Boing Boing

Office Depot, OfficeMax and other retailers will pay $35 million to the FTC over their use of fraudulent software that falsely reported malware infections on customers' PCs.Customers who took their computers in for a free “PC Health Check” at Office Depot or OfficeMax stores between 2009 and November 2016 were told their computers had malware symptoms or infections — but that wasn’t true. The FTC says Office Depot and OfficeMax ran PC Health Check, a diagnostic scan program created and licensed by Support.com, that tricked those consumers into thinking their computers had symptoms of malware or actual “infections,” even though the scan hadn’t found any such issues. Many consumers who got false scan results bought computer diagnostic and repair services from Office Depot and OfficeMax that cost up to $300. Suppport.com completed the services and got a cut of each purchase.It's likely that anyone reading this knows that handing over your computers to teenagers at big box stores is the exact opposite of computer security and the temptation to victim-blame will be overwhelming. Instead, consider this: if a human was held responsible they'd be jailed, but the humans who did this won't be getting in any trouble at all. Read the rest

In January on Twitter, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now, shared 13 tips for writing:Reverse-engineer what you read. If it feels like good writing, what makes it good? If it’s awful, why?Prose is a window onto the world. Let your readers see what you are seeing by using visual, concrete language.Don’t go meta. Minimize concepts about concepts, like “approach, assumption, concept, condition, context, framework, issue, level, model, perspective, process, range, role, strategy, tendency,” and “variable.”Let verbs be verbs. “Appear,” not “make an appearance.”Beware of the Curse of Knowledge: when you know something, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like not to know it. Minimize acronyms & technical terms. Use “for example” liberally. Show a draft around, & prepare to learn that what’s obvious to you may not be obvious to anyone else.Omit needless words (Will Strunk was right about this).Avoid clichés like the plague (thanks, William Safire).Old information at the beginning of the sentence, new information at the end.Save the heaviest for last: a complex phrase should go at the end of the sentence.Prose must cohere: readers must know how each sentence is related to the preceding one. If it’s not obvious, use “that is, for example, in general, on the other hand, nevertheless, as a result, because, nonetheless,” or “despite.”Revise several times with the single goal of improving the prose.Read it aloud.Find the best word, which is not always the fanciest word. Consult a dictionary with usage notes, and a thesaurus. Read the rest

Buzzfeed's Julia Reinstein reports that Yale “has rescinded admission for a student whose family allegedly paid $1.2 Million to get her into the school.”This is believed to be the first such rejection of a student by an American college since the admissions scandal broke over the past few weeks. Dozens of parents, coaches, and university administrators were indicted in a series of interconnected scams.From her report:As part of the scandal, former Yale women's soccer coach Rudy Meredith, was charged with accepting bribes in exchange for designating two applicants as soccer recruits to get them admitted.According to the school, one applicant was rejected despite Meredith's endorsement, but the other was granted admission."Yale investigated the allegations, and the admission of the student who received a fraudulent endorsement has been rescinded," the school said in a statement posted to their website.The school did not disclose the student's identity due to federal privacy laws and university policy.According to the indictment, the family of the admitted student paid $1.2 million to William “Rick” Singer, the ringleader of the admissions operation, who sent Meredith a $400,000 check.In exchange, the coach helped to falsely present her as a competitive soccer player, including lying that she was co-captain of a prominent soccer club.Yale said today the Department of Education has launched a preliminary investigation into Yale and seven other schools as part of the scandal.[IMAGE: An aerial view of the Yale University campus, via yale.edu.] Read the rest

I bought this Tacklife cordless driver/drill earlier this year and really like it a lot. The speed can be varied with the trigger button and it has adjustable torque. It comes with the battery pack and a charging station. Use code A5YBDAL5 to get it for a low price. Read the rest

