Courts around America and the world increasingly rely on software based risk-assessment software in determining bail and sentencing; the systems require the accused to answer more than a hundred questions which are fed into a secret model that spits out a single-digit "risk score" that courts use to decide who to lock up, and for how long. (more…)

Dissernet, a leaderless collective of Russian scientists and journalists scrapes the doctoral dissertations of Russian elites -- who have been attaining advanced degrees at an unprecedented rate -- runs them through plagiarism detection software to flag probable frauds for human review, and publishes the names of officials who've been caught cheating, one or two every day. (more…)

A tumblr that does exactly what the title suggests: Guns replaced with Selfie Sticks. (more…)

Jared Sinclair developed the RSS reader app Unread, which made $10,000 in its first 24 hours on the iOS market. And we’ve all heard the story of Flappy Bird developer Dong Nguyen, whose creation was reportedly earning $50,000 a day at the height of its 2013 explosion. While those are rare examples, they’re also testament to the earning potential of apps that capture public imagination.You could be one of those app development superstars with some luck and the right training, like this Bitfountain iOS Coding Mastery course bundle, now just $39 in the Boing Boing Store.With the package of seven courses, you’ll undergo more than 100 hours of intensive iOS app training, not only learning Apple's new programming language Swift 2.0, but building several functioning iOS apps as you go.The coursework includes:The Bitfountain Immersive iOS 9 Development CourseThe Bitfountain Immersive iOS Design CourseThe Bitfountain Core Data Immersive Course Advanced iOS from Bitfountain: Create a WhatsApp CloneThe Bitfountain Auto Layout Immersive CourseThe Bitfountain Guide to Submitting to the Apple StoreThe Bitfountain iOS 8 with Swift ImmersiveGet this bundle now at more than 80% off its regular price before the deal expires.

In 1989, Canadian activist, engineer and thinker Ursula Franklin gave a series of extraordinary lectures on the politics of technology design and deployment called "The Real World of Technology." (more…)

Before we knew him as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's blockbuster Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Elijah Wood was a child actor. In a recent interview with Britain's Sunday Times, Wood spoke out on sexual abuse of young actors in Hollywood, and says “a lot of vipers” roam the upper echelons of the entertainment biz, preying on naïvete and eagerness for fame.“Clearly something major was going on in Hollywood. It was all organized. There are a lot of vipers in this industry, people who only have their own interests in mind,” he told the Times. “There is darkness in the underbelly. What bums me about these situations is that the victims can’t speak as loudly as the people in power. That’s the tragedy of attempting to reveal what is happening to innocent people: they can be squashed, but their lives have been irreparably damaged.”“If you’re innocent, you have very little knowledge of the world and you want to succeed,” he added. “People with parasitic interests will see you as their prey. What upsets me about these situations is that the victims can’t speak as loudly as the people in power.”Wood is now 35. As a child, he performed with fellow child star alongside Macaulay Culkin in “The Good Son,” and had a part in the “Flipper” remake. He said his mother, Debra, protected him from predators back then, and he “never went to parties where that kind of thing was going on.”Here's a non-paywalled report that quotes extensively from the Times: Elijah Wood Calls Out Hollywood's Pedophile Problem [the daily beast]https://youtu.be/TLspHA8m6AcThe paywalled Sunday Times interview was booked to promote his latest film The Trust, which tells the tale of corrupt cops who plan to steal drug money.What kind of crazy fiction is that? Cops stealing drug money, how crazy, that would never happen in real life, and definitely not in a story that went viral just today about a police detective who stole a heroin addict's drug money after the young man died.

Hate passwords? Google does too, and may begin doing away with conventional passwords on Android devices this year. At Google I/O, the company announced the next steps in its plans to begin using a password alternative: "trust scores" that determine your creds based on various data points. Developed by Google's Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group, the Trust API will roll out to "several very large" financial institutions within the next few weeks. (more…)

California holds semi-closed primaries: that means that if you want to cast a vote for Bernie Sanders, you have to be registered as an independent (not as a member of the racist, homophobic "American Independent Party") or a Democrat. Today is the deadline and you can change your affiliation online -- the primary is June 7. (more…)

A second Baltimore police officer involved in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray was acquitted Monday. Gray, who was black, died in police custody one year ago, in Maryland. (more…)

