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If this holds out (we have not seen the actual indictment, just a reporter's tweet), The U.S. Department of Justice just took a sharp turn down a dark, winding road that leads the country right off a cliff.Katie Benner, NYT Justice Department reporter:Today Deputy AG Jeff Rosen told ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that he rejected his appeal to avoid criminal charges related to his lack of candor with federal agents.Today Deputy AG Jeff Rosen told ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that he rejected his appeal to avoid criminal charges related to his lack of candor with federal agents.— Katie Benner (@ktbenner) September 12, 2019Lack of candor apparently now a crime.DOJ is going down an ugly and deeply disturbing path here. https://t.co/x8UGi2HpM9— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) September 12, 2019Of course he did. The pressure for this indictment has come from the president through his political appointees at Main Justice from day one. https://t.co/TvCoH0IWyi— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) September 12, 2019PHOTO: Andrew McCabe arrives to testify before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill in Washington. [REUTERS] Read the rest

The Verge reports that top YouTuber Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg is rescinding a $50,000 pledge to the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group that opposes antisemitism and supports Israel. The donation, made in the wake of Kjellberg's giggling use of antisemitic imagery and racial slurs on his game streams, did not go down well with his followers.I made the mistake of picking a charity that I was advised to instead of picking a charity that I’m personally passionate about,” Kjellberg said in the video. “Which is 100 percent my fault.”Kjellberg previously addressed the criticism against his donation on Twitter, acknowledging that “making a donation to the ADL doesn’t make sense to everyone, especially since they’ve outright spoken against me.” A spokesperson for the ADL told The Verge at the time that they learned about the “potential donation when everyone else did: when he made the announcement on his channel yesterday.” Regarding people who say bigoted things as a "joke", Ken White invented the Rule of Goats: "even if you say you're only fucking goats ironically, you're still a goatfucker."To which I now add a corollary: "And the goats are now your fans." Read the rest

AB5 is about to pass the California legislature: it forces companies like Lyft and Uber to comply with the longstanding Dynamex decision and treat their employees as employees.Uber and Lyft hate this. It's an existential threat to them (that is, it serves to hasten their inevitable collapse) and in California, when you hate a law, you get to propose a ballot initiative to overturn it. This doesn't always lead to bad outcomes -- the threat of a ballot initiative (funded by a wealthy activist) was the major factor in the passage of the state's excellent privacy legislation.But ballot initiatives are funny beasts: they are nominally democratic (in that the people get to vote on them) but because they are incredibly expensive to run, they become a way for plutocrats to democracy-launder their pet projects, turning cash infusions into policy while maintaining that really, the will of the people is being done. So the plan to institute rent controls gets defeated by the largest-ever political spend in ballot initiative history, and the plan to reinstate progressive property taxes is likely to hit similar headwinds.Enter Uber's general counsel, Tony West, who has demanded that Governor Gavin Newsom (D) modify the bill so that Uber can go on with business-as-usual, treating its drivers as contractors. West has put Newsom on notice that: "Uber and Lyft together have already transferred $60 million into a campaign committee account, and we are open to investing more to put us in the strongest position possible to run a winning campaign."Matt Stoller calls this a money veto, and he's not wrong. Read the rest

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied Ohio State University's trademark filing on the word "The." The AP reports:OSU submitted the trademark application last month.The patent office cited the trademark appears to be used for “merely decorative manner” and as an “ornamental feature” that doesn’t appear to function as a trademark that would differentiate the items from others.Previously: Ohio State University files for a trademark on "THE" Read the rest

The market for web developers is wide open these days. If only we could say the same about the pathway to that career.If you're not already an experienced coder, it can be difficult to get things rolling. A four-year college degree or technical school? Sure, if you've got the money. What about web tutorials? A cheaper option for sure, but the internet being the internet, there's a good reason for you - and prospective employers - to be skeptical about most of the training you'll find out there.Still, there are trustworthy learning options out there. The Complete Web & Mobile Developer Bundle Ft. Rob Percival is one of them, combining the rigor of a college course with the easy pace of online teaching.If you haven't heard the name Rob Percival, he's an old hand at teaching for online audiences - specifically, teaching code. His many courses on web development are among the highest-rated on the online learning hub Udemy, and this bundle distills a lot off that knowledge into a mammoth 6-class package. You'll get:The Complete iOS SDK Development Course, which tells you how to integrate Facebook, Amazon and other popular software development kits into your apps.The Android Developer's Journey, a walk through the app-building process from basic programming to the nuts and bolts of Android Studio.The Complete Guide to Designing a Mobile App, a hands-on course that lets you use Sketch and other design tools to build three fully functioning applications. Read the rest

Amazon offers this selection of delightful penis-shaped gummies, but critics claim that the tasty treats in fact resemble lighthouses, a perverse symbol of the shipping industry, long-associated with press-ganging, slavery, shipwrecks and other atrocities on the high seas.[via The Worst Things For Sale] Read the rest

