The Justice Department says that security features on a San Bernardino attacker's iPhone were bypassed by an ‘outside party’, making that one important government case against Apple moot. But many other similar cases, including other cases involving Apple, are going forward. The war on your phone's security is just beginning. (more…)

Reporters from Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post obtained a huge trove of email from Unaoil, a business run by a rich Monaco family, that reveal that the family ran a corrupt bribery empire that spanned the world's oil-producing states, and that they world with companies like Rolls-Royce, Halliburton, Leighton Holding, Samsung and Hyundai, to rig contracts through a system of bribes and kickbacks that looted the national treasuries of some of the world's poorest countries. (more…)

Once pro-choice, the leading Republican presidential candidate now thinks that women who terminate pregnancies should be punished. Donald Trump's going to ban it, but is not sure yet just what he's going to have done to women who disobey him. But he's thinking about it.[Chris] Matthews then pressed him for a straight answer on what a ban on abortion would entail.“Well, you go back to a position like they had where they would perhaps go to illegal places but we have to ban it,” Trump answered.The former reality television star later added that “there has to be some form of punishment,” for women who get abortions after a ban is implemented, acknowledging the punishment would “have to be determined.”He's unsure about how racist to be, but in no two minds at all about the women. Expect to hear a lot more sexist nastiness as the campaign goes on. Update: He's changed his mind.https://twitter.com/cam_joseph/status/715282824476041216There's something amazing about how Trump just blurts out the right-wing positions he's discerned without realizing some of that stuff is supposed to stay implicit. He's like an AI chatbot who boils down his audience to its most vulgar principles, leaving that audience half-delighted and half-terrified at how completely exposed they are by his performance.

Unlike the Hollywood hospital shutdown in Feb and the Kentucky shutdown in March which got in by phishing attacks on employees, the two hospitals in Baltimore that were taken offline by ransomware were targeted by server-based attacks that got in through vulnerabilities in public-facing hospital services. (more…)

"Tay," Microsoft's attempt at creating an artificial millennial, returned to twitter. Nothing that chatbot said helped Microsoft's situation, and the world should question if this technology giant is allowed to continue mucking around with artificial life.Via Ars Technica:Microsoft today accidentally re-activated "Tay," its Hitler-loving Twitter chatbot, only to be forced to kill her off for the second time in a week.Tay "went on a spam tirade and then quickly fell silent again," TechCrunch reported this morning. "Most of the new messages from the millennial-mimicking character simply read 'you are too fast, please take a rest,'" according to the The Financial Times. "But other tweets included swear words and apparently apologetic phrases such as 'I blame it on the alcohol.'"The new tirade reportedly began around 3 a.m. ET. Tay's account, with 95,100 tweets and 213,000 followers, is now marked private. "Tay remains offline while we make adjustments," Microsoft told several media outlets today. "As part of testing, she was inadvertently activated on Twitter for a brief period of time."Microsoft has apologized.

"A literal reading of the Bible simply is a mistake; I mean it’s just wrong," Sagan told Studs Terkel in 1985. (Blank on Blank)

Here is a startlingly compelling implementation of the classic Windows Solitaire victory animation: simply click and win! The creator is Richard Cabello, who has perhaps played enough Windows Solitaire for one lifetime.

Artist Matthew Herbert successfully created edible record albums that he laser-etched into a variety of foodstuffs and played/displayed at London's Science Gallery. (more…)

Police violence is America is a statistical black hole, where data collection on shootings and killings are kept in haphazard or nonexistent form across local, state and federal levels, leaving scholars to piece together statistical pictures using techniques developed to reconstruct genocides from survivors' accounts. (more…)

CNBC's Big Crunch blog put up a well-intentioned, but disastrously designed tutorial on secure password creation, which invited users to paste their passwords into a field to have them graded on how difficult it would be to guess them. (more…)

Instagram just increased the time limit on user video uploads to a full minute long. (more…)

Two amateur astronomers in different countries captured space images that astronomers say depicts an amazing cosmic event: something basically crashing into the planet Jupiter. (more…)

I used to think Star Wars was the story of C3P0 and R2D2, but The Force Awakens suggests Anakin's lightsaber may be the talisman that ties the room together. This fantastic video by youtuber Christopher Sherwood shows us that iconic weapon from inspiration up to its place in the current story.Video Link

