library of Congress, it was an open secret that she'd been forced out and there was a lot of Big Content conspiracy theories that Google had gotten her canned because she was too friendly to the movie studios and record labels. (more…)

The Onion poses a mystifying question of evolutionary biology: wouldn't it be better if animals had more eyes?https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/849670240082419712I rather think more mouths would be preferable.

Given how much I loved Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage (and tolerated Iron Fist), I’m super pumped for the shows' respective heroes to team-up in The Defenders. You can check out the first quick teaser for the superhero crossover series above. As the security camera footage timestamp (and this accompanying website) indicates, the show is set to debut on Netflix on August 18th.

UFO sightings are on the rise, and America has 300 times the number of E.T. reports than the global median, claims the ‘National Examiner,’ which has done the math so that you don’t have to.That may explain why this week’s tabloids seem even more divorced from reality than usual.Has President Trump’s tenuous affiliation with facts given the tabloids carte blanche to engage in flights of fantasy? Enquiring minds want to know.Just like the “New York Times’ has its venerable motto “All the news that’s fit to print,” so the ‘National Enquirer’ has begun stamping across the bottom of almost every other page its blustering credo: “The only publication with the guts to tell it like it is.” If only. (more…)

In the 50 years between 1955 and 2005, 47.5% of artists who had a song make the sales charts never made it again. HighSnobiety looks at the reasons why. (more…)

With Easter just a few weeks away, it’s the perfect time to revisit this adorable video from 2013. This baby really wasn’t expecting her sister’s toy Easter hen to have an extra surprise in store for her.

I decided I needed to start exercising again, and spinning--cycling on a stationary bike--is the best choice for me. Peloton looked awesome, but too expensive. I figured out a way to enjoy the features of Peloton I care about, without spending the big bucks. Here's how you can do it, too. (more…)

Insurance agent William Herbert Wallace had a terrible night in January 1931 -- summoned to a nonexistent address in Liverpool, he returned home to find that his wife had been murdered in his absence. An investigation seemed to show a senseless crime with no weapon, no motive, and no likely suspects. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll revisit the slaying of Julia Wallace, which Raymond Chandler called "the impossible murder."We'll also recount some wobbly oaths and puzzle over an eccentric golfer.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Box with a Secret (Шкатулка с секретом) is a Yellow Submarine-inspired children's fairy tale about a child who discovers how to fix a magical box that stopped working. You don't have to know Russian to enjoy its Communist-era message about aristocracy. (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 comics, secrets, codes, and much more. GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”A book for the curious and adventurous!” -Cory Doctorow) Book One here. Book Two here. More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Over April Fool's weekend, Reddit introduced r/place, a blank canvas where users could add pixels of any color. It quickly emerged into an astonishing piece of collaborative digital art with several hard-fought battles to keep and erase certain elements. (more…)

Vimeo recently highlighted this stunning minute-long art collaboration called “INORI (prayer).” It comes from creative and technical director Nobumichi Asai and stars Japanese performance duo AyaBambi. According to the description: First, the soundtrack was composed according along the theme “Life.” Nobumichi Asai and Shingo Abe was inspired by the music and then made face mapping work. Aya Sato designed choreography. TOKYO completed the project by making the video work.The music brought Asai the image of “the radioactive.” The destructive force of the radioactive could cause “death,” “suffering,” and “sorrow.” And “prayers” could overcome them. These subjects infuse AyaBambi’s powerful performance. Their performance crushes and conquer black tears, skulls and the Heart Sutra. We built up the concept during the production and Abe designed animation for face mapping.There was a big challenge in technical aspects. We realized the new mapping system that allows us to follow intense performances by using the latest 1,000 fps projector, DynaFlash and a super speed sensor. It is very new and it had not been done before. Projected images become part of their skin and they transform their faces.At the beginning of our development, there was an issue, AyaBambi would loose freedom of performances if we accelerated the tracking speed. Asai, Yoshimura (WOW), Lecturer Watanabe and Teshima (EXVISION) explored how we could keep the tracking speed securing the freedom of performances, taking three months of trial and error to reduce a few milliseconds. And we finally developed this system.Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the video:https://vimeo.com/210565827