His picks, with Amazon links:Seveneves, by Neal StephensonHow Not to be Wrong, by Jordan Ellenberg The Vital Question, by Nick LaneThe Power to Compete, by Ryoichi Mikitani and Hiroshi MikitaniSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Noah Yuval Harari(Gates Notes)

https://youtu.be/pNIvdmJUlVEDeveloped at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa, the iCub robot resembles a baby or a drunk trying to track a moving ball.Our humanoid robot, the iCub (I as in “I robot”, Cub as in the man-cub from Kipling’s Jungle Book), has been specifically designed to support research in embodied artificial intelligence (AI). At 104 cm tall, the iCub has the size of a five-year-old child. It can crawl on all fours, walk and sit up to manipulate objects. Its hands have been designed to support sophisticate manipulation skills. The iCub is distributed as Open Source following the GPL/LGPL licenses and can now count on a worldwide community of enthusiastic developers. More than 30 robots have been built so far which are available in laboratories in Europe, US, Korea and Japan (see http://www.iCub.org). It is one of the few platforms in the world with a sensitive full-body skin to deal with safe physical interaction with the environment.

The Jerx (previously) gave an audience at a magic show an app that let them tap when their suspicions were aroused. (more…)

Investigative journalist Mark Hertsgaard's new book Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden tells the story of modern intelligence community whistleblowing; in a fantastic longread excerpted from the book, he recounts how the US military's program of punishing whistleblowers, and the officials charged with protecting them, convinced Snowden that he should take a thumbdrive full of documents directly to the media. (more…)

The $80 Ramones 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition collects 3 CDs, one LP and a hardcover book, in a limited, numbered box (the edition is limited to 19,760, which is a number you can interpret as either symbolic of the year 1976, or "this edition limited to the number we anticipate selling"). (more…)

Sleep tight.

(more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZFycZqcQhQ&feature=youtu.beAbrams directed the first two Star Trek reboot movies and is producing the third one for Paramount; he says he convinced the studio to drop its controversial lawsuit against Axanar, a crowdfunded fan-film (a suit that included a dubious claim about the copyrightability of the Klingon language) telling them that the lawsuit "wasn’t an appropriate way to deal with the fans." (more…)

WordPress, JavaScript, Drupal, Joomla, SEO, HTML, CSS, PHP…if you’re looking to jump on to the web development career track, you’ve got a lot of learning to do. And those programs, platforms and disciplines and just a small portion of all the web technologies out there that play a factor in creating premium online sites and apps.A successful web developer has a diverse skill set, so build one now with a lifetime subscription to OSTraining’s collection of Developer courses, now $65 (over 90% off retail) in the Boing Boing Store.You’ll get the keys to the full OSTraining library, including more than 3,000 video classes that’ll introduce you to the web concepts you need to know and the technical expertise you need to bring your vision to life.First, get familiar with the planet’s most popular CMS platforms, including Drupal, Joomla and the 800-pound gorilla of CMS environments, Wordpress.Next, you’ll be introduced to templates, extensions and other high-powered features to make good ideas into functioning websites. During your instruction, you’ll build real estate sites, recipe directories, review sites, job board sites and more.Backed by a stable of the most trusted web development instructors from around the world, your OSTraining will help open doors with organizations like Apple and George Washington University who already respect OSTraining’s rigorous methodsBecome the web developer you always wanted to be (and start earning like one) with OSTraining for only $65, or over 90% off MSRP for this lifetime subscription offer.

My latest book just came out: Why I Hunt Flying Saucers & Other Fantasticals. The title comes from the short story of the same name, which was nominated for an Aurora Award in 1991. (more…)

The @DungeonsDonald parody Twitter account combines shooping, RPGs and politics to make D&D great again. (more…)

Arch-conservative Patrick J Buchanan's May column in American Conservative (an organ he founded) traces the history of the Republican Party's position on free trade, arguing that the "party of Lincoln" opposed free trade deals from its first days (Lincoln: "I am in favor of a national bank... and a high protective tariff") through to Reagan's tariffs against Japanese motorcycles. (more…)

Ewan writes, "In Septempber of last year, American YouTube musician Kina Grannis embarked on a tour of Asia. As usual, her social media presences detailed the process beautifully (I've interviewed Kina myself and have called her the gold standard among YouTube musicians on more than one occasion). (more…)

Authorities say a uniformed Secret Service officer shot and wounded a man who brandished a gun outside the White House on Friday afternoon. President Obama was and is off site. The White House is now removed from lockdown, and normal activities in the area have resumed. (more…)

Mike Wallace interviews the amazing Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, about censorship and marketers trying to push around writers of the TV shows they were sponsoring.

