Boing Boing

At this year's Defcon Lock Picking Village, Ioactive's Mike Davis will present a method for cracking high-security locks made by Dormakaba Holding, a Swiss company. The locks are used in very high-stake applications, from security ATMs to Air Force One, as well as guarding classified and sensitive materials on US military bases.Davis discovered a side-channel vulnerability that uses a $5,000 oscilloscope to detect power fluctuations in the lock, from which he can derive the bitstream traversing the lock's subcomponents, allowing him to unlock it without the key.Davis demonstrated his findings to Dormakaba a year ago, and the company has largely stonewalled since, though it did hire outside auditors to investigate its Cencon and Auditcon locks and subsequently declared their findings to be proof that no one needs to worry about Davis's attacks.However, the newest model of the company's X-10 lock does not leak voltage information, but the company insists that this design improvement is unrelated to Davis's findings. Dormakaba also says that because they have never heard of anyone using Davis's attack in the wild, no one should worry about it. The president of Dormakaba's X-10 division, Eric Elkins, said that Davis should not present his findings in public to "a group of hobbyists or hackers or whatever you want to call them" and instead should confine his disclosures to "the government." Despite having had a year since Davis made his disclosures to Elkins's parent company, Elkins said he was not familiar with Davis's attack and couldn't comment on how severe they were. Read the rest

Snoopy has been a NASA mascot for more than 50 years going back to the Apollo missions. Now, Timex has released a wonderful "Snoopy In Space" collection of wristwatches. The watches in the line start at $89. Here's NASA on the space agency's history with the Peanuts gang:NASA has shared a proud association with Charles M. Schulz and his American icon Snoopy since Apollo missions began in the 1960s. Schulz created comic strips depicting Snoopy on the Moon, capturing public excitement about America’s achievements in space. In May 1969, Apollo 10 astronauts traveled to the Moon for a final checkout before lunar landings on later missions. Because the mission required the lunar module to skim the Moon’s surface to within 50,000 feet and “snoop around” scouting the Apollo 11 landing site, the crew named the lunar module Snoopy. The command module was named Charlie Brown, Snoopy’s loyal owner.'All Systems Are Go!' with Timex 'Snoopy In Space' watch collection (collectSPACE)NASA image below: "Headed for the launch pad, Apollo 10 Commander Tom Stafford pats the nose of a stuffed Snoopy held by Jamye Flowers (Coplin), astronaut Gordon Cooper’s secretary." Read the rest

Pippin Barr (previously) writes, "I have a history of making variations on existing games (see also: PONGS, BREAKSOUT, SNAKISMS), and Chesses (source, CC BY-NC) is a continuation of that. I find chess a really interesting game to play around with because it's so classic and sort of monolithic - it's fun to mess with tradition. Other than kind of formal enjoyment involved, I suspect the variations might level the playing field a bit and allow non-experts (or even non-players?) to play some chess."Chesses essentially arose from my interest quite a while ago (like in 2014) in "gravity chess", which would be played with the board rotated 90 degrees such that when you play a piece out into space it falls to the bottom. In fact, I worked on this for a little while with Tom Curtis, but we ran out of steam somewhere along the way (he was doing all the work, to be fair) and it didn't materialise. Now that I'm a better programmer than I was, and pretty comfortable with chess programming in JavaScript thanks to previous projects (Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: Chess Edition and Rogess), I figured I could make a move on it.I went through a larger set of ideas for chess variants that might be interesting specifically played via a computer (rather than just playing on a chess board), and of course culled some (fare thee well, Mirror Chess, Swaps Chess, and Pawn Chess). Mostly I tried to end up with a set that I think are genuinely somewhat interesting to play - both just to try to understand how to do anything sensible, and then beyond that to try to play "well" in the new version. Read the rest

Anish Athalye and friends added a touchscreen to a MacBook with only a $1 camera part. How'd they do it? Magic? No. Software. And ingenuity.The basic principle behind Sistine is simple. Surfaces viewed from an angle tend to look shiny, and you can tell if a finger is touching the surface by checking if it’s touching its own reflection.Kevin [Kwok], back in middle school, noticed this phenomenon and built ShinyTouch, utilizing an external webcam to build a touch input system requiring virtually no setup. We wanted to see if we could miniaturize the idea and make it work without an external webcam. Our idea was to retrofit a small mirror in front of a MacBook’s built-in webcam, so that the webcam would be looking down at the computer screen at a sharp angle. The camera would be able to see fingers hovering over or touching the screen, and we’d be able to translate the video feed into touch events using computer vision.Anish, clean your screen! Read the rest

Lekholm's DM48 is a full-featured MIDI harmonica, with twelve pressure-sensors, one-button presets, and "adjustable breathing resistance." (Thanks, Gnat) Read the rest

