Craig Wright's latest effort to prove himself the creator of bitcoin ended in farce, but some commentators are tired of the whole saga, saying that it doesn't matter who invented Bitcoin because its decentralized nature renders the creator irrelevant. Adrian Chen disagrees: "the idea that Nakamoto’s identity is irrelevant is wishful thinking."Most obviously, Nakamoto’s identity matters because he is estimated to control four hundred and forty-eight million dollars’ worth of bitcoin, which, if it were unloaded quickly, could seriously depress the value of the notoriously volatile currency.The real Nakamoto could have a more fundamental impact as well: as The Economist pointed out, this latest saga unfolded during a heated “civil war” that has broken out among bitcoin developers over how to deal with an increase in transaction volume in the bitcoin network. The network processes transactions in batches known as “blocks.” As the number of blocks has increased, the network has become in danger of being overloaded. One side in the dispute wants to change the bitcoin code, increasing the block size to allow the system to process transactions more quickly. The other side sees this as a betrayal of the integrity of the original code, arguing that a change would lead to more centralization in the system (the greatest sin for a bitcoin believer) and consequent problems.Vanity's murky pond, inch-deep yet thick as tar.

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The massive wildfire that continues to burn in the Fort McMurray area of Alberta, Canada has been captured from space by NASA imaging satellites. (more…)

Publishing is in a weird place: ebook sales are stagnating; publishing has shrunk to five major publishers; libraries and publishers are at each others' throats over ebook pricing; and major writers' groups are up in arms over ebook royalties, and, of course, we only have one major book retailer left -- what is to be done? (more…)

A man in Florida was cited by state wildlife officers for killing an alligator without a permit after an inspection revealed gator body parts in his pickup truck, and the poor dead critter's foot sticking out of the dashboard. (more…)

A man the U.S. says is a hacker aligned with the government of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad will appear in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Tuesday. An unnamed source with U.S. law enforcement told reporters today that the accused hacker, 36 year old Peter Romar, was extradited to the US and flown from Germany to Dulles International Airport on Monday. (more…)

Eight people were killed in Chicago over Mother’s Day weekend. Another 43 people in the city were injured in gun violence. (more…)

A robin made its nest under our deck, giving us a wonderful birds' eye view of the nest through the boards. Today we noticed one of her three eggs had hatched! Here is footage of the new level 1 robin that emerged.

For two years, Vinny Desautels grew out his hair to donate to children with cancer who have lost their hair during treatment. The 7 year old Roseville, California boy was recently diagnosed with an unknown form of metastatic cancer, according to reports from his family and in local news. (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Exploring Calvin and Hobbes: An Exhibition CatalogueBill Watterson and Robb JennyAndrews McMeel Publishing2016, 160 pages, 8.5 x 11 x 0.6 inches (softcover)$15 Buy a copy on AmazonI like many grew up on Calvin and Hobbes. I don’t know if there’s a comic, book, film, or any other piece of art that better captures a childhood. I read every Sunday strip, most of the dailies, and the ones that I missed I would read in dog-eared collection books checked out from the library. As I got older, I wanted to know more about the strip’s creation. When I picked up the Complete Calvin and Hobbes, a 14-pound tomb, I was a little disappointed. Other than an introduction, there was very little information about the mysterious creator Bill Watterson. Thankfully, Exploring Calvin and Hobbes: An Exhibition Catalogue makes up for that. This is the Blu-Ray extras that Calvin & Hobbes fans have been waiting for. It’s not for those casually interested in reading the strip. There are plenty of other books for that. But if you’re interested in process, history, and the inspiration behind a boy and his tiger, you’re going to love this book. The book explores an exhibit of Watterson’s work at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum. It also includes one of the most in-depth interviews he’s ever given. In it you get a rare look at his early work, the tools Watterson used, the struggles he went through, and the wonderful comic that he created. You get a real sense of the artistry that Watterson put into the strip, and how it evolved over the years. It’s great to relive and learn about something that had such an influence on me. This book is definitely a must-have for Calvin and Hobbes fans. – JP LeRoux

