Boing Boing

Amazon's Ring surveillance doorbells are part of a secretive, nationwide police surveillance network, with cops being offered covert incentives to act as street-teams to buzz market the products, and with Amazon repeatedly misleading the public and reporters about when and how police can gain access to footage from the cameras.Enter Shaquille O’Neal, slated to be the celebrity guest at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference on October 27. O'Neal has served as a spokesman for Ring since 2016, thanks in part to his large stake in the company. His appearance at the conference will be attended by a giveaway of tens of thousands of dollars' worth of Ring gear to police chiefs.EFF is calling on O'Neal to meet with them to discuss the privacy issues raised by Ring's police partnerships.That’s why we’re turning to Shaq—and you. We’re asking for your help to tweet at Shaq and Ring and ask them to take these privacy concerns seriously. We’re hoping Shaq will sit down with us, one-on-one, and learn how these partnerships turn our neighborhoods into vast, unaccountable surveillance networks. These partnerships with Ring are #NothingButDragnet. EFF Challenges Ring Spokesperson Shaq Over Privacy Concerns [Matthew Guariglia and Jason Kelley/EFF] Read the rest

In 2017, Equifax admitted that it had doxed America by leaking the nonconsensual dossiers it builds on the nation, covering up the info while its key employees sold off their stock, and then repeatedly lying about the scope of the breach.Some of Equifax's investors have sued the company in a Georgia state court. Among the information revealed in the filings: Equifax used "admin/admin" as the login and password for a key server -- a portal used to manage credit reports.Additionally, the data stored on Equifax's servers was unencrypted.Among the first details to emerge from the breach was Equifax was its terrible IT practices, driven in part by a shopping spree in which it acquired dozens of small companies and failed to integrate them into its networks.“Equifax employed the username ‘admin’ and the password ‘admin’ to protect a portal used to manage credit disputes, a password that ‘is a surefire way to get hacked,’” the lawsuit reads.The lawsuit also notes that Equifax admitted using unencrypted servers to store the sensitive personal information and had it as a public-facing website.Equifax used 'admin' as username and password for sensitive data: lawsuit [Ethan Wolff-Mann/Yahoo](via /.) Read the rest

Last year, Adam Serwer published a phenomenal article about Trump and his supporters titled "The Cruelty Is The Point". His no-nonsense tour of Trumpdom outraged conservatives, who were uncomfortable being seen as fellow travelers to smirking alt-right trolls. Even liberal media, which patronizingly casts Trump as the sigh of the oppressed Cletus, objected to Serwer's straightforward explanation of why people support his lies, atrocities and outrages. Anyway, here's Ben Shapiro praising Trump as "so cruel" in that fawning nasal whimper of his.Incidentally I still get angry emails and tweets about how “mean” the cruelty is the point was. https://t.co/oqQcMopElS— *Palpatine voice* UNLIMITED DADPUNS🍝 (@AdamSerwer) October 22, 2019 Read the rest

An interview with the best of all Jokers, the inimitable Cesar Romero who camped it up for the Batman TV series (1966-1968) and subsequent theatrical film. Romero famously refused to shave his trademark mustache for the role so they just slathered the white greasepaint right over his whiskers. Read the rest

Naomi Wolf's formerly forthcoming book, "Outrages", is about the emergence of homosexuality as a concept and its criminalization in 19th-century England. When review copies went out, though, a serious problem emerged for its claim that many gay men were sent to the gallows by Victorian judges: they were alive after their supposed executions. Wolf had misunderstood the legal term "death was recorded" (which actually means they were pardoned), failed to realize that child rape was also charged as "sodomy" (thereby accounting for some actual executions), and the resulting lack of verifiably gay corpses threatened the book's thesis. The book was temporarily withdrawn for revisions. Four months on, however, the publisher is cutting it loose.The NYT:In June, days before the book was expected to go on sale in the United States, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt postponed the publication and recalled copies from retailers, an unusual and costly move. The publisher said at the time that “new questions have arisen that require more time to explore.” Now, it has pulled the book altogether.On Monday, a spokeswoman for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said in an email that Ms. Wolf and the publisher “mutually and amicably agreed to part company.”This suggests the book can't be rescued as credible nonfiction, a common outcome for attempts to contemporize historical interactions between sexuality and society. But Wolf's been on thin ice a long time and has few defenders. Read the rest