Edelman is one of the world's leading PR firms, and despite the fact that they're the go-to if you want to launder the reputations of the House of Saud or the Transcanada pipeline by running massive fake-grassroots campaigns on social media, they also bill themselves as an ethical firm, refusing to take engagements for coal, tobacco or gun companies (they will, however run smear campaigns against vegan mayo).So when Edelman took on the GEO Group (previously), a titan of American private prisons that had lately branched out into running US concentration camps with lethally bad conditions, its own employees staged a revolt, which led to Edelman firing GEO Group as a client.The Edelman employee who pitched the GEO Group was a new hire: Lisa Ross, who'd just left the Trump White House where she'd served as deputy press-secretary (GEO are bigly Trump campaign donors). The slide deck Ross used to pitch GEO warned that "activists are using controversies around immigration to drive a wedge between you and your stakeholder...your current culture and structure are not prepared for this fight." They proposed to solve this by "proactively correcting the record."Edelman employees discovered that their employer was working for GEO when the news leaked onto Fishbowl, a corporate networking tool. Edelman's spokesperson told the NYT that they resigned the account because "Edelman takes on complex and diverse clients...We ultimately decided not to proceed with this work." But Edelman employees say that during the meeting where they were informed that the account was canceled, company management "took the opportunity to basically shame us for ruining the work for the company because they couldn’t trust us not to leak it to the press."How bad is GEO Group? Read the rest

“You have the right to remain silent.” We’ve heard the Miranda warning countless times on TV, but what good is the right to remain silent if our own cellphones testify against us? Imagine every incriminating and embarrassing secret our devices hold in the hands of prosecutors, simply because you’ve been accused of a minor crime. This is the brave new world that Attorney General Bill Barr advocated when he recently addressed the International Conference on Cyber Security and called for an end to encryption as we know it. Encryption is indispensable to modern privacy. Without it, every message might be read by a third party, and every phone and laptop easily copied by an intruder. Encryption is the digital lock which gives us the security to trust our financial data and inner-most thoughts to the cloud, and without which everything, and I mean everything, in our digital lives might be exposed. Without strong encryption, police officers can potentially transform our cellphones and computers into a de facto government tracking device. It’s odd hearing this call for surveillance coming from Barr of all people. As general counsel at Verizon, he preached about the “freedom to innovate”, opposing net neutrality rules that would block internet service providers from shaking down websites and apps to get faster speeds and better access to potential users. What could more stifle the innovation of every single American than the knowledge that anything we say or do on our devices can be monitored at the request of the police? Read the rest

It's a real life Corgi hamster wheel!This behavior may be what the AKC calls “Frapping,” – corgi code for “frantic random acts of play,” which usually conclude with dramatic slides or fanciful choreography sequences.Watch this truly wonderful iPhone video of Allycorinne's corgi and UNMUTE for maximum enjoyment.A meatball spinning for 60 seconds Read the rest

Cookbooks by Vincent and Mary Price are amongst my very favorite.This new edition of Cooking Price-Wise is certainly a family affair. Originally published as a compendium of recipes shared on Price's titular UK television programme 'Cooking Price-Wise,' daughter Victoria and son V.B. have both added memories, stories and personal anecdotes that make this the version to own.The Price Family's cookbooks are marvelous. In addition to being an authority on art, cuisine and a wonderful actor, Vincent Price was a master storyteller. Recipes are recollection! They involve tales of their origin or other anecdotes that make the dish more than just delicious as prepared.Cooking Price-Wise is no different! This wonderful book is jammed to the brim with recipes and Price family history. Victoria Price included sections of The New Dr. Price Cook Book and shares the story of Dr. Vincent Clarance Price, the grandfather of Vincent Price, who invented Baking Powder and began a long culinary legacy.Organized by the types of food Vincent Price was working with during the filming of his UK based TV show, there is a section on Bacon.Due to the nature of his programme, all the ingredients were generally available in most UK markets at the time of filming. Price and the writers were absolutely certain they needed to make these dishes accessible to the folks who were watching, so generally, you will not go off on a wild goose chase although internet ordering has made that less an issue in many places. Read the rest

At the end of a 1977 bootlegged videocassette of Disney's Fantasia, a fine bit of mockery from Miracle Productions Company, "leaders in illegal Betamax recording since '76." (r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