I use the idea of peak indifference to describe the moment when activists no longer have to try to convince people that a problem is real (the problem does that itself, by ruining ever-more-people's lives), and then the job switched to convincing people that it's not too late to do something about it (if the day you finally decide to take rhino population declines seriously is the day they announce there's only one rhino left, there's a powerful temptation to shoot that rhino and find out what it tastes like).Ove Wired, Boing Boing contributor Clive Thompson (previously) asks whether we're at that point, and, if so, what can be done to avert the nihilism that so often follows from denialism.That means the current political moment is incredibly interesting. Anyone who wants to deal with climate change may have only a brief window to sell the public on a plan. In his new book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, the writer David Wallace-­Wells talks about the value of panic to pushing collective action; Doctorow says it’s the point “where you divert your energy from convincing people there’s a problem to convincing them there’s a solution.”This is why the stakes are so high in the debate over the Green New Deal that Democrats recently introduced in Congress. The young environmental activists of the Sunrise Movement flooded DC this winter to push for a resolution. Six Democratic presidential candidates now support it in principle. And the Yale–George Mason survey found 81 percent of all Americans support the general concept, including—remarkably—57 percent of conservative Republicans. Read the rest

Hudson Yards is a notorious (and spectacularly badly timed) new "luxury housing development" in New York City: a massive, gated, privatized "neighborhood" in Manhattan, a city that has been literally hollowed out by runaway luxury real-estate speculation, to the exclusion of working people and mere millionaires alike.Hudson Yards's capstone is a piece of monumental "public" architecture called "The Vessel" (also known by less flattering nicknames, like "the giant shawarma," "the beehive," "the pinecone," and "the wastebasket." The open-air structure is composed of staircases and landings that visitors can trudge up and down for the purpose of taking selfies. In true grifter capitalism style, the trudgers of the Vessel, agree, by passing under a series of threatening legal notices, that they are assigning a perpetual copyright license to the Vessel's corporate owners for any of those photos (this being an improvement on the original legal regime, in which visitors surrendered title to their copyrights, even to images taken later from distant places from which any part of the Vessel could be discerned). Oh, and you also "agree" to be recorded and to have the recordings retained indefinitely and used as the Vessel and its corporate managers see fit.Enter Kate "McMansion Hell" Wagner (previously), the century's most acerbic and delightful critic of late-stage capitalism's architectural excesses. In a perfectly delightful column in The Baffler, Wagner lays out the case for The Vessel as a perfectly encapsulated symbol of all that is wrong with our economic moment and its intrusions into our built environments. Read the rest

I got one of these RAVPower portable chargers for my nephew a couple of years ago, and he told me it was great to use with his Nintendo Switch, because he could play the Switch with the charger connected and the battery charge would increase at the same time. This newer version is available at a discount when you use the promo code LKWZQ4C3. Read the rest “Good deal on USB C portable charger that can charge a MacBook and a Switch”

John Oliver shows how innocent people's lives can be destroyed by unwarranted public shaming. As an example, he gives the example of the woman who "sued her nephew" for injuring her by hugging her too hard. The real story is more complicated - the woman was forced to sue her nephew to get the insurance company to pay her bills (and her nephew and her parents were happy about it). As a result of the public shaming online, no one would hire her, and she had to change her identity. He also interviewed Monica Lewinsky about her thoughts on public shaming, having been a victim of it for years. Read the rest “John Oliver looks at public shaming on the internet”

Pioneering psychonaut Ralph Metzner who co-led the seminal psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and co-authored The Psychedelic Experience, has died at age 82. (Above image, Metzner at left with Leary.) Through his life, Metzner helped a great many people through his psychotherapist practice, spoke frequently on eco-consciousness, and also composed visionary ballads. (Erowid)Pioneering psychedelic researcher Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., passed away yesterday at the age of 82. We are thankful for his lifelong dedication to providing the world with new insights and discoveries about the scientific and medical potential of psychedelics. https://t.co/XOPfk3t8xt— MAPS (@MAPS) March 15, 2019I'm sorry to learn of the death of Ralph Metzner intrepid explorer of consciousness, author, environmentalist & part of the original Harvard psychedelic project w. Timothy Leary & Richard Alpert/Ram Dass. He used to drop by the Mondo house occasionally. A lovely gentle presence.— MONDO 2000 (@2000_mondo) March 15, 2019 Read the rest “Psychedelics pioneer Ralph Metzner, RIP”

"Consciousness is what allows us to be aware of both our surroundings and our own inner state." In the first of a three part video series, "Kruzgesagt - In a Nutshell" examines "how unaware things come aware." Stay tuned for theories of consciousness that of course may be as much about philosophy as they are neuroscience. Sources here. Read the rest “Where does consciousness come from?”

