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Verizon yesterday bought Yahoo, which had earlier bought Flickr, a photo-sharing site, and Tumblr, a blogging platform. Both of these places have three key qualities that raise important questions about their survival: 1) they're both oldschool platforms locked in time because they were bought by Yahoo, 2) both still have vast, dedicated userbases, 3) both have unique cultures that will be invisible to Verizon's legendarily banal middle-management culture.Flickr tried modernizing a few years ago to compete with Instagram and other fresh social-driven competitors, but had atrophied so much since the 2005 takeover by Yahoo that it couldn't recapture the lead. Yahoo seemed to listen, at least fleetingly. The company finally released some functional mobile apps and started offering a terabyte of storage space to users for free, but it was too little too late.For Ward, Yahoo was desperately trying to appeal to the Instagram generation, and in doing so started to alienate the site’s core users, many of whom were professional photographers. “We all had a lot of hope that Yahoo would be able to bring it back to life, but the changes that were introduced took away things we really loved,” she said.“When we gave feedback it felt like no one was listening. It was a little bit insulting to people who had been using it so actively for so many years. We were clearly not the target audience any more.”Tumblr, meanwhile, is neck-deep in smut and self-absorbed blather and other things likely to terrify suits—but its also one of the net's last safe redoubts for young women. Yahoo never had a plan for the site and left it to hang, but Verizon could shake things up—if it even notices it owns it."Verizon has two choices in my view. They can either let everything as is, and Tumblr will forever be a small service you provide for the benefit of a small quirky community that nobody gets or is able to make money out of, or they change what Tumblr in essence is," writes Rocha. "I doubt there's a middle ground here. There might be, since I'm not exactly business savvy, but smarter people than me tried and failed. Either way, neither choice will be easy and I guess nobody will be happy with it either way.""So I'll be honest here, I don't know if Tumblr can ever survive, as it is, once they monetize it," he continues. "As it exists now, it is a community that has survived for so long specifically because it hasn't been spoiled by other interests."

Having to pack and drag your stuff through security can put quite the damper on your vacation plans. Thankfully, we've got your back with one way to make traveling more painless: the Jumper Overnighter Travel Bag.This compact bag is so lightweight that you can effortlessly carry it, and fit it into any overhead compartment. But just because it’s small doesn’t mean it isn’t spacious: you'll actually pack more than you're used to.The Jumper Overnighter features a portable shelving system that keeps your clothes in order while they’re in the bag, and after you've reached your travel destination too. In other words, no more fussing with hotel hangers or forgetting your things in the closet when it’s time to leave.There’s even a laundry compartment that separates the clean clothes from the dirty, and a zippered shoe pocket that lets you bring along an extra pair of kicks without compromising your wardrobe.If you’ve had enough of traveling the hard way, you’re in luck: the Jumper Overnighter Travel Bag is now 24% off the regular price of $99—just $74.

Language Evolution Simulation is exactly that, showing words changing little by little as time passes in a tiny world with three islands. It's agent-based, which is to say that it models little computer folk interacting with one another to simulate the little mutations that add up over time.RulesIf an agent intersects with another, selects a word from the own vocabulary and tells that. The neighborhood receives and adds that word into its vocabulary as- Mutation of a vowel sound with 0.1 probability- Mutation of a const sound with 0.1 probability- Compounding with another word with 0.1 probability- Without any mutationThere's nothing to do but watch words change, but it feels like the underpinning of a very strange computer game about culture. I love agent-based models; check out this simulation of political cliques I made. It randomly generates several personalities, who then go around and bicker or flatter one another. It's very bland and primitive, made in Flash, and the "next turn" text is rather fiddly to click. But I've always had plans on expanding it into a more fully featured game.