SL Huang got a degree in math from MIT, then became a martial artist, stuntwoman and weapons expert; her debut novel, Zero Sum Game, features an ass-kicking action hero called Cas Russell, who combines all of Huang's areas of expertise: Russell is a ninja-grade assassination/extraction contractor whose incredible math skills let her calculate the precise angles needed to shoot the bolts out of an armored window as she leaps towards it from an adjacent roof; to time a kick so that it breaks her opponent's jaw without breaking his neck, or to trace back the path of a sniper's bullet with eerie accuracy and return fire.Apart from her math ability, Russell is a classic action hero: an enigma with a shadowy past whose hard-boiled cynicism is a mask to cover her own shattered psyche. But that mathematical difference is a game-changer. Huang's own math background shines through here, conveying a way of thinking that is both plausible and alien, conveying a way of seeing and being in the world that is different from the experience of 99.99% of us. Huang's skilled weaving of math into action scenes -- featuring every kind of explosive, firearm, blade, vehicle and bare-hands mayhem -- elevates the story to something that is both fresh and exciting.Zero Sum Game sees Russell pitted against several shadowy conspiracies -- G-men, secret government projects, criminal underworlds -- that she has to navigate via tenuous alliances with a PI, a super-hacker (Huang's math and computer science background make this one particularly interesting), and a vengeful psychopath whose deep Christian faith and strange code of honor make him her only friend in the world. Read the rest

Turn the volume up. [Filmed by @cghgreen] Read the rest

Last weekend, long-distance runner Lenny Maughan ran 28.93 miles through the hilly streets of San Francisco to complete this mapped portrait of Frida Kahlo. Visible through the Strava fitness app, his "Frida Run" took him six hours and eight minutes to finish and was carefully planned out before he left his house. This isn't his first specially-mapped run, he's added over 30 pieces to his "Running Art" project in the past three years (some of those are visible here).SFGate:He describes the process of planning a piece as pretty analog. He prints out a paper map and highlights his route. He usually goes through several different iterations of the map before he sets off on a run. While he's on the road, he must be very careful to follow it – if he makes a wrong turn it has the potential to ruin the whole piece."You can't see the lines drawn until after you finish your run, so it's such a joyful feeling when you put in all of that work and you finally finish and get to see what you envisioned at the end," recounts Maughan..."San Francisco is my canvas. I use the streets as framework for what I want to do, find shapes, and make it work. Kind of like how little kids look up at the clouds."image via Lenny Maughan/Strava(RED) Read the rest

Everything's a computer these days, obviously, but this one is surprisingly elaborate given the apparent simplicity of what it does. Lisa Braun on Twitter: "Here is my little thread about Lightning video adapters – also known as Haywire – which are actually computers that feature Apple Secure Boot and run Darwin kernel."Now you know why they're so unreliable! "Haywire" indeed! Read the rest

We're told that these French bulldogs made mischief with a bag of green food coloring but I suspect that an accidental overdose of gamma radiation altered their body chemistry. Read the rest

Two years ago, the EU Aviation Safety Agency warned that some Airbus 350s required a hard reboot every 149 hours to be safe to fly; two years later, most of the affected planes are still being rebooted to cope with the bug.At least they don't have to close and open all the windows.The revised AD, effective from tomorrow (26 July), exempts only those new A350-941s which have had modified software pre-loaded on the production line. For all other A350-941s, operators need to completely power the airliner down before it reaches 149 hours of continuous power-on time.Concerningly, the original 2017 AD was brought about by "in-service events where a loss of communication occurred between some avionics systems and avionics network" (sic). The impact of the failures ranged from "redundancy loss" to "complete loss on a specific function hosted on common remote data concentrator and core processing input/output modules".Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours [Gareth Corfield/The Register](via /.)(Image: Don-vip, CC-BY-SA, modified) Read the rest

Propublica and Politico have teamed up for a long, beautifully reported expose on the Conservative Majority Fund and other PACs that senior Republican operators founded to solicit millions from donors (many of them elderly and on low, fixed incomes), allegedly to combat racist, far-fetched Obama plans they claimed were in the offing, but almost all of the money ended up in their own pockets.At the heart of the scandals is Kelley Rogers, a top Republican operator whose past is shot through with other fundraising scandals, whose Infocision Management Corp raised more than $10m for the Conservative Majority Fund but only dispersed $48,000 to campaigns and committees, keeping the rest to pay for its boiler-room phone-banks and massive executive salaries.Infocision worked on behalf of the American Conservative Union, pushing racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama through direct email, mail and phone solicitations, often to elderly conservatives on fixed incomes (the scripts included special pitches for low-income prospects). Eventually, the ACU and Infocision parted ways, though there's evidence that Infocision continued to invoke the ACU's name in its fundraising for some time and stopped after legal threats from the ACU.Infocision went on to back its own, unaffiliated PAC, the Conservative Majority Fund. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision (which reclassified political spending as a protected activity under the First Amendment, effectively equating money and speech) opened the door to grifty, deceptive PAC fundraising, and neither law nor regulations offer meaningful protection to people targeted by scammy fundraising appeals.“At the time they called, it seemed like such an important thing,” Miller said in a phone interview. Read the rest