Bruce McCorkindale has been churning out some deliciously demented art for Inktober, recasting arthouse films with Muppets. Who knew the Muppets and David Lynch went together like peanut butter and jelly?My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #20: Snuffleupagus in David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/Y4jDciJWu7— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 20, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #16: Dr. Teeth in David Lynch's BLUE VELVET. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/ISLfZtKnfh— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 16, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #11: Oscar the Grouch in David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/cJXPzgCuTC— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 11, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #8: Elizabeth and Little Murray Sparkles in Nobuhiko Obayashi's HOUSE. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/yZltHIee5B— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 8, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #14: Waldorf in Akira Kurosawa's IKIRU. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/4fZgPaMKEX— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 14, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #12: Zoot in Chris Marker's LA JETÉE. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. pic.twitter.com/cSx2dwKUI8— Bruce McCorkindale (@brucemccorkinda) October 12, 2019My #Inktober theme: Arthouse Muppets! Day #10: Denise in Hideo Nakata's RINGU. Pen, brush, ink & mixed media on 8.5 X 11" bristol board. Read the rest

NordVPN's a popular tool that many people turn to for keeping their shit private while the plumb the depths of the Interwebz. It's available to use with a number of different operating systems. While I'm not fond of what I found while writing about them a few years back (for the record, I rely on ProtonVPN for my online privacy needs) The service is good enough for a whole lot of people.Or at least it was. Because it's been hacked.From TechCrunch:The admission comes following rumors that the company had been breached. It first emerged that NordVPN had an expired internal private key exposed, potentially allowing anyone to spin out their own servers imitating NordVPN....NordVPN told TechCrunch that one of its data centers was accessed in March 2018. “One of the data centers in Finland we are renting our servers from was accessed with no authorization,” said NordVPN spokesperson Laura Tyrell.The attacker gained access to the server — which had been active for about a month — by exploiting an insecure remote management system left by the data center provider; NordVPN said it was unaware that such a system existed.NordVPN did not name the data center provider.So, that sucks.According to TechCrunch, the infiltrated server didn't contain any user activity logs, which is nice. Additionally, NordVPN's spokesperson swears that there's no way that a motivated attacker could have intercepted usernames or passwords. This of course, is like saying that you shit the bed, but the pillows are fine. Read the rest

A notorious "patent troll" — an acquirer of vague or trivial patents whose only real business is to shake down companies that offer implicated products — recently targeted GNOME, developers of a popular desktop environment for the Linux family of operating systems. GNOME fired back yesterday, asking a judge to dismiss the troll's lawsuit.First: a motion to dismiss the case outright. We don’t believe that this is a valid patent, or that software can or should be able to be patented in this way. We want to make sure that this patent isn’t used against anyone else, ever.Second: our answer to the claim. We don’t believe that there is a case GNOME needs to answer to. We want to show that the use of Shotwell, and free software in general, isn’t affected by this patent.Third: our counterclaim. We want to make sure that this isn’t just dropped when Rothschild realizes we’re going to fight this.We want to send a message to all software patent trolls out there — we will fight your suit, we will win, and we will have your patent invalidated. Read the rest

"Look into my pies"Baker Lorraine Elliott has just the thing to bake this Halloween: creepy, vanilla-scented rhubarb "eye pies." A conversation with her friend Nina inspired them:"I'm so hungry I'm going to eat someone's face off!" she said with madness in her eyes, while kneeling dangerously close to my face."How long have you been on this diet?" I asked."A day," she said solemnly....I offered her a rhubarb tart but alas that wasn't high protein enough. Moral of the story: eat pies even ones with eyes or you could possibly want to eat someone's face off.Go to her blog, Not Quite Nigella, for the recipe. (Nag on the Lake)photo by Not Quite Nigella Read the rest

If you're a coder, there's a multitude of avenues for you to take your skills. Whether you're just jumping into the world of programming or looking to rise up the ranks as an established professional, a wide base of knowledge is key. And this Premium 2020 Learn to Code Certification Bundle is a resource that's truly worthy of its name.This collection of 12 courses is designed to cover all the popular programming languages in detail, as well as emerging ones that are crucial for specialized professions like database management and platform-specific app development. If it seems like a lot, it is. And it's going to seem like a lot more to potential employers when you're able to add these skills to your resume.Inside, you'll find The Web Developer Bootcamp where you'll use NodeJS, Express and other platforms to build 13 projects including authenticated web apps. From there, you'll move on to Learn Python Programming in 150 Steps, which contains exercises and puzzles that take you through the high-level language from simple algorithms to deep learning applications.You'll also grow your understanding of Java with Learn Java Programming in 250 Steps, which teaches you clean coding with one of the most essential languages for web design. These courses only scratch the surface of what's inside, though, as there are 12 courses included total.Today, you can get lifetime access to all 12 courses for 98% off the cost of the individual courses, only $45 today. Read the rest

No Maintenance Intended is a snippet of markup (or markdown) you can add to your site or app to ensure that users understand that they're on their own and can stuff right off if they think any work is going to get done for them. Same for would-be contributors and their annoying pull requests. If you’re here, that likely means a project linked you here.Thanks so much for being interested in that project!Open Source is rewarding but it can also be exhausting sometimes. Read the rest

