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I added a line of dialog to Star Trek: First Contact.PREVIOUSLY: Yeah, Obi-Wan Remembers the Truth Alright

Michael from Sparrows Lockpicks (previously) writes, "I am releasing the Gridlock today, a automotive lock teaching tool." (more…)

ChefSteps Joule sous vide eliminates all the niggling inconveniences of other models and turns sous vide into a really useful, everyday technique. I've been cooking with it for months now, and I'm in love.Sous vide cooking is a method of bringing the foodstuffs you want to eat up to their cooked temperature in a gentle bath of heated water. The protein changes are more predictable, flavors far bolder and less cooked out, textures not destroyed by high heat. I love the results sous vide produces but even the best of last years circulators kept it as an every-so-often technique.The containers I found I had to use to match up with the depth, clips and mounting hardware of most units was a total pain in the butt. Over time I settled on using an igloo cooler with the then favorite circulator. It was larger than I wanted to keep in my kitchen, and needed more water than a California felt great about for making a few steaks. Sure, I could recycle the water but it just never felt like something I could do every day. Here is what is so great about Joule: it has a magnet in its bottom instead of using a mounting clip. Even the best mounting hardware doesn't compare to this. If you have any pots that a magnet will stick to, you can sous vide in them. The Joule also runs with much less water than other units I've tried. You do not have to fill the pot up to where the exhaust hole in the unit is. The pump will bring water up. It is really great.Joule's software is simple to use. The iPhone app I tried was a beta version, and everything was already working perfectly. Simple to access via wireless, incredibly intuitive controls. All any of these devices do is to set a temperature and a timer. The app has recipe suggestions and the like, but I doubt anyone really wants that. Another refreshing feature is that the the Joule is small enough that it'll fit in any drawer or cupboard in my kitchen. Because it has no readout or on the unit controls beyond on and off, it is really slender. Thanks to the folks at ChefSteps for making something that really works for small kitchens.ChefSteps CS10001 Joule Sous Vide, White/Stainless via Amazon

Dawoochen makes a line of flatware, called Head Up, for people who don't want the business end of their forks, knives, and spoons from touching the microbes teeming on the dinner table.The Dawoochen Head up flat ware set is an innovative and hygienic product designed to keep the part that goes into your mouth free from touching the surface and this can perfectly prevent various bacteria and dust on the dining tablet from getting into the mouth through table ware.

Peterborough, England photographer Chris Porsz's Reunions photo series and book presents his remarkable street snapshots of myriad characters taken in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s juxtapozed with those same individuals at the location of the original photographs. See more: Reunions

Enjoy the delightful music video for the Was (Not Was) song "Hello Dad, I'm in Jail" (1987), directed by Christoph Simon. This clip was a favorite of many viewers of Liquid Television, MTV's fantastic animation showcase produced in the early 1990s by Boing Boing's pals at Colossal Pictures. (Thanks, UPSO!)

When the next president takes office, he brings with him an anti-encryption, anti-free-press, Islamophobic, racist, anti-transparency agenda that will depend on the tech sector's massive databases of identifiable information and their sophisticated collection capabilities to bring his agenda to fruition. (more…)