My orange Bialetti Moka Express Stovetop Percolator is my version of the red stapler. (I have a real red stapler, too.)Over the years, I've tried to keep my Moka in pristine condition, but my family members don't care about it as much as I do. They would leave it on the burner after the water boiled up from the lower chamber to the upper chamber, which caused the bottom part to overheat and turn black. The final straw dropped on Saturday when one of my family members forgot to put water in it *and* forgot about it on the burner. I was in another room and when I smelled burning plastic, I knew what had happened. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the handle with a dish rag. It stretched like taffy. Even the plastic knob on the lid was melted. Disgusted, I threw the coffee maker in the trash. An hour later I pulled it out of the trash. I decided I could make a new handle. That was a good idea, but I idiotically thought I could get away with making a handle on a 3D printer. I designed the handle on Tinkercad (a fantastic web-based 3D modeling application):I also designed a knob for the lid. It took about an hour to print out both pieces. While it was printing, I used a Dremel tool to remove the carbonized black stuff from alternating facets of the octagonal boiler chamber. I was pleased with my new orange/green/black/silver Moka and posted a photo of it to my Instagram feed: The espresso maker that wouldn't die. A photo posted by Mark Frauenfelder (@frauenfelder) on May 7, 2016 at 8:00pm PDTA few minutes later, I tried making coffee with it and the handle melted immediately. What was I thinking? I guess I'd hoped the water in the boiler would absorb the heat so the handle wouldn't get hot enough to melt. Live and learn.As a believer in the sunk cost fallacy, I didn't want to give up on making this thing work. I found a little bamboo cutting board that we don't use much (part of a 3-piece set I bought last year). I eyeballed a pencil outline for the handle on the board and cut it on a bandsaw. I made a knob from a scrap of 0.75-inch square lumber. The whole process took less than 20 minutes. I like the finished result so much that now I'm happy my family member melted the handle and knob. I like my Moka now more than ever, and it seems to be working just fine (bamboo doesn't melt, and I hope it never gets so hot that it undergoes sublimation). Hurray for mistakes and happy accidents!

The World Wide Web Consortium's plan to standardize web-wide digital rights management is based on the idea that if an entertainment company doesn't like a new technology, it should have the right to prevent that technology from coming into being. (more…)

Created by Kurt Rauffer, who writes:Growing up in the 90s where Star Wars was released on VHS, the franchise really sparked my imagination as a child. It not only let me exercise my imagination but also supplied me with some of the happiest memories as I watched it with my family. After re-watching "The Empire Strikes Back," I decided to use this as a chance to create a homage in the form of a title sequence. This would also serve as my senior "thesis" at SVA and took me the whole semester to complete.The style and tone of the animation was inspired by the James Bond title sequences. The music was a rejected song from the newest Bond film, Spectre, sung by Radiohead. I really wanted to play on the concept of Luke trying to find himself and true purpose, so the music and inspiration felt fitting.

US Federal Magistrate judge Stephen William Smith sounds the alarm about the skyrocketing trend of US courts operating in secret, with their findings (or even the fact that they're hearing a case at all) sealed to scrutiny, and an ever-increasing portion of judicial action taking place in off-record arbitration. (more…)

Kaplamino made this delightful Rube Goldberg-esque demo using magnets and steel balls.

https://vimeo.com/164726039Matthew Callahan's Galactic Warfighters series poses Star Wars action figures in scenes that recreate war journalism from US operations, captioned with AP-style slugs that conjure up the human cost of the battles hidden by the inscrutable armor of the Empire. (more…)

The Present, Jacob Frey's four-minute short about a young boy who's not sure about the three-legged puppy his mom gives him, won more than 50 awards and played more than 180 festivals -- it's got a sting in its tail (and its tale). (more…)

The Australian Productivity Commission has published its long-awaited, 600-page draft report on the country's copyright and patent laws, which are largely the product of diplomatic pressure from the US government, fronting for US entertainment industry associations. (more…)

Other Music, my favorite New York City record store, is closing down after more than two decades in the East Village. Other Music was a hub of avant-garde culture both locally and via their phenomenal weekly newsletter reviewing new releases, from experimental electronica to post-punk indie to freaky psych reissues, and everywhere in between. Whenever I visited Manhattan, I made a beeline to Other Music, and loved hearing staff recommendations (and peeking at what other customers were buying).“We still do a ton of business — probably more than most stores in the country,” co-owner Josh Madell told the New York Times. “It’s just the economics of it actually supporting us — we don’t see a future in it. We’re trying to step back before it becomes a nightmare.”Business has dropped by half since the store’s peak in 2000, when it did about $3.1 million in sales, said Chris Vanderloo, who founded the shop with Mr. Madell and Jeff Gibson after the three met as employees at the music spinoff of Kim’s Video in the early ’90s. (Mr. Gibson left Other Music’s day-to-day operations in 2001.)Rent, on the other hand, has more than doubled from the $6,000 a month the store paid in 1995, while its annual share of the building’s property tax bill has also increased with the local real estate market.Other Music, I will miss you.