This is some serious Wile E. Coyote-level gopher management going on here. Read the rest

The Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College has a weekly newsletter devoted to drones. Here's a sampling of the military and domestic drone technology spotlighted this week.The BBC looked at new anti-drone devices like Raytheon's "Phaser" that may have been sent to the Middle East after the attack on Saudi Arabia's oil fields:Firing from a disc resembling a giant satellite dish atop a sand-coloured container it wipes out the digital elements inside a drone.Raytheon cannot say where the rapidly purchased Phaser has been sent, but the Pentagon has stated that it is being deployed overseas.Perhaps Phaser's biggest strength is it operates at the speed of light. That is the rate at which it fires out bursts of microwave radiation. And that can bring an approaching UAV down in a split second.The beam emitted by Phaser is 100 metres broad at a distance of one kilometre. That translates into a lot of dangerous space for an attacking UAV. Targets are tracked by an electro-optical sensor converting images into electronic signals and working in tandem with the microwave beam.The new Ripsaw M5 can launch a #FLIR SUGV, Skyraider, and features a TacFLIR 280-HD, and the 360 SA system for situational awareness! pic.twitter.com/8WFY1wQ5Rb— FLIR (@flir) October 14, 2019Textron Systems showed off a robotic tank concept:The vehicle, developed in collaboration with FLIR Systems – makers of the Black Hornet micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) – and Howe & Howe uses FLIR systems technology to get a 360-degree image of its surroundings and can carry a range of payloads including a medium-calibre cannon, Javelin missile, and mine-clearing equipment. Read the rest

When Margaret Atwood published "The Handmaid's Tale" back in 1985, it was at the dawn of the Reagan era, when the gains made by feminism and other liberation movements trembled before an all-out assault mounted by a bizarre coalition of the super-rich and the (historically apolitical) evangelical movement; 35 years later, even more ground has been lost and in many ways it's hard to imagine a more apt moment for Atwood to have published a sequel: The Testaments.

“Long have I waited.”Us too, Emperor Palpatine. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my short story "Materiality," which was commissioned for Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow's Architecture, a book edited by Edwina Attlee, Phineas Harper and Maria Smith that is part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale.The editors pitched me on writing a story about sustainability and de-financialization in architecture, and I asked them if they'd be OK with someone who is both an environmentalist and pro-abundance -- in the mode of Leigh Phillips's groundbreaking Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn Addicts. They graciously accepted.What followed was "Materiality," a story that ultimately turned into a kind of dry-run for the novel I'm planning now, which I call my "Green New Deal/truth and reconcilliation/Modern Monetary Theroy" novel; I've just written another very short story in the same vein for a new British magazine and my notes file for the book is filling up so fast that I'm pretty sure I'm about ready to start writing. It was supposed to be a special graduation treat: for their last two weeks of middle school, Artemio's class would be the model classroom for the Huerta's Twenty-First Town, part of the show for all the *other* kids whose teachers were no more excited about being in school in the final weeks of May than their students were. Artemio's parents thought it was going to be great. His dad had loved the Huerta when he was a kid, and his mom, who had grown up in Oregon, had been charmed by the Huerta when she moved to LA for grad school. Read the rest

One of the most exciting elements of Imagineer Christopher Merritt's astounding, essential Marc Davis in His Own Words -- a two-volume set of one of Disney's most storied Imagineers, whose contributions to the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean and other rides cannot be overstated -- was the revelation that there was a fully prototyped ghost for the Haunted Mansion that appears to have never been put into production.The ghost -- the "squeaky door ghost" -- is a cartoonish maid who is applying oil to the hinges of a door, in order to add a squeak to them. Squeak was discovered in the background of a photo taken during production and design on the Haunted Mansion and later matched to Davis's sketches. This all happened not long after the Hatbox Ghost -- long thought to be a rumor -- was discovered to have actually been in the Mansion at one point, albeit briefly, and this, in turn, inspired Imaginnering to recreate Hatty and bring him back to the ride.On the Long Forgotten blog (previously) we get a characteristically masterful analysis of Squeak, and all the ways in which she was exceptional: for one thing, she's the only one of Davis's cartoonish "bedsheet" ghosts that wasn't rendered in a more photorealistic style by Blaine Gibson in accordance with Walt's edict that the ghosts be "believable."Which raises a couple of questions: why wasn't she placed in the Mansion? Here again, Long Forgotten has a very shrewd guess at an answer -- after running down a few possibilities about why Squeak might not have made the cut, Long Forgotten offers a very compelling explanation. Read the rest