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about Charles Platt’s Make: Electronics series (which I instigated as an editor at Make: Books) is his “Learning by Discovery” approach. You learn about electronics by doing the electronics and then learning about the science and engineering behind what you just did. So I was thrilled to see that in Platt’s latest book, Make: Tools, he uses the same project-based learning approach. Here, you do various, mainly wood-based, projects and learn about the tools as they are needed. For instance, in the first project, which is a wooden puzzle, saws are discussed as one is called for, then mitre boxes, clamps, rulers and squares, sanding and finishing tools. In the end, you’ve been introduced to each of the the tools in action and you have a fun puzzle to show for your efforts.Charles always picks clever projects and Make: Tools is no exception. Projects here include a set of jumbo wooden dice, a pantograph, a Swanee whistle, parquetry, some wooden and plastic boxes, basic bookshelves, and even a few useful shop jigs. Through the course of each chapter, the project reveals the tools needed and explains how they’re used, their features and variations, and any safety precautions. Each chapter is also followed by a fact sheet that delves more deeply into a featured tool or material introduced in the chapter. Charles is known for his intense attention to detail and there’s plenty of evidence of that here. Each of the handsomely-designed pages (photographed and illustrated by Charles and designed by his wife, Erico Platt) has a lot going on and close examination pays off. It’s a fun book just to browse through. And, even if you don’t build anything from Make: Tools, the steps in the projects act as a narrative through which you can better understand how these tools are used in a variety of building situations. By the end, you’ll have been introduced to dozens of tools, materials, and techniques and have gained a solid grounding in how to use them in the real world.Make: Tools: How They Work and How to Use Them by Charles PlattMaker Media2016, 260 pages, 8.0 x 0.4 x 9.6 inches, Hardcover$18 Buy one on Amazon

Carryl Baldwin, a professor of cognition and applied auditory research, designs and tests sounds for "use as alarms in household, aviation, medical, and automotive settings." Atlas Obscura explores the art and science of making sounds that convey a spectrum of urgency:One of the main considerations is the annoyance factor. To test for annoyance in the lab, says Baldwin, “we’ll construct sounds and we’ll look at all of the different acoustic parameters, so we might vary, for instance, intensity, frequency, the number of harmonics, how fast it ramps up and down, the temporal characteristics—like whether it’s going d-d-d-d-d-duh rapidly or duhhhh-duhhhhh-duhhhh.”The faster an alarm goes, the more urgent it tends to sound. And in terms of pitch, alarms start high. Most adults can hear sounds between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz—Baldwin uses 1,000 Hz as a base frequency, which is at the bottom of the range of human speech. Above 20,000 Hz, she says, an alarm ”starts sounding not really urgent, but like a squeak.” Harmonics are also important. To be perceived as urgent, an alarm needs to have two or more notes rather than being a pure tone, “otherwise it can sound almost angelic and soothing,” says Baldwin. “It needs to be more complex and kind of harsh.” An example of this harshness is the alarm sound that plays on TVs across the U.S. as part of the Emergency Alert System. The discordant noise is synonymous with impending doom."An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways" (Atlas Obscura)

Thinkgeek's new Her Universe Star Trek collection includes a couple of standout pieces: first, the Wesley Crusher bomber with embroidered "Crusher" over the breast and the three-stripe sleeve piping; second, the Patches Paige bomber with Trekkie embroidery and a selection of Starfleet Academy patches. (more…)

Paul Myers of Opulence Mechanics designed and 3D printed this door lock. You can open the door only if you have a marble. I guess a gumball would would, too.

Trump is a climate denier and he's packing his administration with climate deniers; as Peter Watts pointed out, Trump "seems to think that the laws of politics and of physics somehow carry equal weight, that he can negotiate with the heat capacity of the world’s oceans ('Okay, we’ll cut our bitumen production by 15%, but then you have to increase your joules/kelvin by at least 5…')." (more…)

It's polar night in the Arctic, and temperatures ought to be plunging. But the opposite is happening. Meanwhile, sea ice in the Arctic is at a record low.From Washington Post:“Despite onset of #PolarNight, temperatures near #NorthPole increasing. Extraordinary situation right now in #Arctic, w/record low #seaice,” added Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.This is the second year in a row that temperatures near the North Pole have risen to freakishly warm levels. During 2015’s final days, the temperature near the Pole spiked to the melting point thanks to a massive storm that pumped warm air into the region.So what’s going on here?“It’s about 20C [36 degrees Fahrenheit] warmer than normal over most of the Arctic Ocean, along with cold anomalies of about the same magnitude over north-central Asia,” Jennifer Francis, an Arctic specialist at Rutgers University, said by email Wednesday.

