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Michael Avenatti has been arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of domestic violence.We can confirm that today LAPD Detectives arrested Michael Avenatti on suspicion of domestic violence. This is an ongoing investigation and we will provide more details as they become available.— LAPD HQ (@LAPDHQ) November 15, 2018Avenatti is best known as the spotlight-thirsty and Trump-baiting attorney for Stormy Daniels, in a matter involving President Donald Trump. Avenatti is a perennial cable news guest, and until today, an aspiring Presidential candidate making the political rounds. He is currently in Los Angeles police custody as of Wednesday afternoon. A report on the incident in the Century City area was taken on Tuesday, said Los Angeles police.News of Avenatti's arrest was first reported by TMZ.“Avenatti's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment” by BuzzFeed News.News: Michael Avenatti has been arrested for felony domestic violence and is currently in LAPD custody, @CJRosenbaum reports— Jon Passantino (@passantino) November 14, 2018LAPD officers in West Los Angeles have responded to an incident involving Michael Avenatti, where he is detained during the process of taking an incident report, sources tell @NBCNews - @anblanx— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 14, 2018Sorry, let me translate this Michael Avenatti tweet: What this means is he's been detained, but probably hasn't been formally booked yet, which is why they aren't officially confirming. He's not in sheriff's jail locator either. https://t.co/J2Ue8Q5DBV— James Queally (@JamesQueallyLAT) November 14, 2018From TMZ:Our sources say the alleged incident occurred Tuesday, but there was a confrontation Wednesday between the two at an exclusive apartment building in the Century City area of L.A. Read the rest

We are watching Facebook unravel in real time. I hope.From the New York Times, a story I can hardly believe -- had to read some grafs twice:Excerpt: When Facebook users learned last spring that the company had compromised their privacy in its rush to expand, allowing access to the personal information of tens of millions of people to a political data firm linked to President Trump, Facebook sought to deflect blame and mask the extent of the problem.And when that failed — as the company’s stock price plummeted and sparked a consumer backlash — Facebook went on the attack.While Mr. Zuckerberg conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, persuading a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.You're gonna want to read the whole thing.This story has been 6 months in the making. It started with a question: What happened inside Facebook over the last 3 years, and what did top executives, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, do in the wake of crisis after crisis battering the company? https://t.co/N6kaDNqfj6— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) November 14, 2018As a guy who's been lied to and about by Facebook in the past, and remained fair and tried to give them credit when due anyway, I'm just aghast. Read the rest

The American Cable Association (ACA) represents 700+ small/medium US cable operators; they've written to the Assistant Attorney General calling for an "immediate" antitrust investigation into Comcast's business practices, a call that was supported by Donald Trump in a tweet.The ACA claims that Comcast's market dominance gives it the potential to get preferential treatment for "must have" channels, and that its past conduct (including violations of its consent decree) put it at a high risk of these abuses (Trump claimed that the abuses were already "routine," which is not what the ACA alleges).Comcast owns NBC, one of the many media companies that Trump has vocally denounced.The Justice Department is currently trying to stop a merger between AT&T and Time Warner, and the ACA strategically argues that Comcast is more dangerous than those companies combined. But the department may already have its sights on Comcast. In August, Delrahim warned Comcast that it would continue monitoring potential antitrust threats even after the consent decree expired. Last month, Delrahim also said the Justice Department would investigate whether Comcast was using its 30 percent share in Hulu to undermine the streaming video service, which competes with traditional cable.The ACA’s letter also raises concerns involving Hulu, suggesting that Comcast could effectively hold the service hostage. “We have heard from ACA members that they fear that ComcastNBCU may restrict, if it is not already restricting, their ability to access Hulu and make it available to their customers as an alternative to their cable offerings,” reads the letter. Read the rest

In case you hadn't noticed from the sleigh bell-heavy music and the hues on your Starbucks cup, the holiday season hasn't shown any more patience this year. But that doesn't need to be a bad thing, especially if you're hoping to get a jump on your shopping. Retailers aren't waiting til Black Friday to dish out the deals, and neither should you. Here are's six of the more notable bargains on the radar, from booze paraphernalia to tech-minded winter wear:Knit Touchscreen GlovesSo you're walking in frostbite weather and an urgent text pops up. It's an all-too-common annoyance with an easy solution: These fashionable knit gloves, equipped with a conductive fingertip surface that lets you swipe and send with comfort in any climate. They're currently 42% off the MSRP at $10.99.TREBLAB X11 Bluetooth In-Ear HeadphonesWith passive noise-cancellation tech and HD sound, these next-gen buds will be going straight from the stocking into your music-loving friend's ear. (And with the stabilizing ear fins, they'll stay there.) Equipped with Bluetooth 4.1 CSR and a built-in mic, they're equally well suited for taking calls on the go, at the gym - anywhere you need hands-free audio. Best of all, they're $29.99 - a significant drop from the already sale-priced $54.99.Eravino Whiskey Globe DecanterHere's one for the worldly tippler on your list. Mounted on a hardwood display, this decanter holds 30 ounces of whiskey or other spirits inside an etched globe map, complete with a blown glass ship-in-a-bottle. Great for Christmas, but just as well suited as a gift for newlyweds. Read the rest

