Aussie entrepreneur Craig Wright backed off from his offer to produce more evidence that he is Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. He's also wiped his website, except for a final, rather ominous message.The BBC reports that he regards himself as the victim of false allegations after security researchers revealed his earlier "proof" was no such thing.Craig Wright had pledged to move some of the virtual currency from one of its early address blocks, an act many believe can only be done by the tech's creator.This would have addressed complaints that earlier evidence he had published online was misleading.Dr Wright said that he was "sorry"."I believed that I could put years of anonymity and hiding behind me," he blogged."But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot."When the rumours began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this."This doesn't prove that he isn't Satoshi. But the evidence being requested would be no big deal were he the real Satoshi, as he claims, and wanted to convince people of it, which he does. It's all very odd. At this point, he looks like Uri Geller smiling helplessly in front of Johnny Carson, explaining that he can't bend the spoons because something bad is in the air.But that's a bit easy, isn't it? People are going to be talking about hidden agendas as much as simply writing him off: is he deliberately obscuring things? Is he a stalking horse or scapegoat of some kind? Technically-brilliant people aren't necessarily good at social manipulation (or avoiding being socially manipulated). The old sawhorse is to say "follow the money". Funny how that's not always an option, especially when the ledgers are immaculate.The tone of his blog post -- an enigmatic disappearance that leaves the suggestion of his identity unresolved -- is very alarming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DbsCgwVVIcWith the release of a pair of anti-Trump ads, the Clinton campaign has begun to fight a war on two fronts. (more…)

Jeff writes, "Combined, Washington State is providing Microsoft and Boeing $1 billion annually in tax breaks. Cumulatively, Microsoft's state tax has saved its shareholders $8.6 billion in costs. While the company quietly surpassed $1 trillion in all time revenue, its home state faces emergencies in education funding, homelessness, heroin addiction and escalating crime." (more…)

Alligator sightings are pretty common in South Carolina's Lowcountry region around this time of year. But a genuine gentleman alligator whose momma raised him to ring the doorbell when he comes a-callin on a human neighbor--well, that's just downright precious. (more…)

The U.S. Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are now testing a new unmanned drone warship.The first Navy drone ship is a 132-foot ACTUV (Antisubmarine warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel) known as Sea Hunter, which cost around $120 million to build. The military says more can now be produced for $20 million or so each. But some are concerned that with no humans at the controls, these “robot ships” could be hacked, pwned remotely, and used by America's enemies to attack the United States. (more…)

Chloe from Portland's Reading Frenzy writes, "Six of our favorite Social Justice Kittens are back in postcard form! Next up: MRA Puppies!Postcards by Sean Tejaratchi/LiarTownUSA (previously) published by Show & Tell Press!" (more…)

When I was a wee lad, the first LP I owned was Timbertops, a children's "concept album" released by The Buttercups in 1974. I was captivated by the premise—a young girl is visited by all sorts of peculiar anthropomorphic characters in her treehouse— and by the music, which was already dated (it was by then the mid-80s) but full of fun and very catchy.If you tried to find MP3s or the band online, you wouldn't have had much luck before today. But for a couple of UK library references, it's as if it never existed. And the band (not to be confused with the new The Buttercups) never did another record. I still have no idea who the singer is! The writers were Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, one of the great songwriting partnerships you've never heard of. My best guess is that it was a quick, one-off stab at the kids' music market that came to nothing.Anyway, I finally remembered it and spent ages tracking down an LP, digitizing it and uploading it all to YouTube, no copyright intended. It was really something to reacquaint myself with the cast, and I'm pleased to report that the creators mostly avoided stereotypes and other crutches oft-found in similar stuff from the era (Note: mafia frogs Ricky and Rocky are vaguely coded Italian; Welsh witch Myfanwy is depicted as a gypsy, and then there's MacGregor, a gruff Scottish terrier with a plaid beret.)It's true that Timbertops might be a bit too kiddie for most grown-ups. The album doesn't really have a narrative; it's just vignettes of the oddballs that visit Jo in Timbertops. The best tracks are probably Red (a hippie fox; the last line of the song offers an early taste of post-McGovern liberal self-doubt) and Sharkey (a promiscuous cat whose adventures could be a parody of at least half a dozen Morrissey songs.)Below, the album cover, the characters, the songsheet and the songs themselves. (Here's a YouTube playlist) (more…)

