Boing Boing

Joe Biden, a colossal asshole, wants to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020 and in the most on-brand move ever, he's launched his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by the chief lobbyist for Comcast, the most hated company in America. (Image: Ildar Sagdejev, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Arend Smith -- AKA Ravendark Creations -- is an Etsy seller who sculpts beautiful monsters in a variety of materials, ranging from the Snailien (3.75" x 4.25" x 7", resin, $150) to the Miskatonic Bookworm (6.5" x 6" x 11"; resin, chicken quills, epoxy, many finishes available, $275) which is also available as a Chrysalis (9.75" x 4.5" x 4.75", custom finishes available, $150); to massive custom piece like this massive apoxie/bronze/iron octopus (6" - 10'!) -- or a wonderfully/horribly squishy Silicone Cthulhu Octopus Lovecraft Pet (5" x 2", $50, many finishes available).Snailien:Miskatonic Bookworm:Miskatonic Bookworm Chrysalis:Custom octopus:Silicone Cthulhu Octopus Lovecraft Pet:(via Creepbay) Read the rest

Kaitlyn Reed created a Twitter thread of videos of (mostly Chinese) workers performing manual tasks with incredible acrobaticism, dexterity and flair; the videos were ganked from Tiktok, the massively popular China-based video platform that is mostly know in the west as a place where tweens make and share elaborately choreographic lipsync videos augmented with a suite of skillfully applied video effects.As one reply points out, much of this work is brutal piecework performed by badly exploited laborers; nevertheless, the videos are testament to the human capacity to find joy and mastery even under conditions of drudgery.I've embedded the whole thread below, but here are my favorites:Dancing noodle-tosser:pic.twitter.com/fe6lNLCiT2— Kaitlyn Reed (@kkaitlynreedd) April 18, 2019Robot apocalypse?pic.twitter.com/MwuH0uLWhZ— Kaitlyn Reed (@kkaitlynreedd) April 18, 2019Fritter virtuoso:pic.twitter.com/udRwM6D6pg— Kaitlyn Reed (@kkaitlynreedd) April 20, 2019Bollard-leverer:pic.twitter.com/DKnK7Dibst— Kaitlyn Reed (@kkaitlynreedd) April 22, 2019One of my favorite things about @tiktok_us is when people share videos of their jobs. So here’s a thread of some of the most unique jobs & talented people I’ve discovered on #tiktok pic.twitter.com/IhCkC0v6ED— Kaitlyn Reed (@kkaitlynreedd) April 18, 2019(via Kottke) Read the rest

Happy DNA Day! April 25 is a day to recognize deoxyribonucleic acid - better known as the molecule that holds the code to our entire genetic makeup. What better way to celebrate than with a complete ancestry test that's about more than just satisfying idle curiosity about your family tree? The lab techs at Vitagene use DNA to tell you about your lineage, but they also use that data to tailor a complete wellness plan that's specific to your body.When you get a Vitagene DNA kit, take a simple cheek swab and return it in one of their included vials. After a thorough analysis, you'll get back the most detailed ancestry report you could hope for - not to mention the most practical. With the Vitagene DNA Ancestry Test Kit & Personalized Health Plan, you'll understand your ancestry visually with a map that breaks down ethnic and regional percentages. You'll also get a complete health plan that tells you what food choices are the best for your body, and any gluten sensitivity you're likely to have. Vitagene will tell you the type and frequency of workouts that are best for you and suggest supplements to enhance your regimen.For a small upgrade, the Vitagene Premium Health DNA Kit gives you all that info plus your genetic risk for certain skin conditions, and updates to your profile as new genetic research affects it.Both kits are on sale, with the Vitagene DNA Ancestry Test Kit 20% off at $79 and the Vitagene Premium Health DNA Kit priced 28% off at $99. Read the rest

