Boing Boing

Political pranksters extrodinaire the Yes Men (previously) have printed a satirical edition of the Washington Post announcing that Donald Trump has abdicated and volunteers have fanned out across DC (where Trump is universally loathed) to distribute copies to all and sundry: you can follow their adventures at the #ByeBye45 hashtag. Read the rest

NBC declined to comment.Huffington Post:NBC News’ standards department sent an email to staffers Tuesday telling them not to directly refer to Rep. Steve King’s recent comments about white supremacy as “racist.”“Be careful to avoid characterizing [King’s] remarks as racist,” reads the email, which two NBC News staffers shared with HuffPost. “It is ok to attribute to others as in ‘what many are calling racist’ or something like that.”The email was sent to staffers by Susan Sullivan, a senior employee in the standards division at NBC News. In a news organization, the standards department offers guidance and issues rules about what is legally and ethically appropriate to report, and about how certain topics should be covered.NBC News did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this article. Read the rest

Cryptocurrencies and Tor hidden services ushered in a new golden age for markets in illegal goods, especially banned or circumscribed drugs: Bitcoin was widely (and incorrectly) viewed as intrinsically anonymous, while the marketplaces themselves were significantly safer and more reliable than traditional criminal markets, and as sellers realized real savings in losses due to law enforcement and related risks, the prices of their merchandise plummeted, while their profits soared.But much of the security of dark markets was an illusion. The anonymity of cryptocurrencies could often be pierced; the services themselves could be subverted by law enforcement in order to roll up many sellers and buyers at once; and the "last mile" problem of shipping illegal substances through the mails exposed buyers and sellers to real risks.The buyers and sellers in dark markets have responded to these revelations and new facts on the ground with a range of ingenious, high-tech countermeasures.Buyers are now more likely to conduct sales negotiations through encrypted messenger technologies, and each customer is assigned their own unique contact, staffed by a bot that can answer questions on pricing and availability and broker transactions. Many of these transactions now take place through "private cryptocurrencies" that have improved anonymity functions (there is a lot of development on these technologies).Delivery is now largely managed through single-use "dead drops" -- hidden-in-plain-sight caches that are pre-seeded by sellers, who sometimes use low-cost Bluetooth beacons to identify them (these beacons can be programmed to activate only in the presence of a wifi network with a specific name: a seller provides the buyer with a codeword and a GPS coordinate; the buyer goes to the assigned place and creates a wifi network on their phone with the codeword for its name, and this activates the Bluetooth beacon that guides the buyer to their merchandise). Read the rest

BREAKING: Donald Trump asked by reporter: "Have you ever worked for Russia?" pic.twitter.com/a2ph4Raduq— Paul Lee Ticks (@PaulLeeTicks) January 14, 2019No sniffles tho. Read the rest

Following a publicity campaign to make it the most popular photo on Instagram, a photo of an egg became the most popular photo on Instagram.The campaign started off slowly, with under 10,000 likes by Tuesday. Then, the egg gained momentum. The anonymous person behind it said they were still trying to work out how, exactly, the egg achieved its dream. The egg’s Instagram story also contains a brief statement.“This is madness, What a time to be alive.” The Egg Gang also promises this isn’t the last you will hear of Egg. Read the rest

Trump isn't America's most anti-immigrant president; that honor goes to Obama, the great deporter, who also extensively tested border wall technologies while deporting 2MM undocumented people. One of the designs that Obama's DHS evaluated was steel "barriers" of the sort Trump wants to spend $5.7 billion on. In their tests, they were able to defeat the barriers with hand-held hacksaws in just a few minutes.Trump officials insist that their barriers represent an improvement on the Obama barriers, with "internally reinforced with materials that require time and multiple industrial tools to breach.""While the design currently being constructed was informed by what we learned in the prototypes, it does not replicate those designs," said Waldman. "The steel bollard design is internally reinforced with materials that require time and multiple industrial tools to breach, thereby providing U.S. Border Patrol agents additional response time to affect a successful law enforcement resolution. In the event that one of the steel bollards becomes damaged, it is quick and cost-effective to repair."The professionals on the border know that a wall system is intended not only to prevent entry, it is intended to defer and to increase the amount of time and effort it takes for one to enter so that we can respond with limited border patrol agents. Even a wall that is being breached is a valuable tool in that it allows us to respond to the attempted illegal entry."Test of steel prototype for border wall showed it could be sawed through [Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley/NBC](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Pigzbe is a digital "piggy-wallet" for children that uses its own cryptocurrency called Wollo (WLO). It has gotten $100k on Kickstarter, but that's not where the real money is. According to ICO Bench, $7,200,000 worth of WLO was sold in an initial coin offering.According to Coincodex, WLO is trading at $0.015 Read the rest

