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Updated 2026-11-12 19:02
Every Android device potentially vulnerable to "most serious" Linux escalation attack, ever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xdMteqm994The Dirty Cow vulnerability dates back to code included in the Linux kernel in 2007, and it can be trivially weaponized into an easy-to-run exploit that allows user-space programs to execute as root, meaning that attackers can take over the entire device by getting their targets to run apps without administrator privileges. (more…)
New York Times devotes a 2-page spread to "The 281 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter"
[Full size]The 281 People, Places and Things DonaldTrump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List [Jasmine C. Lee and Kevin Quealy/New York Times]
Downticket Republican candidates threaten libel suits over TV spots tying them to Trump
Five Republican Congressional candidates -- Reps. Bob Dold (R-Ill.), Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), David Jolly (R-Fla.), John Katko (R-N.Y.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) -- have threatened broadcasters with libel suits over Democratic campaign ads that tie the men to their own party's presidential candidate, millionaire Donald J Trump. (more…)
Comedy writer has exactly the right response to his kid's Fahrenheit 451 permission slip
Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh's son came home from school with a permission slip that he'd have to sign before the kid could read Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, which is widely believed to be an anti-censorship book (Bradbury himself insisted that this was wrong, and that the book was actually about the evils of television). (more…)
Texas county commissioner candidate's election ad is pretty great
Gerald Daugherty, a Republican county commissioner in the Austin-area Travis County, has produced one of the best ad-spots of the season, depicting him as a politics-obsessed public servant whose long-suffering, side-eyeing wife can't wait for him to be re-elected so she won't have to listen to him drone on about how much he wants to help people and fix things in the county. (more…)
Donald Trump's super PAC promised a Chinese millionaire access, influence in exchange for a secret $2 million donation
Reporters posing as representatives of a Chinese tycoon approached Trump and Clinton PACs and offered them $2 million; only the Giuliani and Trump, Junior-backed Great America PAC agreed, and moreover, assured the fake Chinese benefactor that the origin of the contribution would be covered up and that he would have influence with Trump after the election. (more…)
EFF asks court to let American sue Ethiopia for hacking his computer and rounding up his friends
Since 2014, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been representing "Mr Kidane," an Ethiopian-born US citizen whose computer the Ethiopian government hacked while he was living in DC, in order to extract the identities of his contacts in Ethiopia and target them for violent human-rights-abusing reprisals over their democratic opposition to the country's ruling dictatorship. (more…)
Caped Wonder Woman onesie
Though the Dawn of Justice movie is bound to be a disappointment (see eg Batman vs Superman), the $45 Wonder Woman Dawn of Justice onesie (with cape!) (and gold foil tiara on the hood!) is not a bad consolation prize (and the cape zips off).
Mercedes' weird "Trolley Problem" announcement continues dumb debate about self-driving cars
In 1967, Philippa Foot posed the "Trolley Problem," an ethical conundrum about whether a bystander should be sacrificed to rescue the passengers of a speeding, out-of-control trolley; as self-driving cars have inched toward reality, this has been repurposed as a misleadingly chin-stroking question about autonomous vehicles: when faced with the choice of killing their owners or someone else, who should die? (more…)
Dickhead's anti-yoga-pants letter to the editor sparks yoga-pants-parade
Rhode Island dickhead Alan Sorrentino wrote a letter to the editor of the East Bay RI, the local paper of record, chastizing women over 20 for wearing yoga pants in public because they lack the "benefit of nature's blessing of youth" and thus "on mature, adult women there is something bizarre and disturbing about the appearance they make in public." (more…)
RIP science fiction great Sheri Tepper
Science fiction great -- and 2015 World Fantasy Convention lifetime achievement honoreee -- Sheri Tepper died yesterday, at the age of 87. (more…)
The current state of American healthcare