A joint report by RNZ, TVNZ and Nicky Hager accuses New Zealand of being at the heart of a gigantic money-laundering operation for the corrupt elites of Latin America. (more…)

Update: Opposition Labour leader Isaac Herzog, identified in the original article as the source accusation denies having made the accusation; and called the websites claiming he did "unsane."It's hard to enumerate all the people to whom this would be politically significant: the Israeli opposition; leadership rivals from Benjamin Netanyahu's own party; Islamists who are at odds with wahabiism; fighters in Yemen and other territories where Saudi is fighting direct or proxy wars, and the citizens and elites of those countries. (more…)

Our favorite PhD of high weirdness, Dr. Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis, recently gave a compelling cosmic rap at the Morbid Anatomy Museum about Timothy Leary and his appropriation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead! Listen to it here."While even most psychedelicists now discount the brazen and now rather dated work he created with Richard Alpert and Ralph Mezner, 1964’s The Psychedelic Experience," Erik writes, "I argue that there was also something deeply canny and even visionary about this mapping, which in some sense just extends possibilities already inherent in the ancient Tibetan concept (which is itself probably as indigenous-shamanic as it is Indian)."

A group of successful indie game devs are kickstarting Losswords, a game whose premise is that players are the resistance in a totalitarian future in which books have been banned, and games are the only form of permitted entertainment: you keep literature alive by making games out of the great books of history. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdBjrURwg-QRicky from Inside the Magic writes, "This weekend Shanghai Disneyland began soft openings and that means the world has now had the pleasure of finally seeing a TRON ride come to life - and it's brilliant. The Tron Lightcycle Power Run is a roller coaster that lets guests hop on the film series' signature vehicles and race around the track to Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy tunes, surrounded by special effects. The Grid is live and is very real." (more…)

The Guardian featured essays by UK punks who made the scene when it first emerged in the late 1970s. Above, Terry Chimes, 59, original drummer for The Clash, now a chiropractor."I just wanted to be in a band, and this was the most exciting band I could find," he writes. "Everyone else in The Clash was angry at the world and the establishment. I wasn’t. That’s why I left, actually. I felt like the odd one out.Below, Jordan, 60, Sex Pistols stylist, Adam and the Ants, manager, now a nurse."A lot of the major music moguls were extremely sexist," she writes. "An A&R guy once said to my face, 'This is not a woman’s job. You should be cooking and laying on your back.' I didn’t want to be there any more, so I came home to Seaford.""Never mind the bus pass: punks look back at their wildest days" (The Guardian)

American toddlers have shot 23 people this year—mostly themselves.Last year, a Washington Post analysis found that toddlers were finding guns and shooting people at a rate of about one a week. This year, that pace has accelerated. There have been at least 23 toddler-involved shootings since Jan. 1, compared with 18 over the same period last year. In the vast majority of cases, the children accidentally shoot themselves. That's happened 18 times this year, and in nine of those cases the children died of their wounds.Doubtlessly these toddlers will kill many more before they are stopped.It correlates strongly to state-level gun storage laws, reports WaPo. States with lax ones see lots of toddler shootings; even states with high levels of gun violence in general see few toddler gun injuries when they enact such laws. The NRA claims gun storage laws are an attack on individual liberty, and it not only opposes them but sues city governments that enact them.

It's presumably OK to eat a banana in a seductive fashion in China. But the official word is out that live-streaming the act is now forbidden.The move is the authorities' latest attempt to clamp down on "inappropriate and erotic" online content. In April, the Ministry of Culture announced it was investigating a number of popular live-streaming platforms for allegedly hosting pornographic or violent content that "harms social morality". News of the banana ban has prompted thousands of users to chime in on Chinese social media. [via]

Facebook workers "routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers," reports Gizmodo, regarding the "trending" topics that are inserted in readers' feeds. This was apparently an issue of individuals working on their own initiative rather than the result of corporate policy, but they were directed to squelch news about Facebook itself and to manually inject "missing" stories into the trending topics.These new allegations emerged after Gizmodo last week revealed details about the inner workings of Facebook’s trending news team—a small group of young journalists, primarily educated at Ivy League or private East Coast universities, who curate the “trending” module on the upper-right-hand corner of the site. As we reported last week, curators have access to a ranked list of trending topics surfaced by Facebook’s algorithm, which prioritizes the stories that should be shown to Facebook users in the trending section. The curators write headlines and summaries of each topic, and include links to news sites. The section, which launched in 2014, constitutes some of the most powerful real estate on the internet and helps dictate what news Facebook’s users—167 million in the US alone—are reading at any given moment.In short, Facebook's "trending" stuff comes out of a newsroom-like culture, with editorial direction and values. Which would be fine, except for the fact that Facebook claims that its trending topics are an organic or algorithmic representation of user interests and activities. Other Facebook curators Gizmodo spoke to denied that they suppressed conservative viewpoints, and "we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed."Managers also instructed them to insert stories that were not trending despite being in the news; the Charlie Hebdo attacks, for instance, failed to trend on Facebook until it was artificially promoted, according to Gizmodo's source.