Amazon is having a sale on tabletop games today, and the one I recommend is the highly rated Pandemic, a cooperative game for 2-4 players.Game description:Four diseases have broken out in the world and it is up to a team of specialists in various fields to find cures for these diseases before mankind is wiped out. Players must work together playing to their characters' strengths and planning their strategy of eradication before the diseases overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks. For example, the Operation Specialist can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases. The Scientist needs only 4 cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal 5. But the diseases are out breaking fast and time is running out: the team must try to stem the tide of infection in diseased areas while also towards cures. A truly cooperative game where you all win or you all lose. Read the rest

Practical Engineering is a video series that clearly and entertainingly explains how public infrastructure works - dams, water towers, bridges, reservoirs, and so on. Above: how water towers work.[via Doobybrain] Read the rest

There are an estimated 129 million tiny bits of debris floating in orbit that, due to their high velocity, can cause catastrophic damage to space vehicles and satellites. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers are developing a compact orbiting device to semi-autonomously seek out the debris and catch it in a net. Designed as a system of CubeSats, each just 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm, the trash collector, called OSCaR (Obsolete Spacecraft Capture and Removal), will collect the tiny pieces of junk until it's full and then deorbit itself to burn up in the atmosphere. From RPI:One of (the three) CubeSat units (in each complete system) will house the “brains” of OSCaR including GPS, data storage, and communication, as well as the power and thermal management systems. Another will hold propellant and the system’s propulsion module to drive OSCaR forward. The third unit will contain four gun barrels, nets, and tethers to physically capture debris, one piece at a time. This capture module will also have optical, thermal, and RADAR imaging sensors to help OSCaR locate debris in the vastness of its surrounding space...“There’s an informal agreement that’s been in place for a few years that people who put space objects up there should be practicing good citizenship,” (Rensselaer engineering professor Kurt) Anderson said. “We envision a day where we could send up an entire flock, or squadron, of OSCaRs to work jointly going after large collections of debris.” Read the rest

Neuhaus.world is a music video for Rotterdam artist Jo Goes Hunting in which the hyperdelic landscape in the video is generated by photos contributed by visitors to the site. "The video is made by Moniker in conjunction with Neuhaus, a temporary academy for more-than-human knowledge at Het Nieuwe Instituut."Neuhaus.world (via Waxy) Read the rest

The Boom Bow is currently my favorite weapon in Fortnite Battle Royale. Firing shotgun shell laden arrows, this gold weapon hits hard and is hard to track. Read the rest

Are you ready for 'Avengers: Endgame' to hit movie theaters this weekend?TheFlippist created this amazing flipbook devoted to the superhero film's imminent release.It's “Ant Man doing his expanding thang in Thanos.” Says TheFlippist, “I’m no Avengers scholar so just assuming Thanos has purple insides.”And below, here's the official trailer for Marvel Studios' AVENGERS: ENDGAME.In theaters April 26. Read the rest

Andrew Paul Joyce: "I made a composite image of all the white men running for president polling at 1% or below. Please be nice to him. He is my son."cf. Pedigree collapse. Read the rest

Cesar Sayoc, the man who pleaded guilty to mailing explosives to Trump critics and the press, says in a new letter that he "was on the front lines of war between right & left."

My friend sent me a photo of his uber tuff tactical Spork.Perhaps it is the burlap couch upholstery, but my aged eyes missed the KABAR and thought this was a handcrafted Spork that some Seattle-area artist must have designed just for my pal. Because who doesn't want a super cool Spork?I was told to wait for it. Then I was sent this photo and it became clear the Spork was made by famed US Military hardware enthusiast fan-favorite Ka-Bar, and not some artisanal Spork maker.I am sort of disappointed the fleetingly imagined trend where Game of Thrones enthusaists are all eating with their own custom version of a Casterly Rock Spork, just like Tywin used, died so quickly. I am ordering a KaBar Spork for my camper van.Ka-Bar Tactical Spork via Amazon Read the rest