(Image: ccPixs.com) I’m not a medical expert. My science career ended in Mr. Maciel’s high school biology class. I remember the basics, we’re all made of cells and whales eat krill, but world governments aren’t calling me to consult when the next outbreak of Ebola occurs. I don’t purport to know what I’m talking about, but I did just watch a Grey’s Anatomy marathon, so I feel confident I can handle a discussion on the complexities of our healthcare system. Matthew B.J. Delaney's Black Rain is available from Amazon.Here’s my medical prediction: whatever you may be sick from, human beings will figure out a cure. Of course you might be dead by the time we do, but we’ll figure out something. We’re good at that. And by ‘we’ I mean people much smarter than I am who actually went to school for science and stuff. For thousands of years humans have been figuring things out. Fire. Space travel. Tinder. And our figuring has been increasing exponentially. We’ve got more human brains on the job now than ever before thinking about things from toilet bowl night lights to artificial synapses. So whatever you’re sick from, we’ll get you that cure. I just hope you have the money to pay for it. I may not know fancy doctoring, but twelve years as a police officer in New York City has taught me about human nature. And humans are motivated by incentives. The incentive to avoid death and suffering is called fear. The incentive to gather resources is called survival. When we gather more than our fair share of resources it’s called greed. Humans are pretty good about restraining greed. We learn at an early age the value of sharing. Stable societies exist on principles of individual fairness, but individuals don’t control pharmaceuticals. Corporations do. The days of Jonas Salk are over, modern medicines are researched and developed not by selfless individuals, but by selfish giant corporations. And corporations are incentivized by profits and motivated by greed. At the risk of alienating a generation of Wall Street fans, greed isn’t always good. Greed can be good. Greed is part of human nature. You’re greedy. I’m greedy. We may show our greed in different ways, but its still present to some extent in all of us. Corporate greed propels invention, and invention works great for society. It brought us lots of fun things like railroads and Facebook and the Pet Rock. Usually the pricing of these new and exciting products is held in place by consumer demand. No matter how good a product might be, people will only pay a certain price. This is true with Big Macs and Mach 3 razors and Buicks; raise the price too much, people stop buying. But when it comes to healthcare, those primal incentives of fear and survival take over and normal consumer behavior no longer applies. The healthcare industry is like the Zombie apocalypse…it’s the perfect storm of fear and greed. The greed produces the supply. The desire to make profits is the incentive to invest in the development of new medicines. The fear produces the demand. People will pay limitless amounts to avoid suffering. This creates a totally inelastic demand curve. “Drugs are typically non-discretionary and consumers are relatively price-insensitive.” I didn’t write this little gem. This came from a Pharma Bro slide presentation to investors. You’re Snow White and you’ve just taken a bite of the poisoned apple. How much will you pay for the antidote? The wicked Step Queen knew the power of control over life and death. So too does the Pharma Bro. That’s why he raised the price of HIV medicine by five thousand percent and got away with it. Greed can be good, but unchecked greed is always terrible. Unchecked greed leads to more Ferraris and beach houses for Pharma bros (yay!), but it also means increased pricing for the sick and dying (boo!) and the general commodification of the American healthcare system (super boo!).Thank God that we live in the United States where we’re protected by strict price controls on drug pricing. Wrong. There are no drug price controls in the United States, which means we have to rely on the generous nature of big pharma to set pricing, and we all know how generous large pharmaceutical companies can be. But this is not a shared problem. This is an American problem. Dig out that shoebox under your bed and take a look at your passport. If it says United States of America on it, congratulations, you are subsidizing the rest of the world’s health care industry. The research and development of most major pharmaceutical companies is funded by overcharging sick American consumers in an American market with no price controls and then releasing the same medicines to overseas price controlled markets at significantly cheaper prices. Does that mean Americans are more afraid of death than the rest of the world? Is that why we’re willing to pay more in America for life saving drugs? That’s insanity. We stormed the beach of Normandy! We sent up a bunch of guys to divert that asteroid in Armageddon and beat the alien invasion in Independence Day and War of the Worlds. We’re the home of the brave. We pay more in