Infernal Scoop is a crowdsourced storytelling site with a no-nonsense, functionalist vibe. Create a story, let readers wander through branching plot developments, and watch everything go weird and wild as they add their own. The format is geared to paragraph-length units posted anonymously—there doesn't seem to even be a way to set up an account—so it feels like a crazy experiment in "authorless" interactive fiction. [via r/internetisbeautiful]There are other sites like it, but this one has the feel of a tool rather than an environment. The street is finding its own uses.

Telecomunicaciones Indígenas Comunitarias A.C. -- a nonprofit telcoms company operated by and for indigenous groups in Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Veracruz -- has received a license to operate cellular services in at least 356 municipalities. It's the first time the Mexican telcoms regulator has given a operations license to an indigenous social group. (more…)

A sustained and rousing standing ovation for Bernie Sanders at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, tonight. (more…)

Here are some animals teaching people a lesson.

Amazon.com says it has entered into a partnership with the British government to get the nation's aviation authority approval for deliveries via small drones. (more…)

Vic Berger and Tim Heidecker’s epic RNC special is terrifying and hilarious. (more…)

Will Smith's entry in the annals of catchy Thomas the Tank Engine remixes is even better than Biggie the Tank Engine. Also, "Insane in the Train" is the perfect title, but that mix isn't quite up to the gold standard of the others:https://youtu.be/S5g8WMFpBEEHere's Back in Coal Black, just madness:https://youtu.be/Ofy-BgRzLQg

How have travel photos changed over time? Hoppa looks at photos taken from the time people used the Kodak No.1 Box Camera in the 1880s to take staged group pictures up until the time of today's Instagram selfie shots of feet pointing at the beach.

Pokémon Go became an overnight sensation, and savvy investors bought Nintendo stock, causing the share price to spike. But when Nintendo issued a statement to remind everyone that its stake in the app is just 13 and that revenue from the game was already taken into account in its forecasts, the stock price plummeted 18%, after which the Tokyo stock market halted trading to prevent a further decline.Via Bloomberg:The correction comes after Pokemon Go’s release almost doubled Nintendo’s stock through Friday’s close, adding $17.6 billion in market capitalization. Nintendo is a shareholder in the game’s developer Niantic Inc. and Pokemon Co., but has an "effective economic stake" of just 13 percent in the app, according to an estimate by Macquarie Securities analyst David Gibson.“It’s still possible to say that in the short-term it’s overheated,” said Tomoaki Kawasaki, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Securities Co.

If a headline ends with a question mark, the answer is no.This rock is actually in the water

Learning is a 24/7/365 proposition, and it never ends. And if you're truly serious about leveling up your skill sets and career prospects, get a subscription to Stone River Academy's massive course collection. This offer normally is worth over $1,400, but is now available for just $89 in the Boing Boing Store.A respected name in information technology training, Stone River Academy already offers over 90 courses and more than 2,000 hours of online training. Access dozens of available courses, covering everything from web and mobile programming and web design to game app creation and 3D animation.With two to five new courses being added to Stone River Academy’s course catalogue each month, you’ll never be at a loss for what to learn next. Don’t miss your chance to get access to this invaluable learning resource for a whopping 93% off while the deal lasts.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, the mind-expanding modus operandi of the counterculture spread into the realm of science, and shit got wonderfully weird. Neurophysiologist John Lilly tried to talk with dolphins. Physicist Peter Phillips launched a parapsychology lab at Washington University. Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill became an evangelist for space colonies. Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture is a new book of essays about this heady time! The book was co-edited by MIT's David Kaiser, who wrote the fantastic 2011 book How the Hippies Saved Physics, and UC Santa Barbara historian W. Patrick McCray. I can't wait to read it! From an MIT News interview with Kaiser:We want to address a common stereotype that dates from the time period itself, which is that the American youth movement, the hippies or counterculture, was reacting strongly against science and technology, or even the entire Western intellectual tradition of reason, as a symbol of all that should be overturned. In fact, many of them were enamored of science and technology, some of them were working scientists, and some were patrons of science. This picture of fear and revulsion is wrong.We also see things that have a surprisingly psychedelic past. This includes certain strains of sustainability, design, and manufacture, notions of socially responsible engineering, and artisanal food. This stuff didn’t start from scratch in 1968 and didn’t end on a dime in 1982...These folks were rejecting not science itself but what many had come to consider a depersonalized, militarized approach to the control of nature. Yet even the most colorful examples of groovy science had specific debts to the High Cold War, the first quarter-century after World War II, the era of “Big Science.” John Lilly was famous for woolly-sounding experiments on interspecies communication [with dolphins] and sensory deprivation and LSD. It’s easy to see why that fits in a book called “Groovy Science,” but Lilly was coming directly out of military-industrial research, from Korean War-era worries about brainwashing and the Soviet Menace. The chapter on the surfboard revolution takes us far away from Dr. Strangelove — we’re not talking about nuclear strategy or bombers — but this happened in Southern California for a reason, because there were a lot of people in defense and aerospace with experience in materials science, which shaped even a leisure/counterculture activity such as surfing.Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture (Amazon)