A puzzled thief had trouble understanding why he couldn't pull a cash drawer through a hole that was too small.

The N’Djili district of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo is home to an enormous market of scrap auto-parts, carefully salvaged from Japan's waste-stream and meticulously arrayed on blankets by merchants eking out a marginal existence. (more…)

The JetJat Ultra Nano Drone claims to be unlike the average nano drone, and I thought it was worth trying out. These days, many nano drones tend to be too beginner friendly and offer little opportunity to evolve your flying skills. At first glance, the biggest difference between JetJat and most drones of this size is the quality camera. I can actually live stream what's below, while flying this little guy inside and outside.It's really easy to get in the air: just click a button to take off, maintain altitude, and land with the auto-land feature. The controller attaches to your smartphone, and lets you steer the drone using a live streaming view. But once the JetJat is in the air, it has a 4-channel control of direction, and can perform flips and tricks. It's a small, nimble drone with the technology I usually see in larger, more expensive options.The good news is that it's much more affordable than the larger and more pricey drones out there. Plus, today only , you can get the JetJat for just $92.99. This drone retails at $129.99 and is usually on sale for $99.99 in the Boing Boing Store. Don't miss this special price, ending tomorrow.Also explore Boing Boing's other 24-hour sales during Deals Week:Complete Game Design Bundle ($59 lowered to $39)

Tim Maughan writes, "Thanks to all the Boing Boing crew that checked out the trailer for our Detroit LIDAR film, it'll be out soon - in the meantime our film IN THE ROBOT SKIES is now up to stream. The first narrative film shot entirely by semi-autonomous drones, it's a love story set on a highly surveilled housing estate in London. Written by me, directed by Liam Young, with music by Forest Swords."

Obamacare has some significant structural problems, all stemming from the way it gives the whip-hand to insurance companies, who get to demand ever-larger sums from both the government and Obamacare users; nevertheless, the ability to get insurance makes an enormous difference for people contemplating starting innovative businesses and stepping away from big, lumbering corporations that are big enough to extend coverage to their employees. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSbT0RCuto8Trossen Robotics challenged the roboticists whom it serves to make junkbots out of grab-bags of surplus parts they had lying around. The three winners are extremely impressive! (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euQvtep54E8&feature=youtu.beBeck Stern writes, "In 2008 I knitted a woolen cozy for my computer, and now it belongs to the internet. This new video is its story." Beck Stern is a national treasure.

https://youtu.be/N6x_AdyFeqk?t=20m40sThis week on the Tax Justice Network's podcast (previously), they profile (at 20:40) the OECD's Tax Inspectors Without Borders, through which poor countries loan each other their most effective tax collectors to help catch the tax-dodging multinational corporations who drain the countries' economies -- and the organization transfers tax enforcement expertise in the process. (more…)

Donald Trump has appointed Gen. Michael "fear of Muslims is RATIONAL" Flynn as his National Security Advisor and Jeff "be careful what you say to white folks" Sessions as his Attorney General. Along with white nationalist hero Steve Bannon's job as Strategic Advisor, that's three strikes for the "give him a chance" crowd from the first three pitches. Japanese-Americans old enough to remember the prison camps know where this is going. (more…)

The uploader of this video doesn't know much about it — "probably it's Tokyu Ikegami Line" — but they know it's the world's shortest train. In honor of the widespread "reporting" of president-elect Donald Trump saving a Ford factory from being moved to Mexico (he didn't), I hereby honor, in search engines and Facebook, the obviously factual fact that this is the world's shortest train.