America because we don’t have a choice. Lack of a price controls allows big pharma to set pricing, and with inelastic demand, we’ll pay whatever they tell us to pay. So too would anyone. There was a popular documentary a few years ago about how awesome the French healthcare system was. In France, the government set the prices of medicines. In the United States, large pharmaceutical companies set drug prices. Which do you think will be lower? Cancer will kill you just as fast in Pittsburgh as it will in Paris, but the sucker in Pittsburgh has to pay four times more to buy the medicine he needs to stop it from doing so. Of course the French healthcare system is awesome, someone else is paying for it. When you swallow that pill, you’re not paying for the 47 cents of ingredients that actually go into your body, you’re paying for the hundreds of millions of dollars of research and development that went into that pill’s creation. If you’re swallowing that pill in France, you’re doing it cheaper because of America. America has opened a tab at the pharma bar and everyone else is drinking for free, but setting price controls isn’t entirely the answer. It works for other countries, because American consumers pick up the research tab. Consider, though, if we all had limited pricing: profits would decrease, but so too would the rate of new innovation. I like being alive. And I want those pharmaceutical companies to be as motivated as possible to keep coming up with better ways to keep me and my friends going. Jonas Salk took no patents for his polio vaccine. He believed public health to be a moral commitment. It is a moral commitment. And morally, we should all pay our fair share. It’s an entirely complicated issue, but understanding the basic inequities of the international healthcare market is a great first step to developing a new system which spreads the costs fairly amongst us all and de-commodifies the American market.Matthew B.J. Delaney published his first novel, Jinn, in 2003. Winner of the International Horror Guild Award, the novel was optioned for film by Touchstone Pictures, was featured as People magazine’s Page-Turner of the Week, and received a Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Delaney received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Dartmouth College and a master’s in public administration from Harvard.Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, he left a career in finance and moved from Boston to New York City to join the New York City Police Department. He has been a member of the NYPD for twelve years and has been assigned to precincts throughout Manhattan and the Bronx as well as within Police Headquarters and the Intelligence Division. He is currently a decorated special operations lieutenant serving in a Brooklyn violent crime suppression unit. He continues to write in his spare time.
Tom Hayden played right
Twenty-nine years ago I photographed people at play for a series in my portfolio. I wanted to shoot Tom Hayden, who I knew as the right fielder on a team in the men’s baseball league I played in. He agreed to pose for me at a batting cage in mid-town, and we made some good images. I gave him a print, and figured that was the end of our business. The next year I was looking for a new team, and called him to get his manager’s number. And that’s how I joined the Hollywood Stars in 1988. Over the next two years Tom and I became friends, first through baseball, then through politics, and then just because. We had midweek work-outs and rode to games together on Sunday. We went to movies. I volunteered on some of his campaigns, and he kept me involved between elections. He debriefed me after my first date with my wife, and we attended each other’s wedding receptions. He gave our son a tour of the State Senate. Mostly, though, we had baseball. That version of the Hollywood Stars eventually disbanded, and the bond between us weakened. It’s always that way in baseball; the ties forged on the field decay at a constant rate away from it. We last spoke about 13 years ago. We played catch in Culver City, and talked about his young son and about my teenage son. Then we parted and got on with our lives.
Video that explains how to become a dictator
This 20-minute explainer video lays down three rules for becoming a dictator:1. Get the key supporters on your side.2. Control the treasure.3. Minimize key supporters.The video is based on a book called, The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good PoliticsFor eighteen years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been part of a team revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don’t care about the “national interest” — or even their subjects—unless they have to.This clever and accessible book shows that the difference between tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance.