In 1952, French physician Alain Bombard set out to cross the Atlantic on an inflatable raft to prove his theory that a shipwreck victim can stay alive on a diet of seawater, fish, and plankton. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll set out with Bombard on his perilous attempt to test his theory.We'll also admire some wobbly pedestrians and puzzle over a luckless burglar.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

The sixth season of HBO's Game of Thrones soldiers on, as the consequences of last week's revival unfold and seemingly long-forgotten characters make surprise returns. Each week following the show, Boars, Gore, and Swords recaps all the action in the world of Westeros. For this week's "Oathbreaker," Ivan and Red discuss Varys's interrogation methods, the differing effects of puberty on actors, and possible ways to defeat a four hundred pound Icelandic zombie strongman. To catch up on previous seasons, the A Song of Ice And Fire books, and other TV and movies, check out the BGaS archive. You can find them on Twitter @boarsgoreswords, like their Facebook fanpage, and email them. If you enjoyed the show, you can get even more BGaS content by supporting them on their newly opened Patreon.

Today we travel to a world with universal translation devices.Flash Forward: RSS | iTunes | Twitter | Facebook | Web | Patreon | RedditIn this episode we talk about how machine translation could be meddled with, who gets to be the baseline language, and what these devices might do for language loss and assimilation. ▹▹ Full show notes

For most of us, there are few feelings of deeper hopelessness than waiting for a car mechanic to tell you what’s wrong with your car. With all the electronics packed into today’s automobiles, it’s virtually impossible for the layman to diagnose his own car problems anymore. Avoid that uncertainty with the FIXD Active Car Health Monitor, now just $38.95 in the Boing Boing Store.FIXD is a small sensor that plugs easily into practically any vehicle manufactured after 1996. Once it syncs via Bluetooth to your smartphone, FIXD can assess any check engine light that pops up, then translate it into simple terms for non-gearheads to tell you exactly how seriously you need to take your car problem.Rather than worrying about your vehicle’s safety or a huge mechanic’s bill, FIXD will ease your anxiety by letting you know what’ll happen if you keep driving with the problem and what repairs need to happen to get your car or truck back in tip-top shape. FIXD can even turn off your check engine light, a procedure that previously could only be handled by an auto repair professional.Even without concerning warning lights, FIXD keeps helping, tracking and alerting you when your vehicle needs scheduled maintenance. This unit also lets you remotely monitor all your family vehicles so you’ll always have peace of mind knowing the wife and kids are all driving safe.Get the FIXD Active Car Health Monitor now at 20% off its regular price.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKNiNPEwjD4&w=560&h=315]

State medical boards are hybrids: part independent regulator, part industry association. They are in charge of handing down professional probations against doctors who do wrong, but the details of which doctors are on probation, and why, are kept from patients. (more…)

With all due respect to web content management systems like Drupal and Joomla, there’s a reason why Wordpress is king. Wordpress owns 60% of the CMS market and powers more than a quarter of all online sites. It’s open-source, SEO friendly, and streamlines the process of building and maintaining nearly any type of website. Obviously, having a stockpile of Wordpress knowledge can be a big boost to your resume - so consider grabbing this jam-packed Wordpress Wizard bundle of courses, now only $49 in the Boing Boing Store.Over 12 courses, you’ll unpack all the Wordpress techniques and tricks used by top-flight web developers, from creation to administration to utilizing 3rd party programs to further augment your Wordpress site.You’ll receive the following courses:Become a WordPress & WordPress Nirvana Expert CourseHow I Make $4000 Each Month BloggingLearn WordPress by Building 2 Responsive WebsitesMake an App for Your WordPress WebsiteCreating a Business Website with a Responsive DesignBuild Your Brand: Blogging, SEO, Social Media & RelationshipsBootstrap to WordPress: Build Custom Responsive ThemesTalking With Clients – Creating a WordPress WebsiteWishList Member & WordPress: Create a Membership SiteDevelop WordPress Sites & Earn Money With Affiliate ProgramsWordPress E-Commerce with WooCommerceBuild a Money Making Website For Beginners: Work From HomeThis course package would normally cost over $1,100, so lock in this limited-time price of $49 now.