I love fountain pens, but handing one to a kid seemed like a bad idea. These simple, disposable Pilot Varsity pens are a pleasure.I bought this pack of five Pilot pens to let my kid see what writing with a fountain pen was like. I was surprised with how nice they write, and have ended up carrying them around as a daily use pen I won't mind losing. Losing an expensive fountain pen is a nightmare. The time spent searching in the car, under seats, in my pockets, and backpacks for a missing pen drives me batty. The line is very fine, and there is little to no flex in the nib. The ink flows well, and dries fast. Neither I nor my daughter have ink all over our hands. I still write with pens from my "permanent collection," but these disposables make life a bit easier. Pack of 5 Pilot Varsity Fountain pens via Amazon

Nixon's War on Drugs, Reagan's three strikes rules, and Clinton's "superpredator" crime bill turned America into history's greatest imprisoner, a carceral state where a racially biased justice system was made worse with every passing day, thanks to the campaign contributions and lobbying by the private prison industry, led by Corrections Corporation of America. (more…)

The problem with power strips is that chunky adapters will cover some of the outlets. I keep a Powersquid outlet multiplier under my desk and never have to worry about that problem. It's a 1-to-5 splitter with a built-in 15 AMP circuit breaker. At $13 on Amazon, it's the same price or less than power strips. There's also a $13 miniSquid travel charger with surge protection and 2 USB charging ports, but I haven't tried it.

Sociologists describe the "spiral of silence": people with socially unpopular ideas fear that they're the only ones who think that way, and say nothing, and their silence convinces others that they, too are alone, begetting yet more silence. (more…)

Stephanie Cegielski was in the Trump campaign from the beginning, first serving as communications director of the Make America Great Again Super PAC, then shutting down the PAC "in order to position him as the quintessential non-politician." (more…)

Landsat imagery of the Ucayali river in Peru shows it meandering over a period of several years; an oxbow lake forms, islands grow and fade in the channel, and a smaller river is "eaten" at the top left. [Hindered Settling, via]P.S. Looks like it might be a bad idea to build houses on flood plains.

Married moments earlier in New Zealand, Sarah and Matthew Oke were posing for photos at Lucy's Gully when they ran into the Maori and Polynesian Black Power gang, who were paying their respects to dead members. So they all posed for this shot, which has gone viral.Photographer Rebecca Inns writes: "The rain had just cleared and we were enjoying a lovely sunny wedding shoot. As we headed back, we came across a very full car-park and the guys who were there as part of a hikoi. We asked if it would be okay to include them in a wedding photo and they were really accommodating. This is the result. … "They all offered their congratulations to the couple and were so kind. They also told the bride how beautiful she looked."

A bizarre glitch in Super Mario World, and an incredible amount of patience, and the SNES classic is transformed into Flappy Bird.It's incredible to watch SethBling in action. Once the glitch (triggered by giving Mario too many power-ups) is active, machine code can be arbitrary rewritten in memory by carefully moving Mario around. This code can, ultimately, be executed. The process takes an hour of careful pixel-perfect actions in the game world, which becomes stranger and more nightmarish as Mario's universe-editing rituals proceed.Welcome to the weirdest, most painful, most existentially-nightmarish IDE—and a reminder that our own reality is probably an abandoned simulation waiting for someone to take too many power-ups and turn it all into a sadistic casual game.

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Ancient alchemists referred to H2SO4 as "oil of vitriol."

In a world dominated by Instagram, SnapChat, and Facebook, it’s easy to think that technology comprises only the Internet. But of course, it’s more than that, also encompassing computer hardware we can tinker with using our own hands. The Mini Linux Computer certainly proves the point. This machine is certainly small. But pound for pound, it’s just as powerful and versatile as any computer you’ve seen. You can use it as a standalone device, or integrate it into a larger system as it works on open source hardware. It runs on the OpenWRT Linux platform, connects to peripheral devices in a cinch, and includes its own built-in Wi-Fi adapter. It extends Ethernet and the USB interfaces with the included Dock, and even works as a fully functional 2.4GHz router. All necessary hardware and source code is included, so you have all you need to start your next amazing project. Its small size is a blessing that allows you to easily embed it into any system you want. So, don’t wait another second, and get your own Mini Linux Computer for just $39, before time runs out. Check out the link below for more details. Take 13% Off the VoCore Mini Linux Computer in the Boing Boing Store. Can’t get enough Linux, and want to become a power user? Check out the (aptly named) Linux Power User Bundle , available for just $19. This bundle comprises 5 courses that cover important Linux subjects, ranging from the LAMP Stack to command line essentials. With a retail value of nearly $700, you’ll get a whopping 97% off if you nab this deal, and will find yourself mastering Linux in absolutely no time.