There have been several attempts to force the US telcoms industry to respect our privacy: to stop our ISPs from spying on us and selling our usage data to marketers, to stop the mobile carriers from spying on our location and selling the data to marketers (and, it turns out, stalkers and bounty hunters), and every attempt has fizzled, as telcoms lobbyists and telcoms-funded lawmakers have sold us out, saying that the privacy rules are unnecessary because the carriers wouldn't do anything too sketchy lest they suffer reputational damage.The thing is, there's no way the carriers' reputation could conceivably get any worse: just as you can't libel a scoundrel, any revelation about carrier shenanigans will only confirm our view of telcoms as the worst industry in the country, with the worst companies in the country.Relying on telcoms industry shame to rein in their worst impulses has repeatedly proven to be useless. Telcoms execs lie like crazy, and then when they get caught, they legeresplain and gaslight about it.As Karl Bode points out, there's actually a pretty easy way to make sure the carriers stop abusing us: make it illegal, and enforce the laws. Whether the solution is a new law or just the enforcement of existing rules, getting any serious location data reform efforts over the hump is going to require a critical mass of public outrage to drive meaningful change.Whether the solution is a new law or just the enforcement of existing rules, demanding the protection of your private location data is going to require a critical mass of public outrage to drive change. Read the rest

An Australian woman is in stable condition after a massive freeway sign toppled onto her car near Melbourne. The dashcam video, captured by the driver behind her, is absolutely terrifying.(I wonder if this will fit in J.K. Simmons' insurance-claim wunderkammer.) Read the rest

KARR is my second favorite animated automobile with an attitude. I love how he blew up after flying off a cliff, but was back a few episodes later looking perfect.I remembered KARR as having a different front grill scanner pattern than KITT, I was mistaken.Herbie has gotta be the best.Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, yawn. Dick Van Dyke is a treasure tho. Read the rest

Dr. Ruth Westheimer is a German-born Jewish Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the United States in 1956 and eventually became arguably the world's best known sex therapist. She's hosted multiple radio and TV shows and written dozens of books about sex. Now, the 90-year-old is the subject of a new documentary titled Ask Dr. Ruth that will premier at the Sundance Film Festival in a few weeks. Directed by Ryan White with distribution by Hulu, the film will be in theaters later this year and presumably streaming after that. Read the rest

The video above is an anti-drug PSA from the early 1970s, in which a slick talking magician offers drugs to children on a playground. "Hey kiddies, gather round, the man with the goodies is here!" he says as he sets up a small performance table and uses magical flourishes to show off his illicit wares. One of the kids in the audience, playing the part of a heckler, challenges the prestidigitating pusher at every turn with spoilers like "They say amphetamines can cause something like schizophreem," "Withdrawals from barbituates can cause convulsions," and "[LSD can cause] bad trips and a chance of chromosome damage."When I started reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest New Yorker article, Is Smoking Marijuana as Safe as We Think?, I was reminded of this commercial -- specifically, the part where the magician, annoyed by the kid's heckling, makes a marijuana bouquet spontaneously appear in one hand and a joint in the other. He says to the kid, "Grass. Anything wrong with pot?" The kid replies, "They're not sure yet, they just started studying about it." Gladwell starts off his article like this kid (who was correct in 1973), by arguing that we still don't know anything about marijuana's effects. The problem is, it's 2019 and Gladwell's article disingenuously cherry-picks some facts and fails to disclose other facts as part of what seems to be a strong anti-pot agenda.On Twitter, science journalist Dave Levitan pointed out a number of major problems with Gladwell's piece. For example, Gladwell wrote "smoking pot is widely supposed to diminish the nausea associated with chemotherapy. Read the rest