About four months ago, cigar boxes, matchbooks, and coffee tins bearing the name and likeness of 19th-century poet Walt Whitman began appearing on the Show & Tell section of Collectors Weekly. Turns out, as Lisa Hix learned when she spoke to Ed Centeno, who posted the items from his personal collection, Whitman's name and bearded visage were once used to sell everything from tobacco products and booze to apple sauce. For the record, Whitman did not smoke, and as the son of an alcoholic father, he argued on behalf of Temperance causes. Presumably, Whitman ate apple sauce, but marketers never asked his permission to to sell stuff when he was alive (1819-1892), nor was Whitman ever compensated for the use of his good name.All this advertising attention to Whitman is curious since, in general, poets don't make good marketing tools. The Whitman name is particularly problematic. While some people are inspired by his steadfast support of the Union cause during the Civil War, imperiling his own health to work as a nurse in a Washington, D.C., Army hospital, others see him as a very early champion of gay identity, as well as a hell of an erotic writer. Being patriotic and gay are obviously not incompatible, but the latter often gives those who would make money off the former pause.Here's a snip:During the Gilded Age, new industrial technology, particularly in chromolithography and tin-stamping, caused an explosion in product branding and advertising with colorful product labels, tin boxes, and tin signs. This new era of marketing meant familiar literary characters and beloved authors could be used to drum up excitement for an unknown products.So when cigar maker Frank Hartmann bought the Spark Cigar Factory in Camden, New Jersey, in the late 1880s, the celebrated local bard was an obvious mascot. By 1890, his company introduced its Walt Whitman brand of cigars. But Hartmann wasn’t the only entrepreneur to have this idea: At least a few companies in the cigar manufacturing center of Binghamton, New York, started offering their own Walt Whitman cigars around the same time. The branding arrived as Whitman was facing his mortality and doubting whether Americans were truly touched by his life’s work. When Whitman disciple Horace Traubel presented the poet with an 1890 envelope advertising Walt Whitman cigars, he reported that Whitman exclaimed, “That is fame! … It is not so bad—not as bad as it might be: give the hat a little more height and it would not be such an offense.”