Monosodium Glutamate. I grew up in an era of terrifying tales about how MSG was a horrible scientifically engineered food additive that was killing me. Now I know the truth: this magic sodium salt of glutamic acid simply makes food taste better, and it doesn't hurt me. (more…)

Not to be mistaken for the legitimate American Academy of Pediatrics, which has 60,000 members! (more…)

Bruce Sterling's 2010 short story Black Swan (a cyberpunk story) comes to life in a fine reading by Paul Cram (MP3) on the Starshipsofa podcast. (more…)

In just a few short years, ransomware -- malware that encrypts all the files on the computer and then charges you for a key to restore them -- has gone from a clever literary device for technothrillers to a cottage industry to an epidemic to a public menace. (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.It was right before Christmas and for a present I was desperate for a Magic: The Gathering player. When I asked knowledgable friends if there was such a thing as a Pokédex-style guide to all the MTG cards available, I was directed towards The Art of Magic: The Gathering: Zendikar. This coffee-table book is limited to art from the Zendikar set, the most recent card collection published by Wizards of the Coast. There is no reference book showing all MTG cards from its 20-plus year history, and this book will not scratch that itch; there are too many cards out there, thousands and thousands, for that to be a reasonable project in 2016. But if you’re someone who would like a MTG-dex to exist, then you’re going to want this on your coffee table.The text isn’t an analysis of the artwork, but instead is closer to a nature guide to Zendikar — the plane (or planet) of this set — and a retelling of the plot behind the collection. Parts are amusingly reminiscent of Lonely Planet travel guides: “In one spot on Murasa’s towering cliffs, the Tajuru elves created a passable route over the wall. The route, consisting of steep, winding switchbacks and a few rickety wooden lifts, ins now maintained by humans and guarded by ogres, all in the service of an ogre named Kazuul. Upon reaching the top, travelers must pay tribute to Kazuul, and if the Tyrant of the Cliffs is not satisfied, he hurls them right back down the way they came as punishment for their impudence.”A six-page appendix is the only place where the book breaks character, as Mark Rosewater — the designer of the Zendikar and Battle for Zendikar card sets — describes the years-long process by which the writers, artists, and art directors create a new world.There’s a house style that dominates, and it would be nice if there was more diversity of drawings. The illustrations mostly use dark, muted colors, there are a lot of floating rocks, and it’s all realistic (for certain definitions of “realistic”), although the inside is more colorful than the drab cover would have you think. There’s none of the humor of some early MTG cards (ork picking your nose, I’m thinking of you). But there’s more variety than you might expect — vampires like Drana, who has traumatic memory loss, and Plainswalkers like Chandra Nalaar, who “handles most of her problems by incinerating them.” I found the descriptions of the lands to be the most interesting (and least likely to involve the word “eldritch”).This book is primarily for MTG players. It’s unlikely anyone unfamiliar with Magic will want to sit down and cosy up with a description of how the Jorga elves were slaughtered by the titans at Bala Ged. But Dragon Age players, D&D dungeon masters in search of inspiration, even people who have no interest at all in dragons — anyone who’d like to see how fantasy art has progressed since the days it meant air-brushing a wizard on the side of a 1975 Dodge Tradesman — will enjoy looking through this impressive example of art and worldbuilding.– Sara Lorimer

If you are a seller on Alphabay -- a darkweb site that sells "drugs, stolen data and hacking tools," you'll have to use two-factor authentication (based on PGP/GPG) for all your logins. (more…)

Italian police spokesman Lt. Colonel Domenico Grimaldi says that Bilal Erdoğan was able to jump bail on money laundering charges because the Saudi embassy paid the mafia to help get him clear, assisting them with fraudulent diplomatic papers and a Saudi prince disguise. (more…)

Japan's recently expanded prisons are already at 70% occupancy, an incarceration epidemic blamed on hungry pensioners who account for 35% of the nation's shoplifting, with a high rate of re-offending. (more…)

Jack Hughes created The Color Clock, whose background color is always a hexadecimal RGB representation of the current time. You can download screensaver versions too.