"Ocular dominance" is defined as "the priority of one eye over the other as regards preference of use or acuity of vision." Awareness of your dominant eye is important for photography, golf, baseball, and archery. The above video explains how to conduct the Miles test to determine your dominant eye. (via Weird Universe) Read the rest

A significant drop, but no worse than he's been before, reports Politico's Steven Shepherd.“President Trump’s approval rating has dipped to its lowest point of his term in the immediate aftermath of the redacted Mueller report release,” said Tyler Sinclair, Morning Consult’s vice president. “This week, 57 percent of voters disapprove, and 39 percent approve of the president’s performance — a net approval rating of –18 percentage points, compared with 55 percent who disapproved and 42 percent who approved — a net approval rating of –13 percentage points — one month ago in the aftermath of Attorney General [William] Barr’s summary of the Mueller report to Congress.”I'm amazed it dropped under 40%, to be honest. Accepting that four in ten American voters are unequivocally, non-negotiably, unarguably with Trump is the basic political challenge for everyone else. Read the rest

Seasoned chefs have a bit of a love-hate relationship with their cutlery. A really good set of knives has to prove its worth by being put through the wringer - and if they're really good, they'll still look great afterward. So it is with the Damasukasu Japanese 3-Piece Master Chef Hanshu Knife Set.Sitting in their reverent, minimalist case, they really do look too good to actually be used. But pick one up, and you'll want to start cutting immediately. They're made from subtly patterned carbon-rich steel, triple-riveted with a full tang and nitrogen cooled. Science aside, they're essentially made with the same techniques used to forge Japanese samurai swords, with a 12-degree cutting edge and Rockwell hardness rating of more than 62. Each one is precision-balanced, stain and rust resistant.Each set contains a 7-inch Nakiri vegetable knife, 8.5-inch slicing knife, and 5-inch utility knife. The full Damasukasu Japanese 3-Piece Master Chef Hanshu Knife Set is now $69.99, a drop from the previous sale price of $199.99. Read the rest

The Netflix doc Knock Down the House debuted at Sundance earlier this year, winning the Audience Award for U.S. Documentaries. Directed by Rachel Lears, it follows the midterm Congressional campaigns of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Amy Vilela, Cori Bush, and Paula Jean Swearengin. Knock Down the House comes to Netflix May 1st. (Photo: YouTube Screenshot) Read the rest

Police were forced to restrain the Easter Bunny this weekend after he landed a series of blows on a man during a street brawl in Orlando, Fla.[The Easter Bunny] said he was out bar hopping with friends when he saw a man and woman fighting. He said he jumped in and tried to pull the man off the woman.Lindsey Edwards, who provided WESH 2 News with cellphone video of the fight, said that just before the bunny jumped in he saw the man spit on the woman he was fighting with.Police arrived seconds later and dispersed the crowd. No arrests were made. Read the rest

Tim of Grand Illusions shows his collection of objects that refer to themselves in one way or another. My favorite is the can opener that comes in a sealed can.My second favorite is this label: Read the rest

National Geographic's Hostile Planet series focuses on the "world’s most extreme environments to reveal the animal kingdom’s most glorious stories of survival on this fast and continuously shifting planet." This Boing Boing exclusive excerpts beautiful and creepy time-lapse videos of day-glo colored slimes and glistening tentacled mushrooms as they erupt, spread, and decay. The highlight of the video is the tragic fate of an ant that gets infected by a cordyceps fungus spore, which highjacks the ant's nervous system, causing it to climb to the top of a stem, where it freezes in place. In a few days, a cordyceps mushroom bursts out of the ant's head, and begins to produce spores that will eventually infect other ants.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is the first 2020 presidential candidate to call for Donald Trump's impeachment as a result of the findings in the redacted Mueller Report released yesterday. Warren going on the record means every candidate will be put on the spot this weekend regarding impeachment. Things are about to get interesting. (Photo: Flickr/ElizabethforMA) Read the rest