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]Pictures never lie, do they?So there’s no arguing with the graphic video footage that the National Enquirer’s latest edition offers showing singer Prince’s last moments dying in an elevator at his Minnesota mansion, and of a suicidal O.J. Simpson trying to hang himself in his prison cell.Dramatic images indeed - if the video actually existed, and if the Enquirer had it. Which it doesn’t.But somehow that doesn’t stop the from littering its cover with photos of Prince sprawled lifeless on an elevator floor, and of prison guards cutting O.J. down from his hand-crafted noose (apparently an impromptu concoction of towels, sheets and old shirts like you might find at a Maker Faire run by Dr Kevorkian.)Beneath the blazing “World Exclusive” headlines you have to look really closely to find the hidden words: “Photo Recreation” on these pictures. And it’s far from certain that they are recreating video that even exists. Prince had video surveillance at his home studio, but were there cameras in his elevator, and did they film his demise? Prison CCTV cameras may cover hallways, but rarely peer into individual cells. There’s some wild speculation at play here, which is business as usual in this week’s tabloids.Katie Holmes is expecting Jamie Foxx’s love child, and singer Rihanna is pregnant with Leonardo DiCaprio’s baby, claims the Enquirer. I don’t think we’ll have to wait nine months to discover the truth of these speculative allegations.Imaginations simply run wild at the Enquirer this week, where the ever-thin Angelina Jolie is now reported to be “on a hunger strike to call attention to the plight of Syrian refugees.” There’s only one small problem with that scenario: Jolie would have to be publicizing her hunger strike in order to draw worldwide attention to the refugee crisis. Having a hunger strike in secret defeats the object of the exercise. Or could this just be more wishful thinking on the part of the Enquirer?The Globe claims to have uncovered Prince’s “tragic suicide note” in the vault at his Paisley Park home, allegedly writing about his loneliness and desire for someone in his life. But this purported note doesn’t include any mention of wanting to kill himself - traditionally the hallmark of a suicide note - and in fact sounds remarkably like what is known in the music industry as “ideas for a song.” The Globe also boasts a remarkable photo of Prince laying dead on the autopsy table, though the small print says - you guessed it - “photo re-creation.”Britain’s Prince Harry tells People magazine “I don't play Xbox or PlayStation any more,” and that “There’s been times I’ve been put off having children.” After all, why have children if you can’t be bothered to play Xbox games with them?And Us magazine reveals that Ashley Madekwe (Seriously - Who she, Ed?) wore it best, that Billy Idol was kicked out of the Boy Scouts at age ten, and that Cyndi Lauper carries Burberry perfume, Mac lipstick and a copy of Reza Aslan’s Zealot (as if she didn’t know she’d be emptying her purse for a photoshoot and dumped the Jackie Collins novel) in her MZ Wallace tote. The stars are still just like us, says Us mag: they sunbathe, walk their dogs, and carry bags. The revelations never end.Thankfully the National Examiner gives us two pages of photographs of dogs eating peanut butter - and why not? - and reveals that wooly mammoths will “walk the earth once more,” as “scientists use DNA to recreate massive mammoths for a real-life Jurassic Park in Russia.”Who cares that this story first broke in March 2012, when even the BBC jumped on board? Some stories are simply too much fun not to repeat once everyone seems to have forgotten about them. Performing this experiment in Spielbergian cloning is the implausible-sounding Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, which against all tabloid logic actually exists - which is more than can be said for Prince’s suicide note and video evidence of his death, O.J. Simpson’s suicide bid, and the pregnancies of Katie Holmes and Rihanna.Onwards and downwards . . .

A day after Cruz threw in the towel, John Kasich follows suit. Trump is not officially the Republican nominee--the Republican convention this summer is when he will be anointed (or somehow shivved) by the party--but this leaves him without a campaigning rival.Mr Kasich's announcement clears Mr Trump's path, although he was never a significant threat and only won his home state.Earlier on Wednesday, he had released a Star-Wars themed advert describing himself as the "only hope" against Donald Trump.

My new favorite subreddit is r/TreesSuckingOnThings, a growing collection of photos of trees growing slowly to encase and envelope signs, railings, motorcycles and other things attached or adjacent to them.

Why buy one of those expensive and confusing universal remotes, clogged with enough buttons to launch a space shuttle, when you could accomplish the same electronic control right on your favorite mobile device? The Blumoo Universal Remote, now just $52.99 in the Boing Boing Store, harnesses the audio power of all your household equipment right into any iOS or Android smartphone or tablet (even an Apple Watch), offering just the mediascape you want with a simple, one-touch interface. Plug it in, download the Blumoo app and within minutes, it immediately wraps your home’s audio capabilities under a 150-foot sphere of control, allowing you to control equipment, stream music from iTunes, Spotify or Pandora or find shows or movies for viewing.The Blumoo functions with over 250,000 different audio and video components and even enjoys support from Alexa on Amazon Echo, Dot, Tap, Fire Stick & Fire TV. Once you’ve got all your home components and devices synced through Blumoo, you can even use Alexa to have your entire home entertainment system voice-activated.Blumoo also offers an interactive channel guide customized to your cable or satellite TV service, allowing you to search shows right from the Blumoo app.Ditch the mountain of remotes and start enjoying the streamlined world of life with Blumoo now at 47% off its MSRP.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBo7FXQAgjM&w=560&h=315]

Judy Belushi and Dan Ackroyd are developing a kid-oriented Blues Brothers animated series with Bento Box, the studio behind Bob's Burgers. (more…)