If you don't know, now you know. (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

The March 29 edition of Airbnb's terms of service requires that people who rent out their homes acknowledge that despite the company's widely advertised Host Protection Insurance program, "you understand and agree that Airbnb does not act as an insurer." (more…)

There should be a three-strikes-and-you're-out rule for any individual or corporation that issues bogus DMCA takedown notices. From Torrent Freak:This week's episode of Family Guy included a clip from 1980s Nintendo video game Double Dribble showing a glitch to get a free 3-point goal. Fox obtained the clip from YouTube where it had been sitting since it was first uploaded in 2009. Shortly after, Fox told YouTube the game footage infringed its copyrights. YouTube took it down.

Animated gif here.[via]

My former EFF colleague Kevin Bankston writes, "For Boing Boing readers in the Washington DC area, here’s a great event: this coming Tuesday, science fiction writer (and Cory's occasional collaborator) Charlie Stross will be doing a happy hour interview at think tank New America. He’ll be talking about cross-pollination between science fiction and real tech and policy with Kevin Bankston, who runs New America’s tech policy shop the Open Technology Institute."

Augmented reality, where stuff is visually superimposed on the real world using special glasses or whatever, is often touted as a more convincing and likely future than, say, everyone ending up in some kind of VR entertainment matrix hooked up to nutrition and shitting tubes. Sadly, AR will be even worse, at least if it resemble Keiichi Matsuda's hellish Hyper-Reality. (more…)

We all rely on our smartphones for pretty much everything these days. So pick up some essential accessories that’ll have your phone turning out high-quality digital images, checking whether you’re good to drive after a night out, or just maxing out your data storage options.Acesori 5 Piece Smartphone Camera Lens KitRegular Price: $50The DEAL: $9.99 (80% off)With this 3-in-1 Acesori lens assemblage, you’ll take your typical iOS or Android phone photos or video up to DSLR class. Just attach the sturdy aluminum lens to your phone magnetically and you’ll have fish eye, wide angle and macro lens capabilities that’ll push your pics to the next level. At 80% off, it’s worth the buy just to see what this kit can do for your picture-taking game.DrinkMate BreathalyzerRegular Price: $40The DEAL: $31.99 (20% off)Avoid facing a cop’s breathalyzer...carry one of your own with the DrinkMate Breathalyzer, available for use with both Android and iOS phones. At less than two inches long, the DrinkMate fits comfortably in a pocket or a purse, powers up via your phone’s USB or Lightning port, and with one blow, can measure your Blood Alcohol Content to within +/- 0.01% accuracy. It’s a vital tool that could keep you out of jail...so pick it up now before the deal expires.iKlips DUO Flash Storage Solution 64GB (Gray)Regular Price: $109The DEAL: $87 (20% off)It’s a portable hard drive for your phone...so just back-up your data to this compact flash drive and keep downloading and shooting videos with impunity. Snap the iKlips DUO on to your keyring and your media files will always be with you. A simple Lightning connector body means it’s compatible with most iOS cases. Available in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB versions, data storage can’t be more convenient.

It's not entirely clear where this image originates from, but the nightmarish interior of the Leatherback Turtle's mouth is attested to by many other ones just like it. Hey, at least it doesn't pee through its mouth.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO9wzb7ijPY

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "From May 11, 1947 until January 29, 1948, Gandhi gave a speech after prayer meetings 129 times. It was a narrative of his life and of the times. All India Radio broadcast his talks to the nation, and everybody stopped to hear what the Mahatma had to say. On January 30, Gandhiji didn't make it to the microphone. " (more…)

Contrary to popular belief, product managers aren’t just the employees who somehow get things done. Product managers receive special training to garner their particular skill sets, allowing their employers to trust that they can create great products to move their business forward.And did we mention that trained product management professionals make loads more than their non-certified colleagues? Jump on board this growing industry now with this Complete Product Management training bundle, now just $44.99 in the Boing Boing Store.In all, you’ll receive access to seven courses designed to run you through product management essentials:Skillsets to Shift Your Career to Product ManagementThe Complete Product Management CourseMaster the Product Manager Interview - The Complete GuideThe Non-Technical Person's Guide to Building Products & AppsBecome a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the JobProduct Management: Product Market StrategyBuyer Personas for Your B2B BusinessFrom ideation to production, from product launch through its early performance phases, you’ll understand the entire process of managing projects and fulfilling the needs of stakeholders. Once you’re through the more than 60 hours of top-flight training, you can start increasingly your job prospects - and hopefully, your tax bracket. For a package worth $220, grabbing this bundle now at 79% off is a no-brainer.