Black women have long complained that they get flagged for secondary screening at TSA checkpoints after passing through a full-body scanner; after years of complaints, the TSA has admitted that its scanners struggle to with curled hair, and are prone to flagging anyone wearing an afro, twists, locks, braids, or other hairstyles predominantly found among Black travelers (though white travelers with long curly hair have also reported being flagged for secondary screening).Black women complain that the TSA's secondary screening of their hair is invasive and humiliating, and also leaves carefully maintained hairstyles in disarray.The TSA has officially asked the scanner manufacturers to suggest ways to modify their products "to improve screening of headwear and hair in compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act."Propublica's excellent story on the problems with the machines quotes an anonymous TSA screener who admits that the body scanners also struggle with turbans and wigs, singling out people who wear them for additional screening. The TSA will not say whether it has ever found a dangerous object in a traveler's hair.The TSA is one of the US government's most diverse agencies; many TSA screeners are people of color. Nevertheless, the number of complaints alleging racial profiling in hair searches has increased sharply in recent years, rising from 73 in 2017 to 105 in 2018. The TSA also maintains the right to search travelers' hair even if nothing suspicious appears on scans, leaving who to search and how to search them up to screeners' discretion. Read the rest

Every month, Tor Books' free Ebook Club gives away a different novel to people who have signed up; this month, the selection is my most recent novel, Walkaway! Sign up between now and the 20th to get your free copy (this only works in Canada and the US; different publishers have the rights in other countries and I'll be sure to let you know when/if they do their own giveaways). Read the rest

You're gonna want to unmute this.Vegan-friendly.The last cherry tomato in your salad!SOURCE: The last cherry tomato in your salad![imgur.com] Read the rest

Holy hell. Read the rest

Mark Zuckerberg leveraged Facebook user data—maybe yours?—to crush rivals and aid allies, leaked documents show.

Helvetica Now is Monototype's new typeface created for today's screens. From Monotype's press release, here are two testimonials from experts whose opinions mean something:“Helvetica Now is the tummy-tuck, facelift and lip filler we’ve been wanting, but were too afraid to ask for,” said Abbott Miller, partner at Pentagram. “It offers beautifully drawn alternates to some of Helvetica’s most awkward moments, giving it a surprisingly, thrillingly contemporary character.”“This is the typeface Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann would have designed back in 1957 if they had known about offset printing, small screens, browsers, digital design tools and UI designers.” – Erik Spiekermann, founder and partner, Edenspiekermann Read the rest

'Scandals. Backstabbing. Resignations. Record profits. Time Bombs. In early 2018, Mark Zuckerberg set out to fix Facebook.'Welp. That didn't work.The May issue cover story of WIRED Magazine is a 12,000-word rip-snorting takedown of Facebook. Never would have predicted this more than a decade ago, when I first wrote about Facebook--- it was still a college networking website-- and I was a contributor to Wired. The future is weird.For the past year, the biggest story in tech has been the meltdown and mayhem at Facebook. So @fvogelstein and I dug in, spoke with 65 current + former employees there, and learned some rather interesting things. https://t.co/3UuFVtMdZz— Nicholas Thompson (@nxthompson) April 16, 2019The magazine hits newsstands April 23, and I'll be wanting a paper copy of this one.WIRED's editor in chief Nicholas Thompson and editor at large Fred Vogelstein spoke to 65 current and former Facebook employees for this story about life and work there over the past year. Plenty of new information, including previously unreported dirt on the split between Facebook and Instagram. Sheryl Sandberg comments here on Cambridge Analytica, which is noteworthy.“It’s ultimately a story about the biggest shifts ever to take place inside the world’s biggest social network,” Thompson and Vogelstein say in a statement sent around to media today, touting WIRED's big story. “But it’s also about a company trapped by its own pathologies and, perversely, by the inexorable logic of its own recipe for success.”Excerpt:TRUSTWORTHINESSWhy would a company beset by fake news stick a knife into real news? Read the rest