In a lead editorial in the current Nature, John Wilbanks (formerly head of Science Commons, now "Chief Commons Officer" for Sage Bionetworks) and Eric Topol (professor of genomics at the Scripps Institute) decry the mass privatization of health data by tech startups, who're using a combination of side-deals with health authorities/insurers and technological lockups to amass huge databases of vital health information that is not copyrighted or copyrightable, but is nevertheless walled off from open research, investigation and replication. (more…)

Fumihito Taguchi's fantastic collection of vintage portable record players, including the wonderful specimens seen here, will be on display at Tokyo's Lifestyle Design Center from July 30 to August 28. See more at this Fashion Press post and in Taguchi's book "Japanese Portable Record Player Catalog," available in the US from my favorite vinyl soulslingers Dusty Groove. (via #vinyloftheday)

Famed psychedelic hot rod artist and comix illustrator Robert Williams has launched another line of rad Vans sneakers! The shoes integrate detail from Williams' mind bending masterpieces “Flaming Cobras”, “Malfeasance,” and “Jalapeña.” Vault by Vans presents limited collection by Robert Williams (Vans)

You could not ask for a clearer, easier-to-read, more informative guide to facial recognition and machine learning thank Adam Geitgey's article, which is the latest in a series of equally clear explainers on machine learning, aimed at non-technical people -- and if you are a programmer, he's got links to Python sample source and projects you can use to develop your own versions. (more…)

James McCormick, a British fraudster, got rich and got jailed selling fake bomb detectors to police in Iraq. But the devices—dowsing rods in a plastic handle, often sold as golf ball 'finders'—were so popular that even after he was collared, cops remained convinced (by inclination or graft) that they worked. After a series of horrific bombings, the government's stepped in to get rid of the useless gadgets.It took a massive suicide bombing that killed almost 300 people in Baghdad on July 3 — the deadliest single attack in the capital in 13 years of war — for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to finally ban their use.The reason it took so long is likely the widespread corruption in the government. Iraqis mocked the device from the start, joking that too much aftershave could set off the antenna.Now there are accusations that plans to start using newly imported explosives-detecting scanners were intentionally held up as part of the political wrangling over which faction — the military or the police — will control security in Baghdad.

In Jim Jarmusch's original short film "Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California" (1993), Iggy Pop and Tom Waits celebrate quitting smoking by having a cigarette, enjoy some awkward chit chat, and confess their love for IHOP coffee. Here's Jim Jarmusch talking about shooting the scene:Tom was exhausted. We had just shot a video the day before for "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" and he had been doing a lot of press. He was kind of in a surly mood as he is sometimes, but he's also very warm. He came in late that morning - I had given him the script the night before - and I was with Iggy. Tom threw the script down on the table and said, "Well, you know, you said this was going to be funny, Jim. Maybe you better just circle the jokes 'cause I don't see them". He looked at poor Iggy and said, "What do you think Iggy?" Iggy said, "I think I'm gonna go get some coffee and let you guys talk." So I calmed Tom down. I knew it was just early in the morning and Tom was in a bad mood. His attitude changed completely, but I wanted him to keep some of that paranoid surliness in the script. We worked with that and kept it in his character. If he had been in a really good mood, I don't think the film would have been as funny."