The Justice Department is expected to approve a $26 billion deal between mobile carriers Sprint and T-Mobile on Friday.Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, head of the department’s Antitrust Division, will announce a significant merger enforcement action on Friday, the Justice Department announced earlier today.Reuters: The expected approval, which would put the deal over a major hurdle, will come with conditions and a consent decree that will require the carriers to sell assets including the prepaid brand Boost Mobile to satellite TV provider Dish Network Corp, people briefed on the matter told Reuters.Prepaid wireless phones are generally sought by lower-income people who cannot pass a credit check.Dish will also get first rights to buy tower leases that T-Mobile decides are redundant following the deal, a source said.T-Mobile, the third largest U.S. wireless carrier, pursued the deal in order to seek scale to compete with bigger rivals Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc.PHOTO: Shutterstock Read the rest

Magic! Read the rest

Laina is the young woman who became internet famous some years back for being the face of the "overly attached girlfriend" meme. She started a YouTube channel to capitalize on her fame and it turned out that she is smart, funny, and talented, and she gained a huge following‹. But a year ago she stopped posting. In this new video, which she says will be her final one, she speaks about her struggles with "mental health, depression, anxiety, psychiatry, and my personal experiences." Read the rest

Gabbard lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Los Angeles federal court, is reportedly the first time a presidential candidate has sued a major technology firm.

The death is the 7th in ICE custody since October 2018

(Thank you, Shaft!) Read the rest

After weeks of mass demonstrations touched off by the publication of a trove of leaked chats and evidence of mass corruption by Puerto Rico's Center for Investigative Journalism, Ricardo Rossello has done what he swore he would not: resigned.Rossello's departure was preceded by so many other high-profile resignations that the governor pro-tem will be Justice Secretary Wanda Vazquez, as the secretary of state position is currently vacant. For the next 17 months, Puerto Rico's government will be "virtually symbolic," and "largely ceremonial," in the words of University of Puerto Rico economist Juan Lara.Puerto Rico has been battered by a series of catastrophes, all stemming from its colonial past: first there were the Wall Street banks that arranged to flog off incredible quantities of state-issued bonds, pocketing hundreds of millions in fees. Then there was Congress's unwillingness to support Puerto Rico through the inevitable insolvency, as they would have done for a majority-white, majority-wealthy US state. Then came the official federal overthrow of Puerto Rico's government and its replacement with appointed finance-sector managers who oversaw a reign of austerity that saw cuts to schools, hospitals, pensions and infrastructure, leaving the island terribly vulnerable to any kind of shock -- including Hurricanes Maria and Irma, which flattened the island and tore through the weakened, brittle infrastructure like wet kleenex. The island was plunged into powerless darkness for months, while the racist president of the USA literally threw paper towels at them while belittling the country's few principled leaders.Then came the mercenary occupation, and the ghastly lies about the death-toll, the sweetheart deals for politically connected Trumpland cronies, the coverups, and even Mark Zuckerberg laughing his way through a VR tour of the ravaged island, even as ethnic-cleansing corporate titans moved in to refashion the island as a bolt-hole for the super-rich with a captive workforce of groveling untermenschen to clean their toilets and rub their backs. Read the rest

Smoking my dinner is the latest in slow and low cooking for me.My brother, the actual bonafide chef in the family, got me addicted to smoking meat. While I've long been an enthusiast of sous-vide cooking, Brother Ben swears by his offset smoker. After visiting with his family for a bit, and eating a lot of barbeque, I was sold.Smoking uses the same principles as sous-vide and also imparts a smokey flavor to your food. Thick, tangy and overpowering smoke, or just very delicate -- the choice is yours, sort of. Rather than immersing your food in a temperature monitored water bath, ala sous vide, smoking surrounds the food in warm smoke. You can find temperate controlled systems to make it a lot easier but that removes the fun of playing with fire for hours and hours.Sous vide is easy, however, you plug in a circulator, put your meat in a plastic bag and away you go. Can smoking meat be as easy? After eating a few delicious meals of smoked salmon, turkey, pork and beef at my brother's, I wanted to spend my long days hanging around a campsite, living la vida Vanagon, smoking meat.Offset, upright, pellet, gas, electric? What kind of smoker was the right one for me? My brother and I started watching lots of YouTube videos and it looked like a 'bullet smoker' also known as a 'water smoker' was the right way to go, for me. Bullet smokers have a fire right at the bottom, a water bath in the middle and a smoke/cooking chamber up top. Read the rest

The excellent "Then & Now Movie Locations" visited the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park where some of the Tatooine shots were filmed for Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977). It's a beautiful locale but I can understand why Luke would want to be teleported off this rock.For more shots of terrestrial locations used for Tatooine, here's a 2015 article from The Guardian about the remains of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's homestead in the Sahara desert. Read the rest