According to the guy who shot this with a Brazilian potato-cam, the boa constrictor attacked a porcupine, which managed to escape after leaving a few hundred spines in its attacker.(more…)

Adam Hillman is a 22-year-old artist and “object arranger” from New Jersey. He uses his Instagram to showcase everyday objects in satisfying patterns.https://www.instagram.com/p/BSBZ60Ehq8z/https://www.instagram.com/p/BSEKQtiBEag/https://www.instagram.com/p/BR061jCBHIb/Hillman spoke to Insider Art about his work in this short video:https://www.instagram.com/p/BSZAKMzhXcS/You can purchase prints of his work on his Society6 page. Here are some more of my favorite of his photos and videos:https://www.instagram.com/p/BRjSp7lhJoQ/https://www.instagram.com/p/BQF9i_ZDT9f/https://www.instagram.com/p/BRdbHAPBgU4/https://www.instagram.com/p/BR5rK1AhMc2/https://www.instagram.com/p/BQLENvdD1ef/https://www.instagram.com/p/BPIfS3KjY0O/

Sarah Jeong of Motherboard says Mastodon is a "kinder, nicer, decentralized open source version of Twitter." I hope she's right! (I'm frauenfelder at Mastodon.cloud.)Snip:Privacy settings are more flexible than they are on Twitter—privacy is set on a per-post basis, a little similar to how it is on Facebook.I could make it so all of my posts are private by default, but I don't have to choose between having a public or a private account.The really interesting nuance here is between "Public" and "Unlisted." An unlisted post is viewable to the public, but it doesn't post to the local or federated timelines.

Chris Notap likes to make humane mousetraps. He's a recreational trapper, I guess. This is the fifth one in his series of homemade traps.Another of my best and easiest homemade humane mouse traps! The 5th in a series! Easy to build, easy to bait, easy to release and best of all, it's humane and there's no springs or levers to wind up or load! The mouse or vole cannot escape or chew his way out of this mouse trap. Mice are not harmed in any way during capture. As a matter of fact, the mouse or vole remains very calm since there is no snapping latches to scare him! Mice can be released calmly and easily without fear of getting bitten even by the most "fearful of mice" person!! Simple operation makes this diy homemade vole mouse trap fun and easy to build and adjust for easy trapping and best of all easy release. Just use a dab of peanut butter to bait the trap. It's the best do it yourself homemade humane live release vole mouse trap you'll find! A few common items is all you'll need. I'll be building a humane squirrel trap next so you can capture and release squirrels easily too so subscribe and don't miss my upcoming "diy humane squirrel trap". Thanks for watching. I also have a "diy humane rat trap" coming soon too!

My friend Donald Bell produces and hosts a weekly video show called The Maker Update. Each week in Maker Update, Donald will take a closer look at one of the tools from the archive of Cool Tools (a tool review site I run with Kevin Kelly. This week, Donald checks out a nifty plastic glue bottle. It's in the video above, and here is Donald's companion post for this episode so you can find out more about all the things Donald talks about.

Amazon will soon fork out up to $70 million to parents whose kids bought in-app purchases without their consent. Although the apps themselves might be free, young players can then easily buy tokens, upgrades, and other goodies for a better gameplay without their parents' permission. After a year of battling it out, the FTC and Amazon agreed yesterday to drop their appeals, and Amazon will soon start the refund process.According to TechCrunch:The FTC’s original complaint said that Amazon should be liable for millions of dollars it charged customers, because of the way its Appstore software was designed – that is, it allowed kids to spend unlimited amounts of money in games and other apps without requiring parental consent.The FTC had previously settled with both Apple and Google on similar charges, before turning its sights to Amazon.The issue had to do with the way the Amazon Appstore’s in-app purchasing system worked. The Amazon Appstore is the store that comes preloaded on Amazon mobile devices, like Kindle Fire tablets, for example, though there is a way to load it onto other Android devices, too.Of course, many kids’ game developers notoriously try to blur the lines between what’s free and paid. They also often design games in a way that they only fully function when kids use in-game items, which can be sometimes earned through gameplay or other times purchased through the app itself. Kids are pushed to buy these things regularly – as any parent can tell you, having experienced their kids’ begging for these items.Read the full story here.