The bowling ball! The melting chocolate bunny! Well done, Dissolve.

Game theory is the place where politics, economics, psychology and math meet, and it offers the seductive promise of being able to quantify empirically optimal outcomes from thorny problems ranging from whether to go to war to how to split the tab at a restaurant. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports that storytellers—people with a natural inclination to craft concise yet compelling narratives without rambling—were found to be hot by science. Feels good to be a writa. The results were the same across all three studies: Women rated men who were good storytellers as more attractive and desirable as potential long-term partners. Psychologists believe this is because the man is showing that he knows how to connect, to share emotions and, possibly, to be vulnerable. He also is indicating that he is interesting and articulate and can gain resources and provide support.“Storytelling is linked to the ability to be a good provider,” because a man is explaining what he can offer, says Melanie Green, an associate professor in the department of communication at the University at Buffalo and a researcher on the study. The men didn’t care whether the women were good storytellers, the research showed.There is also a "how to" guide for nascent storytellers: master the technical basics, set aside time to practice, build a repertoire of basics, develop a relationship to tense, and get emotional. Spotted via the sneering Gilfoyles of Hacker News, who seem fabulously angry about this for some reason.

Pesco posted about "Graham," a man remade to survive car accidents, replete with blemmye-like head and disgusting air-sacs rippling around his ribs. A device to remind us of the fragility of our feeble human bodies, it reminded me of the Natural Born Smoker, a similar effort in the 1980s.Like Graham, he's grossly adapted to resist physical damage. But instead of the trauma associated with high-speed road accidents, NBS is all about dealing with smoke. Above is the classic; here's the lesser-spotted sequel to Barry Myers' Blade Runner-esque public information film:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tDdk8u_BV0Ah, good old British childrens' TV!

Ink on paper is a better product, at least for now, and it's showing at British tills. Sky UK's Lucy Cotter reports the first better year for print since 2007, and the worst one for ebooks since 2011.Last year saw the first rise in sales since 2007, while digital book sales dropped for the first time since 2011.Betsy Tobin, who runs the independent bookshop Ink@84 in Highbury, London, offers her customers a personalised service.The bookshop offers coffee and alcohol and runs events and special author evenings. Diversifying is part of her success but she says her customers also like buying in person rather than online.They take pleasure from handling and owning books, she said.I wonder if this has something to do with how well-run major UK bookstore chains are (small stores in high-traffic areas) compared to American ones (strip-mall big boxes, full of trashy ancillary merch and empty of foot traffic.) The literary retail culture there makes people want to drop in and fuss around with books, while the one here just means no-one is ever in a bookstore in the first place, so they just order stuff on Kindle.

Jeff Atwood (coincidentally the cocaine-dusted, AK-toting godfather of our comment system) writes at length about the absolutely fabulous things that the tiny, supremely adaptable Raspberry Pi computers have done for the emulation scene. His posting doubles as a useful how-to for those unfamiliar with the drill.1. The ascendance of Raspberry Pi has single-handedly revolutionized the emulation scene.2. Chinese all-in-one JAMMA cards are available everywhere for about $90.3. Cheap, quality arcade size IPS LCDs of 18-23".This is most definitely the funnest and cheapest way to get into arcade emulation when you want to step beyond apps. If you're not into messing around with linux and configuration files and whatnot, an Intel Compute Stick (which comes with Windows) is a more expensive but easier path than a Pi. But you'll still have to deal with the hardware.