The second Lego movie includes a memorable scene in Apocalypseburg, an homage to the final scene in Planet of the Apes, complete with a Beyond Thurderdome-style settlement in Lady Liberty's tilted shadow; this is now immortalized as a $300 Lego set. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

I've had quite a few fun afternoons playing with dry ice from making spooky fog in the kitchen to exploding plastic bottles in the yard. But I've never had the opportunity to pour hot lava over dry ice. In this video, the lava is 1400 °C and the dry ice is -78C°. So cool! And hot! Read the rest

It took place a few weeks ago, but it's a good day for it all the same.Credit: NASA, ISS, Riccardo Rossi (ISAA) Music: Inspiring Adventure Cinematic Background by Maryna Details: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181126.html Comments: http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod... Attribution: NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Read the rest

Filmmaker Benjamin Lancaster spent four years secretly shooting a science fiction movie called "The Further Adventures of Walt's Frozen Head," working with actors Daniel Cooksley and Ron Schneider to make a movie about a WDW cast-member who discovers the (urban)-legendary frozen head of Walt Disney, kicking off a series of adventures around the park. The movie premieres online later today. This is (at least) the second time someone has secretly shot a movie at Walt Disney World. (Thanks, Hugh!) Read the rest

The binoculars I bought at a very steep discount are on sale again, and this time they are even cheaper. Use code 63U3YPBN to get them at the sale price. I bought a second pair so Carla and I will each have one for the upcoming Rolling Stones concert. Read the rest

Back in 2016, the Dr Seuss estate won a preliminary court action against "Oh, The Places You'll Boldly Go!" a crowdfunded parody of Dr Seuss's "Oh the Places You'll Go!" and Star Trek, written by veteran Star Trek creator David "Tribble" Gerrold and illustrated by the comics giant Ty Templeton. In 2017, Comicmix, the publisher, secured a partial legal victory, but the Seuss estate wasn't done -- they have been litigating ever since, but now it appears the fight is done, and Comicmix has prevailed, with a Southern District of California judge declaring, in no uncertain terms, that the mashup was protected by fair use. The judgment is long and well-reasoned and comprehensive, and not the sort of thing that you'd expect to go on appeal to the Supreme Court (though who knows: the court has been terrible on copyright, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg never met an expansive theory of copyright she didn't like).Timothy Geigner has published a detailed analysis of the judgment on Techdirt. It's quite an amazing read: the judge is very clear that no one is going to mistake Comicmix's parody for the Dr Seuss original, nor would they buy the parody as a substitute for Seuss, and the court is especially down on the Seuss estate's theory that the (terrible) decision in Oracle v Google means that mashups are illegal. Examining the cover of each work, for example, Plaintiff may claim copyright protection in the unique, rainbow-colored rings and tower on the cover of Go! Read the rest

The new EU Copyright Directive will be up for its final vote in the week of Mar 25, and like any piece of major EU policy, it has been under discussion for many years and had all its areas of controversy resolved a year ago -- but then German MEP Axel Voss took over as the "rapporteur" (steward) of the Directive and reintroduced the long-abandoned idea of forcing all online services to use filters to block users from posting anything that anyone, anywhere claimed was their copyrighted work.There are so many obvious deficiencies with adding filters to every message-board, online community, and big platform that the idea became political death, as small- and medium-sized companies pointed out that you can't fix the EU's internet by imposing costs that only US Big Tech firms could afford to pay, thus wiping out all European competition.So Voss switched tactics, and purged all mention of filters from the Directive, and began to argue that he didn't care how online services guaranteed that their users didn't infringe anyone's copyrights, even copyrights in works that had only been created a few moments before and that no one had ever seen before, ever. Voss said that it didn't matter how billions of user posts were checked, just so long as it all got filtered.(It's like saying, "I expect you to deliver a large, four-legged African land-mammal with a trunk, tusk and a tail, but it doesn't have to be an elephant -- any animal that fits those criteria will do). Read the rest