Sothebys is to auction a diamond ring created by Apple design chief Jony Ive and Marc Newson.Theirs will be created by removing material rather than adding – an ambition made possible by the extraordinary scale of the stone which will enable the ring to be completely made of this material.Creating a ring-shaped diamond is no small feat; the diamond block will be faceted with several thousand facets, some of which are as small as several hundred micrometers. The interior ring will be cylindrically cut out for the desired smoothness using a micrometer thick water jet inside which a laser beam is cast. The finished ring will have between 2000-3000 facets which has never been seen before on a single piece.It'll be made from a cultured diamond and is expected to fetch $150-$250k. It looks great, but is difficult to upgrade and tends to overheat if you leave magazines on top. Read the rest

In the debate over "responsible disclosure," advocates for corporate power say that companies have to be able to decide who can reveal defects in their products and under which circumstances, lest bad actors reveal their bugs without giving them time to create and promulgate a patch.But over and over again, this theory of corporate responsibility and security researcher intransigence falls apart. The reality is that the kinds of security researchers who want to report bugs (rather than using them to attack people) are primarily interested in improving security, and corporations that offer good-faith promises (and live up to them) can easily tempt researchers into coordinating their disclosures. When corporations threaten researchers or fail to act on their warnings, the result isn't silence -- it's uncoordinated disclosure, when a security researcher simply publishes their findings without warning the company first.The latest example of this is Sergey Zelenyuk's publication of a "100% reliable" exploit against Virtualbox, Oracle's popular virtual machine software. The exploit allows attackers to puncture the virtual machine's sandbox and access the underlying system's files and processes.Zelenyuk published the zero-day bug because of Oracle's long history of mistreatment of security researchers (including threatening customers with legal retaliation if they hire auditors to examine the software Oracle sold them), and its cavalier handling of bugs, including a 15-month lag between learning of a similar bug and issuing a patch.It's a sobering reminder that the "responsible disclosure" debate isn't about under which circumstances researchers can go public; it's about whether they choose to trust a company before going public. Read the rest

Amanda Marcotte, author of Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself, explained why Trump's followers embrace his lies even when they know they are being lied to:Thread by @AmandaMarcotte: "No one actually believes Jim Acosta did anything wrong. This is one of those situations where conservatives collectively pretend to believe […]"Image: C-Span Read the rest

Glasgow-based Collins Dictionary has chosen their 2018 Word of the Year: single-use. The adjective meaning "made to be used once only" beat out the abbreviation VAR ("video assistant referee"), floss (the dance, not the dental product), gammon (a white, angry male who supports Brexit), and plogging (a Swedish activity that involves jogging and picking up litter).Selected as the #CollinsWOTY 2018, single-use encompasses a global movement to kick our addiction to disposable products. From plastic bags, bottles and straws to washable nappies, we have become more conscious of how our habits and behaviours can impact the environment...Our records show a four-fold increase in usage of this word since 2013, with news stories and the likes of the BBC’s Blue Planet II raising public awareness of this environmental issue."Single-use" also beat out other words on this year's shortlist: whitewash, vegan, MeToo, and backstop.image via Collins Dictionary Read the rest

Equipped only with handtools, this woman harvests bamboo from a grove and makes a beautiful furniture set. It is interesting to see how she heats the bamboo over a fire to make it bendable.[via Core77] Read the rest

This "Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Guy" makes me so happy! For $13 (plus an annoyingly steep $9 to ship to the states), you get this inspired desk toy along with a little zine that tells the origin story of the wacky tube man, aka the "Tall Boy."Watch him flail about just like his granddaddy:In related news: Inflatable air dancer humorously synced to music Read the rest

In September, a consortium of 11 of Europe's largest science funders announced, "Plan S," whereby they would no longer fund research unless the grantees promised that the results would be published in an open access journal, which anyone could read and copy for free. Two more funders quickly signed up after the announcements, bringing the total to 13. Now, Europe's two largest science funders have joined the consortium: The Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation, and with these 15 funders backing Plan S, nearly all science research in Europe will be open access.Plan S does not allow "hybrid" journals which mix open access and paywalled science, though Wellcome will continue to fund research for hybrid publication until 22, but only if the journal has a "transformative OA agreement" promising to transition away from its paywall. Another exception to Plan S allows publication in paywalled journals provided this takes place simultaneous with deposit in an open repository such as PubMed Central.Some publishers have bifurcated their journals, making them partially open access, but only for research funded under an open access mandate.Open access has gone from a fringe issue to one of global import. In 2013, the young technologist and activist Aaron Swartz hanged himself while facing 13 felony counts for accessing scientific papers over MIT's network, and his death created a sense of urgency for the issue that has not faded.The open access portal Sci-Hub makes the entire corpus of scientific literature available for free, without permission, and has been the subject of widespread internet censorship orders, as giant science publishers like Elsevier seek to block it on the national level. Read the rest