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Cassandra Peterson, the talented actress who has portrayed Elvira since television's 1981 Movie Macabre, is considering hanging up her wig! Ageism and sexism are things even horror movieshow hosts need to think about.Via LA Weekly:Though this year is being billed as her last time attending Comic-Con, she’s not sure if that will be the case. “I said it was going to be my last year when I was 40, when I was 50, when I was 60,” she says. “It’s not really my last Comic-Con, but it’s probably my last Comic-Con in Elvira drag, because really, how long do people want to see that?” she asks, half-joking.“I do have to draw the line. I’m turning 65 this September, I’m trying to keep it together, I’m not sure how many years I can keep this working out,” she says, gesturing to her body. She’s worried about how she’s perceived — she doesn’t want to wear out her welcome.“I don’t think women should have an expiration date, [but] unfortunately, some things don’t hold up as well as others, so there is a thing about playing a particular character — my character is based very much on the sexy, so continuing to try to be really sexy until you’re really old might not work,” she says. “Humor definitely takes the edge off of it, because if you’re self-deprecating, you can still be sexy, and it’s sort of OK, as long as it resonates that way with the fans.”

In the year since Berke Breathed came out of retirement to cover the 2016 election cycles with Opus, Bill, Milo and the gang, he's amassed enough material to fill a new 144-page collection: Bloom County Episode XI: A New Hope, which comes out in September. (more…)

Love the golden lariat!

Timothy Ellis' galaxy spanning space opera continues in Hero at the Gates! We're 9 damn books in and the central plot is finally about to get past its prelude!I've really enjoyed this massive story. 9 novels ago Jon Hunter was a wet behind the ears kid on board his uncle's space trader. Now he's the Admiral of his own massive space flotilla, and ruler of several sections of space. The massive reveal about what the hell is going on, and what part Team Slinky Red Jumpsuits is going to play in it is near unavoidable, when our heroes set off in the exact opposite direction in this sometimes 2D universe. The prize is tempting, but Jon can not miss the short window of time he's allowed to land on his home planet and consult the spiritual guys there who know all. How will it all work out? Gee... I'll have to start book 10.Hero at the Gates (The Hunter Legacy Book 9) via Amazon

Here are before and after photos of spray painted tagging replaced by clean fonts. I thought this was photoshopped, but if you look closely, the details are different in the before and after photos are different. For example, the roses in the flowerbox of of the Rue de Gaillon photo have bloomed in the after photo. [via]

In response to overwhelming demand, I made a 30-second video that shows how to wrap cables so that they stay wrapped, don't get tangled, and are very easy to unwrap.

In an epic Twitter tear, Clay Shirky addresses white liberals who are horrified by the rise of Trump and reminds them that "Trump IS the voice of angry whites. He wasn't on stage because he has unusual views. He was on stage because he has the usual ones, loudly." (more…)

In a new working paper from the Center for Economic Policy Research, scholars look at the trading records of shareholders, directors and top executives of major financial institutions in the runup to the crash of 2007, and find that the sell-offs by the top five executives at a bank strongly correlated with that bank's losses in the crash, but that other stakeholders' trading do not correlate: in other words, the very top brass of banks knew that they were sitting on piles of worthless paper and sold before anyone else knew about it, and kept their shareholders, direct reports, and the board of directors in the dark. (more…)

In the wake of the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that China had been stealing islands in the South China, the Xi Jinping administration's propaganda machine went into overdrive to whip up patriotic sentiment in China, with a massive wave of anti-American and anti-Japanese sentiment. (more…)

NASA released today the first of three videos that will highlight Star Trek and NASA tie-ins, to coincide with the release of Star Trek Beyond and Star Trek’s 50th Anniversary. (more…)

Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton announced on Friday afternoon that her running mate will be Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. (more…)

Researchers from Germany's University of Bielefeld presented their OUROBOT, a "Self-Propelled Continuous-Track-Robot for Rugged Terrain," at the recent IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. From their technical paper:Adapting the concept of continuous tracks that are propelled and guided by wheels, a self-propelled continuous-track-robot has been designed and built. The robot consists of actuated chain segments, thus enabling it to change its form, independent of guiding mechanisms. Using integrated sensors, the robot is able to adapt to the terrain and to overcome obstacles. This allows the robot to “roll” and climb in two dimensions. Possible extensions of the concept to three-dimensional navigation are presented as an outlook.