In a delightful short video, Klara Sjöberg demonstrates the extreme and alarming freakout that you can trigger in a mechanical calculator by trying to divide a number by zero; in a followup, Lynn Grant tweets "That is why the old Friden calculators had a 'Divide Stop' key." What happens with you divide by zero on a mechanical calculator. pic.twitter.com/CLfeoSzqzX— Klara Sjöberg (@klara_sjo) April 13, 2019 Read the rest

Ford CEO Jim Hackett -- formerly head of the company's autonomous vehicle division -- publicly announced that the company had "overestimated the arrival of autonomous vehicles" and that the vehicles, when they did arrive, their "applications will be narrow, what we call geo-fenced, because the problem is so complex."Hackett confirmed that the company still planned to launch self-driving vehicles in 2021. The company has spent more than $4b trying to develop autonomous vehicles.This is particularly grim news for rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft, who have insisted all along that they will stop losing billions of dollars once autonomous vehicles come along and they can fire all their drivers.Even though Hackett walked back immediate hopes for autonomous vehicles, he made it clear that he believed in the technology's potential. "When we bring this thing to market, it's going to be really powerful," Hackett added.Ford CEO says the company 'overestimated' self-driving cars [Amrita Khalid/Engadget](Image: Gartner Group) Read the rest

Ahead of our panel at the LA Times Festival of Books on Sunday, John Scalzi interviewed me about my new book Radicalized for his column in the Times.John tells the story of how I was the first writer he met after he embarked on his career -- it was at the Toronto Worldcon -- and then we delve into the nature of dystopia, hope, and the role of science fiction in informing our policy debates:Q. You write fiction and you’re also a public advocate for tech, privacy and current cultural issues, and you’ve been adept your entire career in using the former to advance the latter. What is it about fiction that makes it an effective vessel for talking about the issues that drive you? How do you find the balance for entertainment and argument?A. I think that fiction is a superb way to put flesh on the dry, abstract bones of technical and policy debate — a fly-through of an architect's rendering of the emotional lived-experience of the consequences of our policy choices.Technological problems are pernicious — in a manner similar to climate change, the consequences of bad technological choices often manifest a long time after the choices themselves, and it's hard to get people to act on these issues with the right degree of urgency given the long fuse that's burning on them. Fiction can make the detonation more visceral and immediate, and possibly spur us to action when the problems are still manageable rather than when they're so pernicious that they can't be denied, but also might be too far along to do anything about. Read the rest

Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg unpack the tale of Human Torch creator, Carl Burgos's, bitter attempt to agitate the mainstream comics publishers of the 1960s with his very own Captain Marvel character (and Plastic man, Dr Doom, Dr. Fate, and The Bat).For further reading:Marvel, The Untold Story, By Sean Howe. Subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel for future episodes Read the rest

Indian animal adoption campaign World for All commissioned these excellent posters in 2017 to promote the cause. [via] Read the rest

Macarthur "genius prize" recipient Octavia Butler (previously) is one of science fiction's most important figures, an author who wrote cracking, crackling, accessible and fast-moving adventure stories shot through with trenchant and smart allegories about race, gender and power (I like to think of her as "woke Heinlein"). Grand Central has just published a new edition of one of her most important books, Parable of the Sower, the first of a two-volume set that tells the tale of a young Black girl in southern California during a time of environmental and economic collapse and the rise of authoritarian rule; about how she leads a band of refugees, founding a new religion grounded in solidarity and stewardship, and how she triumphs over lunatic gangs; corrupt, militarized cops; and the logistical challenges of flash-fires, starvation and disease. The new edition features a brilliant introduction by NK Jemisin (previously), whose Broken Earth trilogy made Hugo Award history last year when all three volumes won the prize for Best Novel.Jemisin's introduction describes how she read Butler's novel at three times in her life, and how each read evinced a very different reaction from her -- once in the roaring nineties when the economy was booming and the internet promised democratization of culture and communications; once in Jemisin's thirties when she was was a grad student researching the theory of Black liberation and the nature of white supremacy; and now, in the Trump era, when stories about authoritarian rule, mass inequality, and climate devastation don't feel nearly so allegorical and have taken on the tinge of description instead. Read the rest