After a solar eclipse last month, a fisher in Indonesia's Banggai island region found a female figure floating in the sea. He brought the figure to his remote village where some believed it to be a bidadari, a kind of angel. Police noticed images of the figure on social media along with reports that the fisher spotted the angel "stranded and crying." The police investigated and quickly determined that the angel was in fact a sex doll. According to the BBC, the police confiscated the doll. What a shame."They have no internet, they don't know what a sex toy is," the police chief said.(BBC)

https://youtu.be/W3qkdB5bzLYPICO-8 is a virtual game platform with 128×128 pixels and a palette of sixteen colors. Because its memory and processing demands are so meager, it can easily run on the $9 C.H.I.P. computer. Even better, the makers of the C.H.I.P. are taking pre-orders for a $49 gaming console called the PocketCHIP that comes with a color display.

Robin Williams in drag and oldface doing his strikingly-talented thing. It's more unsettling than the movie; he creates the character as the session goes on, moving from anxiety to action, creepy to canny, English to Scottish.

LED light bulbs are still not as cheap as incandescent bulbs, but the price has dropped a lot in the last few years, and they will quickly pay for themselves in lower electricity bills. The highly rated TaoTronics LED Bulbs (9W Equivalent to Traditional 60W) are on sale at Amazon right now at 6 for $20. I prefer the soft white version rather than daylight, because it's warmer looking.

According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Prince died the day before he was to meet with a California physician who specializes in opioid addiction:Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a national authority on opioid addiction treatment, was called by Prince representatives the night of April 20 because Prince “was dealing with a grave medical emergency,” said William Mauzy, a prominent Minneapolis attorney working with the Kornfeld family.Kornfeld, who runs Recovery Without Walls in Mill Valley, Calif., could not clear his schedule to meet with Prince the next day, April 21, but he planned to fly out the following day.So he sent his son, Andrew Kornfeld, who works with him, to Minnesota, with plans for him to go to Paisley Park to explain how the confidential treatment would work, Mauzy said...When Andrew Kornfeld arrived at Paisley Park at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, Prince’s representatives could not find him, Mauzy said. Andrew Kornfeld was one of three people at Paisley Park when the musician’s body was found in an elevator a few minutes later — and it was Andrew Kornfeld who called 911"Prince died amid frantic plans for drug addiction treatment"

If you were thinking of joining Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE, now's the time to do it. For the rest of the month of May, 125% of all sign-up proceeds will be donated to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which promotes press freedom worldwide.When you join the INNER HIVE, you get each week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic emailed to you at least one day before it's published online, along with commentary, preliminary art, additional comics and "content," recipes and puzzles, other junk, etc. And this month, when you pay just $11.95 to sign up, $15 will be donated to help defend the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal. Click here to sign up for the INNER HIVE; click here for more information.

Journalist Paul Daling, creator of the 1001 Chicago Afternoons blog, has created a walking tour of the most corrupt sites in Chicago's fantastically corrupt history, and it's selling out. (more…)

Jenise writes, "Dreaming Robot Press is a teensy little publisher in New Mexico trying to fill a much-needed niche: they publish science fiction for children. In particular, they publish the Young Explorer's Adventure Guide, an annual anthology of SF short stories, most of which are for middle grades readers written by such luminaries as Nancy Kress and Beth Cato." (more…)

Over at the Root Simple website, Mr. Homegrown wrote about the fun he's been having learning how to draw Islamic geometric patterns from this book by Eric Broug. It’s a book of step by step drawing instructions. All you need is a ruler, compass, pencil and pen. While the geometry behind theses patterns is enormously sophisticated, actually drawing out the shapes is surprisingly easy and relaxing. It’s also a fun and painless lesson in geometry, especially for those of us not inclined towards math..