Everybody could use a little improvement, especially those of us on the hunt for new careers. Each job requires a different set of skills, and that list can change from year to year or even month to month as new technologies emerge.When you're in that race and need to learn fast, the old model of schooling can seem, well ... a little too old school. So what's the alternative?Enter StackSkills, a subscription service that opens up a library of more than 1,000 eLearning courses.Both beginning and established coders will find a ton of great resources here, with classes on blockchain, app development, project management, data analytics and much more, frequently updated for the latest programming languages and platforms.But that's just one broad subject area. You'll also find courses on graphic design, personal finance, entrepreneurship, speed reading and a ton of other disciplines. There are even ways for you to learn a new hobby or monetize an existing one with masterclasses on things like photography and podcasting.They're all taught by top instructors in the field, and they're all open for you to use. StackSkills is essentially a virtual university, minus the lifetime debt. In fact, it's just $59 now for an annual pass. Read the rest

The reviews are in! Mitch O'Connell's Trump "They Live" billboard, which many Boing Boing readers help to fund, has won wide praise among the intellectual elite who discuss fine art on Facebook. Mitch collected the reviews and posted them on his blog. Here's a selection: Read the rest

Aestetix writes, "We have good news. There will be a HOPE [ed: Hackers on Planet Earth, a beloved, NYC-based hacker con put on by 2600 Magazine] in 2020. And we expect it to be better than ever. For several months, we have been looking for a venue that would have the needed space and flexibility for HOPE. Thanks to the efforts of many - and the massive amount of suggestions and support from attendees - we've found a new location for the conference that's much, much better than what we had before. HOPE will take place at St. John's University in Queens from July 31st to August 2nd, 2020. It's still in New York City, easily accessible by mass transit, and well positioned to do everything we've done in the past." Read the rest

I'm something of a Bitcoin skeptic; although I embrace the ideals of decentralization and privacy, I am concerned about the environmental, technological and social details of Bitcoin. It was for that reason that I was delighted to spend a good long time chatting with the hosts of the Bitcoin Podcast (MP3), digging into our points of commonality and difference; despite a few audio problems at the start, the episode (and the discourse) were both fantastic. Read the rest

In 2018, Katie Porter flipped a Republican safe seat -- it had literally never been held by a Democrat-- in California's 45th District, and since then, she has been a delightful, brilliant terror of a lawmaker, using her deep background in finance law (she's a tenured finance law prof at UC Irvine who literally wrote the textbook on consumer finance law in the wake of Dodd-Frank and Elizabeth Warren's establishment of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau).Porter's got an amazing background: she went magna cum laude at Harvard Law (Elizabeth Warren was one of her profs), and she's also a single mom of 3 and domestic abuse survivor. She's got an amazing, prosecutorial questioning style that is an absolute breath of fresh air in Congressional hearings, where the median lawmaker is barely capable of asking a coherent question.In her short time in Congress, Porter has blazed through a series of hearings in which she systematically exposed the dire incompetence of both Trump appointees and the captains of industry they serve, pursuing them relentlessly.For example, Porter's pursuit of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, a principle villain of the financial crisis, about the inability of someone working the jobs his company advertises in her district to make ends meet, which the CEO -- who makes $31m/year in salary alone -- is completely flummoxed by trying to figure out how his employees might possibly solve their monthly shortfall (needless to say, it does not occur to him to suggest that he give them a raise). Read the rest

I got one of these bands for my Apple Watch a couple of years ago. It replaced the stock rubber band that's like a little belt with holes and a buckle. This one automatically adjusts to any size wrist and stays in place with a magnet. It's so much better than any other kind of band I can think of. It's usually on Amazon but if you use code SSBZ7IR8 it's about half that price. Read the rest

Last week, students at Haveri, Karnataka, India's Bhagat Pre-University College wore boxes on their heads to prevent cheating on exams. Apparently the front of the boxes were cut away so the students could see their papers while not allowing for peripheral vision. According to school officials, this was a trial of the anti-cheating measure and that parents had approved. In fact, the students brought the boxes from home. From CNN:Before long, the school was facing widespread criticism on social media. Even government officials weighed in -- S. Suresh Kumar, the state education minister, said in a tweet that the school's practice was "unacceptable.""Nobody has any right to treat anybody more so students like animals," Kumar wrote. "This (perversion) will be dealt with aptly."The school has provided authorities with a written explanation of the trial and an apology, Sateesh said. Read the rest

Dr. Adrian Smith of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences at North Carolina State University has been raising mealworms as ant food for many years. He had little interest in the creatures, but then starting taking time-lapse photos of them and discovered how truly amazing they are.Here are some things I learned about them:They are called mealworms not because they are commonly used as meals for pets, but because they often invade stored grains.After several molts, they go into a pupal stage, which can last for days or weeks.When they emerge as beetles, they are pale and soft. It takes several days for their cuticle to darken and get hard.Dr. Smith runs a YouTube channel called Ant Lab, which I just subscribed to. The videos are excellent and not always about ants, but most of them are, like this one about a certain kind of ant that collects the skulls of an enemy ant. Read the rest