Judge Aaron Persky, who sentenced Stanford rapist Brock Turner to a mere six months in jail (for which he served only three), is now coaching a girls tennis team at Lynbrook High School in San Jose, California. This is the same man who said that Turner, who raped an unconscious young woman with a foreign object and left her undressed behind a dumpster, "will not be a danger to others.” Of course, the residents of Santa Clara County, who had the judge recalled last year, are not happy. According to HuffPost:A petition to remove Persky from his coaching position at Lynbrook has already been created. “We as a community should be so disappointed in my alma maters the decision to hire recalled Judge Aaron Persky as their new Tennis Coach for the girls’ JV team,” the petition reads. “Survivors deserve better. Our community deserves better. We can, should, and ought to do better. Fire Persky from Lynbrook High, now.”Image: YouTube/CBS Read the rest

Juul is the cash-flush e-cigarette company whose billions (invested by Marlboro's parent company) have allowed it to create a massive market of addicted children, wiping out decades of progress in weaning children off of nicotine.Now, the FDA has demanded that Juul answer claims that the company sent marketing representatives to schools to present during "mental health/addiction" seminars, where children were exposed to marketing messages promoting Juul products, told they were "totally safe" and "the Iphone of e-cigarettes." A Juul rep told a child who asked for advice for a friend who was addicted to nicotine to steer the friend towards using Juul products (the friend was already addicted to Juul products).Juul's US-based products are stronger than those sold in other countries, with much higher levels of addictive nicotine. Berkman’s son, Caleb Mintz, and a friend—who also testified at the hearing—said that the presentation was given during one of the school’s “mental health slash addiction” seminars, which are held at the school three times a year. The teens, who were in 9th grade at the time, said that to make the seminars a “safe space” where kids could speak openly, teachers are asked to leave the room.Alone with the students, a Juul representative allegedly presented a “mixed message” by saying Juul products were “totally safe” and then “following up every ‘totally safe’ with ‘but we don’t want you as customers.’” The representative also took out a Juul device, called it the “iPhone of vapes,” and showed the students how it worked. Read the rest

For two decades, the Phoenix police union has had a secret deal with the police department that required that the disciplinary records of cops would be "purged," so that no one, not even their supervisors, would be able to retrieve them.As a result, Phoenix cops who repeatedly committed violent, corrupt acts -- including acts that resulted in severe injuries -- were allowed to serve on the force, even collecting commendations for their "good behavior."The Arizona Republic undertook a deep investigation into the practice and uncovered more than 600 acts of wrongdoing committed by 525 cops (out of 3,000 PD employees) in just the past five years, with 90% of all "serious misconduct" incidents being purges from cops' records.And as bad as this policy is, the Republic revealed that it was routinely abused, allowing cops to purge their records more quickly, and for graver offenses, than were officially permitted. Scholarly work has found that serving alongside corrupt officers makes otherwise honorable officers corrupt, too, with a few bad apples actually spoiling the barrel. Allowing violent, corrupt cops to continue to serve, and to reoffend, compromises the whole force. Officer Kevin McGowan, for example, earned top marks in his 2015 evaluation despite being disciplined for serious misconduct during the previous year.An internal investigation concluded McGowan used excessive force when he stomped on an 18-year-old man’s neck, driving his face into the tile floor of a convenience store and knocking out three of the man's teeth.The incident was captured in surveillance footage taken from the store. Read the rest

A well-funded startup called Hims, which sells subscriptions to generic viagra and cialis, launched a digital doctor's visit service so people can get a prescription without having to visit a doctor. Weirdly, it looks like they lifted almost everything from the website of a competitor, called Roman. Check out the Medium article that's loaded with examples of the swipes here, which was written by the cofounder of Roman. Read the rest

I would say 94,504 bitcoins is real folding money, buy you can't fold bitcoins. In any case, someone moved $1,018,147,900 worth of bitcoin between wallets and no one knows for sure who it was. The Token Analyst tweeted, "We took a look and saw that a large percentage of it could be traced to @HuobiGlobal addresses."Huobi Global is a Singapore based cryptocurrency exchange.$1 Billion+ $BTC was transferred in one transaction yesterday. Where did that come from? 🤔We took a look and saw that a large percentage of it could be traced to @HuobiGlobal addresses pic.twitter.com/4jdeYMgyNG— TokenAnalyst (@thetokenanalyst) September 6, 2019 Image: Token Analyst/Twitter Read the rest

Apple will announce the iPhone 11 at 10am PT today. Here's the live stream. Read the rest

President Trump this morning fired John Bolton, his national security mustache. Trump cited various disagreements with him over policy. I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore. ... I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.After his firing, Bolton immediately tweeted that he had tried to resign last night, but Trump fobbed him off. Enjoy this a rapid-fire entry in the annals of Trump collaborators haplessly trying to get back in front of him after he publicly humiliates them on Twitter. Read the rest