The Computer Entertainment Show gave a digital sex toy an award. Then it rescinded the award because sex toys are "immoral, obscene, indecent [or] profane" and banned it from the trade show floor. Katie Notopoulos reports, however, that they've given such toys awards in the past.It’s unclear why the CTA made the Osé an honoree in the first place, before backtracking on its decision to include an adult product. The trade show gave a sex toy a similar award three years ago, and other companies have exhibited sex toys and adult products at the show over the years.A representative from CTA told BuzzFeed News, “[Osé] does not qualify because it does not fit in to any of our existing CES 2019 categories.” Asked to clarify if this is because it didn’t meet the standards of being a robot or drone, they replied, “it’s an adult product so not eligible.”Those dead-eyed, life-size sex dolls are another feature of CES that are fine by it:Perhaps the answer to all this is that CES's executives are old-school sexist twerps and there's simply no unraveling what's going on under their skin. In 2012, the BBC reported that CES chief Gary Shapiro mocked complaints about the "booth babes" that were then still a pervasive feature at the exhibition. "Well, sometimes it is a little old school, but it does work," Shapiro tells the BBC. "People naturally want to go towards what they consider pretty. So your effort to try to get a story based on booth babes, which is decreasing rather rapidly in the industry, and say that it's somehow sexism imbalancing, it's cute but it's frankly irrelevant in my view."This man is the head of America's main tech industry trade group. Read the rest

Zuckerberg San Francisco General has arranged for all ER care to be out-of-network, allowing the hospital to charge whatever wild prices it likes.VOX:Zuckerberg San Francisco General (ZSFG), recently renamed for the Facebook founder after he donated $75 million, is the largest public hospital in San Francisco and the city’s only top-tier trauma center. But it doesn’t participate in the networks of any private health insurers — a surprise patients like Dang learn after assuming their coverage includes a trip to a large public ER.Most big hospital ERs negotiate prices for care with major health insurance providers and are considered “in-network.” Zuckerberg San Francisco General has not done that bargaining with private plans, making them “out-of-network.” That leaves many insured patients footing big bills.The problem is especially acute for patients like Dang: those who are brought to the hospital by ambulance, still recovering from a trauma and with little ability to research or choose an in-network facility.A spokesperson for the hospital confirmed that ZSFG does not accept any private health insurance, describing this as a normal billing practice. He said the hospital’s focus is on serving those with public health coverage — even if that means offsetting those costs with high bills for the privately-insured.“It’s a pretty common thing,” said Brent Andrew, the hospital spokesperson. “We’re the trauma center for the whole city. Our mission is to serve people who are underserved because of their financial needs. We have to be attuned to that population.”But most medical billing experts say it is rare for major emergency rooms to be out-of-network with all private health plans. Read the rest

Too late for Christmas! Razer's laptops—one of few designed for playing games that an adult could use in public without embarassment—got a spec bump to include 2000-series Nvidia graphics chips. The updated line of laptops will also feature an anti-ghosting keyboard powered by Razer Chroma which offers 16.8 million colors for key customization. New power management options, including modes to boost graphics performance, or to maximize the run time of the 80Wh battery. Audio is delivered through improved dual front-firing speakers and features Dolby Atmos for deeper bass response in the sound.Configurations start with the 2060 part, which was just announced by NVidia at a pre-CES event, but if you're going to spend this much on a laptop you should probably hike up to the 2070. It comes in white and traditional Razer "black 'n' rainbows". They'll be out Jan. 29, and if you have to ask, you can't afford it.I found that a 15" laptop was too hefty for me and recently went back to a 12" MacBook as my daily driver. I'm more tempted to switch, then, by the smaller 13" Razer Blade Stealth laptop [Amazon]. Updated two months ago, it's still the size of a MacBook but now includes the MX150 chip. It won't handle the latest games on Ultra, but it is a credible game-capable GPU in an ultraportable laptop. (Last-gen Stealth owners had to get an external GPU to play—a bulky ask) Read the rest

How can America possibly fund a radical transformation into a carbon-free economy, centered on preparing for the coming centuries of climate crises? ACO knows: a 70% tax on people with more than $10,000,000/year in earnings: “I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country...If that’s what radical means, call me a radical." (via Mitch Wagner) Read the rest

🔊Sound on!Mitch Centers did the effects, and says, “I saw these two fighting and HAD to edit in some effects for them!”This kiddo really delivers an Oscar-worthy performance. Watch: View this post on Instagram 🔊Sound on🔊 I saw these two fighting and HAD to edit in some effects for them! #oscarwinner performance! Original post on Reddit by /u/tjeastman and @leahzielich ___________ #starwars #starwarsdaily #starwarsedit #starwarsmemes #starwarsnerd #aftereffects #vfx #videoedits #lightsaber #funny #cutebabies #funnyvideos #kids #adobeaftereffects #adobe #vfxartist #starwarslife #starwarsepisode9A post shared by Mitch Centers (@mitch.centers) on Jan 4, 2019 at 9:50am PST Originally posted on Reddit, and the *original* video was posted to reddit by proud papa and mama /u/tjeastman and @leahzielich. Read the rest