This is post is part of a series of reviews of Federal, State, and County provided campsites along California's amazing coastline.I mistakenly thought Gaviota State Beach was Refugio State Beach. It is not.Another parking lot style campsite adjacent to a fairly lovely California beach! Gaviota features a lot of bunnies, all of whom appear to have massive ticks in their ears, cold showers, and an all-night party. This is my least favorite style CA campsite, but my daughter really loved it.Located 33 miles north of Santa Barbara, Gaviota is very popular with RV campers. The site I was in had no RV hookups and was your typical CA picnic table and shitty fire ring. There was no shade to be found and somewhat, unfortunately, a large group of RV campers had decided to leave open spots between their family of trailers when they booked in. This had several folks, not in their party, trapped inside of their large group free for all.Aside from toddlers wandering around a field of open fire pits, and the occasional off-leash pitbull, we had a lovely overnight stop. I was glad I did not book a second night and we simply continued down the coast. I had thought this site was Refugio, which similarly is right on a beach with a very mild break, perfect for kids to boogie board or body surf. There are a few really great beachside camping spots in the Santa Barbara area. I am looking forward to El Capitan and Jalama. Read the rest

The hundreds of men dressed in white who beat up Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters last week were thought to be affiliated with the notorious triad organized-crime gangs, but according to the AP, the triads' main role in the violence was to round up people in "rural areas" like Yuen Long and paying them to participate in the beatings.The AP cites T. Wing Lo, "an organized crime expert at the City University of Hong Kong," who estimated that the bill for the violence would be on the order of HKD10m/USD1.28M, and that the individual thugs would likely be paid HKD2000/USD250 for their participation.Triads have previously been used as recruiters to commit violent assaults on both pro-democracy and anti-democracy protesters, and have no particular ideological commitment either way (Lo: "The Hong Kong triad only works for money, not for political ideology. They will work for anyone").The AP doesn't say who paid the thugs, but they quote the University of Toronto's Lynette Ong, who studies markets for hired thugs in China and Hong Kong, as saying that the Chinese government has hired thugs to do this kind of thing during previous periods of unrest.Who are the men in white behind Hong Kong’s mob attack? [Yanan Wang/AP](via Naked Capitalism)Ahead of today’s march, Hong Kong protesters have put together this video reading out their manifesto. The same manifesto was read out during the parliament siege on Jul 1. This version is in English and very much aimed at an international audiencehttps://t.co/5fdwc0SfKa— Jerome Taylor (@JeromeTaylor) July 21, 2019 (Image: @CraigChoy)Internet video shows triad members in Yuen Long of #HongKong gather & pose threat to peaceful protestors. Read the rest

Louisiana police officer Charlie Rispoli is out of a job for posting to Facebook his belief Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deserves to be assassinated. Officer Rispoli wrote the post after reading one of the countless fake news stories that are Facebook's stock-in-trade. The fake story, which originated on a parody but quickly took on a life of its own as a real story on Facebook, claimed that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thought US military personnel were overpaid, which is false. Officer Rispoli shared the bogus story with the comment, "This vile idiot needs a round......and I don't mean the kind she used to serve," (referring to her previous job as a bartender). Another Louisiana officer, Angelo Variscom, liked Officer Rispoli's post so he was fired, too.From Gizmodo:Ocasio-Cortez was also singled out in a Facebook group comprised of current and former members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that was recently revealed by the news outlet ProPublica. One of the Facebook posts in the group showed a photoshopped image of President Trump participating in a violent sexual assault of Ocasio-Cortez. Last week, the congresswoman asked Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan about the posts in an opening hearing.“Those posts are unacceptable,” McAleenan said. “They are being investigated but I don’t think that it’s fair to apply them to the entire organization or that even the members of that group believed or supported those posts.”But the the image wasn’t out of character for the group and it wasn’t comprised of just a small minority of CBP. Read the rest

Over at my other website, Cool Tools, we just posted a new video produced and hosted by my old MAKE colleague, Sean Michael Ragan, about steel rules. I had my doubts that a 10-minute video comparing 6-inch precision steel rules would hold my interest, but it did! Sean looks at rules under a microscope and points out the differences between three brands of rule. I would have thought the cheap General tools rule would be about as good as the Starrett that costs four times as much, but Sean's video convinced me that it really is worth spending the extra money for the Starrett.Tools (Recommended):Starrett C604RE-6 6" Rigid, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")Starrett C636EM-6 6" Rigid, US/Metric (36 - 1/32", 0.5mm, 1/64", 1mm)General Tools 676 6" Rigid, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")General Tools CF667ME 6" Rigid, US/Metric (31 - 1/32", 1/64", 0.5mm, 1mm)Related tools mentioned:PEC Tools 402-006 6" Rigid, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")Starrett C304SRE-6 6" Semi-Flexible, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")Starrett C304R-6 6" Full Flexible, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")General Tools 616 6" Flexible, US Units (4R - 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/8")PEC 262-006EZ 6" Rigid, Black Chrome, US/Metric (31 - 1/32", 1/64", 0.5mm, 1mm)PEC 262-006TN Tools 6" Rigid, TiN, US/Metric (31 - 1/32", 1/64", 0.5mm, 1mm)Image: YouTube/Cool Tools Read the rest