Angélique Kidjo is a Beninese musician of enormous talent and repute (and three Grammys!); with 10 brilliant albums to her credit; album number ten is special, though: a tribute to Talking Heads' 1980 album Remain in Light (available for $7.92 as DRM-free MP3s); I've been listening to it all morning and, speaking as someone who would give any of the Talking Heads principals one of my kidneys if need be, I am head-over-heels in love with this album: Kidjo is touring the world with it and judging by the videos, she's an electrifying performer. Read the rest

Sometimes life comes at you fast, and you just have to make the best of a challenging situation.This clever birdie finds a way to make it work.Clever Read the rest

Since 2016, there have been multiple instances of attacks on keyless entry car-locks, and there's a burgeoning industry of expensive ($5000) aftermarket alarm systems that are billed as protecting your car from these radio attacks on its security.Pen-Test Partners evaluated several of these systems and found that the two leading models, Pandora and Viper (AKA "Clifford") were very defective, with a mix of vulnerabilities that allow attackers to track cars in realtime, extract the car and its owner's details, disable the alarm, remotely enable/disable the immobilizer, stop the car while it's in motion, eavesdrop on the in-car mic, and even steal the car.Pen-Test Partners attacked the companies' APIs, which allow their apps to communicate with and configure the in-car systems; by modifying the parameters in API calls, they were able to hijack users' accounts, changing the associated email and password. Once that is done, "It’s possible to geo-locate and follow a specific vehicle, then cause it to stop and unlock the doors."There's plenty of room for research on even more extravagant attacks: the alarm systems interface with cars internet networks over the CAN bus -- a common data infrastructure system that all the car's subsystems use to talk to each other. Pen-Test Partners estimates that $150B worth of cars are exposed via these flaws -- about 3M high-end cars.This is a superb example of how security systems can expose users to risk: once you design a system that treats the person using it as an adversary and a remote party as trusted, then, by design, a remote party who compromises the system can attack the person who's using it. Read the rest

When critics want to dismiss Bernie Sanders's bid to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, the say that he is too old and too white, and incapable of bringing young people and racialized people to the polls, the way that, say, Obama did in 2008 (after all, American politics is as much a contest of who votes and who doesn't as it about whom they vote for).The same people who say this often have other iron laws of Democratic policy, like "Democrats can't support Medicare for All" and "Democrats can't support a Green New Deal" and "Democrats shouldn't try to tax the rich." When they say this, they really mean "Establishment Democrats' big-money millionaire/billionaire donors won't back Democrats who support these policies," and so, despite the enormous popularity of these policies, the Democrats shouldn't run on them.Sanders favors all of these policies, and more, and so it's no surprise that his critics are grasping at (evidence-free) straws to neg him in the public sphere, but of course, reality has a well-known left-wing bias, so it's no surprise that they're (very, very) wrong.For example, Sanders is beating Kamala Harris 2-to-1 in polls of African American voters (possibly because Harris supported the preservation of forced prison labor, joked about her actions to jail parents whose kids were truant, and let Steve Mnuchin walk away from grotesque financial crimes that victimized poor people and stole their homes). And 18- and 19-year-old first-time voters are big on Sanders because his policies matter more to them than his age, especially his support for immediate, meaningful action on climate change -- even though Sanders will be dead before climate change makes most of the USA uninhabitable, these kids won't be, and they know it. Read the rest

Would-be Democratic Presidential nominee Elizabeth Warren (I've donated to her campaign, as well as Bernie Sanders') has published her latest policy prescription: a plan to break up Big Tech monopolists to protect the public's privacy and the interests of small-business competitors.Under Warren's plan, large tech companies (with more than $25b in global revenues) would be designated "platform utilities" and would be required to give all commercial users "fair, reasonable and nondiscrimatory" access to their services, and the owners of these utilities would be prohibited from participating in their marketplaces -- that would mean, for example, that Amazon would have to accept all sellers on the same terms, and would not be allowed to sell its own products to compete with them.Companies with annual global revenues of $99m-$25b would also be platform utilities, but would be permitted to sell on their own platforms.Enforcement would come through a right for state Attorneys General and private parties to sue platforms for violating the deal, "to enjoin any conduct that violates these requirements, to disgorge any ill-gotten gains, and to be paid for losses and damages." Violators will face statutory damages of 5% of global revenues.Next, Warren will force tech giants to divest themselves of former competitors that they acquired: Amazon would have to sell off Zappos and Whole Foods; Facebook would have to sell of Instagram and Whatsapp; and Google would have to sell off Waze, Doubleclick and Nest.Then there's a bunch more squishy stuff, like "we must ensure that Russia — or any other foreign power — can’t use Facebook or any other form of social media to influence our elections" and "We must help America’s content creators — from local newspapers and national magazines to comedians and musicians — keep more of the value their content generates, rather than seeing it scooped up by companies like Google and Facebook" (this rhetoric is scarily similar to the notional basis for Europe's terrible Article 13 proposal, but there are some ways to imagine it going well, if we keep in mind that enriching media companies has little relationship to enriching creators). Read the rest