A company scraped information from public profiles on LinkedIn and LinkedIn sued it under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. LinkedIn lost, and now it loses again. Moreover, the court's opinion takes aim at the company's efforts to stop people from accessing information its users post publicly. The panel affirmed the district court’s preliminary injunction forbidding the professional networking website LinkedIn Corp. from denying plaintiff hiQ, a data analytics company, access to publicly available LinkedIn member profiles. Using automated bots, hiQ scrapes information that LinkedIn users have included on public LinkedIn profiles. LinkedIn sent hiQ a cause-and-desist letter, demanding that hiQ stop accessing and copying data from LinkedIn’s server. HiQ filed suit, seeking injunctive relief based on California law and a declaratory judgment that LinkedIn could not lawfully invoke the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, California Penal Code § 502(c), or the common law of trespass against it.Note that this wasn't a copyright infringement claim, as is easy to assume; LinkedIn wasn't claiming ownership of the material being scraped. So the moral of the story is not "finders keepers" but "if you don't want something to be publicly published, don't let your users publish it publicly on your website". Other ways of putting it may be "If you don't want people to hear what your customers are saying, don't be a pub." Or maybe "If you're the sleazest, spammiest, data-suckingest social network on the planet, get in the sea." Read the rest

The attorneys general of 48 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia have opened a joint antitrust investigation into Google, stepping in where the defanged, irrelevant DoJ (gripped by a Reaganite cultlike doctrine that worships monopolies) refused to go for decades.The investigation is co-chaired by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and DX Attorney General Karl Racine (D), and is focused on Google's dominance of both advertising and search markets.The action follows last week's announcement of a smaller antitrust investigation into Facebook."We have 50 attorneys general from across the nation who are involved in this investigation that we're leading from Texas," said Paxton. "This is a company that dominates all aspects of advertising on the internet and searching on the internet as they dominate the buyers' side, the sellers' side, the auction side and even the video side with YouTube," he said of Google.50 attorneys general launch antitrust investigation into Google [Harper Neidig/The Hill] Read the rest

They've ruined democracy, now they're ready to ruin your love life.

A Glendora, California woman is about to blow a gasket because she spots a man in the Walmart parking lot who "looks illegal." That's the reason she tells police that they have to come and arrest him. "There's a guy illegal here," she insists. "The other guy behind him might snap my neck." She babbles on, irate as hell, and even gets into a heated argument with another guy, in his car, who calls her a racist. The only thing askew is that it's a sunny day and she's not wearing her MAGA cap. Read the rest

A Brooklyn company is supposedly offering at-home "metoo"-branded rape kits, complete with official-looking "EVIDENCE" tape. Such kits would be legally useless, according to experts.The kits are not yet available for purchase, but the idea has already sparked criticism. In a cease-and-desist letter to the company, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel argued that “an at-home evidence kit does not address the health care needs of many sexual assault survivors,” and that any evidence collected might not be admissible in court.“We are advocates for all options for survivors” as long as those options are not dangerous or harmful, Morgan Dewey, communications director for the group End Rape on Campus, told Vox. “This is in fact harmful.”Company co-founder Madison Campbell told Vox that the kit was in its early stages and that she wanted to work with experts on making sure the evidence gathered by users could be admissible in court. She said the idea for the kit was rooted in her personal experience as a survivor of campus sexual assault. Poe's law may be defined as "without a signifier of humor, it is impossible to tell extremism from parody." As the only company by the name Metoo in New York's public records appears to be a Chinese restaurant, I propose a corollary: "without an LLC or trademark registration, it is impossible to tell a bad joke from a grift." Read the rest

Howard Shultz is ending his bid to become President of the United States of America—or at least blackmail Dems into supporting a billionaire-friendly centrist over more popular left-leaning candidates. To his credit, he haltingly admits that a second Trump term would be worse than a lefty, though he's still whining about them. Unfortunately, election rules in each state and the way this Democratic nomination process has unfolded pose another challenge: It has become more likely that the Democratic nominee will not be known before the deadlines to submit the required number of signatures for an independent to get on the ballot. If I went forward, there is a risk that my name would appear on ballots even if a moderate Democrat wins the nomination, and that is not a risk I am willing to take.A good illustration of Howard Schultz's staggering arrogance is him thinking he'd still win a significant percent of the vote, even without campaigning at all, if someone like Joe Biden got the nomination.Shultz's independent run is mirrored by similarly flagging efforts within the bosom of the party. But it's not just that the rich can't buy the Democratic nomination. They can't even buy 2%:One of the Democrats in the race, Tom Steyer, is a billionaire like Mr. Schultz. Despite spending millions of dollars of his own money on advertising, he failed to qualify for next week’s debate because of low support in polls. The bottom line: very few Americans are convinced that "medicare for all" is far-left extremism in the same way that "cage migrant children" is far-right extremism. Read the rest