In response to the old-fart Republicans who thought they finally had a gotcha moment by digging up a college dance video of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she fired back with the best tweet of all – a new dance inside a hall on Capital Hill.Granted, this one isn't nearly long enough, or as joyous as her first one, but it's still fantastic. Notice how she comically peeks over her shoulder before she begins. Once she realizes the coast is clear, she dares to dance to Edwinn Star's "War."I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous.Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too! 💃🏽Have a great weekend everyone :) pic.twitter.com/9y6ALOw4F6— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 4, 2019In case you missed it, here is Ocasio-Cortez's "scandalous" dance that threw frightened Republicans into a tizzy....High School video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- Congratulations New York! pic.twitter.com/VSKdUImhZj— Dan Jordan (@realdanjordan) January 2, 2019 Read the rest

Reminiscent of the Trumpkin congressman who blamed his wife for his illegal campaign expenses, we've now got a hunter who's pointing his trigger finger at his wife for his illegal killing of a deer.When the Michigan hunter was caught with an illegal spike horn buck, he at first tried to deny it. But when a conservation officer cornered him, saying there was a witness to the deer shooting, he hung his head and blamed his wife, saying, "The honest-to-God truth is that my wife wants deer meat and if I come home without any she’ll get really mad at me.”The hunter was forced to hand over the deer corpse, which he had stashed behind a house, and "enforcement action was taken,” according to CBS.Via CBS Boston Read the rest

A memorial service was held Thursday for Angry Bob the bad swan. Bob went viral in 2010 after killing one mate and chasing two more away.The ceremony for 'Angry Bob' was held after a large online response to a post announcing his death on the Facebook page of Hestercombe House in Somerset.The swan's temperament even inspired a poem which was read at the memorial.Goodbye "Angry Bob"....🦢 A memorial service has taken place at @HestercombeGdns to remember one of it's grumpiest residents. Volunteer Ben Whitworth told us a bit about him... pic.twitter.com/ngnyfpFm3A— BBC Somerset (@bbcsomerset) January 4, 2019Photo: BBC Somerset Read the rest

Earlier today, the China National Space Administration's Chang'e 4 landed a rover on the far side of the moon for the first time. Blocked from direct communication with the Earth, the lander and rover will depend on China's Queqiao communication satellite launched in May. From the New York Times:“This is a major achievement technically and symbolically,” said Namrata Goswami, an independent analyst who wrote about space for the Defense Department’s Minerva Research Institute. “China views this landing as just a steppingstone, as it also views its future manned lunar landing, since its long-term goal is to colonize the moon and use it as a vast supply of energy.”The place the probe is exploring, Dr. Goswami said, could become a future refueling base for missions deeper into space in the way “navies viewed coaling stations, for purposes of refueling and resupply.”The instruments aboard the lander and the rover include cameras, ground-penetrating radar and spectrometers to help identify the composition of the area, which was formed by a meteorite. Scientists hope the rocks and dirt in the area will add to the understanding of the moon’s geology.The lander will also conduct a biology experiment to see if plant seeds will germinate and silkworm eggs will hatch in the moon’s low gravity. Read the rest

In 1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy prosecuted Eros magazine publisher Ralph Ginzburg for violating federal obscenity laws when Eros ran 8-pages of photos of a naked black man and naked white woman embracing each other (see page 72 of the fourth and final issue of Eros). After a long trial, which went to the Supreme Court, Ginzburg was found guilty and in 1972 was sent to federal prison. He was released on parole eight months later. (Arthur Miller said of the conviction, a man is going to prison for publishing and advertising stuff a few years ago that today would hardly raise an eyebrow in your dentist's office.")In 1964, during his legal battles, Ginzburg launched a quarterly social commentary journal called fact:, and it was a masterpiece of design and content. Bringing to mind the best of Esquire, Rolling Stone, Spy, and The Realist, fact: was "dedicated to the proposition that a great magazine, in its quest for truth, will dare to defy not only Convention, not only Big Business, not only the Church and the State, but also — if necessary — its readers." (From the introduction to 1967's The Best of Fact, by Warren Boroson). The first issue had a delicious takedown of Time magazine, the titan of news magazines in 1964, with quotes from dozens of intellectual luminaries attesting to Time's treacherousness, propensity to lie, and prejudices (P.G. Wodehouse: "Time is about the most inaccurate magazine in existence."). The first issue also ran an Madison avenue advertising executive's "sojourns in heaven and hell while experimenting with peyote, belladonna, and marijuana," a profile of American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell (titled "The Man Who Thinks Goldwater is a Communist"), a piece examining "The Sexual Symbolism of Christmas," and an essay by Bertrand Russell on the inadequacy of the nuclear test ban treaty. Read the rest