What an incredibly powerful piece of writing from Utah Jazz basketball player Kyle Korver on playing in the NBA, on coming to understand his own racial justice blind spots, and -- beautifully -- the difference between guilt and responsibility.Excerpt from 'Privileged' at theplayerstribune.com:Two concepts that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately are guilt and responsibility.When it comes to racism in America, I think that guilt and responsibility tend to be seen as more or less the same thing. But I’m beginning to understand how there’s a real difference.As white people, are we guilty of the sins of our forefathers? No, I don’t think so.But are we responsible for them? Yes, I believe we are.And I guess I’ve come to realize that when we talk about solutions to systemic racism — police reform, workplace diversity, affirmative action, better access to healthcare, even reparations? It’s not about guilt. It’s not about pointing fingers, or passing blame.It’s about responsibility. It’s about understanding that when we’ve said the word “equality,” for generations, what we’ve really meant is equality for a certain group of people. It’s about understanding that when we’ve said the word “inequality,” for generations, what we’ve really meant is slavery, and its aftermath — which is still being felt to this day. It’s about understanding on a fundamental level that black people and white people, they still have it different in America. And that those differences come from an ugly history….. not some random divide. Read the rest

The book Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman commemorates the 1000th issue of Batman comics; my contribution is an essay called Occupy Gotham, about the terror of letting a billionaire vigilante decide who is and isn't a criminal (featuring Lessig and Piketty jokes!). Read the rest

A Morning Consult poll of Hispanic voters shows 33% for Bernie Sanders, more than any other candidate from any party -- Joe Biden is polling at 24% and Beto O'Rourke is at 13%, with other Democrats trailing far behind. Three early primary states have large concentrations of Hispanic voters: California, Texas and Florida (California and Texas are also "delegate rich," with a significant impact on candidate selection within the national Democratic party). The majority of Sanders' campaign staffers are women, and 40% of the staff are people of color. Sanders outraised every other candidate, and I am a Sanders donor (I also donated to Elizabeth Warren's campaign). Read the rest

Dune is arguably the best-selling science fiction novel of all time. A first edition copy of Frank Herbert's 1965 epic novel of adventure, betrayal, and palace intrigue on the planet Arrakis is worth $10,000. Here's your chance to get the Kindle edition at a lower price.Image: kamin Jaroensuk/Shutterstock Read the rest

Time 4 Machine is a Ukrainian design shop led by Denis Okhrimenko; their latest project is "The most beautiful construction set in the world", a set of thin steel parts that you bend together to make (yes) beautiful mechanical models: a business-card case, a tractor, a working clockwork timer, a vintage sportscar, a springpowered cabriolet, a sedan, a Hercules eight-motor aircraft and a dieselpunk steamliner engine. Each model is assembled with two fine-nosed pliers, and features mechanical linkages, gears and hinges to animate it. The project's creators designed and fulfilled a similar project in 2017, which bodes well for backers of this one.The models range in price from $18 (card case) to $112 (steamliner) with breaks for quantity: the full set will cost you $432. They are fully funded. The most beautiful construction set in the world [Time 4 Machine/Kickstarter](Thanks, Katia!) Read the rest