Joseph Kimble noticed this peculiarly-worded sign. I'm not sure of the jurisdiction but, to he honest, I would move elsewhere if I ran into a sign like this.https://twitter.com/ProfJoeKimble/status/799288576169168897

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I just died in your arms tonight, cat.[Video Link]

The United States of America interned citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. The 1988 Civil Liberties Act signed by President Ronald Reagan issued a formal apology and $20,000 to each surviving victim of this racist program. It was a dark chapter in American history. Trump surrogate Carl Higbie believes that bringing back internment camps for Muslim citizens would Make America Great Again. (more…)

Slow coffee service at a Miami Starbucks launched this gentleman into a racially based tirade. Apparently this is now America's answer to everything.Via @jbdclWe already understand you prefer horizontally recorded video of racists. Thanks!

https://youtu.be/NvDvESEXcgEErik Singer, a dialect coach, was shown clips from 32 famous actors playing roles that required them to adopt an accent. He critiqued each one. As you might expect, Meryl Streep, Daniel Day Lewis, and Philip Seymour Hoffman get top marks. Tom Cruise and Kevin Costner, not so much. The worst? Not Dick Van Dyke's Cockney accent in Mary Poppins. It's Mickey Rooney's ridiculous Japanese accent in Breakfast at Tiffany's. This video was directed and edited by our friend, Joe Sabia.

Google's neural net is amazingly good at figuring out what you draw. In this game, it correctly guessed five out of six doodles I drew: cookie, saw, scissors, beach, grass. It missed watermelon.

In 1977 Richard Posner (then a prof at the University of Chicago's notorious ultra-libertarian school; now a federal judge) teamed up with an economist and law student to form Lexecon, which has since grown to a firm worth more than $130,000,000, whose major business is to serve as intellectual guns-for-hire who will produce plausible-seeming economic models defending giant corporate mergers against anti-trust regulators. (more…)

White supremacist media baron Steve Bannon ran Donald Trump's campaign; now he is Trump's presidential Chief Strategist. Last year, he did an interview in which he declared his belief that people from Asia who attend top US universities and found and run successful US firms should be kicked out of the country because they represented a threat to "civil society." (more…)

Research suggests that people who do nice things for others, often at a cost for themselves, are more sexually attractive. From an evolutionary perspective, this might be because altruism indicates that a potential mate is more cooperative and caring. Evolutionary psychologists Steven Arnocky, at Nipissing University, and Pat Barclay, at the University of Guelph, conducted a fascinating study to explore whether altruistic people really do have more sexual partners. From Scientific American: This theory suggests that altruism may serve, in part, to convey one’s value as a mating partner, including one’s concern for others and likelihood of cooperating with future mates. Research has shown that we prefer altruistic partners, all else being equal; especially for long-term mating (the evidence for altruism being preferred in short-term mates is mixed). Not surprisingly, then, the pull to demonstrate one’s altruism can be strong. Some research has shown that men will actively compete with one another (termed competitive altruism) by making charitable donations to women. Interestingly, these charitable donations increase when the target of one’s altruism is physically attractive...Previous findings from hunter-gatherer populations have shown that men who hunt and share meat often enjoy greater reproductive access to women. But do these links hold up in other cultural and contextual arenas, such as in contemporary North American society? To find out, we conducted a set of two studies. In our first study, undergraduate men and women completed an altruism questionnaire (involving questions like “I have donated blood”), along with a sexual history survey. Participants also completed a personality inventory, given the possibility that those with certain personality characteristics (such as being extroverted) might happen to engage in both more altruism and more sexual activity. We found that people who scored higher on altruism also reported they were more desirable to the opposite sex, had more sex partners, more casual sex partners, and had sex more often within relationships (although this latter finding was not statistically-significant after controlling for personality variables). The statistical models (including covariates) explained between 13 and 26% of variance in the sexual behavior variables. Moreover, altruism mattered more for men’s number of lifetime and casual sex partners than for women’s."Altruistic People Have More Sexual Partners" (Scientific American)

Apple has acknowledged that its Icloud service is a weak link in its security model, because by design Apple can gain access to encrypted data stored in its customers' accounts, which means that the company can be hacked, coerced or tricked into revealing otherwise secure customer data to law enforcement, spies and criminals. (more…)