Two police officers in Louisiana lost their jobs this week after one said Democratic Party legislator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be shot and the other signaled their agreement. Charles Rispoli wrote that she "needed a round" and Angelo Varisco "liked" the post. Rispoli was responding to a fabricated news item falsely reporting that Ocasio-Cortez had called for US troops to get a pay cut."This vile idiot needs a round...and I don't mean the kind she used to serve," he wrote.Ms Ocasio-Cortez, 29, worked as a waitress and bartender before stunning the political world last year by defeating veteran Joe Crowley in their party's congressional primary in New York City. Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson told reporters that both Charles Rispoli and a fellow officer who "liked" the post, Angelo Varisco, had been fired."These officers acted in a manner which was unprofessional, alluding to a violent act to be conducted a sitting U.S. congresswoman," Mr Lawson said.The extent to which U.S. policing is infested with and inflitrated by white supremacists is still more or less ignored, despite the FBI's own investigation and plenty of reporting on the matter. Read the rest

In this video, a FedEx delivery driver demonstrates the proper form for hurling a television set over a 6ft fence. Read the rest

Boris Johnson is to lead the UK Conservative Party after winning 66.4% of votes cast by members in its election. As head of the largest party in Parliament, he will become Prime Minister.- Boris Johnson has won the Tory leadership election with 66.4% of the vote- He will travel to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday (July 24) and ask permission from the Queen to form a government.- More resignations from the current government are expectedJohnson defeated current Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the final round of voting. Theresa May quit the post after failing to convince Parliament to pass the Brexit deal her government negotiated with the European Union. Johnson has until October 31 to figure out a better deal, but has signaled his happiness with there being no deal at all, allowing the UK to "crash out" of the EU irrespective of the economic or political fallout. Read the rest

If you suffer from sleep disorders, there are a number of methods out there to mitigate them: Ambient noisemakers, relaxation tapes, sleep masks, you name it. One thing that doesn't get tried is headphones, for good reason. Even the smallest earbuds are liable to wake you up if you roll over the wrong way.Now there's a pair specifically designed to address that problem: Bedphones Wireless Sleep Headphones.The first thing to know is that these earbuds are incredibly light and pillow-soft, with a flat design that enables you to wear them comfortably - even while sleeping on your side. All the while, the adjustable ear hooks keep them firmly in place. Whether you're listening to soft music, whalesong or just white noise to block out your partner's snoring, the 23 mm drivers and CSR Bluetooth chip will provide clear, crisp sound. And with a 13-hour life on the battery, you won't need to worry about your soundtrack cutting out in the middle of a dream.Pick up a pair of Bedphones Wireless Sleep Headphones for $99.99, a full 33% off the list price. Read the rest

I'm headed back to San Diego for Comic-Con today for a signing and giveaway for Radicalized, Tor Booth, #2701. I hope to see you there! Read the rest

I was absolutely thrilled with this hot burning, nearly smoke-free portable fire pit.If you are dispersed camping and you do not want to dig a fire pit everywhere you go, or you just want to enjoy a wood-burning fire in your backyard without scorching your pavement or yard, this fire pit has me convinced.A friend joined me at the coastal camping site I've enjoyed this week. When he asked whe he could bring I told him firewood would be awesome, as the camp hosts were selling stuff that just wouldn't burn. I'd tried lighting some charcoal and using it as a base to start my fires, but they were still just smokey and unfun. I had given up on reading by the fire with my whiskey and had taken to going to bed early.Lo and behold my friend arrived with the Solo Stove 'Ranger' -- a portable firepit that is designed to maximize airflow to the fuel, burn hot, radiate heat but thrown off almost no smoke. It is 'lightweight' for car camping uses and only weighs in around 15lbs. He took the Ranger out of its bag, threw some wood in it and then set the fire off with a tablespoon or two of the white gas I keep around for my Coleman Stove (we've both know White Gas as 'LBS' or liquid boy scout since our teens.) Instantly the fire was started and within a few moments it was roaring along!The Solo Stove only put off smoke when there was wood fuel above the top line of the stove. Read the rest