Boing Boing comic artist Ed Piskor, creator of the stupendous Hip Hop Family Tree, designed this set of Public Enemy Action Figures! They're sculpted by Tomohiro Yasui and stand around 4" tall. They're articulated at the neck, shoulders, hips, elbows, and knees.Pre-order them from Presspop Toy for $60/set: PUBLIC ENEMY Action Figure Set (via Dangerous Minds)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Chihuly on Fire by Henry Adams (author) and Dale Chihuly (artist)Chihuly Workshop2016, 212 pages, 9.3 x 12.1 x 0.9 inches $40 Buy a copy on AmazonFor several decades now, art critics and casual admirers alike have talked about Dale Chihuly’s art in terms of its forms. Indeed, the artist himself organizes his work largely by their physical shapes, as does his latest self-published coffee-table book, Chihuly on Fire, whose chapter titles range from “Baskets” and “Sea Forms” to “Jerusalem Cylinders” and “Rotolo.” But thumbing the pages of this sumptuous, hardcover volume, and reading the biographical essay by art-history professor Henry Adams, one is struck by the importance of color to Chihuly’s work.The shift to color began in 1981, when Chihuly and his team of gaffers and assistants produced the first of what would become known as the Macchia series. These often enormous vessels, whose sides were usually folded and deformed, featured solid-color interiors, lip wraps in contrasting hues, and thousands of “jimmies” of pure crushed colored glass, usually set against a background of white glass “clouds.” Even in his early days, Chihuly’s ambitions for his chosen medium seemed larger than the modest network of glass-art galleries around the country would have the wherewithal to support. By the time his Macchia pieces came along, the so-called craft arts, of which glass art was but one, were allowed to be exuberant and even a bit zany, but they were ultimately expected to exhibit good table manners, to sit uncomplainingly at the kid’s table of the art world. Gloriously and unapologetically garish, Chihuly’s Macchia pieces were a grinning, joyful, and emphatic “fuck you” to all of that. With the Macchia, Chihuly finally shook off the cobwebs of craft, not so much because the pieces pushed the boundaries of technique to ludicrous places – although they certainly did that – but because they pushed what was possible, and politic, with color.Today, technique remains central to Chihuly’s work, while his teams of artisans have become ever-more adept, as the 2013 photo in Chihuly on Fire of two assistants in helmeted, fireproof space suits preparing to catch a still-glowing piece dramatically shows. To be clear, it’s okay to be impressed by that sort of thing, to get sucked into the spectacle that is Chihuly. After all, lots of artists have made careers of astounding viewers with physical spectacle, as anyone who has walked within the rusty, leaning walls of a curving Richard Serra can attest. In a way, though, Chihuly takes the greater aesthetic risk by being brash enough to demand that his creations are also, well, beautiful. For that, color rather than form has been his most capable collaborator.

The Amherst, Mass. fire department evacuated an apartment complex on Wednesday due to a nasty smell coming from one of the units. They saw what appeared to be chemicals cooking on the stove and called in the Hazardous Materials Response and bomb squad. Turns out, the tenant was actually cooking up urine. According to police, it was distilled urine the tenant was using for unspecified medical purposes. From Wikipedia: "In alternative medicine urine therapy or urotherapy, (also urinotherapy or uropathy or auto-urine therapy) refers to various applications of human urine for medicinal or cosmetic purposes, including drinking of one's own urine and massaging one's skin, or gums, with one's own urine."Police aren't charging the tenant with anything, but the building is still locked down until health inspections are complete.(MassLive)

I'm loving it. McDonald's New Zealand created a site for people to "build your own unique burger" and name their creations. Problem is, the submissions appeared on the site without moderation. (more…)