Geek Fuel is like comic-con delivered to your door
Geek Fuel is a subscription delivery service that caters to those of us that love comics, gaming, and general geek culture. Every month, Geek Fuel will assemble a box of goodies with a value of $50 or over. The specific items are a mystery, but you’ll always get an exclusive t-shirt not found anywhere else, a full downloadable game, the latest issue of Geek Fuel Magazine, and 5-8 items like toys, comics, collectibles, and more.They say each box delivers a $50 value (minimum), and we've found each box to be truly worth it. Plus, with this deal you get a welcome box and three additional boxes for just $79.99. Past products include paraphernalia from titles like Doctor Who, Super Mario Bros, and The Avengers. One of our favorite finds was a Stormtrooper Bobblehead.Geek Fuel is a great pick me up in the mailbox every month, for yourself or for a friend. Act fast if you want your own Geek Fuel Mega Pack: this 64% off deal is for a limited time only.Also explore the Best-Sellers from different categories on our network right now:Online CoursesGear + GadgetsLifestyleDesign
"Somebody Goofed," an animated Jack Chick tract
In acknowledgement of evangelical comic artist Jack Chick's death yesterday, please enjoy this classic animation of the Chick tract "Somebody Goofed," created in 1998 by longtime Boing Boing pals Syd Garon and Rodney Ascher.
RIP Jack Chick, father of the Satanic Panic
Things Jack Chick hated (a partial list): Dungeons and Dragons, Roman Catholics, Freemasons, Muslims, Jews and Satan. (more…)
Canada man goes on racist rant over parking space for his truck
Police are investigating a Canadian man in a British Columbia border town after a video went viral that shows the man yelling racial slurs at another person, apparently over a parking ticket. (more…)
UAE surveillance contractor is recruiting an army of foreign hackers to break into its citizens' devices
The world's most sophisticated security experts have been bombarded with recruiting offers from UAE-based company Darkmatter, which bills itself as a major state security contractor -- but people who've taken the bait say they were then told that they were being hired to weaponize huge arsenals of zero-day vulnerabilities so that the UAE can subject its own population to fine-grained, continuous surveillance. (more…)
China electronics maker will recall some devices sold in U.S. after massive IoT hack
A China-based maker of surveillance cameras said Monday it will recall some products sold in the United States after a massive "Internet of Things" malware attack took down a major DNS provider in a massive DDOS attack. The stunningly broad attack brought much internet activity to a halt last Friday. (more…)
Artificial intelligence won't destroy the human race anytime soon
The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), funded by billionaire Paul Allen's, is developing projects like an AI-based search engine for scientific papers and a system to extract "visual knowledge" from images and videos. According to Scientific American, another goal of AI2 is "to counter messages perpetuated by Hollywood and even other researchers that AI could menace the human race." SciAm's Larry Greenemeier interviewed AI2 CEO and computer scientist Oren Etzioni:Why do so many well-respected scientists and engineers warn that AI is out to get us?It’s hard for me to speculate about what motivates somebody like Stephen Hawking or Elon Musk to talk so extensively about AI. I’d have to guess that talking about black holes gets boring after awhile—it’s a slowly developing topic. The one thing that I would say is that when they and Bill Gates—someone I respect enormously—talk about AI turning evil or potential cataclysmic consequences, they always insert a qualifier that says “eventually” or this “could” happen. And I agree with that. If we talk about a thousand-year horizon or the indefinite future, is it possible that AI could spell out doom for the human race? Absolutely it’s possible, but I don’t think this long-term discussion should distract us from the real issues like AI and jobs and AI and weapons systems. And that qualifier about “eventually” or “conceptually” is what gets lost in translation...How do you ensure that an AI program will behave legally and ethically?If you’re a bank and you have a software program that’s processing loans, for example, you can’t hide behind it. Saying that my computer did it is not an excuse. A computer program could be engaged in discriminatory behavior even if it doesn’t use race or gender as an explicit variable. Because a program has access to a lot of variables and a lot of statistics it may find correlations between zip codes and other variables that come to constitute a surrogate race or gender variable. If it’s using the surrogate variable to affect decisions, that’s really problematic and would be very, very hard for a person to detect or track. So the approach that we suggest is this idea of AI guardians—AI systems that monitor and analyze the behavior of, say, an AI-based loan-processing program to make sure that it’s obeying the law and to make sure it’s being ethical as it evolves over time.Do AI guardians exist today?We issued a call to the community to start researching and building these things. I think there might be some trivial ones out there but this is very much a vision at this point. We want the idea of AI guardians out there to counter the pervasive image of AI—promulgated in Hollywood movies like The Terminator—that the technology is an evil and monolithic force."AI Is Not out to Get Us" (SciAm)
How to cut heavy duty string with your hand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbelhLT5veE"With the right tension, and the right distance of "travel" it doesn't even hurt your hand...much." (Essential Craftsman)
Woman with skull on stick leads police to corpse
A woman walking around Sacramento with a skull on a stick led police to a homeless encampment where she found the cranium. Apparently someone spotted the woman marching around with the skull and called police. After police found the woman at an abandoned house, she took them to the area where they located the body."A call like this is not something that happens every day," Sacramento police Sgt. Bryce Heinlein told Fox 40. "We hope we can get down to the bottom of what caused this person to become deceased."