In 2012, Vi Hart made this video giving "9.999... reasons that .999... = 1" She also made a video of bad proofs why .999... does not equal 1.https://youtu.be/wsOXvQn3JuEThere's some interesting discussion about it at TYWKIWDBI.

A person in a dinosaur suit does a good job of pretending to be clumsy while chasing people around.

Research scientist Janelle Shane writes: "I’ve been training a neural network (based on this open-source neural network framework from Andrej Karpathy) on datasets from recipes, to lists of Pokemon, to superhero names. I decided to see if it could invent names for new fruit varieties - I fed it a list of apple, peach, pear, plum, and cherry varieties, and asked it to generate more."SunbrownStankerPork GalaHorspestShivercellHencoughMoregallBrown SoftenRuby WallyRuckNagtortBlee RedRedcellsZuby GlongZeelcherHacker GalaSoften FujiKlunk 134Horking

My friend Kent Barnes recommended this simple, fast-moving dice game called Tenzi. I bought it and my wife, 11-year-old daughter, and I had fun playing it. The rules are simple - everyone starts out with 10 dice and the goal is to roll your dice as fast as you can until all of them show the same number. Every time you roll, you are allowed to set aside any dice that match your desired number. When all ten of the dice show the same number, you shout "Tenzi!," throw your hands in the air, and gloat while the other players gnash their teeth. The game rules included a couple of variations on the basic rule set, which we also played and liked.A few days later Kent told me about a $10 deck of cards called 77 Ways to Play Tenzi. I ordered the deck and last night my wife, 11-year-old, 16-year-old daughter (who doesn't like games and joined us reluctantly), and I tested the deck out. Ninety minutes later we decided that this deck takes Tenzi to a new level. The deck adds variety, surprise, and humor to Tenzi. It makes Tenzi so much more fun that I think the company shouldn't sell the dice without the cards. My 16-year-old daughter was surprised that she had such a good time.Each Tenzi card has a variation of the basic rules. The rules for the variants are simple enough that they can be described in one or two sentences. Here are a few examples:To win the above game, you start with nine dice and roll until you get nine threes. Then you have to arrange the dice as shown on the card, and then roll the tenth dice until you get a six.

No, she's not dead. But over at Neatorama, actor Eddie Deezen wrote a delightful tribute to Dawn Wells who from 1964 to 1967 famously played Mary Ann, one of seven stranded castaways there on Gilligan's Island. Of course during the first season of the show, she (and the professor) weren't even named in the theme song, having been unfairly lumped in under "and the rest." But for the many young people who didn't dig the movie star, Mary Ann was the down-to-earth object of their affection. From Neatorama:In 1964, Dawn auditioned for a new show on the CBS schedule called Gilligan's Island. She met with the show's creator, Sherwood Schwartz, where the two chatted about the character she was up for- Mary Ann Summers, a farm girl from Kansas (based on Judy Garland's "Dorothy" character in The Wizard of Oz.) Before officially testing for the role, her agent/husband Larry called and asked how Sherwood liked her. He was told, "She's too smart to play Mary Ann," to which he replied, "She can play dumb."When Dawn heard of this conversation, she quickly disagreed. "Mary Ann's not dumb," she declared, "She's not very experienced, she's kind of naive, but she's not dumb." It was as if she already fully understood the character she was to make immortal, before she even had the role. Trivia: Another young, beautiful actress named Raquel Welch was also up for for the Mary Ann role....And here's Wells on a couple of her castmates:Jim Backus (Mr. Howell): "He was cheap... cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap." Dawn recalled how she, Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer, who played Mrs. Howell, would go out to lunch together every day, and each day, at the end of their meal, Backus would claim "I forgot my wallet," forcing Natalie to pick up his tab. At the end of the year's filming, Natalie went over to Backus and presented him with a bill for $340 to cover his "freebies."Russell Johnson (the Professor): "He had the best sense of humor. He was the funniest and he was a hunk." She added about her special friend: "He was a very handsome, good man. I miss him.… If [during the show's run] either of us had been single or both of us had been single, there would have been some chemistry.""Dawn Wells: Forever Mary Ann"