Netflix removed an episode of the program "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj" in Saudi Arabia because the royal family didn't like its coverage of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The streaming media service said it was warned that the program violated Saudi Arabia’s "anti-cybercrime law," which forbids content “impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy.”Via NBC News:In the episode which has been available since October, Minhaj criticizes Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who has been blamed by the U.S. Senate for being responsible for Khashoggi's death in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last year.“It blows my mind that it took the killing of a Washington Post journalist for everyone to go, ‘Oh, I guess he’s really not a reformer,'” Minhaj said, referring to the royal who is widely known as MBS. “Meanwhile, every Muslim person you know was like, ‘Yeah, no s---, he’s the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.'” Read the rest

A driver from Orange County Florida was dinged by the cops for using a very slick-looking device to obscure his license plate while using a toll road. It would have been the perfect crime, except for one thing: when the driver worked his license plate magic, he failed to notice that there was a police car rolling right up on his back bumper. Read the rest

Despite gains over the past century in the area of equal rights, equal pay and, in some regions, not having some assclown with a penis dictate what they do with their bodies, women, on the whole, still hold the short end of a very shitty stick. While men might feel safest and most comfortable inside the walls of their home, a new report from The United Nations has reiterated what far too many woman already know: the place that women call home is more dangerous than anywhere else they might roam.From The New York Times:About one in five homicides is carried out by an intimate partner or family member, and women and girls make up the vast majority of those deaths, the report concluded after analyzing the available data.Of the approximately 87,000 women who were victims of intentional homicide last year around the world, about 34 percent were murdered by an intimate partner and 24 percent by a relative.The rate of women killed by a partner or relative was highest in countries in Africa, followed by the Americas. The lowest rate was in Europe.The New York Times points out that the U.N.'s report comes with a few caveats. First, it's worth mentioning that the vast majority of those murdered every year are men. But they're far less likely to be killed by an intimate partner or family member than a woman is. Second, women are just as capable of killing a family member or intimate partner as men are. Read the rest

Writing in The Art Newspaper, Andrea Marechal Watson enumerates the up- and down-sides of keeping your millions in art treasures aboard your super-yacht: on the one hand, the full-time crew of up to 50 will certainly ensure that the art is well looked-after and kept in climate controlled stasis; but then there's the problem that international looters like Jho Low have had their collections seized after their complicity in multi-billion-dollar frauds were discovered. Super-yachts with many millions in art aboard might be excellent "floating signifiers of their owners’ wealth," but on balance you might be better off warehousing your "assets" in anonymous shipping containers in the Freeport of Basel. (Images: Ed g2s, MrPanyGoff, CC-BY-SA) (via JWZ) Read the rest

Reddit user Sneegles spotted the unpleasant clown, Pennywise, from Stephen King's It hiding in a rug pattern. Pattern in rug looks like Pennywise from r/mildlyinteresting Read the rest

At considerable expense, Christian Friedrich Johannes Büttner, the man behind successful YouTube channel TheFatRat, recorded and posted an original music video. It ran up 47m views, helping to place him among the higher echeleons of YouTube's hitmakers. But then a scammer—someone with no posted videos, no working contact info and no significant internet presence—claimed ownership of it through YouTube's ContentID system.Büttner appealed and was denied. Worse, it was clear that YouTube had simply allowed the scam account to wait until the last possible moment to respond, then to decide for itself whether it was a legitimate appeal. Büttner, being a serious channel operator with millions of subs, tried to get relief from his liaison at YouTube. He was told he had to work it out with the scammer (who was still being paid the revenue the video was generating) through the scammer's fake email address. YouTube gave him no other recourse and refused to provide more information.It got sorted out only after he went public and got lawyers involved.In this enraging video, Büttner explains what happened with remarkable calmness and professionalism, exposing in detail just how awful and broken ContentID is -- and how grossly vulnerable it is to bad-faith exploitation by frauds, scammers and wannabe censors.One trick that Büttner misses, however, is that ContentID isn't copyright law. The scammer probably didn't issue a fraudulent DMCA takedown, so won't end in trouble for that. ContentID is exactly the thing YouTube claims it doesn't do: it privately mediating ownership of content without involving the law. Read the rest