Maserati Hearse
People are dying for a ride in Ellena Funeral Car's Maserati Hearse: Multifunctional steering wheel- Dual-zone automatic climate control- Windshield wiper with rain sensor- Body in fiberglass- Hydraulic Alzabara- Interior lighting LED- Stainless steel cladding and imitation leather boating- Cross removable stainless steel- Hooks door wreaths- Audio engineer- Metallic paint choiceOptional accessories:- Opening the tailgate automatic- Platform Automatic- Parking sensors- Tinted windowsMaserati Hearse (via Uncrate)
How to make a binary mechanical keyboard
Sadly, ElectricTrousers' binary mechanical keyboard has off-brand switches, making it less useful that it might otherwise have been.It has multiple modes and type in ones and zeroes, or in ASCII text! ... Controller is an Arduino Pro Micro powered by horribly inefficient homemade code.https://i.imgur.com/QqwFS8t
First Amendment offers "too much protection" of free speech, says millionaire Donald Trump
Trump wants to end criticism of Trump. But more than that, he wants to silence the women he boasted about groping.Specifically, he wants America to be more like England, where "they actually have a system where you can sue if someone says something wrong." (more…)
Japanese Hakone marquetry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxvOMHoLRBY&feature=youtu.beThis video depicts craftsman Tanegi Zukuri making extraordinarily beautiful and precise examples of Japanese marquetry.
Tell us about your Halloween candy preferences, and other things besides
There’s the stuff about science, and ranking, and surveys, and strata, we say that every year. There’s the extra layer about experimental proof, rigorous data analysis, metrics of repeatability. Got it, we got it. So we’re here are again.Yes, indeed, let me take the survey at onceLast year was a kind of game changer in the candy ranking industry. We split the survey results between those who were actually planning to trick-or-treat and those basing their answers on memories of childhoods long lost to time. We added this whole other layer of survey questions to gauge the character of survey takers. We promised we would find a legit reason for doing so, but we’d figure it out post facto. Which we did. We contrived a reason post facto. Like, did you know people who like black licorice prefer Sundays over Fridays? No wonder they suck (Sundays and black licorice). Also, did you know that people who ranked peanut butter and chocolate combo candies higher than mint and chocolate combos are wrong to do so? Why? Because it’s just wrong. Because Mint + Chocolate always goes first. Then Caramel + Chocolate. Then, if you must, Peanut Butter + Chocolate. Stuff like that, that’s what we got. No bias or rigging here.Also, what about that 5000+ people voted with over 500,000 individual preferences? God, imagine if we could harness that energy for something that actually made things better on this crazy blue dot of ours.Now we return in trying times. We were tempted to focus this survey on Tic Tac and Skittles-heavy asides and sly references. You’d all be like, Oh damn, they just did that. But Halloween is still some time away, and we know by now that campaign references only have a shelf life of about ten days, two weeks tops, so that even today, we bet half of you don’t know what we’re referencing with deplorable Tic Tacs and Skittles. (Unlike Mint + Chocolate candies, which can keep in the pantry for months and still best Peanut Butter + Chocolate in a straight up two-way race.) With sophisticated survey tools at our disposal and genuine statistical analysis to follow, here is our third annual Candy Hierarchy survey (that makes this a longitudinal study folks!) and, overall, the preparation for our tenth annual Candy Hierarchy. Please fill it out to the best of your ability, and we’ll report back, as always, on Halloween. The Third Annual Candy Hierarchy SurveyLoading...