Is the world funny? Let Groucho and Buckley settle the matter once and for all on Firing Line (1967). From the same year: Timothy Leary and William F. Buckley, Jr. in conversation:https://youtu.be/BnoCHlybAnU

In her spare time, University of California, San Diego engineer Janelle Shane trained a neural network to generate recipes for new dishes. Informed by its reading of existing recipes, the neural network did improve over time yet it's clearly not quite ready for Iron Chef. Here are two recipes from her Tumblr, Postcards from the Frontiers of Science: Pears Or To Garnestmeammeats¼ lb bones or fresh bread; optional½ cup flour1 teaspoon vinegar¼ teaspoon lime juice2 eggsBrown salmon in oil. Add creamed meat and another deep mixture.Discard filets. Discard head and turn into a nonstick spice. Pour 4 eggs onto clean a thin fat to sink halves.Brush each with roast and refrigerate. Lay tart in deep baking dish in chipec sweet body; cut oof with crosswise and onions. Remove peas and place in a 4-dgg serving. Cover lightly with plastic wrap. Chill in refrigerator until casseroles are tender and ridges done. Serve immediately in sugar may be added 2 handles overginger or with boiling water until very cracker pudding is hot.Yield: 4 servingsThis is from a network that’s been trained for a relatively long time - starting from a complete unawareness of whether it’s looking at prose or code, English or Spanish, etc, it’s already got a lot of the vocabulary and structure worked out. This is particularly impressive given that it has the memory of a goldfish - it can only analyze 65 characters at a time, so by the time it begins the instructions, the recipe title has already passed out of its memory, and it has to guess what it’s making. It knows, though, to start by browning meat, to cover with plastic wrap before chilling in the refrigerator, and to finish by serving the dish. Compare that to a recipe generated by a much earlier version of the network:Immediately Cares, Heavy Mimupe, chips3 dill loasted substetcant1 cubed chopped whipped cream3 unpreased, stock; prepared; in season1 oil3 cup milk1 ½ cup mOyzanel chopped½ teaspoon lemon juice1 ¼ teaspoon chili powder2 tablespoon dijon stem – minced30 dates afrester beater remainingBake until juice. Brush from the potato sauce: Lightly butter into the viscin. Cook combine water. Source: 0 25 seconds; transfer a madiun in orenge cinnamon with electres if the based, make drained off tala whili; or chicken to well. Sprinkle over skin greased with a boiling bowl. Toast the bread spritkries.Yield: 6 servingswhich bakes first, has the source in the middle of the recipe directions, mixes sweet and savory, and doesn’t yet know that you can’t cube or chop whipped cream."The Silicon Gourmet: training a neural network to generate cooking recipes" (Thanks, Toshi Hoo!)

Shia LaBeouf's new movie Man Down grossed just $26 during its UK run which, in fairness, was only playing at one theater once each day. But still. From the Hollywood Reporter:"I think we've sold three tickets in total," the cinema manager told the Hollywood Reporter, adding that she hadn't "experienced anything like it before."The manager said Man Down would end its weeklong run in Burnley's Reel Cinema this Thursday, "highly likely" without any further purchases being made, a move that would see the film's U.K. theatrical total max out at £21 ($26.20), rather less than the $454,490 it earned following a limited theatrical run in the U.S. last December.