David Miscavige leads the Church of Scientology, the cultlike sci-fi religion notorious for its hostility to members, apostates and critics alike. His wife, Shelly, hasn't been seen in public in many years, and few trust the LAPD's proforma assurances that she is safe, let alone those of the church. Jezebel posted a long story about her alleged captivity, and Scientology is asking them to remove the post.The [church's lawyers'] letter makes some specific claims about both Shelly and Remini, which are as follows:1. Mrs. Miscavige is not “missing.” Remini previously filed a “missing person” report about Mrs. Miscavige with the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”). LAPD investigated. It then immediately concluded that Remini’s report was “unfounded,” which means the report was false and meritless. Mrs. Miscavige has no interest in appearing in public merely because Remini – who is no friend to Mrs. Miscavige, her husband or her religion (see below) – wants to use that as some cheap publicity stunt to get ratings.The LAPD hasn’t said that Remini’s report was “false” or charged her with filing a false report, which would be a misdemeanor under California law, but they did, as far as we know, close the investigation in 2015.Seems like it would be easy to clear all this up with an interview.Photo: Scientology Newsroom Read the rest

YouTube commenter Steve Kurtics-Lentinello: "They get more depressing over time.. poor Yoda :("Hmmmm.Video by Jason Scanlon. (via Laughing Squid) Read the rest

So, get this. For many years now, NASA has been putting out some really fun posters to bring awareness to their space missions. They reference everything from Star Trek to Star Wars and lots in-between.Bored Panda writes:Since the very first International Space Station mission in 2000, NASA has been creating expedition posters usually featuring a group photo of the crew. These posters were used to advertise expeditions and were also hung in NASA facilities and other government organizations. However, when astronauts got bored of the standard group photos they decided to spice things up a bit.They call them "cringy" but I love them. I think they're fun and creative. Here's a few of them (more here):images via NASA, lead image cropped to fit Read the rest

In 1950, four patriotic Scots broke in to Westminster Abbey to steal the Stone of Scone, a symbol of Scottish independence that had lain there for 600 years. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the memorable events of that evening and their meaning for the participants, their nation, and the United Kingdom.We'll also evade a death ray and puzzle over Santa's correspondence.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Some communities across California are suing to ban cannabis operations in their vicinity because they claim the smell from the crops is nauseating. I mean, they don't call it skunk for nothing. From the New York Times:As a result of the stench, residents in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, are suing to ban cannabis operations from their neighborhoods. Mendocino County, farther north, recently created zones banning cannabis cultivation — the sheriff’s deputy there says the stink is the No. 1 complaint...“It’s as if a skunk, or multiple skunks in a family, were living under our house,” said Grace Guthrie, whose home sits on the site of a former apple orchard outside the town of Sebastopol. Her neighbors grow pot commercially. “It doesn’t dissipate,” Ms. Guthrie said. “It’s beyond anything you would imagine.”When cannabis odors are at their peak, she and her husband, Robert, sometimes wear respirators, the kind one might put on to handle dangerous chemicals. During Labor Day weekend, relatives came to stay at the house, but cut short their visit because they couldn’t stand the smell...“Just because you like bacon doesn’t mean you want to live next to a pig farm,” said Lynda Hopkins, a member of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, whose office has been inundated with complaints about the smell...image: Wikipedia/Cannabis Training University Read the rest

It's easy to "jailbreak" an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, so you can run 3rd party apps. This ETA Prime video walks you through it what you need to do so you can sideload Android games as well as Kodi, an open-source media player. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan conducts a rigorously scientific fiscal experiment.