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning is serving 35 years in prison, in part due to a conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the overbroad, antiquated statute made notorious by its role in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz. (more…)

In 1986, Aerosmith and Run-DMC collaborated on a remake of the former's 1970s song "Walk This Way." Masterminded by producer Rick Rubin, then 22, the resulting jam was a gamechanger for both hip hop and rock. Over at the Washington Post, Geoff Edgers put together a fascinating oral history of the instant classic:Steven Tyler: I loved rap. I used to go looking for drugs on Ninth Avenue and I would go over to midtown or downtown and there would be guys on the corner selling cassettes of their music. I’d give them a buck, two bucks, and that was the beginning of me noticing what was going on in New York at the time....DMC: Rick gives us this yellow notebook pad. He tells us, “Go down to D’s basement, put the needle on the record.” We go down to my basement and put on the record and then you hear “Backstroke lover always hidin’ ’neath the covers” and immediately me and Joe get on the phone and say: “Hell no, this ain’t going to happen. This is hillbilly gibberish, country-bumpkin bulls---.”

I knew someone who lived in a house with a driveway that was very popular with drivers who used it to turn around. He didn't mind people doing it in the day, but it also happened all night and he hated the cars' headlights beaming through his windows. He fantasized about covering his driveway with spikes like these but wisely never acted out on that fantasy. He would have loved DrivewaySpikes ($40 on Amazon), which are rubber spikes that act as a visual deterrent to would-be driveway encroachers.

This is the lede to CNN's story about a man whose vaporizer battery exploded during use: (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Horrorstörby Grady HendrixQuirk Books2014, 240 pages, 7.4 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches (softcover)$9 Buy a copy on AmazonImagine a store much like Ikea, but not quite up to Ikea’s standards. In the book Horrorstör, Orsk is a shabby copy of the Scandinavian warehouse we all know, and maybe even love, right down to the incomprehensible product names (Frȧnjk, for example) and a Bright and Shining Path that guides shoppers through the showroom floor maze. But something about Orsk is different. And very, very wrong. Amy works at the Orsk in Cleveland, Ohio. Caught in a spiral of student debt and unable to support herself, she moves into her mom’s trailer and wonders if she’ll ever dig herself out of retail. ​That's when things change. ​Resigned to working at Orsk for the rest of their lives, Amy and her co-workers arrive every morning to find broken wardrobes, shattered glassware and vandalized sofas. Convinced someone is hiding out in the store and up to no good, they agree to spend the night in the store with their manager to unravel the mystery. Little do they know that tonight is their final shift.Horrorstör is a clever twist on a traditional haunted house story that takes place in a modern consumerist setting. The symbolism and criticism of consumer culture and the nature of work are there if you look for them, but it’s light, and pretty funny, and doesn’t get in the way of the story. The catalog-style furniture ​pages in Horrorstör — complete with enthusiastic but meaningless descriptions – grow increasingly dark as the story, and Amy’s situation, become dire. Consider this catalog page for a chair:“Boasting several advantages over traditional forms of restraint, BODAVEST confines the penitent and opposes the agitated movement of blood toward the brain, forcing the subject into a state of total immobility, conducive to self-reflection and free of stressful outside stimuli.”The book also includes humorously grim versions of Orsk employee evaluations, order forms, and pages from the Orsk Leadership Handbook. They really add to the enjoyment of the story. I found myself eagerly looking forward to them, trying to decipher which twist in the story they alluded to. Surprisingly, the last pages of the book took the story from hilariously gruesome to “Oh, heck yes!” in the last few paragraphs. I won’t ruin it for you, but they left me wanting to read more stories set in the wild and outrageous world of Orsk. “Orsk. It’s not just a job. It’s the rest of your life.”