Let's get this done and get home. No time for lollygagging.This “Pup knows what he's about.”Pup knows what he's about. Read the rest

x6udpngx's x6ud is a single-purpose search engine that offers high-quality animal photographs for use by artists seeking reference material. It also has a 3D head that you can rotate Read the rest

What an amazing DIY castle playroom-bedroom for some seriously lucky grandkids. Truly epic, from IMGURian jshepherddesign2000.About the top image: “Mural and drawbridge bed. Chains are plastic and easily removed as well as breakaway from the top for safety.”The "curtain" and "stained glass" in the image below? Trompe l'oeil. “All one piece of art printed on fabric.”Wow. I'm an adult and I seriously want this!Original below.Our DIY Medieval Castle playroom/kids bedroom for our grandkids. Read the rest

The Apollo 11 documentary is premiering in theaters tomorrow. It makes use of a "newly discovered trove of 65mm footage," which is very crisp, making it look like it was shot yesterday instead of 50 years ago.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Measles is no joke. Anti-vaxxers are dangerously inviting infectious disease back into our society.NBC:In the Washington county that is home to one of the nation’s largest measles outbreaks, the effects go far beyond the 71 confirmed cases.The Seattle Times reports over 800 students considered exposed to the highly contagious disease in Clark County have been ordered to stay away from classrooms for up to three weeks, disrupting their education.Since January, field trips, after-school activities and an assembly honoring Martin Luther King Jr. have been canceled or postponed. Some students are doing homework off prepared handouts; others are using school-issued laptops to keep up. Read the rest

Full Frontal's Samantha Bee presents the Sackler family, "art patrons, cosmopolitans, and, believe it or not, almost single-handedly responsible for the nationwide opioid crisis."The Sacklers aren't just rich. They are rich. They have wings named after them at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, an entire museum at Harvard, a center at the Guggenheim...So how do you get to have this many museums name shit after you? By having a fortune of $13 billion, which you, whoops, largely made by creating the opioid crisis. The Sacklers' family business, which they own in full, is Purdue Pharma, a company best known for developing OxyContin, one of the most prescribed and abused opioids in the United States. Read the rest

House Democrats have made good on their promise to introduce the Save the Internet Act, legislation mandating Network Neutrality, which would force the FCC to reinstate the policy that Trump's Chairman Ajit Pai used a string of dirty tricks and illegal maneuvers to destroy.Such legislation cannot pass without the support of Senate Republicans, but it's still a canny move by the Democrats, since many of those Republicans represent the largely rural states that are ground zero for the worst price-gouging and under-servicing by the telcoms industry, and Net Neutrality enjoys broad bipartisan support (83%!!), so forcing Senate Republicans to go on the record about the rule before the 2020 elections will do good for the Democrats' election plans even if they can't get the bill passed. The legislation is being lead-sponsored by Massachusetts Sen. Edward J. Markey in the Senate and Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle in the House. Markey also tweeted out a copy of the bill on Wednesday, saying nearly every Democrat in the Senate had joined him to introduce it.Save the Internet Act [Ed Markey/US Senate]Democrats introduce 'Save the Internet Act' to restore net neutrality [Marrian Zhou/Cnet] Read the rest