This funny South African ad depicts an African explorer discovering Europe in the 1650s, a counterfactual to the 1652 arrival in South Africa of the Dutch. But it's upsetting people there and fast food chain Chicken Licken has withdrawn it due to the complaints.South African Sandile Cele lodged a complaint with the Advertising Regulatory Board, arguing that the commercial made a "mockery of the struggles of the African people against the colonisation by the Europeans in general, and the persecutions suffered at the hands of the Dutch in particular".Upholding the complaint, the board said: "While the commercial seeks to turn the colonisation story on its head with Big John travelling to Europe, it is well-known that many Africans were in fact forced to travel to Europe in the course of the colonisation of Africa."They did not leave their countries and villages wilfully. They starved to death during those trips to Europe and arrived there under harsh and inhumane conditions."Chicken Licken said it wanted to show that South Africa had "all the potential to conquer the world and rewrite history from an African perspective". Read the rest

Flynn pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges, and is set to be sentenced on Tuesday.On the eve of former Trump aide Michael Flynn's sentencing on felony charges, special counsel Robert Mueller has released a January 2017 FBI memo that details an interview with Flynn by agent Peter Strzok and another FBI agent.Here is a PDF copy shared by USA Today.In the interview described in the SCO memo, Flynn --President Donald Trump's national security adviser at the time -- lied about his contact with Russia's Ambassador to the United States at that time, Sergey Kislyak.Flynn, writes Mueller, “does not need to be warned it is a crime to lie to federal agents to know the importance of telling them the truth.”This will be big. Judge in Flynn case says that the memo, written by FBI agents following their interview with Michael Flynn at the White House, should be made public, with some redactions allowed, and will be relevant at his sentencing. This memo had only been filed under seal.— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) December 17, 2018From the Daily Beast's synopsis:The document, dated February 2017, recounts Flynn’s conversation with FBI agents at the White House in January of that year. The notes state that agents asked Flynn if he remembered asking Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to refrain from retaliating against President Obama’s expulsion of Russian diplomats for meddling in the 2016 election. Flynn responded by saying, “Not really. I don't remember. It wasn’t ‘Don’t do anything.’” Agents also asked Flynn if he asked Russia and other countries to vote down a pending U.N. Read the rest

Researchers at Nvidia are creating interactive 3D virtual environments using videos of real cities. Read the rest

Popcorn is the delightful synth instrumental penned by Gershon Kingsley in 1969 for his classic LP "Music to Moog By." It was later covered by countless other artists including this gentleman, Jacques Perrot, who performs it on his face. (via Popcorn Song) Read the rest

The fight against surveillance capitalism and mass state surveillance has reached a tipping point, the peak-indifference moment, when new privacy advocates are self-radicalizing as they witness firsthand the undeniable risks of overcollection, over-retention, and secret manipulation of personal data.A natural response to this awakening is to declare personal data to be personal property and to use property-rights to manage our relationship to the surveillance machine. The response is natural for many reasons, but mostly because, after 40 years of neoliberalism, we have all but lost the ability to think of things as "valuable" unless they are owned.But the most valuable things in the world can never be owned (e.g. people, ideas). Making people into property makes them less valuable, not more.Instead, we have a whole vocabulary, and with it, a whole set of norms and laws, for describing the "interests" that accumulate around people: familial ties, state and police interests, interests the people have in themselves.Using property as the framework for managing our privacy will do us no good. Your phone number is an integer. It's sensitive and private, but you can't own it, and if you tried to, the cure would be worse than the disease.As Martin Tisney points out in an excellent essay in MIT Tech Review, property rights aren't just a dysfunctional way to make sense of privacy -- they're also ineffective. Even if you never share your data, corporations and governments can still make potentially compromising inferences about you by analyzing other peoples' data. Read the rest

No one bothered to tell this honey badger that the garbage can it's digging was designed to be baboon-proof. Not that it would matter: A honey badger isn't a baboon. In just a few minutes, it manages to yoink out a brag-worthy late night feast. Read the rest

Magician David Kwong moonlights (er, daylights?) as a crossword puzzle creator for the New York Times. In the parlance of the craft, he is a "cruciverbalist," one who is adept at making, or solving, crossword puzzles. (Wired) Read the rest