China's Internet censors are capricious and impossible to predict -- but this isn't because China's censors are incompetent, rather, they're tapping into one of the most powerful forms of conditioning, the uncertainty born of intermittent reinforcement. (more…)

The Supreme Court -- at the behest of the US government -- has announced changes to "Rule 41," a crucial procedure of the US court system, which will give law enforcement sweeping powers to hack into computers anywhere in the world, including victims' computers, with drastically reduced oversight. (more…)

The Bodleian Libraries at Oxford acquired a recently-discovered map of Middle-earth annotated by JRR Tolkien, "which reveals his remarkable vision of the creatures, topography and heraldry of his imagined world where The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. The annotated map went unseen for decades until October 2015 when Blackwell’s Rare Books in Oxford put the map on display and offered it for sale."(Thanks, Gary Price!)

It's the International Day Against DRM, and in honor of the day, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Parker Higgins has written an excellent post explaining why we can't live with DRM, even on media that you "rent" rather than buying (streaming services like Spotify, Netflix, etc). (more…)

The World Wide Web Consortium -- an influential standards body devoted to the open web -- used to make standards that would let anyone make a browser that could view the whole Web; now they're making standards that let the giant browser companies and giant entertainment companies decide which browsers will and won't work on the Web of the future. (more…)

In 2014, Allie Brosh's outstanding, hilarious, and gut-wrenching webcomic Hyperbole and a Half made the jump to print with an incredible book (review); now Simon and Schuster have announced a followup, Solutions and Other Problems, to be published next October -- I just pre-ordered my copy! (via Wil Wheaton) (more…)

Alex Jason, 15, used his lawnmowing money to acquire what Cult of Mac says "is becoming one of the most significant private collections of Apple devices in the United States." Jason converted his family's basement into a museum, called the Apple Orchard, and in a couple years he plans to move it into a former library that he and his father plan to convert into the Maine Technology Museum. From Cult of Mac:His collection includes every big Apple computer model except a rare Lisa 1. He has early portable computers, prototypes of Powerbooks, a green-plastic prototype of a Color Classic and Japanese models of early Macs. The orchard also includes Apple’s failures while Jobs was in exile as well as a computer from the company he started after, NeXT.Alex showed off his Apple 1 (only around 170 sold and about 60 have surfaced), its keyboard adapted to a briefcase, which provided protection and may explain why all the original chips still work. The original owner, according to a story passed onto Alex, supposedly went to an IBM conference with his briefcase, opened it up and began typing. When curious conference-goers asked what he was doing, he said, “I’m typing on my personal computer.”

Greenpeace has handed newspapers 240 pages of current negotiating documents from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a secretly conducted trade deal between the USA and the EU, which has run in parallel with the notorious Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). (more…)

Last month, I wrote about Paramount's lawsuit against Axanar, a crowdfunded Star Trek fan-film. (more…)

"Technoheritage" is the movement to preserve vulnerable history through digitization: making detailed scans of precious places, objects and works from which they can be recovered if they are destroyed by war, climate, or other disaster. (more…)

When Norway -- historically one of the poorest countries in Europe -- struck oil in the North Sea, the country put the proceeds into a "sovereign wealth" fund that invested it in other industries and used the returns to pay for an extensive welfare state that has given Norwegians one of the highest standards of living in the world. (more…)

In August 1980, an extortionist planted a thousand-pound bomb in Harvey’s Wagon Wheel Casino in western Nevada. Unless the owners paid him $3 million within 24 hours, he said, the bomb would go off and destroy the casino. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the tense drama that followed and the FBI's efforts to catch the criminal behind it.We'll also consider some dubious lawn care shortcuts and puzzle over why a man would tear up a winning ticket.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Google Maps and similar services are most useful, but who has the most recent space footage of your neighborhood? Check out mapbox, a Landsat viewer that tells you when the satellite image you're looking at was taken, and when a new snap is scheduled. The zoom level really isn't useful for anything at a life-lived level – with the exception of recent weather, disasters, etc – but all services should expose metadata like this.