I have been enjoying this bendable iPhone lightning cable. It is great for keeping the phone where I can see it. Using it with a 20000mAh USB battery as a base works well too.Not rigid enough to work as a stand in my car.COMROLL Cable Charger Holder Flexible Holder Stand Up USB Desk Charging Sync Data for iPhone 5S 6 6S 7 Plus 50cm via Amazon

Last year, according to a recent study by Oxfam International, just eight people owned as much wealth as half of the world’s population. That's bad. Many people suggest Universal Basic Income as a way to help solve that problem. My friend and Institute for the Future colleague Marina Gorbis suggests that we need something more -- Universal Basic Assets. From her provocative essay on Medium:The answer may be in the concept of Universal Basic Assets (UBA),​ which​ in my definition​ is​ a core, basic set of resources that every person is entitled to, from housing and healthcare to education and financial security...In designing Universal Basic Assets we take into account access to traditional physical and financial assets like land and money, as well as the growing pools of digital assets (data, digital currencies, reputations, etc.). We also recognize and assign value to exchanges we engage in as a part of maintaining the social fabric of our society but that do not currently carry with them monetary value (caring, creative output, knowledge generation, etc.).In essence, we need to look at the concept of assets in its broadest sense, considering three classes of assets: private, public, and open.‘Universal Basic Assets’: A new economic model that could save the other 99%

The Hans Christian Andersen classic, The Snow Queen, is a quick and enjoyable read, made all the more so with printmaker Sanna Annukka’s gorgeous illustrations. You’ll likely recognize the textile designer’s aesthetic from Marimekko and, not surprisingly, many of her illustrations make full use of her bold, geometric patterns through the characters’ dress. Her landscapes look like fabrics, too. A panel that shows a wintry countryside looks like it could be a weaving and I wish I could buy another, a garden in full bloom, by the bolt. The story itself is not what I had expected. In many ways, the titular character is a minor player. The heroine is a young girl, Gerda, who journeys bravely and earnestly, escaping numerous villains by virtue of her devotion to her young friend and playmate, Kay, who has been lured away by the Snow Queen. Kay first fell victim to the heart-numbing trickery of the devil himself, who had accidentally broken an evil mirror crafted to reflect and amplify only the most wicked and ugly things in the world. When the mirror breaks, pieces “smaller than a grain of sand” are sent flying around the word, one of which sticks in Kay’s eye, and another which pierces and chills his heart. As the Snow Queen further freezes Kay’s heart with a kiss, Gerda braves witches, haunts, thieves, and icy winds to save her friend. Maybe it’s because I’m a mom who is worn out on Frozen, the Disney smash hit (which refuses to die, despite every parent’s best efforts) that was loosely based on the fairy tale, but I wish that the movie more closely echoed the actual story. The Snow Queen is a story about the good and strength inherent in children, in which a young girl saves a young boy for a change. Though the movie maintained some of this (and, of course, the “love thaws a frozen heart” moral), I think it did an injustice to the young audience who could have seen themselves, as they can in the book, in a persistent heroine their own age.The Snow Queen: A Tale in Seven Stories by Hans Christian Andersen (Illustrator), Sanna Annukka (Illustrator), Jean Hersholt (Translator)Ten Speed Press2016, 88 pages, 5.0 x 0.6 x 9.0 inches, Hardcover$16 Buy on AmazonSee sample pages from this book at Wink.

Brandeis physicist Daniel Perlman modded a wine bottle so wine wouldn't dribble when it was poured. Why didn't the wineries figure this out a couple of hundred years ago?Perlman studied slow-motion videos of wine being poured. He observed first that drippage was most extreme when a bottle was full or close to it. He also saw that a stream of wine tends to curl backward over the lip and run down the side of the glass bottle because glass is hydrophilic, meaning it attracts water.Using a diamond-studded tool, Perlman, assisted by engineer Greg Widberg, created a circular groove around the neck of the bottle just beneath the top. A droplet of wine that would otherwise run down the side of the bottle encounters the groove, but can’t traverse it. Instead, it immediately falls off the bottle into the glass along with the rest of the wine.

This never gets old.