In the 1960s and 1970s, Los Angeles's Laurel Canyon neighborhood was flowing with sex, drugs, and folk-rock and roll. Joni Mitchell, the Byrds, Jackson Brown, Carole King, the Mamas & The Papas, and countless other musicians made the scene or had homes in the hills. Echo in the Canyon is a new documentary about that magical moment and the influential sound that emerged. The trip back in time to this "legendary paradise, as Tom Petty called it, was directed by Andrew Slater with Jakob Dylan as executive producer. “The best test of songwriting is that it transcends its moment in time,” Dylan said in a statement. “And there is no doubt that the songs we explore in this film are as powerful today as they were in 1965.”Echo in the Canyon will see a national release in June.(Rolling Stone) Read the rest

The preachersnsneakers Instagram is 🔥🔥🔥.We've long chronicled the excesses and corruption of megachurch preachers, including those who threaten violence against the news organizations that dig into their apparent grift and curious financial arrangements.But whoever is behind this preachersnsneakers account does it as best as anyone can. Juxtapositions of megapreachers and the insanely expensive kicks they're wearing as they spout bogus god bullshit.[via Christian Nightmares] Read the rest

The Mexican media company Cultura Colectiva and an app called "At the Pool" used their access to their users Facebook data to make local copies of it, then left that data exposed, in the clear, without a password, on the public internet -- 540 million records in all, stored in publicly accessible Amazon S3 buckets.The leaks include "comments, likes, reactions, account names, FB IDs and more." The At the Pool leak also includes user passwords, presumably for the app (but many users recycle passwords); as well as 22,000 passwords for Facebook itself, stored without encryption.At the Pool has been shuttered since 2014, implying that its data has been exposed for many years. After a formal notification email, someone took its user data offline.Cultura Colectiva -- which is still in business -- has been repeatedly notified about its breach (both by the security researchers at Upguard, who discovered the breach, and by Amazon, after they were notified by Upguard) but has not replied nor did it take any steps to protect its user data until it was sent a query by Bloomberg news, months later.These two situations speak to the inherent problem of mass information collection: the data doesn’t naturally go away, and a derelict storage location may or may not be given the attention it requires.For app developers on Facebook, part of the platform’s appeal is access to some slice of the data generated by and about Facebook users. For Cultura Colectiva, data on responses to each post allows them to tune an algorithm for predicting which future content will generate the most traffic. Read the rest

A new bill from Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes personal, criminal liability for top executives of companies turning over more than $1B/year when those companies experience data breaches and scams due to negligence (many of the recent high-profile breaches would qualify, including the Equifax giga-breach, as well as many of Wells Fargo's string of scams and scandals).It is part of a raft of excellent policy proposals that Warren has introduced in conjunction with her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination (I am a donor to her campaign, as well as the Bernie Sanders campaign): lowering drug prices with federally commissioned generics, an annual wealth tax on family fortunes over $50m, antitrust breakups of Big Tech, an end to the Electoral College and a national Right to Repair law for farm equipment. I believe that the major distinction between Warren and Sanders is that Warren believes that a market-based distribution system will work so long as the state corrects its failures, while Sanders believes that at best, markets are tools to solve the odd allocation problem.My sympathies are more with Sanders than Warren, but I'm consistently impressed with Warren's extensive, specific policies.I also think that Warren is laying a trap here. Plenty of people will say that no CEO can possibly oversee the operations of a billion dollar company well enough to prevent it from engaging in widespread fraud or suffering catastrophic breaches, but of course, the natural rejoinder is that this means that we shouldn't have companies that are too big to effectively oversee (let alone too big to fail). Read the rest

Florida Man is the inaugural kickstarter from Los Angeles's incomparable comics store Secret Headquarters (previously): it challenges players to fill in the blanks from hundreds of cards capturing actual headlines about actual Floridians, creating hilarious, Cards Against Humanity-style madlibs. $20 gets you a game (early bird, rising to $25), $50 gets you a game and expansion pack, and there are tiers with tons of swag and of course a retailer bulk-discount pack. Read the rest