It's been a year since David Cameron's Tories took control of the UK Parliament with a majority that gave their free rein to govern UK, plc to their taste. (more…)

Doesn't University of Pennsylvania economist Guido Menzio know that you should never do Al Gebra on a plane?From FB:Unbelievable…Flight from Philly to Syracuse goes out on the tarmac, ready to take off. The passenger sitting next to me calls the stewardess, passes her a note. The stewardess comes back asks her if she is comfortable taking off, or she is too sick. We wait more. We go back to the gate. The passenger exits. We wait more. The pilot comes to me and asks me out of the plane. There I am met by some FBI looking man-in-black. They ask me about my neighbor. I tell them I noticed nothing strange. They tell me she thought I was a terrorist because I was writing strange things on a pad of paper. I laugh. I bring them back to the plane. I showed them my math.It’s a bit funny. It’s a bit worrisome. The lady just looked at me, looked at my writing of mysterious formulae, and concluded I was up to no good. Because of that an entire flight was delayed by 1.5 hours.Trump’s America is already here. It’s not yet in power though. Personally, I will fight back.Here's the WaPo story about it.[via](Thanks, Ryan!)

Monthly bills are a pain. Rent, power, gas, cable, digital...every month, you’ve got to do the rounds, either authorizing online payments or sending old-school checks in the mail like your grandparents did. Bills are annoying.So let your friends at Boing Boing take one of those monthly bills off your plate for the next decade - if you win this killer 10 Years of Netflix Giveaway. One lucky winner will get their subscription to Netflix’s premium service paid for the next 10 years. Just think - you’ll get to watch the end of Frank Underwood, Piper Chapman and even Daredevil’s stories without paying a dime. In fact, Netflix has so much stuff, you could pretty much turn it on now, start watching movies and TV shows continuously for the next 10 years and STILL not exhaust Netflix’s ridiculously huge content catalogue.All you’ve got to do to is fill out a simple online entry form, then wait for the phone call that you’re a winner. You can also pick up an additional entry by getting a friend 21 years of age or over to also enter the contest by following the equally simple Additional Entry instructions.Ten years of Netflix premium service would normally run you over $1,400, so win this contest and cross one of those pesky monthly bills off your list. Good luck and happy viewing...registration ends June 12.

In honor of Free Comic Book Day, we present this essay by Jon Chad, author of Science Comics: Volcanoes: Fire and Life, and the co-author, with Maris Wicks, of "Science Comics," a free comic available in comics stores all over the world today. (more…)

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Chris writes, "After a recent Kobo software upgrade, a number of Kobo customers have reported losing e-books from their libraries--notably, e-books that had been transferred to Kobo from their Sony Reader libraries when Sony left the consumer e-book business. One customer reported missing 460 e-books, and the only way to get them back in her library would be to search and re-add them one at a time! Customers who downloaded their e-books and illegally broke the DRM don't have this problem, of course." (more…)

Animator Lee Hardcastle reimagines the quintessential first-person shooter as an even gorier game, starring Claycat, a fearless and fearsome claymation character.(via JWZ)

After the public overwhelmingly voted to name a new British Natural Environment Research Council vessel "Boaty McBoatface," the UK government pulled a switcheroo, declaring the will of the people to be secondary to the judgment of humourless bureaucrats, and summarily named the ship the R.R.S. David Attenborough. (more…)

Phrack has been publishing erratically since 1985, but the four year gap between the previous issue, published in April 2012, and the current issue, published yesterday, was so long that many (me included) feared it might have died. (more…)

"John Doe," the mysterious whistleblower who released the largest-ever leak of confidential documents in world history -- papers from the Panamanian law firm Mossack-Fonseca, a key player in the offshore dark money industry -- has published their first-ever public statement. (more…)

The practicing Muslim son of Pakistani immigrants has been elected mayor of London. Labour Party politician Sadiq Khan's win today is a major political milestone in the Western world. (more…)

MicrowaveMe Show Experiment #426: Microwave. Rated G. (more…)

An assistant principal at a South Carolina high school is under investigation after police say the man restrained a 15-year-old student in a chokehold, and kept her in a chokehold until she passed out. The Kingstree, SC police department is reported to be seeking assault and battery charges against the man. (more…)

Listen: "Time Fi Legalize" extra-elevated remix of We Chief feat. Ragga Twins & Gosteffects by Reid Speed. (more…)

Sometimes the simplest things in online life are the most sublime (more…)

Marine biologists with a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expedition in the Mariana Trench encountered a luminous red-and-yellow jellyfish in April, Scientific American reports. (more…)