This amazing Gibson is for sale, a mere $11,999USD. Beautiful, but my guitar addiction syndrome has been cured. Via Reverb:Freakishly clean 1908 Style U harp guitar in near mint all original condition, serial number 8618 batch number 1004 with original hand tooled rear loading leather case. By far the cleanest century old Gibson instruments we've seen. Purchased originally by the school teaching matriarch of a homesteading family from the Southwestern United States to entertain her students. The size was too much to deal with and the instrument sat unmolested at home in her closet, on her dresser until the death of her only son from old age. The caregiver attending to the dying needs of the now elder son claimed she was gifted the guitar before his death and that the conversation went something like this. Dying son says "what about my Moms' guitar? Caregiver says, what guitar? Dying man points to the closet and she sees the case on top of the dresser, that's for you, you take it." She sold it to me a few days’ later, perfect provenance, perfect guitar and perfect deal. It’s slightly difficult to covey how clean and original this instrument is, there will probably not be another of these, this nice ever. Spectacular varnished finish displays perfectly normal varnish shrinkage, patterned in a way only varnish does when not French polished out. A better example cannot be found for sale anywhere. All instruments are examined, cleaned and set up before selling. No modifications or repairs, no cracks or breaks. Fast and free same day safe shipping, USPS Priority fully insured by Heritage Insurance. Comes with original case, thanks. $11999. VGALet us know if you pick it up!

These excellent minimalistic remakes of famous movies were created by Russian animation studio 420.https://youtu.be/PZp2-5fGtmchttps://youtu.be/K03TTJB38Pkhttps://youtu.be/2bMDC7P_y5ohttps://youtu.be/NZzCMEWufbMhttps://youtu.be/03N1jCsPBnE[via]

The Trump Administration claims Bannon was placed on the council to oversee fired National Security Director and Russian pattycake player Michael Flynn. Today the famous white supremacist was removed from the council, reputedly never having attended a meeting.Via Bloomberg:Under the move, the national intelligence director, Dan Coats, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, are again "regular attendees" of the NSC’s principals committee.Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, was elevated to the National Security Council’s principals committee at the beginning of Trump’s presidency. The move drew criticism from some members of Congress and Washington’s foreign policy establishment.A White House official said that Bannon was placed on the committee in part to monitor Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and never attended a meeting. He’s no longer needed with McMaster in charge of the council, the official said.Trump fired Flynn on Feb. 13 for not disclosing to the president or to Vice President Mike Pence the extent of his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, before Trump’s inauguration.

Jannis Hermanns built a lovely little Macintosh Classic from Lego and brilliantly integrated a 2.7" e-ink display controlled by a Raspberry Pi Zero. He kindly posted his build plans right here.

Simply willing your projects to completion might be enough for those of you well-steeped in the mind-hacks of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret. For the rest of us chronic pessimists, doing the actual work in a logical fashion is probably going to yield more success. Planning out large projects can be supremely difficult without proper organizational methods, which is why Aeon Timeline 2 was created to help ease some of the pain of staying on track.This Windows- and Mac-friendly app helps manage the complexity in everything from creative writing projects to legal cases. The virtual timeline is ideal for fiction writers that need to keep track of key events and character growth over time, and for students mapping out major essays. Project managers can use its powerful task assignment, grouping, and nesting features to keep their teams flexible without losing sight of the bigger picture.Aeon Timeline 2 gives you the freedom to juggle abstract goals, research materials, and concrete deadlines within a single interface. Usually $50, you can get it here for $22.99.

I've got an editorial in this month's Wired magazine about the relationship between the science fiction stories we read and our real-world responses to disasters: Disasters Don’t Have to End in Dystopias; it's occasioned by the upcoming publication of my "optimistic disaster novel" Walkaway (pre-order signed copies: US/UK; read excerpts: Chapter 1, Chapter 2; US/Canada tour schedule). (more…)

A presentation by Igor Soumenkov at Kaspersky's Security Analyst Summit reveals that the method behind a rash of mysterious ATM heists that left behind no evidence of hacking -- only a single small hole drilled by the machines' PIN pads -- were likely accomplished by using the hole to insert a $15 connector that allowed thieves to hijack the ATMs and order them to spit out all their money. (more…)

R Martin bought a Garadget -- a device that lets you verify whether your garage door is closed using a mobile app -- and couldn't get it to work and left an intemperate 1-star Amazon review for the product. (more…)

Snarge: "The residue smeared on an airplane after a bird/plane collision. The snarge is generally all that is left of the bird. See if you can use it in casual conversation today! (via Dan Hon)