Halloween safety video from 1977
Centron Corp. was good enough to prepare this helpful safety video for pre-helicopter parenting days. Oh, for the days when you'd send your kids out for a night of trick-or-treating at strangers' houses with nary an adult in sight, all the time wearing sight-restricting masks and dark clothes. (more…)
Makeup artist transforms herself into Han Solo
Italian makeup artist Lucia Pittalis transforms herself into Han Solo and others in this charming video. It's a follow-up on her remarkable self-transformations into The Blues Brothers, Iggy Pop and more: (more…)
San Francisco's 58-story "leaning tower" is sinking fast
San Francisco's 419-apartment, 58-story luxury Millennium Tower has been sinking since at it opened in 2009, and now it's begun to lean alarmingly. (more…)
Audit reveals significant vulnerabilities in Truecrypt and its successors
Veracrypt was created to fill the vacuum left by the implosion of disk-encryption tool Truecrypt, which mysteriously vanished in 2014, along with a "suicide note" (possibly containing a hidden message) that many interpreted as a warning that an intelligence agency had inserted a backdoor into the code, or was attempting to force Truecrypt's anonymous creators to do so. (more…)
This week's top 3 deals will make you forget tomorrow is Monday
This week's top deals from the Boing Boing Store range from lobster to wine to desk organization. 1. Get Maine Lobster (50% Off)With these discounted packages from Get Maine Lobster, you can experience the sweet, fresh flavor of world-renowned Maine lobster right at your own dinner table. There are four options to choose from, each at least 50% off: 4 hand-picked live lobsters, 5 lbs of crab claws, and more. No matter your choice, you’re guaranteed a delicious meal—just ask Rachel Ray, USA Today, or The Wall Street Journal. 2. Stainless Steel Wine Chilling Stick, Aerator & Pourer (60% Off)The Stainless Steel Wine Chilling Stick ($17.98) is an iceless chilled stick that cools your vino from right inside the bottle. Just stick it in your freezer for at least two hours, then pop it into the bottle of your choice to quickly chill the wine down to the perfect drinking temperature. The best part is that the wine chilling stick is also an aerator and pourer, so you get the perfect amount of crisp wine in your glass, every time. 3. Spacebar Monitor Stand & 6-Port USB Hub (69% Off)The Spacebar ($37.99) is more than just a sleek monitor stand. It comes packing four USB 3.0 ports for high speed syncing and two USB charging ports that will power up all your devices in no time. There’s even a handy designated space for your keyboard. Plus, the Spacebar can hold any monitor up to 30 lbs, so you don’t have to worry about whether it’ll be able to handle what you throw at it.Also explore the Internationally Shipped Best-Sellers on our network right now.
Using machine-learning to auto-gen scary faces and hauntify buildings
The Nightmare Machine is an MIT project to use machine learning image-processing to make imagery for Hallowe'en. (more…)
Trump vs Trump: the fourth debate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esdU-l2ckS4I wouldn't vote for either of these jokers.