Following Walmart yesterday, retailer Walgreens is prohibiting customers from openly carrying guns in its stores. It posted a succinct press release, quoted here in full:We are joining other retailers in asking our customers to no longer openly carry firearms into our stores other than authorized law enforcement officials.Remember that above all things, the right hates free markets. https://t.co/bl0XoeNEsE— Rob Beschizza (@Beschizza) September 5, 2019 Read the rest

I once found myself staying in a small hotel with a "State Department" family whose members clearly all worked for some kind of three letter agency (the family patriarch had been with USAID with the tanks rolled into Budapest) and I had some of the weirdest discussions of my life with them.The big one was about "cyberweapons" and whether the US should be developing them and what could go wrong from such a program. It was clear to me that these folks knew a lot about classic Cold War deterrence theory, and deep experience with how the military-industrial complex functioned (and didn't function) but that they knew virtually nothing about computers, and this deficit meant that they were terribly, awfully misled in their thinking on the matter.It was clear that for them, a "cyberweapon" was just another R&D project: just as with the Manhattan project or the labs where they make better cruise missile guidance systems, cyberweapons were an invention that turned on discovering some property of physics and then using engineering to weaponize that property in order to project force over your adversary.But that's not what a cyberweapon is at all. While it's exciting to read 40-year-old cyberpunk novels where console cowboys wield "ice breakers" to pierce their enemies' electronic defenses, the reality is a lot weirder and more mundane at the same time.A cyberweapon begins with the discovery of a defect in a piece of software, preferably a widely used piece of software, like the Windows operating system. Read the rest

This 64GB flash drive is going for the bargain price of on Amazon. You can use SanDisk's encryption software for Windows and Mac to keep a password-protected secure folder on the flash drive. Read the rest

"Emily Doe" no more, Chanel Miller, the woman who survived Brock Turner's attacks will be appearing on 60 Minutes. Turner was convicted of three felony sexual assault charges and his mere 6-month prison sentence set him up as a poster boy for white male privilege in America.CBS:Miller read her victim impact statement in court to her assailant, the former Stanford swimming standout Brock Turner, who was convicted of three felony sexual assault charges supported by two eyewitnesses who stopped and subdued him. Her story became a cause célèbre when the statement was published online after Turner was sentenced to six months jail time. In the statement, "Emily" recounts her inability to control her own narrative in a justice system she says is brutal and dehumanizing for victims. Read the rest

I like to write letters. Theselokta notecards are my favorite.I usually keep a few styles of lokta paper notecards around. The butterflies are particularly lovely and encourage me to find green ink.Usually, I write with Noodler's Heart of Darkness, and ink that is designed to stand the test of time. Lokta paper is known for its durability and is resistant to mold, rot and bugs. The paper has a wonderful texture and simply looks beautiful, showing the pulped fibers it is made of. There are claims in the packaging of how eco-friendly, local economy-friendly and indigenous peoples-friendly the makers of this paper are. These are all great things.Writing on this paper takes a Medium nib or a very, very careful hand with a Fine and you must use ink that will flow. The paper accepts the ink, does not feather very much but even quick-drying ink will take a moment or two.Beware the smudge!The messages you send to loved ones will last forever on notecards that look lovely enough to keep!Now you have to write things that are worth standing the test of time. It is fun tho, I treat writing letters on these a lot like I do taking photos with 120 roll film, every shot costs a few dollars, make it worthwhile!I am sure folks toss my works of art into the trash.Nepal Greeting Card and Envelope Set: Butterfly Notecards, Handmade Lokta Paper via Amazon Read the rest

After two shootings in their El Paso, Texas and Southaven, Mississippi stores, the CEO of Walmart has announced major changes to the chain's gun sale policies, including no longer selling ammunition for assault-style weapons and discontinuing the sale of handgun ammunition.CEO Doug McMillion revealed the changes in a company-wide email sent this morning. Today, we’re sharing the decisions we’ve made that go further:• After selling through our current inventory commitments, we will discontinue sales of short-barrel rifle ammunition such as the .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber that, while commonly used in some hunting rifles, can also be used in large capacity clips on military-style weapons;• We will sell through and discontinue handgun ammunition; and• We will discontinue handgun sales in Alaska, marking our complete exit from handguns.We know these decisions will inconvenience some of our customers, and we hope they will understand. As a company, we experienced two horrific events in one week, and we will never be the same. The store will also request that customers no longer carry firearms in the open while shopping. As it relates to safety in our stores, there have been multiple incidents since El Paso where individuals attempting to make a statement and test our response have entered our stores carrying weapons in a way that frightened or concerned our associates and customers. We have also had well-intentioned customers acting lawfully that have inadvertently caused a store to be evacuated and local law enforcement to be called to respond. Read the rest