Infosec consultant Nik Cubrilovic summarizes the evidence for and against Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright's claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the legendary creator of Bitcoin. Cubrilovic comes down hard on Wright.Wright has a history of fabricating evidence in support of his claim that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Despite his claims of not wanting the notoriety or the attention, he is going to a lot of trouble to construct a reality of himself as Satoshi Nakamoto. In the almost 6 months since the first Wired and Gizmodo stories were published he has had ample opportunity to prove conclusively that he is Satoshi, and the protocol and requirements for doing so are well understood and not onerous. They do not require a 10 page blog post with notepad screenshots of shell scripts explaining Linux commands, file formats or OpenSSL. They also do not involve tightly controlled demonstrations in an environment completely under his control. The real creator of Bitcoin would know this.The burden of proof for anybody claiming to be Nakamoto should be high. In the case of Wright, because of his previous fabrications, that burden is greater. His claims have to be treated with a great amount of skepticism, and his actions treated not as those of a sincere person, but rather as those of a person with a history and reputation for deception. Wright has yet to meet this burden, and until he does, Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto.The key thing is that it should be easy for Satoshi to meet the evidentiary requirements and no big deal to do so under circumstances controlled by others. But Wright's reveal was like a magic trick, carefully staged to prevent scrutiny and to direct attention a certain way. This means it could never succeed in convincing technical minds, no matter how apparently convincing.On the other hand, look at us, a frenzy of attention glued to a conspicuous moron pulling Bitcoin out of a top hat on stage. Who is off in the corner, not participating?

You may not love Microsoft Word, but you’ve definitely used it. Other than being one of the most ubiquitous programs on the planet, it’s been the go-to word processing system for more than a quarter-century because it’s as basic as it gets. But occasionally, you’ve got assignments that beg for a lot more options than simple line justifications and spell checking. Maybe you’re writing a screenplay or instruction manual that requires deeper specialization. Or you’ve got a document with a host of elements that demand extra organizational assistance.Where Word ends, Scrivener 2 picks up the baton - and right now, it’s only $22.50 (50% off its regular price) in the Boing Boing Store. Fire it up and immediately you’ll see how Scrivener’s project-management-based environment and aid functions can automatically adapt to the work style you prefer best.If you want to organize your thoughts before writing, no problem - Scrivener allows you to jot notes in a storyboard format, document your revisions and even look up research that could add another layer of depth to your project. If you want to write first and let all that editing and revision stuff take a backseat, you can do that too. Scrivener 2 adjusts to your workflow, offering up its bevy of specialized helping tools whenever you’re ready.Choose between Scrivener 2 for OS X ($22.50) or Scrivener for Windows ($20) and with both at 50% off, you’ll never find a better time to ditch Word and get with Scrivener 2.

A man in Florida was arrested last week for planning to use “a weapon of mass destruction” at a synagogue near Miami, federal authorities said today. The ill-fated words that James Gonzalo Medina reportedly uttered to the undercover FBI agent who sold him a fake explosive device, words which will likely seal the suspect's fate: “I’m ready, bro!” (more…)

People who fear the TSA's airport body scanners might start driving more instead of flying, and that will raise the number of traffic deaths. That's the argument behind a new legal challenge filed against the Transportation Security Administration today over the much-loathed airport security scanning machines. We have blogged about them zillion times here at Boing Boing. We hate them too. (more…)

Here's a puzzle from Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column, which ran for many years in Scientific American. I found it in his anthology, My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles, which is only $3.76 on Amazon.Imagine that you have three boxes, one containing two black marbles, one containing two white marbles, and the third, one black marble and one white marble. The boxes were labeled for their contents – BB, BW, WW – but someone switched the labels so that every box is now incorrectly labeled. You are allowed to take one marble at a time out of any box, without looking inside, and by this process of sampling you are to determine the contents of all three boxes. What is the smallest number of drawings needed to do this?