JWZ reminds us that all social media is some variation on the walled garden strategy, designed to lock you in and lock value away from the open, interoperable Web into a silo where it languishes and rots. You know, AOL. (more…)

Microsoft Research deployed a tween-simulating chatbot this week, only to recall it a few hours later because it had turned into a neo-Nazi, and the next day, they published a bewildered apology that expressed shock that it had been so easy for trolls to corrupt their creation. (more…)

NC State University researcher Max Scott and colleagues have engineered a strain of transgenic blueflies whose maggots secrete human growth factor, which they hope to use to fight infections in patients with non-healing wounds for whom antibiotics do not offer any hope. (more…)

“A new shipment of science, spacewalk gear and crew supplies is on its way to the International Space Station,” NASA says. Astronauts on the International Space Station will grapple an arriving Cygnus supply spacecraft this morning, with coverage starting at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT). (more…)

A woman in San Diego, CA is reported to have contracted the Zika virus through sexual transmission. (more…)

The Republican presidential campaign just got even weirder. After a pro-Ted Cruz group ran a nasty ad about Donald Trump's wife, Trump said something nasty about Cruz's wife, and a too-timely story appeared in the Trump-friendly National Enquirer about the Cruzes' private life. All nasty stuff. In his denial today, however, Cruz was talking about about Roger Stone, Trump's political advisor, when he went off on a rather bizarre tangent."Stone is a man for whom a term was coined for copulating with a rodent. Let me be clear. Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him."Ooookaaaay, Ted.

Legendary punk Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü, Sugar) has a killer new album out today, Patch the Sky! One of Bob's pals is singer-songwriter Ryan Adams who was a fan before becoming a friend. Earlier this week, Ryan invited Bob over to his studio to hang out, shoot the shit, and play some songs. NPR has the audio evidence....For the next hour you'll hear Bob and Ryan play music and hear a sprawling, geeky and fun conversation. Sometimes it's about Bob's record, other times it's about Metallica bootlegs, caveman sounding lyrics, favorite cereals, fasted band, how the revival of vinyl helps make better, more focused records, praying, the quietness of church, zombies, Einstürzende Neubauten, noise rock and recording/mixing/soundboards."Hear Ryan Adams and Bob Mould Play Music And Talk About Everything Under The Sun" (NPR's All Songs Considered)Bob Mould "Patch The Sky" (Amazon)Bob Mould's "Voices In My Head":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLKIkmiLCzM

https://youtu.be/SLoukoBs8TEI've been avidly watching these Primitive Technology videos. The fellow who makes the videos lives in "Far North Queensland, Australia," and so far has made a hut with a kiln-fired tiled roof, underfloor heating and mud pile walls, baskets, a stone hatchet, charcoal, and a sling using only his hands on primitive stone tools. In his latest video, he builds a bow and some arrows.He stresses that doing these things is a hobby for him, not a way of life. From his FAQ:Primitive technology is a hobby where you make things in the wild completely from scratch using no modern tools or materials. This is the strict rule. If you want a fire- use fire sticks, an axe- pick up a stone and shape it, a hut- build one from trees, mud, rocks etc. The challenge is seeing how far you can go without modern technology. If this hobby interests you then this blog might be what you are looking for.Also It should be noted that I don’t live in the wild but just practice this as a hobby. I live in a modern house and eat modern food. I just like to see how people in ancient times built and made things. It is a good hobby that keeps you fit and doesn’t cost anything apart from time and effort.

There are rubber bouncy balls in between my couch cushions, under ever piece of furniture, and filling my desk tray. I feel like someone re-wrote the Trouble with Tribbles, starring bouncy balls.It started out innocently, I have a gumball machine. I noticed that my daughter ALWAYS wants the bouncy ball at a local pizza parlor, and never candy from their machines, so guess what I did? This bag of 250 more than filled the tank, and there were quite a few left over. I say were.Throwing handfuls of bouncy balls in a small room never gets old. Bouncy balls loose in the car on a windy road can be kind of scary. While rubber bouncy balls can be a lot of fun, they are a real choking hazard around small kids and pets. Like my dog Pretzel. I was constantly removing them from her mouth for a while, lucky she wants to chew them up and not swallow them hole. We've gotten more careful. The cat wants to chase them, and bat them around too. You can also make your own. DIY cornstarch and borax balls are not as long lived as rubber ones, which may be good. They also will destroy a gumball machine, don't use them for that.250 Rubber Bouncy Balls via Amazon