Harun Mehmedinovic of the SKYGLOW project shares with Boing Boing this latest video from their project celebrating the beauty and importance of keeping the night skies dark.SKYGLOW's Harun tells Boing Boing:We just released this latest SKYGLOW video visiting North America's best petroglyph and ruins, including those of Paiute tribe in California and the Ancestral Puebloans of the Southwest.Scattered across the United States, from the Southwest, all the way to Hawai'i, ancient astronomy petroglyphs and archaeoastronomy structures sit weathering in the landscape. Carved and built by diverse group of tribes, from Native Hawaiians, to the Paiutes of Bishop, California, and the Ancestral Puebloans of the Southwest, these petroglyphs and structures reflect the long standing interest in Ancient Astronomy which grew stronger as many of the tribes went from the Hunter Gatherer to the Agrarian societal orders. From references to the Sun carved in the rock, and interest in using the Sun to predict seasons (entire buildings built to essentially serve as sundials and calendars, a critical element in the farming communities) to those of 13 moons (lunar annual calendar), to carvings of stars and constellations, interest in celestial bodies is ever present across the indigenous communities of the United States.The video also features 2018’s epic Lunar Eclipse, a.k.a. “Blood Moon,” seen at 1:03. You can view the video here, and see more high resolution photos from the film here. SKYGLOW (skyglowproject.com) is an “ongoing crowdfunded quest to explore the effects and dangers of urban light pollution in contrast with some of the most incredible dark sky areas in North America,” the founders tell BoingBoing. Read the rest

I don't know how long this deal will last, but I just bought a set of GHS Thin Core Boomers for . The strings on my Telecaster are at least 10 years old, so I think it's time. Read the rest

Brian Feldman of The Intelligencer interviewed New York Times reporter Mike Isaac about his new book, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.I haven’t read too many start-up histories but Super Pumped is the only one I’ve read that has a significant amount of violence. Uber drivers are pressured to keep driving in adversarial conditions and subsequently murdered. Medallion owners whose prices are undercut by Uber regularly commit suicide. On rare occasions, passengers are assaulted by drivers who slipped through Uber’s lax background checks. Do you think it’s fair to say that Travis Kalanick has a body count?I don’t know if I want to tag him with that, but what I will say is that Uber is one of the first start-ups that really crashed into the real world in a very different way than Facebook or Snapchat or whatever. That said, you know, you could argue Facebook has a body count, too: People spread anti-vaxx information, for instance. Uber literally changed how cities work and in a very short period of time. Deep, quick cultural change can often come with pushback, and violent pushback. Brazil is a key reflection of that. Uber parachuted into Brazil at one of the country’s worst economic points in its history. They’re in the middle of this deep recession, unemployment is skyrocketing, and folks would resort to committing violence in order to stay afloat. Add drivers in Uber cars with a bunch of cash, because it’s a cash-based economy, and in a lot of ways, you have a recipe for disaster. Read the rest

I am heartbroken. Every story I read about the loss of Truth Aquatic's Conception leaves me crying.I've been diving with Truth Aquatics since I was certified in the late 90s. When I was young they were the Cadillac of California's Live-Aboard fleet. My dive buddy, Bill, and I used to sit around debating if we would schlep all the way to Santa Barbara for the luxury of a several day live-aboard or just get on one of the cheaper, less lovingly cared for and less excellently staffed dive boats out of San Pedro or Oxnard.Later, having moved to Northern California and found a new dive buddy, Sean, he and a number of friends of ours would meet up annually on a Truth Aquatics boat. Usually the Vision but whenever scheduling didn't work out, the Conception was her near-identical twin with only a few differences to make it funky. The week-long trip from Santa Barabara to Catalina Island, once a year, was something I longed for.I have made many very dear friends diving with Truth Aquatics. You read about Marcus' work with Extra Life Gaming every year. Dan helps me maintain my BMW and my sanity. Former Boing Boing contributing weirdo Joel Johnson used to join me on those trips. Lisa, Sean, Gary, Dave, Adam, Eileen, Ken, Jamie, Eddie, Sal, Peter, Paddy, Carol. Wonderful people. Incredibly important experiences.Truth Aquatics has the very best people in the business working to make sure I had the safest and then most enjoyable time I possibly could. Read the rest

Confined in a Soviet prison camp in 1941, Polish painter Józef Czapski chose a unique way to cope: He lectured to the other prisoners on Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe Czapski's ambitious project and the surprising importance of literature to the prisoners of oppressive regimes.We'll also race some lemons and puzzle over a woman's birthdays.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Vantablack -- the darkest, most light-absorbing pigment on the market -- is freaky stuff to behold (previously, previously, previously, previously, and previously). Vantablack reflects vanishingly little visible light, making anything in which it is coated appear to be void cut in the fabric of reality.Now BMW has painted a car with Vantablack, which, as Mark Wilson notes in Fast Company, is just about the most dangerous way you can paint a car in the history of ever: Black cars are notably more dangerous to drive than white cars for reasons of visibility already. A study by Monash University Accident Research Centre in Australia, which studied crash data across the country from 1987 to 2004, found that compared to white cars as a baseline, crash risk was higher for just about every other common color, including red, blue, silver, green, gray, and, yes, black. Black performed the worst by every measure: In daylight, the chance of crash is 12% higher than that of white cars. At dawn and dusk, that jumps to 47%—though your relative risk of getting into an accident at that time is lower at those hours, the authors point out. Monash’s study was consistent with at least one other, from the University of Granada, which determined that yellow was a safe alternative to white. The center is a respected resource in vehicle safety, also contributing to the annual Used Car Safety Ratings.In any case, if black is the least safe color for a car, making that black even blacker seems like an objectively terrible design decision. Read the rest