James Corden is back with a new episode of Carpool Karaoke. On this drive, he rides, sings, and chats with living legend Barbra Streisand. The 76-year-old singer sat in the driver's seat and shared that she once phoned Apple CEO Tim Cook in the hopes he could get Siri to pronounce her last name correctly. It worked, Siri now pronounces it the right way, "Strei-sand."Ms. Streisand has a new album out. It's called "Walls" and she created it in response to "these difficult times:"screenshot via Read the rest

FTP -- the "file transfer protocol" -- is a long-supplanted Unix tool for transferring files between computers, once standard but now considered to be too insecure to use; so it's alarming that it's running on the voting machines that will be used in elections in Wisconsin and Kentucky tomorrow.The FBI has warned that "criminal actors" use FTP in targeting US voting machines. The Wisconsin Elections Commission and DHS have reported hacker attacks on Wisconsin voting machines in the 2016 elections.Propublica portscanned the voting machines in Kentucky and Wisconsin, which are connected to the fucking internet, and found FTP services being advertised by servers on the machines.Kentucky's voting machines did not require a password to access their FTP servers.As of late Wednesday, Kentucky’s voter-registration server still allowed users to browse a list of files without a password. Even the names of the files contained clues that could conceivably help an intruder. For example, they indicated that Kentucky may use driver’s licenses on file in its motor vehicle software to verify voters’ identities.Bradford Queen, a spokesman for Kentucky’s secretary of state, declined to say if running an FTP server was problematic. “We are constantly guarding against foreign and domestic bad actors and have confidence in the security measures deployed to protect our infrastructure,” he said.“ProPublica’s claims regarding Kentucky’s website lack a complete understanding of the commonwealth’s full approach to security, which is multi-layered. Defenses exist within each layer to determine and block offending traffic.”File-Sharing Software on State Election Servers Could Expose Them to Intruders [Jack Gillum and Jeff Kao/Propublica] Read the rest

Brian Kemp is the Secretary of State for Georgia, where is he also running for governor, meaning that he is overseeing his own election -- and in that capacity, he has purged thousands of Black voters from the rolls (the total purge runs to the millions) and distinguished himself as one of the last holdouts for replacing his state's worst-of-breed insecure voting machines with ones that produce a paper audit trail that can be consulted if they are suspected of malfunction.Kemp, who is running against Stacey Abrams (a Black woman with an "unapologetic progressive" platform) has a long history of voting machine shenanigans (one set of machines was wiped right after Georgia voters filed a lawsuit involving them) and his campaign has been a mix of (semi)coded racism and performative tough-guy stunts.His latest eleventh-hour salvo has reached a new low for absurdist tragicomedy: Kemp has accused the Democratic Party of hacking into the state's voter registration system in order to steal its records (these records are sold to anyone who asks, by the State of Georgia, for $250!).Besides the "the Demmycrats hacked us to save $250" weirdness, there's plenty more surrealism in Kemp's accusation: Kemp has accused the Democrats of two separate, mutually exclusive offenses: hacking into the voter registration system to steal its data, and hacking into it to expose its vulnerabilities (vulnerabilities, mind, which have been lavishly documented and demonstrated by independent security researchers).Kemp is a serial offender when it comes to false accusations of hacking voting systems: in 2016, he accused the Department of Homeland Security of hacking Georgia's vote (in reality, someone at the DHS had visited Kemp's Secretary of State website. Read the rest

A non-negotiable feature of Disneyland's 2008 contract with Unite Local 11 -- which represents the laundry workers who clean linens from the resort's hotels and restaurants -- was a new "work-tracking" system that used "gamification" to display realtime signals about each worker's productivity on public leaderboards, colorcoded with the slowest workers' names in red, as well as color-coding indicators on individual machines to indicate whether they were underperforming.The workers called this system "the electronic whip" and they say that it had the intended effect of speeding up their work -- at the expense of bitter fighting between workers (in a workplace that had a decades-long reputation for being a good and pleasant place to work) and a sharp increase in on-the-job injuries.Disneyland has been the site of intense union organizing, a pushback that was triggered by a decades-long ratcheting-down of real wages and working conditions.While this whip was cracking, the workers sped up. ‘We saw a higher incidence of injuries,’ Topete said. ‘Several people were injured on the job.’ The formerly collegial environment degenerated into a race. The laundry workers competed with each other, and got upset when coworkers couldn’t keep up. People started skipping bathroom breaks. Pregnant workers fell behind. ‘The scoreboard incentivises competition,’ said Topete. ‘Our human competitiveness, whatever makes us like games, whatever keeps us wanting to win, it’s a similar thing that was happening. Even if you didn’t want to.’The dark side of gamifying work [Vincent Gabrielle/Aeon](Thanks, Don!)(Image: Cryteria, CC-BY) Read the rest