Cynthia Newman, dean of the college of business administration at Rider University in New Jersey, has resigned from that position after her school denied Chick-fil-A a campus location "based on the company's record widely perceived to be in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community." (Newman will continue as a tenured professor though.) According to the university administrators, Chick-fil-A's "corporate values have not sufficiently progressed enough to align with those of Rider."I first suspected Newman stepped down because she loves Chick-fil-A's waffle fries so much, but she says she actually has "a problem with University leadership passing judgement on Chick-fil-A’s values which are reflective with the values of the Christian as well as other faiths.” “I endeavor every day to do exactly what Chick-fil-A puts forward as its overarching corporate value: to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to me and to have a positive influence on all who come into contact with me," Newman said in her resignation speech.From CNN:Newman wrote that she asked administrators to apologize for offending Christians, but ultimately decided to step down after the university stuck to its original stance."While we respect Dr. Newman's personal decision, we maintain that the decision about choosing an on-campus restaurant franchise was in no way a judgment on religious values," Kristine Brown, a spokeswoman for Rider University, said in a statement to CNN."Rather, our intention was to foster a sense of respect and belonging of all members of the campus community, including those who identify as LGBTQ+."More in the Rider University newspaper: "Dean steps down from position due to religious beliefs" (The Rider News) Read the rest

A new report from Data & Society (previously) goes into depth on the ways that employers are increasingly rolling out workplace surveillance and monitoring technologies that "exert greater control over large workforces, rapidly experiment with workflows, detect deviant behavior, evaluate performance, and automate tasks."While some of these technologies offer legitimate solutions to real problems, they're more often deployed in ways that simultaneously make life harder for workers and make it harder for workers to push back against employer overreach.The report is a neat illustration of what I've called the adoption curve for oppressive technology, which goes, "refugee, immigrant, prisoner, mental patient, children, welfare recipient, blue collar worker, white collar worker." Remote monitoring and time tracking through GPS-location, computer monitoring software, app-based activity trackers, and remote sensors allow managers or clients to manage large groups of workers indirectly. Many workers on platforms are classified as independent contractors despite the company having significant control over worker actions. Gig platforms like Handy.com and Uber, for example, use apps to decentralize their control of worker activities, but still collect detailed data about trips, communications, and pay. This information can allow companies to nudge workers in ways that advantage the company, but not necessarily the worker (such as directing workers to perform a poorly compensated task that they might not accept if given more information). Recently, Instacart came under scrutiny for using tips that drivers receive in order to supplement pay when they didn’t earn enough to meet the minimum wage. Read the rest

An hero cat of unknown origin bravely fights off invisible attackers.Hang in there kitteh, you can do it.Fighting off your dream attackers.[via] Read the rest

If someone wants to steal your phone number -- say, to intercept the two-factor authentication SMSes needed to break into your bank account or other vital service -- they hijack your SIM by impersonating you to your phone company (or by bribing someone at the company to reassign your phone number to them), and this has made the security of phone numbers into a top concern for security experts and telcoms companies, as there are millions of dollars at stake.Enter Comcast, all-time champion "most-hated company in America," whose Xfinity Mobile cellular service assigns the same unchangeable PIN to every customer: 0000.But don't worry, Comcast says that this only puts you at risk if you recycle user-names and passwords, and nobody does that.Because of that 0000 PIN, getting a victim's Xfinity Mobile account number was the main obstacle for attackers. A Comcast spokesperson told Ars that this account number is available only by logging into the Xfinity Mobile Web portal and is therefore protected by a Comcast's user's password. Comcast told Ars that it does not send out paper bills for Xfinity Mobile and does not include that account number in emails to customers, cutting off two potential ways that attackers could get the account number.Comcast indicated that the number-porting attack affected only customers who reused passwords across multiple sites.Comcast set mobile pins to “0000,” helping attackers steal phone numbers [Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica](Image: Specious, CC-BY-SA)(via /.) Read the rest

Samsung and Huawei wowed early-adopters (and their creditors) this week with cutting-edge designs for foldable tablet-phones. LG's genius answer is to just clip two screens together. The BBC:It has created a second display as a detachable accessory. The end result may look less elegant thanks to the gap between the screens, but it is likely to cost less. The 6.2in (15.7cm) V50 ThinQ handset and its matching Dual Screen add-on both use OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology. Read the rest