My daughter and I are watching A Game of Thrones on HBO (my second time, her first) and it reminded me that I read the first Martin novel and liked it but never got around to reading the others. I'm going to correct that by getting this five novel set for Amazon. Read the rest

This man's fear and exhilaration is palpable without understanding what he's saying. The subtitles amplify his terror. Read the rest

This short set of Amazon reviews had me laughing out loud! Check out Amazon's bulk Cheez Whiz offer.After the top rated review, the remarks purchasers make about their 39 POUNDS of Cheez Whiz are pretty great. I guess folks are surprised at just how much Cheez Whiz 39 pounds really is.Top rated reviewer is a humorist, however Amazon does list him as a verified purchaser so ENJOY YOUR WHIZ, SIR!Also, Cheez Whiz is not cheese, but it does include it. Read the rest

I spend a lot of time typing shit and talking smack about Apple's recent hardware shortcomings, greasy dealings with authoritarian governments and questionable labor practices. But you know what? The still make my favorite smartphone. I kind of hate myself for that, but here we are.It's looking like we'll soon have a whole new crop of iPhones to love/covet and loathe as the invitations for this fall's iPhone event have, it would seem, been dispatched on the chamfered wings of a lily white dove.From The Verge:Although Apple’s invitation doesn’t explicitly say what the company plans to announce at the event, the rumors suggest we’ll see three new iPhone models, and these will act as successors to the iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max. Two of these phones are expected to feature Apple’s first triple-camera system on the rear of the device, and the successor to the XS could also have a slightly bigger 6.1-inch display (up from 5.8 inches on the current model).Another rumor suggests that these iPhones could support bidirectional wireless charging, allowing them to charge AirPods when used with their new wireless charging case. Upgrades to battery life and Face ID biometric security, as well as the use of new shatter-resistance technology have also been suggested.I tend to ignore any talk of what Apple'll be releasing until it's been trotted out on stage—the world's on fire and careening off into space. So you know, things to do. But I know that lots of people dig playing what if with Cupertino-designed hardware. Read the rest

Two Canadians who tried to bring bottles of cannabidiol (CBD) oil into the Washington state have been banned from entering the US again, even though cannabis and CBD are legal in Washington and the US.From CTV News:When CTV News reached out to U.S. Customs & Border Protection for clarification about these cases, a CBP spokesperson reiterated that it remains illegal to import marijuana under U.S. federal law.When asked about specific marijuana-derived products like CBD oil, spokesperson Jason Givens directed CTV to a website related to hemp seed importation that read in part: "Products containing THC, the hallucinogenic substance in marijuana, are illegal to import. Products that do not cause THC to enter the human body are therefore legal products."Saunders couldn't say how much THC, if any, his clients' oils contained, or if the content was clearly labelled. CBD oils for sale vary from high THC concentrations to little-to-no THC content.When CTV News pressed the CBP's Givens on whether a Canadian carrying CBD oil that was labeled as containing "no THC" would be stopped at the border and subjected to a lifetime entry ban, he responded:"Items labeled 'THC free' sometimes contain detectable amounts of THC… every situation is unique and determinations about admissibility are made by an immigration officer based on the facts and circumstances known to the officer at the time, including responses to questions that are posed by CBP officers."Photo by CBD Infos on Unsplash Read the rest

Majestic Trinkets created a double-layered D20 that looks like something right out of a dingy pub in Waterdeep. It's $80, but think how quickly you'll win it back! This die is perfect for the most extra member of your adventuring party.This is the regular gaming D20 in my 'Advantage' design family of dice. It is mathematically balanced in CAD software design to ensure that the die is centered and fair.A 'clean' roll where the inner die settles with the outer die may not happen with every roll. When rolling on a flat surface, like a table or dice tray, it settles roughly 40% of the time. When rolling with a dice tower, it settles roughly 70% of the time. If it did not settle, give it a little shimmy on the surface it's laying and it should settle. Read the rest

When replacing a watchband, or fixing one where the spring bar has gone awry, this super cheap tool and set of springs will come to the rescue.Much like an eyeglasses repair kit, a watch spring bar tool is never around when you need one. Trying to push that tiny pin in and get the spring to engage, or disengage, is maddening. If I do not just break the spring bar and send bits a flying, I'll find some tool around the house to try that invariably scratches the lugs on my watch.This cheap box of springs and a removal tool can sit in my desk drawer and just always be there. The set comes with replacement tips for the tool, and 108 spring bars in the standard sizes.Watch Spring Bar Tool Set for Watch Wrist Strap Repair Kit, 108PCS Extra Watch Band Pins via Amazon Read the rest