This week's Saudi State-sactioned Murder Wheel of Misfortune has landed upon "acid bath."A top Turkish official, presidential adviser Yasin Aktay, has said he believes Jamal Khashoggi's body was dissolved in acid after being cut up. The "only logical conclusion", he said, was that those who had killed the Saudi journalist in Istanbul had destroyed his body "to leave no trace behind".Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi rulers, was killed inside the country's consulate on 2 October. No forensic evidence has been provided to prove his body was dissolved. What will the story be next week? Tktktktkttiktick tick tick tick... tick.... "eaten by angry raccoons." Read the rest

For more than a decade, Shipping and Transit LLC (AKA Arrivalstar) has been aggressively pursuing dubious patent claims against public transit companies, shippers, and other businesses whose practices overlapped with Arrivalstar's absurd, obvious patents on using GPSes to figure out where stuff was.Now, Shipping and Transit is bankrupt, and it has valued its portfolio of 34 patents at $1. It's the most honest moment in the company's shameful history.Shipping and Transit is the poster-child for sloppiness at the US Patent and Trademark Office. The company owns a suite of patents for using GPS exactly as it was designed to work: to figure out where stuff is, and then to log and/or transmit that location. The people who filed these patents didn't invent GPS: they just took someone else's widely used invention and patented the most obvious way to use it. The US Patent and Trademark Office granted the patent, Shipping and Transit bought it, and then used it to harass and soak people who were making products and providing services (including city bus services!), while Shipping and Transit made nothing (except lawsuits).Thankfully, there have been some changes in patent rules that have made it easier to get junk patents thrown out. After a couple of significant court losses in which Shipping and Transit was ordered to pay their victims' legal fees, and facing mounting debts, the company filed for bankruptcy.Though the company made millions in settlements and "licenses" for its patent portfolio, it valued the portfolio at $1 in the bankruptcy. Read the rest

Hey you know what happens when a superpower declares that it's going to take steps that will allow it to dictate the internal policies of other nations?I'll give you a hint: nothing good. From Vox.comNational Security Adviser John Bolton just gave a modern-day “Axis of Evil” speech, this one focused on three countries in Latin America.In a 30-minute address at Miami Dade College’s Freedom Tower, Bolton said the Trump administration will take a hard line against Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua by sanctioning the countries and cutting off diplomatic relations with them until they meet US demands.“This Troika of Tyranny, this triangle of terror stretching from Havana to Caracas to Managua, is the cause of immense human suffering, the impetus of enormous regional instability, and the genesis of a sordid cradle of communism in the Western Hemisphere,” Bolton said. “Under President Trump, the United States is taking direct action against all three regimes to defend the rule of law, liberty, and basic human decency in our region.”I guess that if Trump can't stop folks from migrating to the American border (totally legal) to request asylum (very legal as well), then he and his flying monkeys will throw cash and personnel at stopping the problem at what they perceive to be the source? This sounds pretty thin.According to Vox, US relations with Cuba will become more limited. Diplomats--apparently America still has those--will attempt to force the Venezuelan government to release hundreds of political prisoners and Nicaragua, which we've talked about here extensively, will get a talking to over the 300-plus civilians that have been killed so far this year in anti-government protests. Read the rest

Katie Notopoulos of Buzzfeed has found a new way to amuse herself -- looking at houses on Zillow that cost more than $10 million, yet still suck.So I moved the sliding toggle out of the price range that might, in theory, be realistic for me, to find houses in the area that cost more than $10 million — just out of curiosity. And what I found was pure, hideous, tacky, gilded-and-marble joy.I found mansions with suits of armor in the hallway, made to look like medieval castles. Mansions clearly built in the ’80s, with custom white metal railings, by a Miami Vice fan. A mansion in Connecticut that is literally a replica of Monticello, a Nashville mansion with a giant custom pirate ship bed that belongs to Big Kenny from Big & Rich (I googled the address), a ’90s purple explosion that belonged to Eddie Murphy (I learned that when I called the realtor to ask for permission to use the photos in this article; apparently his ex-wife sold it after their divorce). Mansions on Staten Island that, well, look like mansions on Staten Island.Image: Zillow Read the rest

A drunken baggage handler for Piedmont Airlines was in Kansas City when he took a snooze on the job. Just a bit later he woke up to find himself in Chicago. The gentleman had taken his lie down in the cargo hold on a Boeing 737 American Airlines flight.Although there were 80 passengers onboard, the heated, pressurized cargo hold was empty, making for a cozy napping nook. The man wasn't hurt. He was sent back to Kansas City with no charges pressed. It's one hell of a way to fly for free.Via The Kansas City StarImage: Colin Bowern/Flickr Read the rest

The bad news is that, due to the sheer tininess of certain components, iPhones are particularly vulnerable to going haywire in the presence of helium. The good news is that helium just isn't a problem you run into often.Sure enough, Apple’s user guide for the iPhone and Apple watch admits this is a problem: “Exposing iPhone to environments having high concentrations of industrial chemicals, including near evaporating liquified gasses such as helium, may damage or impair iPhone functionality. … If your device has been affected and shows signs of not powering on, the device can typically be recovered. Leave the unit unconnected from a charging cable and let it air out for approximately one week. The helium must fully dissipate from the device, and the device battery should fully discharge in the process. After a week, plug your device directly into a power adapter and let it charge for up to one hour. Then the device can be turned on again.” (Emphasis added.) Read the rest