Ken Gude, senior fellow at Center for American Progress in Washington DC, wrote a Twitter thread listing all the felonies Trump may have committed, based on Michael Cohen's congressional testimony yesterday.Thread by @KenGude: "I don't think people have appropriately processed the incredible number of felonies that Cohen directly implicated Trump in today. And its u […]"Image: Federico Fazzini/Shutterstock Read the rest

40+ years ago, extremists from the Chicago School of Economics destroyed antitrust law, pushing a bizarre theory that the antitrust laws on America's books existed solely to prevent "consumer harm" in the form of higher prices; decades later, we live in a world dominated by monopolists who use their power to crush or swallow competitors, suppress wages, reduce choice, increase inequality and distort policy outcomes by making lawmakers and regulators dependent on their lobbyists for funding and future employment.The Federal Trade Commission recently solicited comments on how it could update the Consumer Welfare Standard for the 21st century -- a move that represents an odd alliance of left-wing, latter-day trustbusters, and right wing operatives who woke up one day to discover that being blacklisted by 5 companies would make them disappear from the public eye forever.The Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted an excellent and cogent set of comments to the FTC on the subject, and in a highly readable, plainspoken post, EFF activist Shahid Buttar and EFF lawyer Mitch Stoltz explain the substance and background of the comments (disclosure: I am a special consultant to EFF).EFF makes two main points here: first, that even if you're going to limit your antitrust analysis to "consumer welfare," that the power of the Big Tech platforms to surveil users, influence their behavior and censor their speech should be factored into "consumer welfare," because all of these activities materially and measurably reduce the welfare of the users of these services. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH good ol' Howard Schultz gets called a blockhead

Last October, Bloomberg published a blockbuster story claiming that some of the largest tech companies in the world, as well as sensitive US government and military systems, had been attacked through minute hardware implants that had been inserted at a subcontractor facility during the manufacture of servers from the world's leading server company, Supermicro.The story immediately drew forceful -- and unprecedentedly detailed rebuttals -- from many of the companies involved, creating a mystery that is still being debated: if Bloomberg sourced its story as carefully as it claimed, then how to explain all these detailed rebuttals? And if the rebuttals are to believed, then how to explain the dozens of people from different companies and agencies who would have had to collude to trick Bloomberg's reporters into publishing the story?Enter Andrew "bunnie" Huang (previously), one of our era's greatest hardware hackers (his book on hardware hacking is one of the best technical books I've ever read, period).Bunnie presented a 45 minute talk on supply-chain attacks earlier this month at Microsoft's Blue Hat conference in Tel Aviv (he pitched the talk before the Bloomberg story broke, but the timing was indeed fortuitous).I appreciate that 45-minute blocks of time are few and far between for most of us, but this is 45 minutes well spent. Huang walks through several techniques for sabotaging and compromising hardware, and uses his deep expertise in arranging and overseeing electronics manufacture to describe how you could pull these off in the real world, and what difficulties you'd encounter. Read the rest

For a couple of bucks, this illuminated magnifier is a great deal. I use mine all the time, especially when reading values on tiny electronic components. Read the rest

In Fort Pierce, Florida, police officer Doug McNeal arrested Zachery Moellendick, 23, and Krista Leigh, 24, for shoplifting and put them in the back of his squad car. The couple started making out so McNeal played Barry White's "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love." Later, he allowed Leigh to smoke a cigarette in the car. In the police report, McNeal admitted to seeing them kiss and "was fine with it."According to Florida Today, "The Fort Pierce Police Department said it suspended Officer Doug McNeal for 20 days without pay for the ride, which captured the couple's backseat actions on video..." Read the rest

Trailblazing filmmaker Spike Jonze made this short film, titled "The New Normal," about how America's relationship to cannabis has changed from the days when George Washington grew hemp. Read the rest