'Star Wars: Ahsoka' is finally here
The long awaited Star Wars: Ahsoka offers a glimpse into the time between the fall of the Republic and the beginning of the rebellion against the Empire. Ashoka Tano, dedicated padawan Jedi and apprentice to Anakin Skywalker, was tossed from the Jedi order on trumped up charges. After clearing herself, the Togrutan force user declined to rejoin the order and disappeared, conveniently allowing her to survive 'Order 66.' We know that in time Ahsoka will aid the budding rebellion and face off against her dreaded former master, but what happened in between? Star Wars: Ahsoka not only picks up with the story of WHAT HAPPENED??!? after the Jedi fell, it shares a few excellent tidbits about her past well, like where those white lightsabers come from! Ashoka is aided by old friends, and new, as well as enemies. See the Inquisitors begin to rise, and the Jedi light fades from the galaxy. I'm a huge Ahsoka fan, and this one of the best pieces of Star Wars fiction I've read in a long while!Star Wars: Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston
Trump hotels, faced with massive declines in bookings, rebrand as "Scion Hotels"
When estimating his net worth, Pepe the Cheeto is apt to include a multibillion dollar valuation for the "Trump" brand-name; but new Trump Hotels will be called "Scion" hotels, "a nod to the Trump family and to the tremendous success it has had with its businesses, including Trump Hotels, while allowing for a clear distinction between our luxury and lifestyle brands." (more…)
Alt Right conspiracy image generator
I made a generator to provide images from Twitter after The Fourth Debate. It picks random frames from TV footage and draws conspiracies on them. Reload the page for another set! (more…)
Facebook's crackdown on publishers feeds has sites paying celebs to repost
Facebook -- which accounts for as much as 75% of the traffic to popular websites -- tweaked its algorithm to downrank those same publishers, who had been engaged in an arms-race to dominate Facebook users' feeds through techniques intended to gain high rank in Facebook's secret scoring system. (more…)
Trolling Trump with an Arabic billboard
The billboard went up in Dearborn, MI, which has a large number of Arabic speakers, and reads "Donald Trump, he can't read this, but he is afraid of it" (a riff on the bags printed with "This text has no other purpose than to terrify those who are afraid of the Arabic language"). (more…)
Stormtrooper decanter
The Stormtrooper Decanter is on back-order, but you can pre-order one from the next batch for £22 -- it's based on Andrew Ainsworth's original movie helmet moulds from 1976, and will provide endless opportunities to point to lowball glasses and say things like "aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper drink?" (via Bonnie Burton)
Internet-destroying outages were caused by "amateurish" IoT malware
Some of the internet's most popular, well-defended services -- including Twitter -- were knocked offline yesterday by a massive denial-of-service attack that security experts are blaming on botnets made from thousands of hacked embedded systems in Internet of Things devices like home security cameras and video recorders. (more…)
First impressions of Amazon's Echo Dot
I didn't think an IoT voice assistant was for me, but at $50 I couldn't resist the Amazon Echo Dot. I'm finding Alexa to be handy for lots of little things. Amazon's hockey puck like Echo Dot gives you all the utility of their personal assistant Alexa at pretty low price. I felt it wouldn't be too much of a disaster if the thing never got used. Thus far it is proving to be pretty handy. Echo Dot pairs with bluetooth speakers pretty well, and I enjoy being able to voice control my radio. Switching between news, music and podcasts is easy. I've found that this alone makes Echo Dot useful to me. Being able to occasionally stop the sound and ask Alexa for time time, weather in San Francisco or other simple, frequent searches one may perform is strangely satisfying, and temporarily provides an 'I live in the future' feeling.Next up will be syncing it with my Fitbit, tho I'm not sure what that is really going to do for me.Echo Dot (2nd Generation) - Black via Amazon
A Walk in Eden – Anders Nilsen's surrealist paradise is a haunting adult coloring book