Vice decided to test out Facebook's commitment to positively identifying the people and organizations behind political ads, so they applied for clearance to buy ads in the names of ever sitting US Senator, showing no proof, and Facebook granted permission in each case.They didn't go on to buy ads, but if they had, those ads would have run with Facebook's standard "paid for" disclosures, as in "Paid For By Chuck Schumer."It turns out that Facebook's new anti-fraudulent political ad measure operates on the honor system.To test it, VICE News applied to buy fake ads on behalf of all 100 sitting U.S. senators, including ads “Paid for by” by Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer. Facebook’s approvals were bipartisan: All 100 sailed through the system, indicating that just about anyone can buy an ad identified as “Paid for by” by a major U.S. politician.What’s more, all of these approvals were granted to be shared from pages for fake political groups such as “Cookies for Political Transparency” and “Ninja Turtles PAC.” VICE News did not buy any Facebook ads as part of the test; rather, we received approval to include "Paid for by" disclosures for potential ads.We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them. [William Turton/Vice](via JWZ) Read the rest

Since Halloween is nearly here, Norwegian musical artist Leo Moracchioli (previously on BB) made a metal cover of Danny Elfman's "This is Halloween" from Tim Burton's 1993 classic The Nightmare Before Christmas. Prepare to headbang with a devil puppet.(The Awesomer) Read the rest

Longreads posted an excerpt from from Alec Nevala-Lee’s new book, Astounding, recounting the events that led to L. Ron Hubbard creating a religion and its origins in the golden age of science fiction: Dawn of Dianetics: L. Ron Hubbard, John W. Campbell, and the Origins of Scientology.In the summer of 1949, Campbell was thirty-nine years old and living in New Jersey. For over a decade, he had been the single most influential figure in what would later be known as the golden age of science fiction, and he had worked extensively with Hubbard, who was popular with fans. The two men were personally close, and when Hubbard, who was a year younger, suffered from depression after World War II, Campbell became concerned for his friend’s mental state: “He was a quivering psychoneurotic wreck, practically ready to break down completely.”Hubbard had sought medical treatment for his psychological problems, which he also tried to address in unconventional ways. While living in Savannah, Georgia, he began to revise Excalibur, an unpublished manuscript on the human mind that he had written years earlier. In a letter to his agent, Hubbard said that the book had information on how to “rape women without their knowing it,” and that he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to use it to abolish the Catholic Church or found one of his own. He concluded, “Don’t know why I suddenly got the nerve to go into this again and let it loose. It’s probably either a great love or an enormous hatred of humanity.”The degree of Campbell's involvement in shaping early Scientology lore came as quite a surprise. Read the rest

Deon is a project to create automated "ethics checklists" for data science projects; by default, running the code creates a comprehensive checklist covering data collection and storage, modeling and deployment: the checklist items aren't specific actions, they're "meant to provoke discussion among good-faith actors who take their ethical responsibilities seriously. Because of this, most of the items are framed as prompts to discuss or consider. Teams will want to document these discussions and decisions for posterity."The lists can be customized for your own purposes, and if you think the default list needs revising, there's a democratic process for amending it.Checklists are a powerful way to ensure that important steps are not missed out; the rise of surgical checklists made an enormous positive change in patient outcomes -- hilariously, though surgeons often chafe at having to refer to checklists while doing a procedure they've done a hundred times, they overwhelmingly say that they would prefer to have checklists in the mix any time they are the patients.First and foremost, our goal is not to be arbitrators of what ethical concerns merit inclusion. We have a process for changing the default checklist, but we believe that many domain-specific concerns are not included and teams will benefit from developing custom checklists. Not every checklist item will be relevant. We encourage teams to remove items, sections, or mark items as N/A as the concerns of their projects dictate.Second, we built our initial list from a set of proposed items on multiple checklists that we referenced. Read the rest

Have you ever wondered if someone died in your house, or worse? Enter DiedInHouse.com. A simple $11.99 search through them will tell you everything you (probably don't) want to know.A query on this website will uncover if a specific address is "stigmatized," meaning that it's got issues beyond its physical condition. Sellers are generally not under legal obligation to share if something horrible -- like a murder, suicide, or, say, a meth lab -- has happened on a property. And they certainly aren't required to disclose "paranormal" activity.Software engineer Roy Condrey founded the site in 2013 after getting a strange text.Forbes:The website’s creation begins like a ghost story. ...Condrey received a text message in the middle of the night from one of his tenants that read: “Did you know that your house is haunted?” Condrey went down a cyber rabbit hole seeking, but not finding, an easy way to determine if his property had indeed seen a gruesome crime or fatality. “I went online to find a ‘Carfax’ of sorts for deaths in homes and I didn’t find anything, but I did find pages and pages of people asking if there’s a way to find out if their house is haunted,” says Condrey, who rents out several properties. He later learned through his data collection that, in fact, at least 4.5 million homes nationwide have had documented deaths take place on the premises. The number of homeowners that know about the history of their home, however, is unknown. Read the rest