Russian scientist Denis Rebrikov claims that he's begun a gene-editing process to eventually enable couples who both carry a specific genetic mutation that causes deafness to birth children who can hear. Rebrikov formerly announced his effort to use the CRISPR tool for gene editing to create babies resistant to HIV. From Nature:In his e-mail to Nature, Rebrikov makes clear that he does not plan to create (a gene-edited) baby yet — and that his previously reported plan to apply this month for permission to implant gene-edited embryos in women has been pushed back.Instead, he says that he will soon publish the results of his egg experiments, which also involved testing CRISPR’s ability to repair the gene linked to deafness, called GJB2, in bodily cells taken from people with this mutation. People with two mutated copies of GJB2 cannot hear well without interventions, such as hearing aids or cochlear implants. Rebrikov says these results will lay the groundwork for the clinical work.Rebrikov adds that he has permission from a local review board to do his research, but that this does not allow transfer of gene-edited eggs into the womb and subsequent pregnancy...Some scientists and ethicists also call into question the benefits of this procedure because hearing loss is not a fatal condition. “The project is recklessly opportunistic, clearly unethical and damages the credibility of a technology that is intended to help, not harm,” says Jennifer Doudna, a pioneer of the CRISPR gene-editing tool and a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Read the rest

Available from Banksy's delightful new homewares shop Gross Domestic Product, the "Met ball" "home entertainment lighting system is made from an old Police riot helmet and approximately 650 little mirrors." It is a limited, signed edition of 15 and sells for £500.00.The Gross Domestic Product shop will reportedly only be open for business for a couple of weeks as it was created to thwart a stupid trademark claim on the artist's name. Read the rest

A cool vest, an SLR and a kidnapped lion cub help identify this Barbie as Photojournalist Barbie.I have not seen Barbie in a long time, but I guess the pink convertible doesn't scare off the wildlife.I have been told Boing Boing readers love Barbie... right Ryan? Nice to see she reads.Barbie Photojournalist Doll via Amazon Read the rest

David Nicholas Dempsey, 32, was arrested in Santa Monica, CA after he was found to be concealing a manbun under his red MAGA cap. He received an additional charge for spraying a crowd of Trump protesters with bear repellent. (Where is Mitt Romney when you need him?)"Police announced Sunday that they arrested David Nicholas Dempsey, 32, on felony charges for allegedly violating his parole, using a prohibited tear gas weapon and assaulting the crowd with a caustic chemical," according to The Washington Post.From KTLA 5:[Dempsey] was seen in witness video arguing with protestors opposed to President Trump when he began spraying the crowd with a large canister of pepper spray intended for deterring bear attacks. At one point, he's seen walking up to a man who was lying on the ground and spraying him directly in the face at close range.Dempsey was pointed out by bystanders as the person who sprayed the bear spray and he was taken into custody at the scene.As a convicted felon, Dempsey is barred from possessing pepper spray or other tear gas weapons, police said.In Los Angeles County, Dempsey was convicted of burglary in 2006 and again in 2009, and he was convicted of larceny and conspiracy in 2012, court records show.Image: NBC News screenshot Read the rest

Researchers at Chicago's Field Museum collaborated with fragrance chemists to recreate what is likely the foul odor of a T. Rex's breath. Now, museum visitors can push a button for an olfactory experience of the dinosaur age. The new sensory station is part of an exhibit centered around the most complete T. Rex skeleton ever discovered. From Atlas Obscura:They quickly gave up on imitating T. rex poop. Most of the commercially available synthetic feces scents are imitations of human waste, and our generally omnivorous diets stray too far from SUE’s carnivory. Cat poop is slightly better, because they’re obligate carnivores, (exhibit developer Meredith) Whitfield says, but hyena droppings would be ideal, because that includes both chewed-up meat and ground bones, just like SUE’s deuces. Turns out synthetic hyena poop scent is hard to come by, so the team moved on. (But, Whitfield adds, “If you’re at the hyena enclosure at the zoo and smell their poop, that’s probably close to what T. rex poop smelled like.”)Dino breath, on the other hand, was both tempting and feasible. “From anatomical studies of SUE’s teeth, we can say, ‘Well, you have the kind of anatomy that might suggest that you have some nasty raw meat decaying in your mouth,’” Whitfield says. “What did that smell like? The answer is: Bad.”The team found a service that manufactures a range of prepackaged smells—mainly pleasant air fresheners for hotel lobbies and other benign places, but also stinky ones for police training exercises, so that officers can learn to detect stuff like meth labs, decomposing bodies, and other malodorous things. Read the rest