Now that Boars, Gore, and Swords has switched to full coverage of HBO's Westworld, they've returned to their schedule of posting episodes following that night's airing. For this week's "Contrapasso," Ivan and Red are joined by comedian Allison Mick to discuss ever-expanding fan theories, dude robot full frontal, and Ed Harris's frontier medicine. They've also concluded their Patreon-exclusive coverage of the Great British Bake Off finale, so kick in a buck for some high-class cake talk. To catch up on previous episodes of Westworld, previous seasons of Game of Thrones, the A Song of Ice And Fire books, and other TV and movies, check out the BGaS archive. You can find them on Twitter @boarsgoreswords, like their Facebook fanpage, and email them. If you want access to extra episodes and content, you can donate to the Patreon.

This week on HOME: Stories From L.A., a member of the Boing Boing Podcast Network:Color slides were once the state of the art in family photography -- vibrant, immersive, ubiquitous. So ubiquitous, in fact, that millions, maybe billions of them survive. A conversation with midcentury pop culture expert Charles Phoenix: What can we learn from the vast shadow world of abandoned slides about the way we used to live in our homes?If you like what you hear, please drop by the iTunes Store and leave the show a rating and/or review. And don't forget to subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS

Via a Freedom of Information Act request, Yellowstone National Park recently reported the tragic details of an accident last summer, where a 23 year old man dissolved after an illegal attempt to bathe in Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. He had gone 200 yards past the legal tourism area with his sister, who was recording on her cell phone when the incident happened. Luckily, that video has not been released.Though search and rescue was attempted, Deputy Chief Ranger Lorant Veress remarked, "in a very short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving" due to the churning, acidic water. The man was reaching down to test the temperature, with the intent to "hot pot," aka bathe in the steaming water, when he slipped and fell in. Reports Wyoming's KURL news:Search and rescue rangers who arrived later did find the victim's body in the pool, along with his wallet, and flip flops. But, a lightning storm stopped the recovery efforts. The next day, workers could not find any remains. Veress says the water was churning, and acidic.He remarked, "In a very short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving"Veress said the park posts warning signs for important reasons, "… because it is wild and it hasn't been overly altered by people to make things a whole lot safer, it's got dangers. And a place like Yellowstone which is set aside because of the incredible geothermal resources that are here, all the more so."Yellowstone is meant to be wild and preserved as such, so the park posts warning signs for this very reason. Despite the signs and the accident, a week later, a Chinese tourist also left the visitors boardwalk and illegally tried to collect water from the same spring to use for its "medicinal purposes." Collecting any of the park's resources, including water from hot springs, is a federal violation and the man was heavily fined. Walking on the fragile crust of the thermal springs causes irreversible environmental damage.How the hot springs were formed, from the Yellowstone website: At Yellowstone each year, the rain and melted snow seeps into the earth. Cold to begin with, the water is quickly warmed by heat radiating from a partially molten magma chamber deep underground, the remnant of a cataclysmic volcanic explosion that occurred 600,000 years ago.After moving throughout this underwater "plumbing" system, the now hot water rises up through a system of small fissures. Here it also interacts with hot gases charged with carbon dioxide rising up from the magma chamber. As some of the carbon dioxide is dissolved in the hot water, a weak, carbonic acid solution is formed. In the Mammoth area, the hot, acidic solution dissolves large quantities of limestone on its way up through the rock layers to the hot springs on the surface. It is not known why the FOIA report was requested, but the incident does provide an option out for those unable to tolerate living under a Trump presidency. https://youtu.be/ggNIDrtiEJI?list=PLcXJBBXzyHHEKeuwewjc1rbecE4-bNa4W

James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, has tendered his resignation. He says he will serve through the handover to the new administration, whereupon Donald Trump will inherit an arsenal of cyberweapons and a $52B/year army of 107,000 secret, unaccountable spies that Clapper has strengthened and emboldened in one of the most sustained and successful exercises in empire-building in US governmental history. (more…)