Purvi Patel was the first woman in America to be convicted of "feticide"—a euphemism for abortion—and jailed 20 years after suffering a miscarriage that prosecutors claim was induced by illegally-procured drugs. The feticide conviction was quashed today by an appeals court, but it affirmed the felony conviction for "neglect of a dependent."The appeals court ruled that the state Legislature didn't intend for the feticide law "to be used to prosecute women for their own abortions."As for the neglect conviction, we hold that the State presented sufficient evidence for a jury to find that Patel was subjectively aware that the baby was born alive and that she knowingly endangered the baby by failing to provide medical care, but that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the baby would not have died but for Patel’s failure to provide medical care. Therefore, we vacate Patel’s class A felony conviction and remand to the trial court with instructions to enter judgment of conviction for class D felony neglect of a dependent and resentence her accordingly.The neglect charge (Patel claimed stillbirth, prosecutors argued that the fetus was alive for a period of seconds after birth) is still serious; the statute book allows for six months to three years, though news reports suggest lenience is not unheard of.From the original story:According to Sue Ellen Braunlin, doctor and co-president of the Indiana Religious Coalition for Reproductive Justice, Purvi was most likely 23-24 weeks pregnant, although prosecutors argued Patel was 25 weeks along in the state's opening argument. The prosecution confirmed on Monday that the baby died within seconds of being born.Patel's lawyers argued that she panicked when she realized she was in labor. Patel comes from a conservative Hindu family that looks down on sex outside marriage, and the pregnancy was a result of an affair Patel had with her co-worker."Purvi Patel's conviction amounts to punishment for having a miscarriage and then seeking medical care, something that no woman should worry would lead to jail time," said Deepa Iyer, Activist-in-Residence at the University of Maryland's Asian American Studies Program and former director of South Asian Americans Leading Together.

Apparently it's now perfectly legal to sneak a camera or a video up a woman's skirt, as long as she is in a public place. After a gentleman in Perry, Georgia was found guilty of "criminal invasion of privacy" for shooting "upskirt" videos of a woman in a grocery store, he appealed and won over a technical glitch. The Georgia Court of Appeals decided 6-3 that because of the wording of the law, upskirting in public was legal. According to Georgia law, it's illegal for "[a]ny person, through the use of any device, without the consent of all persons observed, to observe, photograph or record the activities of another which occur in any private place and out of public view." But read the last part closely — the defendant acted in a public place, so the law didn't apply. And unfortunately, the appeals court agreed.In other words, if you plan to point your camera up a woman's skirt, just make sure to do it on the street or in a public building and not in a private setting like a bathroom stall. Lawmakers do plan to change the wording of the law to make crotch shot photography (without permission) illegal anywhere in the Peach State, but that won't be until next spring. Read the full story here. Image: Flickr/ptxdview

Remember Billy Mitchell, the star of excellent videogame documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters? In 1999, the Donkey Kong champ was also the first person confirmed to attain a perfect score on Pac-Man.

Reports of yet another mass shooting, this one at a shopping center in Germany. In Munich late Friday afternoon, a man with a gun shot people at mall in Munich. Local news reports that several people were killed, and several more wounded. (more…)

A day after an expensive, multinational police effort to remove KickAssTorrents from the net culminated in the arrest of its founder and the confiscation of its domains, the inevitable happened. It's back online.This morning the founder of kat.cr was arrested in Poland. It is another attack on freedom of rights of internet users globally. We think it's our duty not to stand aside but to fight back supporting our rights. In the world of regular terrorist attacks where global corporations are flooded with money while millions are dying of diseases and hunger, do you really think that torrents deserve so much attention? Do you really think this fight worth the money and resources spent on it? Do you really think it's the real issue to care of right now? We don’t!You don't have to believe the rhetoric to understand how futile it is trying to push cybertoothpaste back in the cyberbottle. Effectively, all the attempt did here was turn an underground piracy site into a mainstream phenomenon, its mirrors linked to by every major news site on the internet.