This gorgeous 1960s aerodynamic test model of a NASA supersonic transport plane from the space agency's Langley Research Center can be yours for $5,685. On offer from Agent Gallery Chicago, it's approximately 51" long with a wingspan of 24" and "built of wood and composite materials." Unfortunately, one of the fins has snapped off but I'm sure the right person could work wonders with a little balsa wood, X-acto knife, and paint."RARE 1960'S NASA AERODYNAMICS SST MODEL" (via Uncrate) Read the rest

Set aside your feeble 3D printers, meatbags. The Grind Master demonstrates the supremacy of fully-automated robot milling of stone, wood and other sculptural materials. Here the Buddha's head is sculpted from foam:Previously: Epic glove ad explains benefits of gloves Read the rest

Whether you already have hearing loss or want to save what you have, it's time to look into bone conduction earphones. Well, guess what! These True Wireless Bone Conduction Earphones are on sale and a great introduction to the tech.If you're not familiar with bone conduction, you'll notice something different about these otherwise minimalist gadgets: No earbud. That's because the headphones sit outside of the ear, transmitting sound through the bones of the skull in a way that completely bypasses the eardrum while still delivering crisp stereo sound. Lightweight and unobtrusive, they're also equipped with 4.2 Bluetooth wireless technology and a one-touch home button that lets you answer calls or switch music tracks quickly and easily. They juice up in just two hours and can last up to 10 hours on a single charge, making them your new traveling companion no matter where you need sound.Pick up the True Wireless Bone Conduction Earphones today at a 20% discounted price of $39.99. Read the rest

Britain, like most of western Christendom, celebrates Christmas with ornamented trees. The British mark Remebrance Day for World War I on November 11 by wearing paper poppies. A shopping mall in Salisbury, England, has ingeniously combined the two events by making a giant Christmas tree out of paper poppies. One tweet described the red tree as an oddity, saying: "Christmas and Remembrance Sunday, together at last in one oddly conceived package."Another comment described it as "tasteless", while a further tweet said it was "disrespectful". But the Royal British Legion said it was "grateful to all individuals, as well as any shops, pubs and other commercial enterprises, which choose to show their support for the Armed Forces Community".There's something about the way monumental paganism remains an emergent property of the British condition, even (especially) when it's trying to do blithely inoffensive corporate promotional material. MARKETING CONSULTANT: George, something's come up about the sign by the poppy tree. It's Selfridges. They object to some of the text.GEORGE: What now?CONSULTANT: It's the line that reads "KNEEL BEFORE THE BLOOD TREE! FUCK BEFORE THE BLOOD GOD!" They're wondering if it could say "copulate" or "make love" instead of "fuck". GEORGE: (sighs angrily) There's always something. Read the rest

The U.S. Marine Corps is looking into allegations that one of its pilots drew a giant invisible dick in the sky, angering people who don't like giant invisible dicks.From USA Today:Maj. Josef Patterson, spokesman for 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, told the Marine Corps Times that the aircraft in question belongs to Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101. Patterson could not say whether the pilot was an instructor or in training."Obscene or inappropriate actions, flight or not, do not reflect the core values we hold as Marines," Patterson told NBC 7 San Diego. Somebody needs to have a word with the crew of US Navy T-34C 160937 SHUTR91 out of MCAS Miramar 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/WgrgkKzRln— Aircraft Spots (@AircraftSpots) October 23, 2018 Read the rest

You know those super real-looking food samples on display – sampuru – in front of restaurants all over Japan? Now, imagine a mashup between those and your phone case. Here's Rakuten's nice line up of delicious-looking coverings for your phone. There is everything from sushi to pizza toast to curry and tacos, from bacon and eggs to shrimp tempura, and so much more. You can also set your phone into a stand shaped like a small bowl of ramen.If you would rather keep your old case but still want to be in on the food fun, watch this video till the end. Read the rest

To Whom It May Concern:I write today on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to raise urgent issues related to Articles 11 and 13 of the upcoming Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, currently under discussion in the Trilogues.The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. We work to ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as our use of technology grows. We are supported by over 37,000 donating members around the world, including around three thousand within the European Union.We believe that Articles 11 and 13 are ill-considered and should not be EU law, but even stipulating that systems like the ones contemplated by Articles 11 and 13 are desirable, the proposed text of the articles in both the Parliament and Council texts contain significant deficiencies that will subvert their stated purpose while endangering the fundamental human rights of Europeans to free expression, due process, and privacy.It is our hope that the detailed enumeration of these flaws, below, will cause you to reconsider Articles 11 and 13's inclusion in the Directive altogether, but even in the unfortunate event that Articles 11 and 13 appear in the final language that is presented to the Plenary, we hope that you will take steps to mitigate these risks, which will substantially affect the transposition of the Directive in member states, and its resilience to challenges in the European courts . Read the rest

The latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has proven a sumbitch to contain. Since this latest "oh shit" moment in the history of this infectious outbreak started on August 1st, the brave healthcare professionals and epidemiologists throwing their shoulders into the problem have reported 200 total cases of the disease, 117 confirmed Ebola-related deaths and 35 deaths that are probably related to the illness. This latest outbreak, the 10th to have cropped up in Congo since 1976, is proving more difficult, logistically, than past outbreaks have been. The epicenter of the outbreak is in North Kivu Province: chockablock with danger as government forces, local militias and regional warlords get their violence on. This makes getting folks in the region to the care that they need and, just as vital, containing the disease, far more difficult than it already is. From The New York Times:Congolese rebels have killed 15 civilians and abducted a dozen children in an attack in the center of the latest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, Congo’s military said Sunday. The violence threatened to again force the suspension of efforts to contain the virus.Congo’s health ministry has reported “numerous aggressions” in the new outbreak against health workers, who have described hearing gunshots daily. Many are operating under the armed escort of United Nations peacekeepers or Congolese security forces, and ending work by sundown to lower the risk of attack.The World Health Organization hasn't classified the outbreak as a world health emergency, yet. Read the rest

Despite an uprising of Amazon employees over the use of the company's AI facial recognition program ("Rekognition") in law enforcement, the company is actively courting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the hopes that it will use the wildly inaccurate technology.Thanks to work by McKinsney, ICE and Amazon's sales team met over the summer to discuss how Amazon's facial recognition could help the agency, which has cemented its reputation for performative xenophobic cruelty with a program of stealing babies from immigrant parents, dooming thousands of babies and children to never see their parents again.ICE could use facial recognition as part of its illegal surveillance of medical facilities and houses of worship.Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recently described his pro-immigration views ("I’d let them in if it was me, I like ‘em, I want all of them in"). In an email to ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) office dated June 15, 2018, an Amazon “sales principal” described the meeting and spelled out follow-up “action items.” One was setting up a tech briefing for ICE officials about tools including the tagging and analysis capabilities of Amazon’s real-time facial matching system, dubbed “Rekognition.”“Thanks again for your interest in AWS [Amazon Web Service] to support ICE and the HSI mission,” the Amazon salesperson wrote.The email lists “actions items from our conversation,” starting with an “Innovation Workshop focused on a big HSI problem,” but does not describe the problem. Regarding that problem, the Amazon employee wrote, “I would be happy to arrange for a 1 day workshop. Read the rest

Today on ABC's The View, Senator Jeff Flake admits that he doesn't know if Brett Kavanaugh, accused by three women of sexual assault, was telling the truth or not during his hearing before being confirmed to the Supreme Court. It was Flake who had requested a delay in the confirmation process to make room for a week-long FBI-investigation into the sexual assault accusations against Kavanaugh. At about 5:20 in the video, he's asked if he believed Ford, and he answers, "She was very compelling. He was very persuasive. I don't know. I don't know. I wish I had the certitude that some of my colleagues expressed. But I said on the floor before that hearing, we’re likely to hear the hearing with as much doubt as certainty. And that’s how I felt afterwards.”Later, at 6:15, he's asked again, "So you didn't believe her?" And he answers, "I don't know. I don't know if I believed him, either."Via Daily Beast Read the rest

I love the ink in the Uni-Ball Signo Gel Pen. It's stark, smooth, and pure. If you've not tried one yet, you're in for a treat. Amazon has them on sale right now - a 3-pack for $3.72. Read the rest

Why did early humans form their tools into teardrop shapes? Why do so many human-made things have proportions that match the Golden Ratio? Why is symmetry appealing? Why is human made abstract art preferred over procedurally generated art? This new video by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell explains that humans like the way certain things look because they are tied in some way to our survival.This explains why I like visiting r/cozyplaces. Read the rest

A man couldn't resist the urge to climb Len Lye's "Water Whirler" sculpture in Wellington, New Zealand earlier this month. To his surprise, the $1 million artwork snapped. In a final act of resistentialism, the sculpture fell on the man while he was in the water, and he was sent to the hospital.From The New Zealand Herald:Roger Horrocks, a trustee of The Len Lye Foundation and author of Len Lye's biography, said it was not the first time the iconic sculpture had been damaged.The foundation had no uptake when it previously recommended Wellington City Council block access to the sculpture. He hoped it would now reconsider."A sculpture like that has to be proofed against idiots - total idiots who want to destroy it."Image: YouTube screenshot Read the rest

If you're shopping for a camping lantern, you're looking for reliability, period. So it's nice to find something like the Revogi Convertible LED Lantern that jumps over that low bar and actually offers some versatility.Made of simple materials, the Revogi is high-tech in a refreshingly minimalist, eight-ounce package. Yes, it'll light up the campsite and then some with 25 LED bulbs delivering up to 2.5 watts, and it can do it for up to six hours on a charge at the highest of its three brightness settings. But it's also collapsible, which allows not only for added portability but functionality. Fold it out and it's a lantern, collapse it and it's a powerful spotlight. Thanks to the sleek design, it can even serve as an indoor lamp.In short, it can go just about anywhere. The Revogi Convertible LED Lantern is $32.99 now - 17% off the original MSRP. Read the rest