For more than a month, Hong Kong has been rocked by an escalating series of public demonstrations that have persisted in the face of violent police suppression tactics; the demonstrations were kicked off when Hong Kong's puppet regime -- elected after China banned pro-independence candidates from standing in local government races -- proposed a new rule that would make it simple for Beijing to demand the extradition of political dissidents to mainland China, where torture and arbitrary detention of political prisoners is the norm.Though the marches have seen millions of Hong Kongers in the streets, the majority of those marching were young, with a high proportion of student activists, which has allowed China apologists to write the movement off as youthful zeal in action. Now, though, 9,000 elderly Hong Kongers have taken to the streets in solidarity with their younger allies, in a "March for the Silver-Haired." The protest leaders reiterated the five demands of the #612strike movement: 1. Withdrawing the extradition bill2. Revoking the classification of protests as riots3. Dropping all charges against all extradition bill protesters4. Investigating police violence5. Enstating universal suffrage in 2020 Another massive protest is planned for this weekend.“In their fight against the extradition bill, our youth brave truncheons, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, violent arrest and, harsh punishment,” Yeung said. “We are proud of them – their determination, mobilisation and tactics, teamwork and self-organisation.”The statement also endorsed the storming of the legislature on July 1, describing it as a justifiable response by young people and a “symbolic provocation” to the Chinese Communist Party. Read the rest

TONIGHT: "The Squad" claps back at President Trump! #LSSC pic.twitter.com/AUzgmVdKbE— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) July 17, 2019 Comedy shows have been our source of truth for too long. Read the rest

Fifty years ago today, a Saturn V rocket launched with Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins on board. On July 19, Armstrong became the first human to step onto the moon. Above is almost five hours of CBS News's coverage of the historic Apollo 11 mission to the moon. And that's the way it was.More: "Apollo 11 launch: Watch the most memorable moments from CBS News' coverage" Read the rest

Throwflame, the Ohio-based supplier of flamethrowers, announced the TF-19 WASP Flamethrower Drone Attachment designed for the DJI S1000 drone. The WASP contains a one gallon fuel tank for 100 seconds of flame with a 25-foot range. Why would you need a flamethrower, much less one that flies? According to Throwflame, here are some worthy applications:Prescribed agricultural burnsGround clearingSnow and ice removalIncinerating weeds and pesky insect hivesPyrotechnic events and movie propsFirefighting and trainingGrassland managementWhat could possibly go wrong? Read the rest

Endless casts of land crabs have invaded a neighborhood in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Apparently heavy rains have driven the crustaceans to seek shelter in people's homes. Groceries have reported a run on butter. (OK, that last part isn't true.)“My wife stands out here with a broom when I’m trying to back the car out to keep them from running into the garage because once they get in there there’s a million places they can hide and you only find them once they die,” Bill Paterson told WPBF. Read the rest

Orix Auto charges $4 to rent a car for 30 min. The car-sharing company has more than 12,000 parking places, so cars are readily available. Orix learned that a large number of its 230,000 users rent cars and don't drive them anywhere. So they looked into it and discovered that people were using them to take naps, eat lunch, do work, change clothes, recharge cell phones, and store things (when storage lockers at train stations weren't available).From Asahi:"I rented a car to eat a boxed meal that I bought at a convenience store because I couldn't find anywhere else to have lunch,"said a 31-year-old male company employee who lives in Saitama Prefecture, close to Tokyo.“Usually the only place I can take a nap while visiting my clients is a cybercafe in front of the station, but renting a car to sleep in is just a few hundred yen (several dollars), almost the same as staying in the cybercafe.”Easy accessibility is a big advantage of car-sharing services. Customers can reserve vehicles any time 24 hours a day on their smartphones for immediate use.Image: Orix Auto Corp.[via The Verge] Read the rest

Lou Cabron writes, "Jonathan Coulton re-visited his album/graphic novel 'Solid State' (previously) over the weekend with new comments about how it applies to today's world. 'When I started work on Solid State, the only thing I could really think of that I wanted to say was something like, 'The internet sucks now',' Coulton said in 2017 (in an epilogue to the graphic novel). So what does he think today?" "I feel like when I wrote it, we were still in a kind of slow motion cultural digital apocalypse. And then Trump was elected, and it made me think we were much further along than I had feared. Suddenly my worries about us being mean to each other on the internet felt a lot less pressing." But he still has a very hopeful and positive message for our current moment in time. "I think a lot of it still applies. Basically, the internet and social media are technologies that are way too powerful for us to use responsibly right now. This is a common cycle with tech of course, somebody makes a thing that breaks all the rules, people abuse it, it beats us up for a while, and eventually we figure out how to manage it better. I still believe we're in the middle of that kind of cycle. It's exposed how small and scared and nasty we all are, and my hope is that we will eventually see that and learn how to be better humans." Or, as Coulton says at the end of his graphic novel. Read the rest

In a Fox & Friends newsbrief, Thiel spurred President Trump to promise to look into baseless claim that Google committed treason.