Oh, this is too good. After Bowie died in 2016, YouTuber George Dillon made this video of Laurel and Hardy dancing to "The Jean Genie" to honor the late rockstar. It really works. He also did a similar treatment for "Rebel Rebel":Joy!(Soap Plant WACKO) Read the rest

I hear endless stories of grief from the friends I have who try to make ends meet working for these services.Jalopnik's Dhruv Mehrotra and Aaron Gordon share the terrible economics:But Dave, who was granted anonymity out of fear of being deactivated by the ride-hail giant for speaking to the press, had no real choice but to wait. The passenger had requested the stop through the app, so refusing to make it would have been contentious both with the customer and with Uber. The exact number varies by city, but drivers must maintain a high rating in order to work on their platform. And there’s widespread belief among drivers that the Uber algorithm punishes drivers for cancelling trips.Ultimately, the rider paid $65 for the half-hour trip, according to a receipt viewed by Jalopnik. But Dave made only $15 (the fares have been rounded to anonymize the transaction).Uber kept the rest, meaning the multibillion-dollar corporation kept more than 75 percent of the fare, more than triple the average so-called “take-rate” it claims in financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Had he known in advance how much he would have been paid for the ride relative to what the rider paid, Dave said he never would have accepted the fare.“This is robbery,” Dave told Jalopnik over email. “This business is out of control.” Read the rest

In an effort to fight cynicism, David Byrne has started a new online editorial project called Reasons to be Cheerful. It's described as a "self help magazine for people who hate self help magazines."He writes:It often seems as if the world is going straight to Hell. I wake up in the morning, I look at the paper, and I say to myself, 'Oh no!' Often I’m depressed for half the day. I imagine some of you feel the same.Recently, I realized this isn’t helping. Nothing changes when you’re numb. So, as a kind of remedy, and possibly as a kind of therapy, I started collecting good news. Not schmaltzy, feel-good news, but stuff that reminded me, Hey, there's positive stuff going on! People are solving problems and it’s making a difference!I began telling others about what I’d found. Their responses were encouraging, so I created a website called Reasons to be Cheerful and started writing. Later on, I realized I wanted to make the endeavor a bit more formal. So we got a team together and began commissioning stories from other writers and redesigned the website. Today, we’re relaunching Reasons to be Cheerful as an ongoing editorial project.We’re telling stories that reveal that there are, in fact, a surprising number of reasons to feel cheerful -- that provide a more optimistic and, we believe, more accurate depiction of the world. We hope to balance out some of the amplified negativity and show that things might not be as bad as we think. Read the rest

Give Analyze Words a Twitter handle—perhaps your Twitter handle!—and it will perform a personality analysis based on all the words it finds. My report is embedded above; I am a spacy, sensuous valley girl. Read the rest

PC gamers, choose your weapons. We've sniffed out summer discounts on a truckload of gear from Azio, a company that gets high marks from users for style as well as performance. Here are a few of our favorites from their diverse line of keyboards and mice.Azio Vision KB505U Backlight KeyboardWhen you're on a raid, you can't take time to hunt for keys. Azio's Vision is the perfect example of the company's trademark, gamer-friendly innovations. Extra-large print keys and backlighting (in your choice of three colors) combine to make things easy to find no matter what the lighting. There's also built-in multimedia controls and quick-access hotkeys to make things a breeze no matter what game you're playing. Pick up the Azio Vision KB505U Backlight Keyboard now for $24, nearly 20% off the list price.Azio GM2400 Gaming MouseThe GM2400 is built for speed, and that starts the moment you plug in the USB. The mouse is plug-and-play, with no software installation needed. From there, you can adjust the DPI setting with onboard controls and use the side buttons to turn on a dime in your most hectic firefights. Get the Azio GM2400 Gaming Mouse for $15, down 24% from the MSRP.Azio MK MAC USB KeyboardMac users will wonder what they did without this one. Bold, backlit keys convey authority, and you can access Mac features like Launchpad with the click of a single button. And if you have to press more than one, that's ok too: Like all Azio keyboards, this one comes equipped with 6-key rollover capability. Read the rest

[I ran a review of this in June when the UK edition came out -- this review coincides with the US edition's publication] Rob Smith is an eminent computer scientist and machine learning pioneer whose work on genetic algorithms has been influential in both industry and the academy; now, in his first book for a general audience, Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All, Smith expertly draws connections between AI, neoliberalism, human bias, eugenics and far-right populism, and shows how the biases of computer science and the corporate paymasters have distorted our whole society.Smith's book weaves the history of science and mathematics' contribution to our understanding of probability and uncertainty, the philosophical quest for an understanding of the true nature of reality and its relationship to our perceptions and ruminations, the inextricable stories of evolutionary theory and eugenics, and the long project to design a thinking machine to show how the imperatives of neoliberalism and its way of valuing (and discounting) people combined with some of computer science's most ill-advised and habitual simplifications to produce a form of statistical tyranny, one that tries to force humans to simplify their behaviors to suit the models, rather than adapting the models to suit the humans.On the way, Smith shows how the parts of machine learning that do work refute some of the uglier philosophical ideas that have risen in currency as algorithms have taken over our society -- just as the Victorians had their "blind watchmaker," the rise of evolutionary algorithms has given a new lease on life to eugenic theories about survival of the fittest and the need to purify and protect the "best" among us. Read the rest