Christina Ward has a new book out called American Advertising Cookbooks: How corporations taught us to love Spam, bananas, and Jell-O. It's beautifully designed book with lots of color photographs from mid-century food corporation cookbooks that takes a deep dive into the sociological and geopolitical implications of American eating in decades past.Here's an excerpt (PDF): Good Housewife photo section from American Advertising Cookbooks Ward for boingBoingBackground image: By dexterous simpson/Shutterstock Read the rest

I'm not a Las Vegas fan, but I wish I could plop myself at the Bellagio hotel for just four minutes one night this week to watch their Game of Thrones water show, which began last night. It looks spectacular.From Las Vegas Review Journal: A medley of the theme for HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and the song “Winter Is Here” from the show premiered at Bellagio Fountains water show on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday night. The new number will run at 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. daily, in rotation through April 13. The final season of Game of Thrones premieres April 14th. Read the rest

Researchers from Tencent Keen Security Lab have published a report detailing their successful attacks on Tesla firmware, including remote control over the steering, and an adversarial example attack on the autopilot that confuses the car into driving into the oncoming traffic lane.The researchers used an attack chain that they disclosed to Tesla, and which Tesla now claims has been eliminated with recent patches.To effect the remote steering attack, the researchers had to bypass several redundant layers of protection, but having done this, they were able to write an app that would let them connect a video-game controller to a mobile device and then steer a target vehicle, overriding the actual steering wheel in the car as well as the autopilot systems. This attack has some limitations: while a car in Park or traveling at high speed on Cruise Control can be taken over completely, a car that has recently shifted from R to D can only be remote controlled at speeds up to 8km/h.Tesla vehicles use a variety of neural networks for autopilot and other functions (such as detecting rain on the windscreen and switching on the wipers); the researchers were able to use adversarial examples (small, mostly human-imperceptible changes that cause machine learning systems to make gross, out-of-proportion errors) to attack these. Most dramatically, the researchers attacked the autopilot's lane-detection systems. By adding noise to lane-markings, they were able to fool the autopilot into losing the lanes altogether, however, the patches they had to apply to the lane-markings would not be hard for humans to spot. Read the rest

Teslas are incredibly data-hungry, storing massive troves of data about their owners, including videos of crashes, location history, contacts and calendar entries from paired phones, photos of the driver and passengers taken with interior cameras, and other data; this data is stored without encryption, and it is not always clear when Teslas are gathering data, and the only way to comprehensively switch off data-gathering also de-activates over-the-air software updates for the cars, which have historically shipped with limited or buggy features that needed the over-the-air updates to fix them.Tesla has a history of being secretive about the data its cars collect, fighting customer attempts to recover data from their cars, and selling a special cable needed to access limited car telemetry for $995. Tesla employees told CNBC that the company uses telemetry to secretly identify Tesla owners who tinker with or investigate their cars, and flags them for late software updates.Two pseudonymous security researchers called GreenTheOnly and Theo recovered "hundreds" of wrecked Teslas from scrappers and junkyards and systematically investigated the data left behind on the cars. Much of the data that these junked Teslas store is not unique -- other manufacturers' "smart" car systems store mountains of driver data in the clear (this is especially a problem for rental and fleet cars, which harvest data from many different drivers). But Tesla does store more data than its rivals, and goes further than other manufacturers in disincentivizing independent security research through its alleged blacklisting system; the fact that Tesla also operates a robust bug bounty system reveals a deep ambivalence about independent scrutiny about its products. Read the rest

Watch CNN's @ryanobles try to ask Betsy DeVos about proposed federal cuts to the Special Olympics. pic.twitter.com/69yzJsq5Hy— Daniel Lewis (@Daniel_Lewis3) March 28, 2019This week inherited wealthy person and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos tried to cut all Federal funding to the Special Olympics. Watch as she smirks and smiles while ignoring CNN's Ryan Nobles. Read the rest

Belka and Strelka, who both survived their trip to orbit, are immortalized here on a pair of shoes. Soviet Space Dog Shoes [$59, octophant.threadless.com] Read the rest