Johnson City, Tennessee police arrested Tupac Shakur for assault, resisting arrest, and possession of meth and drug paraphernalia. According to News Channel 9, Shakur is being held on an $18,000 bond. In addition to being a hip hop legend, Shakur is apparently a master of disguise. Read the rest

“People [in the Senate] are really friendly, they’re really nice—except Bernie,” Romney said of fellow senator Bernie Sanders in an interview in The Atlantic.“He’s a curmudgeon. It’s not that he’s mean or whatever; he just kind of scowls, you know” — Romney hunched his back and summoned a Scrooge-like grunt. “For Bernie, it seems like this is kind of who he is. It’s defining. It’s his entire person. For me, it’s part of who I am, but it’s not the whole person.”It's a good thing for Bernie that Romney doesn't disapprove of his hair style.Image: By Ben P L from Provo - Mitt Romney, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Read the rest

Nothing conjures up the eldritch geometries that are the secret fuel of Disney's Haunted Mansion like the hair-pulling geometrical puzzles posed by Ikea assembly instructions: hence, Spöke Håus, $20 and up on Teefury, proving once again that trademark violation is your best entertainment dollar.(Thanks, Buzz Benson!) Read the rest

And you thought Facebook was in the bag for Trump! Mark Zuckerberg and his wife have privately made hiring recommendations for Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign, and the recommendations were hired by it.Earlier this year, Zuckerberg sent multiple emails to Mike Schmuhl, Buttigieg’s campaign manager, with names of individuals that he might consider hiring, campaign spokesman Chris Meagher confirmed. Priscilla Chan, Zuckerberg’s wife, also sent multiple emails to Schmuhl with staff recommendations. Ultimately, two of the people recommended were hired.Buttigieg's centrist presidential campaign floundered until recently, but has enjoyed a surprise surge as Joe Biden's risen star sputtered. Buttigieg recently became conspiciously defensive of billionaires and big corporations, and maybe now you know why. Read the rest

Jon Evans of TechCrunch zeroes in on Facebook's big problem. Mark Zuckerberg wants you to believe that Facebook was designed as a platform where anyone can share their ideas, but as Evans points out, it's Facebook's algorithm that decides which ideas you see.When Zuckerberg talks about giving people a voice, he really means giving those people selected by Facebook’s algorithm a voice. When he says “People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate,” what he actually means is that Facebook’s algorithm is itself that Fifth Estate. Read the rest

Facebook user Brandon Ftacek shares this fantastic demonstration of just one of the many potential pitfalls you may encounter when using gasoline and rapid combustion to control your local gopher population.He certainly showed them.(Thanks, Randy C.!) Read the rest

Two great things that get even better together: Sublime and Hong Kong Phooey.Penrod Pooch studied the 'Hong Kong Book of Kung-Fu' to no great effect, and Sublime was the only reason I'd go to Long Beach in the late 80s. The cartoon may be dated but the band remains in my rotation.Thanks, Boing Boing BBS reader GulliverFoyle! Read the rest

Either it's windy in the warehouse today, or there's an extremely muscular poltergeist in occupation.Reagan Steiner: "A table that seems to be controlled by a ghost totally attacks this random guy" Read the rest

The under-construction New Orleans Hard Rock Hotel partially collapsed last week, killing three people and injuring thirty more, and efforts to dislodge cranes attached to the building didn't go entirely to plan on Sunday. CNN reports that the still-stuck second crane is at least now safe to work around, so rescue workers can now explore the debris and recover two bodies known to be within. FOUR ANGLES: Watch the cranes explode in four different angles >> https://t.co/zl2qGVKiLT #HardRockCollapse pic.twitter.com/IaYjNM6cQc— wdsu (@wdsu) October 20, 2019 Read the rest

Nest is a home automation company that Google bought in 2014, turned into an independent unit of Alphabet, then re-merged with Google again in 2018 (demonstrating that the "whole independent companies under Alphabet" thing was just a flag of convenience for tax purposes); the company has always focused on "ease of use" over security and internecine warfare between different dukes and lords of Google meant that it was never properly integrated with Google's security team, which is why, over and over again, people who own Nest cameras discover strangers staring at them from their unblinking camera eyes, sometimes shouting obscenities. One of Nest's most popular uses is as a babycam, and there's something especially terrifying and ugly about discovering a hacker screaming obscenities at your baby in the middle of the night from out of their baby monitors, which is why hackers keep doing it.The latest: the nanny in Jack Newcombe's family was in the nursery when a stranger started threatening her and shouting at her, trying to get a rise out of her, in an orgy of menace that ended with the hacker threatening to come over to Newcombe's house and kidnap their baby.The most significant vulnerabilities in Nest's model are that it doesn't require robust passwords during setup, and it lacks a decent intrusion detection tripwire that would prevent someone from using a credential stuffing attack, wherein an attacker automatically tries millions of login/password combinations harvested from gargantuan breaches. It's quite a combination: weak passwords and weak protection against password guessing, and it means that people who just want to keep an eye on their babies need to have a subtle and sophisticated understanding of security to be safe when they do it. Read the rest