The U.S. government will launch a program about a month from now to help state officials prevent ransomware attacks on voter registration databases and systems, ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency program is designed to teach state election officials how they can prevent ransomware infestations and other internet-based attacks that represent as an increasingly grave threat to election security. Voter registration databases are particularly ripe targets for ransomware, a type of attack in which the attacker sends a virus that can cripple entire city computer networks. Such incidents have already happened in major cities throughout the United States, most recently in Texas, Baltimore, MD, and Atlanta, GA.CISA won't be offering states “advice on whether a state should ultimately pay or refuse to pay ransom to a hacker if one of its systems is already infected,” Reuters reports:These systems, which are widely used to validate the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots, were compromised in 2016 by Russian hackers seeking to collect information. Intelligence officials are concerned that foreign hackers in 2020 not only will target the databases but attempt to manipulate, disrupt or destroy the data, according to current and former U.S. officials.“We assess these systems as high risk,” said a senior U.S. official, because they are one of the few pieces of election technology regularly connected to the Internet.(...) “Recent history has shown that state and county governments and those who support them are targets for ransomware attacks,” said Christopher Krebs, CISA’s director. Read the rest

Security at La Perla, a downtown bar in Los Angeles, aggressively forced out at least two transgender women and "several gay men," according to CBS.Cellphone video of the incident shows Jennifer Bianchi, one of the women, repeatedly saying, “Don’t touch me like that.”A friend of hers is shown being pulled off a chair and carried out the door.“I think it was really wrong and humiliating,” Bianchi says, “Hurtful.”The group at the bar was comprised of staff and volunteers from a local nonprofit, Bienestar Human Services who were there to support DTLA Proud, an annual two-day festival held in Pershing Square that celebrates the LGBTQ community.Image: Youtube Read the rest

Illegitimate US president Donald Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron’s respective governments have struck deal to end feud over France’s tax on tech giants.Trump still won't directly answer when asked if he'll abandon his threatened retaliatory tariffs on wine imports, joking "I can confirm the first lady loved your French wine.”“We have reached a very good agreement,” Macron said at a joint news conference with Trump as the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Biarritz, France, ended on Monday.From Bloomberg:The law Macron signed imposes a three per cent tax on the revenue of technology giants such as Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Trump objected to France taxing U.S.-based companies.The tax, retroactive to January, affects companies with at least 750 million euros (US$845 million) in global revenue and digital sales of 25 million euros in France. While most of the roughly 30 businesses affected are American, the list also includes Chinese, German, British and French companies.“We are pushing for international rules on this,” Macron said. “It is not against any company in particular, it’s just to solve the problem.”PHOTO: Reuters Read the rest

Approximately once every ten minutes, the Bitcoin network issues one "miner" with a block reward of freshly minted bitcoins. When bitcoin launched in 2009, the block reward was 50 bitcoins. Every four years, the reward is cut in half. Currently the block reward is 12.5 BTC. In May 2020 it will go down to 6.25 BTC. (Here's an interesting page with live data about bitcoin and mining rewards.) The only other incentive besides block rewards are transaction fees miners require to add a transaction to a block.So what happens when the mining reward becomes so small as to be inconsequential (it will reach zero in about 120 years, and the reward we be on the order of 0.00000001 BTC, or about 1/100 of a penny at the current exchange rate). In this video Heidi of Crypto Tips describes of the scenarios that could play out.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Ross Ulbricht, the creator of The Silk Road darknet marketplace, is serving a double life sentence plus forty years with no possibility for parole for "money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics by means of the Internet." [Wikipedia] Above, a detail from his incredible drawing of his cell and cellmate at the MCC (Metropolitan Correctional Center).In a Medium essay titled Life in a Box, Ross writes:Try, if you can, to imagine being in this 65-square-foot cell, just you, your cellie and a pet mouse. Mail comes in and out. You get the occasion visit or phone call, but otherwise this and the prison is your universe. Now imagine living here day after day. You lay down in the bunk at night and wake up in it every morning. You eat here. Some days you weep here. Year after year, this is it. No breaks, no weekend off, and you are told you will never be let out, ever.What can one live for under these conditions?Surprisingly, there is much. At the very least, I know that rarefied states of mind, states of pure bliss that dedicated monks experience after many years of devotion, are available to me if I live a spiritual life in here. I know also that all the world’s knowledge is still available to me between the covers of books (some I was reading at the time I drew “Life in a Box” can be seen stacked on my bunk). Read the rest