No one has been reported harmed. No bomb reported found.Police in Menlo Park, CA are at the Facebook and Instagram campus near the 200 block of Jefferson Avenue. According to multiple local news reports, NYPD forwarded an anonymous tip to local authorities.NBC Bay Area:A building on Facebook's campus in Menlo Park was evacuated Tuesday evening after a bomb threat, police said.Menlo Park police said the threat was called into the New York Police Department's Crimestopper unit, which in turn notified local authorities.According to Menlo Park police, the bomb threat was made to a Facebook building at 200 Jefferson Drive.Bomb squads from allied agencies across San Mateo County are on scene and going through the building. The NBC Bay Area chopper spotted several police patrol cars on the campus.Here's KRON's early report:Police are investigating a bomb threat at Facebook's campus in Menlo Park Tuesday evening.The Menlo Park Police Department says they were alerted by the New York Police Department of an anonymous tip regarding a bomb threat to Facebook. Menlo Park police then issued an alert at 5:22 p.m. asking residents to avoid the area of the 200 block of Jefferson Drive near Constitution Drive as they investigate. Facebook's campus has been evacuated. San Mateo County allied agencies bomb units are currently checking the building.Law enforcement officials did not provide any further details on the threat. BREAKING: Facebook confirms company is looking into a bomb threat on its headquarter campus in Menlo Park - spokesman pic.twitter.com/93PE9h3X0T— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) December 12, 2018 Read the rest

Barcelona-based Eclectic Method is most known for his remix songs that are based on pop culture (previously). Now he's trying something new, an experiment that's a little risky. He writes:Here's a video remix made from samples no longer than 0.5 seconds from 107 different artists. Madonna won her court case over the use of a 0.23 second horn stab in "Vogue". Sabrina Setlur won her courtcase for unauthorized use of 2 seconds of Kraftwerk. So I have been wondering how long is too long when it comes to sampling. This video remix is to test out the algorithm. Will YouTube's copyright ID system take offence at Taylor Swifts voice appearing for 0.14 seconds and her face occupying 18% of the screen... Who knows?If you're seeing the video, congrats, it hasn't been shut down yet. Read the rest

Equifax doxed 145 million Americans, dumping their most sensitive financial data into the world forever, with repercussions that will be felt for decades to come. A Congressional panel convened to evaluate the causes of the breach has published its majority report, endorsed by the Republicans on the committee: Equifax, in a drive to attain fast growth, acquired companies at a rate that exceeded its ability to securely integrate them; it neglected its IT, resulting in a critical vulnerability remaining unpatched for 145 days; it did not engage in basic preparation like a breach notification procedure. In other words, this catastrophe was the result of greed triumphing over good management, and was thus "entirely preventable."However, the Committee's Republican members refused to sign onto the very modest recommendations proposed by Democrats on the committee. These recommendations included "';requiring federal financial regulatory agencies to report their efforts to protect consumers from cybertheft and identify areas Congress could enhance agencies' authorities to achieve that goal,' guidelines for federal contractors to comply with established cybersecurity standards, a comprehensive notification law that dictates how victims of a victim breach must be notified and an amended Federal Trade Commission Act to 'strengthen civil penalties for private sector violations of consumer data security requirements.'"Equifax released a statement complaining that they weren't given enough time prior to the committee report to prepare their spin. "We are deeply disappointed that the Committee chose not to provide us with adequate time to review and respond to a 100-page report consisting of highly technical and important information. Read the rest

An archaeologist is studying a 4,000-year-old game board carved into the floor of a rock shelter in Azerbaijan. According to American Museum of Natural History researcher Walter Crist, the board was used to play an ancient game called "58 Holes" or "Hounds and Jackals." From Live Science:(Previously), British archaeologist Howard Carter found a game set with playing pieces fashioned like those animals in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Amenemhat IV, who lived in the 18th century B.C.The distinctive pattern of round pits scored in the rock of the shelter in Azerbaijan came from that same game, Crist told Live Science. But the Azerbaijan version may be even older than the game set found in the pharaoh's tomb...Though the rules of 58 Holes are unknown, many think it was played a bit like modern backgammon, with counters, such as seeds or stones, moved around the board until they reached a goal."It is two rows in the middle and holes that arch around outside, and it's always the fifth, 10th, 15th and 20th holes that are marked in some way," Crist said of the pattern cut into the rock shelter. "And the hole on the top is a little bit larger than the other ones, and that's usually what people think of as the goal or the endpoint of the game."Players may have used dice or casting sticks to regulate the movement of counters on the board, but so far, no dice have been found with any ancient game set of 58 Holes or Hounds and Jackals, he said... Read the rest

Meeting Queen Elizabeth II was a little too real for 9-year-old Nathan Grant. As she approached him and his parents during her visit to The Thomas Coram Foundation for Children last Wednesday, he bowed out of the whole thing by dropping down to the floor and crawling towards the nearest exit. Once he was through the door, he turned around to say, "Bye!" Read the rest