Article 13 is the on-again/off-again controversial proposal to make virtually every online community, service, and platform legally liable for any infringing material posted by their users, even very briefly, even if there was no conceivable way for the online service provider to know that a copyright infringement had taken place.This will require unimaginable sums of money to even attempt, and the attempt will fail. The outcome of Article 13 will be a radical contraction of alternatives to the U.S. Big Tech platforms and the giant media conglomerates. That means that media companies will be able to pay creators less for their work, because creators will have no alternative to the multinational entertainment giants.Throwing Creators Under the BusThe media companies lured creators' groups into supporting Article 13 by arguing that media companies and the creators they distribute have the same interests. But in the endgame of Article 13, the media companies threw their creator colleagues under the bus, calling for the deletion of clauses that protect artists' rights to fair compensation from media companies, prompting entirely justifiable howls of outrage from those betrayed artists' rights groups.But the reality is that Article 13 was always going to be bad for creators. At best, all Article 13 could hope for was to move a few euros from Big Tech's balance-sheet to Big Content's balance-sheet (and that would likely be a temporary situation). Because Article 13 would reduce the options for creators by crushing independent media and tech companies, any windfalls that media companies made would go to their executives and shareholders, not to the artists who would have no alternative but to suck it up and take what they're offered. Read the rest

#OSCARS realness.

Volante Design (previously) has two new pieces: the Augment blazer and jacket, shipping on March 15 and available for pre-order today (Vest, $195: Men/Women; Blazer, $270: Men/Women), in men's sizes 37-51 (vest also in 55) and women's sizes 33-45.I'm a total sucker for contrast stitching, seams and piping and these pieces are so up my street, like a bit of golden-age Cyberdog, but straight enough that you could just squeak by wearing them to a wedding or a big day at work. Read the rest

I'm fascinated by this PDF, by Bram Lambrecht, describing the difference (with examples) between legal and illegal Lego builds. [via MeFi]In it, Lambrecht describes "the model that forever changed LEGO," an Audi TT that was difficult to put together, required the user to deform components for them to fit, and came with no instructions. As a direct result of this set, all models now produced by the LEGO Group must go through the Design Department. This ensures that nothing gets released without first being approved by a Model Committee. Sometimes lasting up to 2 or 3 days, this review allows representatives from building instructions, senior designers, engineers and the designer sit down together and build the model. The goal is to maintain an ‘only the best is good enough’ approach to our design process. A final heat test then highlights further weaknesses that must be changed before the set can be launched out onto the market. Read the rest

Are you a collector of groovy 70s decor? If so, you may have the missing pieces to the nearly-renovated Brady Bunch house. The home that served as the exterior shot for the Brady Bunch is currently being gutted and rebuilt. HGTV and the Brady kids (who are, of course, now adults) are renovating the Studio City-based property to make its interior match what we saw on television. A Very Brady Renovation, the renovations' web series, is being shown on Facebook and a call was recently put out to locate some very specific furnishings that match ones from the original set. Specifically, they are looking for the living room's credenza and the horse statue that sat on top of it (both shown above). They're also looking for the kitchen's double oven, the kitchen fridge/freezer, two fish trivets, the dining room's curio cabinet, the living room's massive table lamp and floral sofa, the antique radio from Greg's groovy pad, Alice's bedroom set, and the giraffe plushie from the girls' room. The wish list with photos is available at HGTV. Previously:-- For Sale: The real-life Brady Bunch house-- Here's the story of how 'N Sync's Lance Bass won and then lost the Brady Bunch house-- HGTV not saying how much it paid for the Brady house ($3.5M)-- All six Brady kids reunite at their TV home Read the rest

In his first U.S. TV interview, Ren Zhengfei describes Huawei as “a tomato” crushed between two superpowers.

First, Carvel made ice cream. Then came ice cream cakes. Many years later, they created a stout based on one of their most celebrated ice cream cakes, Fudgie the Whale. A collaboration with craft microbrewery Captain Lawrence Brewing Company in Elmsford, New York, Fudgie the Beer was released last Father's Day with great success.Their latest offering? Cookie Puss the beer, a limited-edition "Milkshake IPA." But, wait, it doesn't end there. There's also Cookie O' Puss the beer. A "Pastry Stout," you know, for St. Patrick's Day.Both are brewed by Captain Lawrence Brewing and will be available starting on February 26 in select East Coast locations. Fun fact: Cookie Puss is a space alien born on Planet Birthday (and it's Carvel's 85th birthday this year).For nostalgia's sake: Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Gavin Smythe, of Chagrin Falls, USA, needs his iPhone battery replaced