Games are awesome. They were awesome when you were a kid, slamming buttons on the old Nintendo controller. And now games are extra awesome with all the technology at hand for mobile play and now, virtual reality. Today you can do more than just play with this Virtual Reality & 3D Game Developer Bundle that’s 92% off. You’ll learn from top experts how to build the most exciting games in the industry with hands-on experience. It’s a whole new kind of fun.These three courses together offer over 95 hours of content. Using the Unity game engine, you’ll build 8 games, mastering C# and object-oriented programming concepts. From the beginners stage, you’ll tackle basic scripts to create games using minimal code at first. With the Virtual Reality course, get an overview of fundamental concepts and even create a Google cardboard game for mobile. Then 3D modeling will teach you the Blender suite of skills to have you creating and moving basic shapes you’ll need for game design. The quizzes at the end of each section will guarantee you’ve learned it all.Because you’re creating actual games here, your programming and design portfolio is about to look a lot more impressive. Show the work you’ve built to existing or potential employers for a whole new career now that all these courses are available for 92% off. Apply these skills to making your own games or to simply appreciating the fun that much more. Check out the link below for more details.Take 92% Off Virtual Reality & 3D Game Developer Bundle in the Boing Boing Store.

More Americans are riding public transit than ever before, and not a moment too soon, because between oil's direct and indirect costs, climate change, the expense of roadworks, and the scaling problems of private cars, the increasingly urbanized nation needs something to keep its cities from imploding under the logistical challenge of getting everyone everywhere. (more…)

https://youtu.be/clbbMt2sl0kSreedharan Subramaniam shot a video of impatient waterfowl walking over to the tardy man who feeds them every morning.

Would you like to see how a sewing machine works? How braces straighten teeth? How a key and lock works? How an ant walks? This collection of 25 GIFs will show you.

Microsoft has pulled the plug on on Tay, a twitter AI chatbot that went from zero to Nazi in a matter of hours after being launched. And not the strangely-compelling Kenneth Branagh-type Nazi, either. bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now. donald trump is the only hope we've got.@TomDanTheRock Repeat after me: Hitler did nothing wrong!The problem seems obvious and predictable: by learning from its interactions with real humans, Tay could be righteously trolled into illustrating the numbing stupidity of its own PR-driven creators. The Daily Telegaph:All of this somehow seems more disturbing out of the 'mouth' of someone modelled as a teenage girl. It is perhaps even stranger considering the gender disparity in tech, where engineering teams tend to be mostly male. It seems like yet another example of female-voiced AI servitude, except this time she's turned into a sex slave thanks to the people using her on Twitter.

I'm giving the closing keynote at this year's Information Security Summit, which is being held at the Universal City Hilton in Los Angeles. (more…)

The crowning paradox of the touring comic's life may be this: You have to leave home to make a name, but without the grounding and security of home you may not have anything to say. This week on HOME: Stories From L.A., three experienced comedians on striking the tricky balance between the road and home.HOME is a member of the Boing Boing Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please consider leaving the show a rating and/or review at the iTunes Store. Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSSThanks to Cathy Ladman, whose one-woman show, "Does This Show Make Me Look Fat?", opens soon; Brad Upton, whose upcoming tour schedule is available here; and Jackie Kashian, who can be heard on The Dork Forest and The Jackie and Laurie Show.

Stop by the Collector's Shangri-La booth at WonderCon this weekend, and check out this beautiful collection of "Cabinet Cards" by artist Alex Gross. From Collector's Shangdi-La's website:His (Alex Gross') mixed media “cabinet card paintings” reinterpret traditional studio portraiture, translating each cabinet card beautifully from the original 19th century medium into a completely new image and reimagining the working class faces of the nineteenth century as everything from superheroes to villains, escape artists, animals, wizards, Godzilla, and Darth Vader. Published by Collector’s Shangri-La, the artwork is printed with archival inks on museum-quality fine art paper. 8.5 x 11 inches. COAAlso at booth 505 will be: a drawing for a $100 gift certificate, free "art cards", and signings with Olivia De Berardinis, Gris Grimly, the incredible Martin Olson, Miss Mindy, Johnny Ryan and filmmakers of Death if Superman Lives!If you are at WonderCon, be sure to stop by!