Samuraiguitarist Steve Onotera created this fantastic cover of the Super Mario World music including sound effects made on his guitar. (via Laughing Squid)

Boing Boing pal Adam Savage (MythBusters, Tested) tours the incredible prop collection of Peter Jackson, producer of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, District 9, and the forthcoming The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun. One of his favorite pieces? An original Hal 9000 faceplate! That is quite the wunderkammer, Mr. Jackson! (Tested)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8CNWbqmhDw&feature=youtu.beWe interrupt your growing anxiety at America's emergent cyberpunk dystopia for a tense missive from the Syrian War. In this video, an explosive-laden suicide truck bears down on a position held (reportedly by French special forces with the SDF) near Raqqa. The perspective on the video makes it hard to tell, but the vehicle is well-armored and only seconds from putting the defenders in serious trouble. Bullets ricochet off; a missile sails past its target. It is not long before everyone is becoming quite alarmed at the driver's progress. What happens next, though, will probably not surprise you. (more…)

In a Subway eatery, a displeased customer. (more…)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Digital Security Tips for Protesters builds on its indispensable Surveillance Self Defense guide for protesters with legal and technical suggestions to protect your rights, your data, and your identity when protesting. (more…)

In Carrie Fisher's new memoir The Princess Diarist, she writes that she had an affair with Harrison Ford while they were filming Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977). From CNN:"It was so intense," Fisher told People magazine. "It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend..."Fisher was 19 when she landed the breakthrough role of Princess Leia for the 1976 filming. Ford, then 33, was married to Mary Marquardt, with whom he had two children.Fisher writes that she and Ford spent their first night together after a birthday party for director George Lucas."I looked over at Harrison. A hero's face -- a few strands of hair fell over his noble, slightly furrowed brow," she wrote. "How could you ask such a shining specimen of a man to be satisfied with the likes of me?""I was so inexperienced, but I trusted something about him," she added. "He was kind."The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher (Amazon)

https://youtu.be/ELjEM4C2QSQIn 1959 Disney released a 30-minute educational featurette called "Donald in Mathmagic Land." Everything about it is superb - the design, the animation, the music, the narration, and the presentation of the material. I remember watching this in school and realizing how interesting math could be.From Wikipedia:Donald in Mathmagic Land is a 27-minute Donald Duck educational featurette released on June 26, 1959.It was directed by Hamilton Luske. Contributors included Disney artists John Hench and Art Riley, voice talent Paul Frees, and scientific expert Heinz Haber, who had worked on the Disney space shows. It was released on a bill with Darby O'Gill and the Little People. In 1959, it was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Documentary - Short Subjects). In 1961, two years after its release, it was shown as part of the first program of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color with an introduction by Ludwig Von Drake. The film was made available to schools and became one of the most popular educational films ever made by Disney. As Walt Disney explained, "The cartoon is a good medium to stimulate interest. We have recently explained mathematics in a film and in that way excited public interest in this very important subject."

The windowless, 550'-tall AT&T tower at 33 Thomas Street in lower Manhattan is the building referred to as TITANPOINTE in the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and was likely the staging point for the NSA's BLARNEY operation, which illegally spied upon communications to and from "International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank of Japan, the European Union, the United Nations, and at least 38 different countries, including U.S. allies such as Italy, Japan, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, and Cyprus." (more…)

Days after Mark Zuckerberg called the idea that Facebook -- and specifically, the fake news circulated on Facebook -- had influenced the US election as "a pretty crazy idea," a group of "renegade" Facebook employees have formed themselves into a "task force" to tackle the issue, and have been warned by their managers that they may not speak to the press about this on pain on termination. (more…)

A wonderful collection of images that prove cats are magic, found on IMGUR. (more…)

Prolific and dramatic security researcher Samy Kamkar (previously) has unveiled a terrifying device that reveals the devastating vulnerabilities of computers, even when in sleep mode. (more…)