Remember Sarah Cooper's brilliant "10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings"? Here are a few choice bits from her new "Meeting Speak Cheat Sheet":• “This wasn’t on my calendar” = I deleted this from my calendar• “To your earlier point…” = I’m kissing your ass• “That said…” = We’re still not changing anything• “Let’s circle back later” = I need this to be overPreviously:• "15 tricks to appear smart in emails"

https://youtu.be/8f9mhC-low4Granted, the nail was loose, but it is remarkable to see a bee work it out of the hole. Two questions: what was the nail doing in the hole in the first place, and why was the bee so intent on getting it out?[via]

https://youtu.be/C01qpmWAeC0Ricky Jay demonstrates his admirable faculty with playing cards. To learn more about this remarkable person watch the documentary, Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, which is often available on Netflix.[via]

“We already knew of many asteroids, but they have all been baked by billions of years near the Sun,” says Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy. “This one is the first uncooked asteroids we could observe: it has been preserved in the best freezer there is.”C/2014 S3 (aka PANSTARRS) was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, close to Earth when it was formed. But PANSTARRS traveled far from the sun, "preserved in the deep freeze of the Oort Cloud for billions of years." Now it is headed back, and astronomers are excited to see what fresh frozen ancient asteroid looks like.Careful study of the light reflected by C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS) indicates that it is typical of asteroids known as S-type, which are usually found in the inner asteroid main belt. It does not look like a typical comet, which are believed to form in the outer Solar System and are icy, rather than rocky. It appears that the material has undergone very little processing, indicating that it has been deep frozen for a very long time. The very weak comet-like activity associated with C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS), which is consistent with the sublimation of water ice, is about a million times lower than active long-period comets at a similar distance from the Sun.The authors conclude that this object is probably made of fresh inner Solar System material that has been stored in the Oort Cloud and is now making its way back into the inner Solar System.

Craiglist has something wonderful on it: a vast collection of more than 600 vintage Smith-Corona typewriters, including accessories and marketing literature. Yours for a hundred grand.My collection consists of over 600 typewriter items including the company's first typewriter in the 1880's to one of the company's last typewriters in 2000's and all models in between, along with all types of items that correspond to the typewriters, including ads, accessories, displays, documents, manuals, photos, shipping crates, etc. Smith Corona's products are beautiful, interesting, unique, colorful, and when displayed, fun to look at.I collected the typewriters and related items from 44 of the 50 United States, Washington DC, four Canadian provinces and three foreign countries. I only purchased museum quality items, so the collection would make an instant museum. The collection includes many rare and valuable items.I have decided it is time to sell the collection.The collection is a nice financial investment that consistently increases in value over time due to a large international typewriter collectors market. The collection will only increase in value over time.More pics at the listing!

Long a prime suspect and claimant to the title, Australian entrepreneur and programmer Craig Wright outed himself Monday morning as the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency. "Satoshi is dead," he writes, producing early cryptographic keys associated with Satoshi as evidence.The BBC reports that Wright has provided it other proof to back up his claim, such as using coins known to be owned by Bitcoin's creator.Prominent members of the Bitcoin community and its core development team have also confirmed Mr Wright's claim.Renowned cryptographer Hal Finney was one of the engineers who helped turn Mr Wright's ideas into the Bitcoin protocol, he said."I was the main part of it, but other people helped me," he said.Mr Wright said he planned to release information that would allow others to cryptographically verify that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.Soon after Mr Wright went public, Gavin Andresen, chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, published a blog backing his claim."I believe Craig Steven Wright is the person who invented Bitcoin," he wrote.Jon Matonis, an economist and one of the founding directors of the Bitcoin Foundation, said he was convinced that Mr Wright was who he claimed to be.The Economist, however, reports that skepticism will prevail for a little while yet. And Reddit's r/BitCoin subreddit appears to be mostly unimpressed by the claim, with one rather technical post that purports to debunk the cryptographic evidence Wright offered.Wired thought it was Wright last year, but later decided he was probably part of long con to get people to think he was the brain behind bitcoin.

In a weirdly hostile and creepy press conference in Alabama this week, the state's Supreme Court Chief Justice complained about a variety of foes including “a tranvestite,” plus "atheists, homosexuals and transgender individuals." He says these foes brought forward a politically motivated complaint about his administrative order to probate judges not to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Chief Justice Roy Moore also blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for getting in the way of his gay marriage squashing orders. (more…)