The Economist reports that a tech startup sells a surveillance and control badge for the workforce. The device monitors workers' conversations and tracks their movements. You can even use it to make them sit straight.A technology company has created an electronic badge that can monitor workers' conversations, posture and even time spent in the toilet pic.twitter.com/L55v9PRrzp— The Economist (@TheEconomist) October 21, 2019The company that makes the creepy "sociometric" combadge has a creepy name — Humanyze — and its marketing is a cold wall of data jargon. The CEO and co-founder, Ben Waber, is an MIT Media Lab alumnus who boasts that he "literally wrote the book on People Analytics" and who published research on having workers take coffee breaks together to improve their productivity. If it weren't reality, it would be too crudely dystopian to pass muster as fiction. "I literally wrote the book on People Analytics. You're spending WAY too long on the toilet" Read the rest

The Star Trek Short Takes episode "The Trouble With Edward" focuses on H. Jon Benjamin as the mad scientist who sets Tribbles on the path to becoming an official enemy of the Klingon EmpireHe talked to SyFy about the part:"We didn’t do a ton of backstory before shooting it," Benjamin explains. "But I talked to the writer [Graham Wanger] and there was a conversation about how he got there. Was it like nepotism? Is he like barely a scientist? Or is he just of dubious ethics? Or an outsider and nobody liked him? I think we landed on the latter. Like, I think he might have some basis in real science and maybe some real credentials. But, he’s a bit of a lunatic."In one scene, right before Larkin injects the tribbles with whatever genetic cocktail he's cooked up to modify them, he seems to be briefly sporting an ominous black vest and one of the all-black Starfleet badges usually worn by members of the clandestine organization Section 31. In essence, for one moment, it's like Larkin raided the closet of Captain Leland from Star Trek: Discovery. Later in Trek canon, the tribbles end up being a huge problem for the Klingons. (In DS9, Worf said tribbles were declared an enemy of the Empire at some point.) So, did someone in Section 31 plant Larkin with the hopes that he would act crazy and create new alien pest species?Benjamin isn't ruling it out. If someone were pulling Larkin's strings, it would certainly explain how he got on the ship. Read the rest

So, this is fun: starting in December, Chinese citizens who want to snag a new phone number or sign up for internet service will have no choice but to allow their faces to get scanned. This new bag of Orwellian bullshit was announced at the end of September by the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. According to Gizmodo, the MIIT totally swears that the initiative is totally designed to “earnestly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of citizens in the cyberspace”.Uh huh.The Chinese government recently lost their shit over protestors in Hong Kong wearing masks to hide from the facial recognition tech that the police and other government agency use to monitor their citizens. They use surveillance tech to detect and creep on the nation's Uighur Muslims. In the case of the latter, those identified and confirmed as being part of the Uighur minority have ended up in reeducation camps. Given that this is the case, it seems unlikely that the nation's only motive for forcing you some to submit their face to get a phone number is to cut down in fraud.When a nation's citizenry's every move is monitored and cataloged to use against them, the notion of democracy becomes one that is thought upon, but never dares to be heard. Read the rest

There are many articles about nice monospace typefaces, but Programming Fonts lets you see all the good ones live on-screen—and how your work looks in it. I'm a big fan of APL385, with a truly ancient pedigree, whose eccentricities land perfectly at the needs of the moment: high-dpi fixed-width legibility that's fun without drowning in nostalgia for old displays and their stupid pixels. Read the rest

Akiva Leffert has designed an Ikea-themed tarot deck:Ikea is a place of transition, a journey, a source of light and comfort, but also strife. Ikea contains the universe. Harness that power to understand your own life with these cleanly designed Ikea themed tarot cards. They'll go great sitting on your BILLY bookcase or on the table next to your MALM bedframe. The deck contains the four suits of the minor arcana: sofas, lamps, dowels, and allen keys as well as a full set of major arcana.Available at Etsy.(Via Brandon Sheffield.) Read the rest

In an important reminder that Republicans are entirely capable of stopping Trump when they actually disagree with him, next year's G7 summit of world leaders will no longer be held at one of his own hotels.President Trump says the White House has abandoned plans to host next year’s G7 summit at his Doral Miami Resort because of “crazed and irrational hostility” by Democrats and the media. “I thought I was doing something very good for our Country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 Leaders,” the president tweeted late Saturday. Why? The New York Times puts it succinctly: "He knew Democrats would criticize him. When Republicans started doing so, he changed his mind."The House of Representatives had been expected to vote next week on a resolution condemning the decision. Democrats also planned to require the White House to present information to justify why the administration decided on Doral.Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, was among those who suggested the decision violated the constitution. Last month, the US Air Force (USAF) ordered a review of its accommodation after it emerged some personnel had been staying at one of President Trump's Scottish golf resorts.The Consumer Entertainment Show used to be held alongside the Adult Entertainment Show in Vegas, an amusing juxtaposition of the world's stiffest business nerds and its most relaxed performers. Likewise, having G7 overlap Miss World 2020 or Golf Boobs Florida or whatever else Trump hosts at Doral would have made for great coverage. Read the rest