As innocent people sat on a sidewalk bench in Beirut, pranksters walked by them, tripping over nothing. The pranksters were spaced out through the flow of pedestrian traffic, to make it seem more real. The people who saw the trippers were mystified. Read the rest

"The person who sends me a screenshot of the best manbaby fan reaction to this wins a chocolate fish," tweeted Sacha Judd, linking to a GQ article with the headline: "Actress Lashana Lynch Is the New 007 in the Upcoming James Bond." The manbabies did not disappoint, as you can see from the replies to her tweet.The person who sends me a screenshot of the best manbaby fan reaction to this wins a chocolate fish. https://t.co/DyJYHUJyTb— Sacha Judd (@szechuan) July 14, 2019Tag for this post swiped from @scalzi Read the rest

Mountain Dew made a place in the market by tasting like crap and having more caffeine than a handful of No-Doz. The flavors are all "SUGAR." They are nearly indistinguishable to an over 8-year-old palate. This new Dew, however, is for gamers and has a resealable lid because angry young men like to conserve!That said, this dude at Kotaku seems to know his Mountain Dew:That fancy resealable lid is a real pain in the ass to open. The directions are simple, but actually getting it to pop open was annoying and felt poorly designed for people with bigger hands or fingers. After struggling for far too long, I finally got it to pop open and my hand was covered in Game Fuel. It wasn’t a great experience. And then I finally tasted Game Fuel.I should say before I explain how awful this stuff tastes, that I drink a lot of energy drinks and used to drink a lot of soda. I like Mountain Dew, even if I avoid it these days to save my teeth. I even liked some of the Game Fuel flavors that existed years ago. I also have enjoyed Mountain Dew Kickstart and Black Label. I say all this to assure you that I am very well acquainted to overly sweet, sort of bitter and a little too dry sodas and soft drinks. Read the rest

Back in 2017, The Nation ran a superb, in-depth story on "heirs' property," a legalized form of property theft that allows primarily rich white developers to expropriate land owned by the descendants' of Black slaves.Now, an in-depth Propublica investigation returns to the American south and its landgrabbing white grifters, with a piece that blends the personalities of the brave Black landowners who are willing to serve long jail sentences rather than cave in to legalized theft (brothers Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels are two of the longest-serving inmates for civil contempt in American history, having spent eight years in lockup for refusing to knock down their ancestral homes).To understand how heirs' property expropriations work, you have to place them in the context of Black expropriation, which starts with the expropriated bodies of kidnapped Black people who were enslaved, and continues through the ages: the (marshy or arid) properties deeded to formerly enslaved Black people who carefully worked the land and prospered until white mobs came and chased them away with arson, murder and threats; many of the ones who stayed were chased off with massive tax-hikes directed at Black landowners (in South Carolina, property taxes levied on Black lands went up as much as 700% in a decade; Hilton Head had thousands of acres of heirs' property and now it has fewer than 200). As the remaining property owners began to die off, they were (correctly) mistrustful of white southern lawyers, so they did not draw up wills, leaving their family land to their descendants through a regime called "heirs' property," under the incorrect view that this would keep the land in the family. Read the rest

Computer scientist Alan Turing, key to decoding Nazi communications during World War II, is to be the face of the new £50 banknote. The BBC:The work of Alan Turing, who was educated in Sherborne, Dorset, helped accelerate Allied efforts to read German Naval messages enciphered with the Enigma machine.Less celebrated is the pivotal role he played in the development of early computers, first at the National Physical Laboratory and later at the University of Manchester.In 2013, he was given a posthumous royal pardon for his 1952 conviction for gross indecency following which he was chemically castrated. He had been arrested after having an affair with a 19-year-old Manchester man.Also, artist Turner on the Twenty:The Jane Austen tenner entered circulation in 2017. Churchill's on the fiver. Queen Liz is, of course, on all of them.There hasn't been a £100 in circulation from the Bank of England for decades (The Bank of Scotland has one, with founder Archibald Campbell on it). They should do a run and put Ira Aldridge or Mary Seacole on it. Read the rest

The Social Security Administration has a tool for looking up deaths in the USA that took place within the past three years, but older deaths are in the Social Security Death Master File (aka Death Index); you can buy a limited version of that from the SSA for $2.3k + $3.4k/yr; the SSA has quoted access to the full version at $5.2k. Sai is crowdfunding to buy the full Death Index, which they will then publish online, for free, for all. As they say, "It is extremely useful for genealogical and medical research, preventing fraud, etc."They're also suing the SSA to just publish this themselves: Congress already ordered them to do so.The database includes "Name (first, middle, last, & suffix); date of birth & death; SSN; validation (Verified: Report verified with a family member or someone acting on behalf of the family / Proof: Death certificate etc observed by SSA); record update date; and record update code (add/change/delete)."Think this is a rather un-“open” approach to providing something that Congress required to be publicly available. We would like to start litigation — but also to also pre-pay the requested $5.2k as a surety, so that they cough up the database now and we have a non-hypothetical fee charging to litigate. It would be very interesting to see, for instance, how exactly they spend 150 hours “searching” for a single database file.We will make all received information publicly available, for free, both as flat files and through a Google BigQuery database. Read the rest