Weird Universe alerts us to the curious case of Gerald Mayo, who in 1971 filed a class action lawsuit in the Western District of Pennsylvania against Satan "and his staff." According to the sui, "Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery and unwarranted threats, against the will of plaintiff, that Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in his path and has caused plaintiff's downfall" and "deprived him of his constitutional rights." The court rejected the suit for several reasons including the fact that "the plaintiff has failed to include with his complaint the required form of instructions for the United States Marshal for directions as to service of process." Basically, how in hell could the court get in touch with Satan to let him know he's being sued? And even if they could, it's not clear that he's bound by U.S. law."Even if plaintiff's complaint reveals a prima facie recital of the infringement of the civil rights of a citizen of the United States, the Court has serious doubts that the complaint reveals a cause of action upon which relief can be granted by the court," the court ruled."United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff"More here: "A Weekly Guide to Being a Model Law Student" (Google Books)

Liyla and the Shadows of War (Google Play link) is a game about a child's struggles living in the Gaza strip, and Apple says it is ineligible for consideration for inclusion in the Ios App Store because it would be "more appropriate to categorize your app in News or Reference for example." (more…)

Communion Cups with Wafers: prefilled and pretransubstantiated for your convenience. A box of 500 is only $95.Prefilled Communion cups with wafers are the easiest, healthiest way to share the Lord's Supper with your church members. Easy open Communion cups virtually eliminate all the setup time, giving you more time for fellowship without the worry of germs. You'll save money because you won't have to throw anything away. Simply save unused single-serving Communion portions for your next service.These portable Communion sets also make it possible to easily celebrate Communion at hospital and home visitations, military installations, camp meetings, retreats, large stadiums and more. Don't leave out church members with allergies. Remember to add a box of gluten free Communion wafers to your order.

Jenna Vecchio says she was working out with her husband at Movati Athletic Club in Orleans, Ontario when a supervisor told her that she would need to change her tank top because other clients at the gym felt uncomfortable.From Vecchio's Facebook post:My tank top was no different than many other women's tank top at the club; except my chest size is much larger in appearance in comparison to my frame than many of the other women. After asking every woman at the club who I could find on the way out if my attire offended them and they responded no, it became clear that the only ones offended were the two women supervisors working at the club today. I pointed out to them that my shirt was no different than any other woman's shirt. They informed me that it did not matter that due to my chest size I could not wear a tank top.THIS IS DRESS CODE DISCRIMINATION. DIFFERENT FIGURES DOES NOT MEAN DIFFERENT RULES!

Riding Light from Alphonse Swinehart on Vimeo.This video lets you hitch a ride on a photon emitted from the sun. It takes about 45 minutes to get to Jupiter.In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective.I've taken liberties with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually "sees" or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall I've kept the size and distances of all the objects as accurate as possible. I also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter as I wanted to keep the running length below an hour.

Lured by the internet's pervasive insistence that it represents a superior, more comfortable typing experience, I recently went back to an old-timey mechanical keyboard. This was a mistake. I am now a hamfisted ASCII jazz disaster. (more…)

The sale of Time Warner Cable to Charter Communications is completed today, and former TWC customers (including me) can probably look forward to a whole new era of crappy service, Netflix throttling, and horrible customer service experiences under our new broadband overlords. (more…)

Streaming video service Netflix today launched Fast.com, which shows you your internet connections in megabits per second. You can use it on your mobile or over your home broadband connection, and it doesn't require a Netflix account. (more…)

Hero of the Public Domain Rick Prelinger writes, "Many of you know of Prelinger Library, an independent, experimental research library in San Francisco's South of Market district." (more…)

My kids and I like to sketch together on the weekends. My older daughter and I also frequently go to a weekly figure drawing session here in LA. For me, using charcoal sticks is more fun than pencils or pens, because it's faster and I can work on shading.The Royal & Langnickel Small Tin Charcoal Drawing Art Set ($6 on Amazon) has a good selection of different kinds of charcoal for drawing. My daughters are starting to like charcoal, too, so I bought sets for them. If you enjoy charcoal drawing, you should also get a white stick for highlights.Here are a couple of my sketches:

Two gentleman broke into a watch store in a mall during business hours. A person standing a few feet away shot video of the whole thing. The two burglars didn't get away with the heist, which involved dragging a bag of stolen merchandise behind a scooter.Two lowlifes robbed the watch shop 'Klockmaster' in Kista Galleria, a shopping mall in the suburbs of Stockholm, Sweden. This all happened at 10 o'clock 13th of May, Friday 2016. As you can tell from the video, the gun that the one of them has in his hand malfunctions when he tries to be tough and fire it off into the air/ceiling. He then tries to unjam it during the whole robbery while the other guy smashes up the display cases etc. When they're done they try to get away on the scooter but it's having a difficult time starting -- the gunman holds the gun very close to his friends head... What a dope. They were later arrested at a check point near a McDonalds.