In recent years, natural language processing technology and language translation technology have advanced greatly. The trouble is, language translation software typically comes in the form of apps. And while your mileage may vary on their usefulness, they share one thing in common: a serious drain on the battery for your smartphone, the very thing you'll be using to get around in unfamiliar towns.The CM Translator is the first great alternative to the clumsy crutch of translation apps. It's a standalone device that works with a single click. Just say whatever you want to be translated and it'll repeat the phrase back in one of many different languages. You can hold the device up to a person who speaks a different language than you do, and it will be translated into your language.Powered by Microsoft and Orion voice recognition, that functionality puts us firmly in "Star Trek" translator territory. Better still, its workhorse battery is capable of up to 24 hours of continuous use, freeing up your cell phone for other things. On standby, that operation time can stretch to 180 days.The CM Translator works in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and a myriad of other languages. You can use your smartphone to toggle between active languages, then let the translator do its thing. At less than 6" long, it's portable enough to take anywhere.Pick up the CM Translator now for 23% off the retail price. Read the rest

Sunday brought us McKay Coppins' detailed interview with Mitt Romney, the last Republican grandee to hold out against Trump's domination of the party. In it, Romney mentioned in passing that uses a secret Twitter account to keep tabs on stuff. Ashley Feinberg tracked it down with ruthless cunning and fast results: This Sure Looks Like Mitt Romney’s Secret Twitter Account (Update: It Is).Meet “Pierre Delecto.”...Pierre has only ever tweeted 10 times total, and all of them have been replies to other tweets—certainly the sort of behavior one might expect to see from a self-described “lurker.” The account’s first tweet, coming a whole four years after its initial registration, was a show of frustration at Fox News for not yet having a New Hampshire presidential poll up. ... More recently, there was a tweet expressing unhappiness at Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria (which Romney has publicly condemned) while also insisting on the Senate’s powerlessness (as Romney a move as there ever was). Remember Little Face Mitt? Get ready for Big Derriere Pierre. Read the rest

German security researchers from Security Research Lab created a suite of apps for Google and Amazon smart speakers that did trivial things for their users, appeared to finish and go dormant, but which actually stayed in listening mode, then phished the user for passwords spoken aloud to exfiltrate to a malicious actor; all their apps were successfully smuggled past the companies app store security checks.The basic workflow is this: the app is invoked by a voice command ("Give me my horoscope"), then appears to terminate, by playing a null character (U+D801), which is played as silence. After a long interval, the speaker then spoke in a voice that terminated the speaker's OS, with a fake error message asking for a password to allow for a security update.The researchers reported their findings to Google and Amazon and withdrew their apps from the manufacturers' app stores, both companies say they are putting new policies in place to prevent similar future attacks.All of the malicious apps used common building blocks to mask their malicious behaviors. The first was exploiting a flaw in both Alexa and Google Home when their text-to-speech engines received instructions to speak the character "�." (U+D801, dot, space). The unpronounceable sequence caused both devices to remain silent even while the apps were still running. The silence gave the impression the apps had terminated, even when they remained running.The apps used other tricks to deceive users. In the parlance of voice apps, "Hey Alexa" and "OK Google" are known as "wake" words that activate the devices; "My Lucky Horoscope" is an "invocation" phrase used to start a particular skill or action; "give me the horoscope" is an "intent" that tells the app which function to call; and "taurus" is a "slot" value that acts like a variable. Read the rest

Trimbandit's Scary Animated Zombie Groundbreaker Instructable uses two pneumatics to make a partially buried zombie jerk and pitch and seem to try to claw its way out of your lawn -- it's an incredibly effective illusion, one that capitalizes on the jerking, sudden motions of the pneumatic to lend a terrifying, otherworldly vigor that makes the mannequin skinned over the pneumatics seem like the living dead.*NOTE* I recommend starting with a low amount of pressure when testing and increasing from there until you are satisfied with the speed. The cylinders are very powerful and you don't want to rip everything apart.You will probably want to either weight or stake down the groundbreaker to keep it from shaking across your lawn. I ran a considerable length of air hose so I could keep the compressor in the back yard, since it is rather noisy. Scary Animated Zombie Groundbreaker [Trimbandit/Instructables](via Hackaday) Read the rest