In previous books, like the strange and cinematic Big Questions, Anders Nilsen has used his gorgeous pen and ink, stipple, and hatch technique, amidst generous white space, to create surprisingly dense and dreamy worlds. In A Walk in Eden, he builds a wonderful narrative backdrop, an abandoned Eden, and invites us in to finish it with “magic markers” and our undivided attention. But this isn’t any Eden you’ve imagined or heard of, this is a tripped-out surrealist dream-Eden if drawn by Dali, Ernst Haeckel, and kiddie-show cartoonists (maybe after a little bump of ether). Over the pages, the scale of what you’re looking at, from the seemingly diatomic to full-size flora and fauna, changes until you feel as though you’re really examining this world in a unique and thorough way. The book is really engaging and wants to tell you its stories, as-is, but I can only image how much richer it becomes after coloring it in yourself. The adult coloring book is all of the rage these days and I, for one, am a fan of this perhaps shortlived, gimmicky genre. A Walk in Eden takes the genre for a stroll in a very fun and promising direction. And like any coloring book worth its bold outlines, it was hard to get through this without wanting to grab my Crayolas, stick my tongue out like a five year old, and start coloring. See sample pages from this book at Wink.A Walk in Eden: A Coloring Book by Anders Nilsen by Anders NilsenDrawn and Quarterly9.8 x 9.9 x 0.4 inches (softcover)$17 Buy a copy on Amazon
Skateboarding in an abandoned nuclear missile silo
Skateboarder Rick McCrank hosts Abandoned, a series from Vice where he explores abandoned malls, amusement parks, racetracks, and even nuclear missile silos. Many of these are excellent places to skate. (more…)
I'll just drive my car off this tow truck, what could go wrong?
This gentleman didn't want a tow truck to take his car away, so he tried to drive off the truck's bed. You will believe what happened next.
Angry "sovereign citizen" meets polite police officer
This patient police officer does not take much stock in the legitimacy of the sovereign citizen movement.Best part:Cop: "You're under arrest."Sovereign citizen: "NO I'M NOT!"From Wikipedia: "The sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of American and Canadian litigants, commentators, tax protesters, and financial-scheme promoters. Self-described sovereign citizens take the position that they are answerable only to their particular interpretation of the common law and are not subject to any government statutes or proceedings."
Large dog surfing
You can really see the dogs adjusting their balance and controlling the boards! Haole and Hanzo are both awesome!
Monkey tries to teach human how to open a nut
Dangit human. put some muscle in itThis little monkey is trying her hardest to train a limp-limbed human how to crack open a nut with a rock. When she realizes the human isn't making much of an effort, she looks up with an expression that says, "Wtf‽ Help me out here, hairless ape covered in fibers!"Similarly: Monkey teaches human how to crush leaves
Charity roast trainwreck: Donald Trump booed at Catholic dinner
At the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation white-tie event in New York last night, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton sat within groping distance of one another—and delivered speeches for a largely-Catholic audience. A traditional and restrained roasting of oneself and one's opponent, the dinner speeches mark the final public event where the two will tangle before election day. And, as you may already have predicted, Donald Trump managed to get himself booed at a charity dinner.Here's the Washington Post's cut of the best moments:He joked about the size of his hands and the size of his rival Hillary Clinton's rally crowds, then compared himself to Jesus. ...“Hillary is so corrupt, she got kicked off the Watergate Commission,” Trump said, citing a false Internet rumor as the crowd turned on him and started to boo, something that simply doesn't happen at lavish charity dinners at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. The face of one the guests sitting on the stage behind him was suddenly struck with horror.“Hillary believes that it's vital to deceive the people by having one public policy and a totally different policy in private,” Trump said, as the booing intensified.Trump would go on to accuse Clinton of “pretending not to hate Catholics” and mock the Clinton Foundation's work in Haiti. At one point, he wondered aloud if the crowd was booing him or Clinton, to which someone in the crowd answered: “You!”He screwed it up because he could not restrain his spite toward his opponent, had little himself at all, and wasn't very funny. Trump, though, to his credit, made a good show of taking Clinton's jabs with good humor, laughing and grinning along with everyone else (in contrast to his infamously sullen demeanor at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner.)The real loser of the night? Rudy Guliani, who sat simmering like a dollar store Mussolini while Hillary dumped on him with her best line of the night.https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/789283241190535169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
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