I learned about a phone service called Twilio from reading this Lifehacker article. The article is mainly about how to set up a phone number that makes calls "disappear into the ether, never reaching me, never bouncing back, but disappearing like a stone tossed into the fog." I'm not sure why just making up a random number wouldn't be the easiest thing to do if that's your goal, but Twilio sounds useful if you need a way to receive voicemail from certain people without having to hear your regular phone ring. One cool thing about Twilio is the way you can create a computer-voice announcement just by writing the words you want it to say:But here’s the fun part. When you click on your phone number’s settings on the Twilio dashboard, you can tell the service what it should do when somebody calls or texts the number. By default, it reads a little message (saying that you haven’t set up the number, or something). So I copied that message, and altered it so it sounded like a full voicemail box. Here’s my script:You have reached. 5 5 5. 5 5 5. 1 2 1 2. Please leave a message after the tone. This mailbox is full. Image: By takayuki/Shutterstock Read the rest

On September 12th, GM's director of global digital transformation Saejin Park gave a presentation to the Association of National Advertisers in which he described how the company had secretly gathered data on the radio-listening habits of 90,000 GM owners in LA and Chicago for three months in 2017, tracking what stations they listened to and for how long, and where they were at the time; this data was covertly exfiltrated from the cars by means of their built-in wifi.The company says it never sold this data, but the presentation to the advertising execs was clearly designed to elicit bids for it. Toyota has promised not to gather and sell telematics data, but GM seems poised to create a market in data gathered by your car, which can listen to you, follow you, take pictures of you and your surroundings, and even gather data on which passengers are in the car at different times by tracking Bluetooth beacons from mobile devices.Saejin Park, GM's director of global digital transformation, the report said, explained that by matching audio feeds from AM, FM, and digitally driven XM radio,GM plans to study the alignment between radio cues and consumer behavior."We sampled (the behavior) every minute just because we could," Park explained.The report said GM considered station selection, volume and ZIP codes of vehicle owners. Here's what GM learned, according to Park:The owner of a Cadillac Escalade large SUV might be more inclined to listen to a radio station that is different from someone driving a GMC Yukon, even though that also is a large SUV. Read the rest

A new generation of commercial trackers from companies like Adjust, AppsFlyer, MoEngage, Localytics, and CleverTap allow app makers like Bloomberg, T-Mobile US, Spotify Technology, and Yelp to covertly track when you've uninstalled apps: the trackers send periodic "silent notifications" to the apps you've installed, and if the apps are still installed, they ping the trackers' servers. If they don't hear back from you, they assume you've uninstalled the apps.The trackers are billed as a means for app vendors to understand whether sending an update triggers its users to delete the app. This use of trackers violates both Google and Apple's terms of service.At its best, uninstall tracking can be used to fix bugs or otherwise refine apps without having to bother users with surveys or more intrusive tools. But the ability to abuse the system beyond its original intent exemplifies the bind that accompanies the modern internet, says Gillula. To participate, users must typically agree to share their data freely, probably forever, not knowing exactly how it may be used down the road. “As an app developer, I would expect to be able to know how many people have uninstalled an app,” he says. “I would not say that, as an app developer, you have a right to know exactly who installed and uninstalled your app.”Now Apps Can Track You Even After You Uninstall Them [Gerrit De Vynck/Bloomberg](via /.) Read the rest

Richard Stallman's new GNU Kind Communications Guidelines are a brief set of guidelines for being "kind" in your interactions in free software communities, with the explicit goals of ensuring participation from "anyone who wishes to advance the development of the GNU system, regardless of gender, race, religion, cultural background, and any other demographic characteristics, as well as personal political views."It's similar to other codes of conduct that have started to become the norm in tech circles, but with some free software-specific clauses ("be kind when pointing out to other contributors that they should stop using certain nonfree software. For their own sake, they ought to free themselves, but we welcome their contributions to our software packages even if they don't do that. So these reminders should be gentle and not too frequent—don't nag"). The guidelines do say that suggesting "that others use nonfree software" is "not allowed," and set out the two non-negotiable political principles necessary for GNU contributors: "(1) that users should have control of their own computing (for instance, through free software) and (2) supporting basic human rights in computing. We don't require you as a contributor to agree with these two points, but you do need to accept that our decisions will be based on them."Please respond to what people actually said, not to exaggerations of their views. Your criticism will not be constructive if it is aimed at a target other than their real views.If in a discussion someone brings up a tangent to the topic at hand, please keep the discussion on track by focusing on the current topic rather than the tangent. Read the rest

In 1969, Capitol Records released this incredible double LP set (and double 8-track tape) from Vincent Price titled "Witchcraft-Magic: An Adventure in Demonology." Hear the whole thing above. The nearly two hours of spoken word includes sections on the history and culture of "witchcraft" and helpful guides such as "How To Invoke Spirits, Demons, Unseen Forces" and "How To Make A Pact With The Devil." I certainly wouldn't vouch for the factual accuracy or research rigor of the material, but hearing horror icon Price's silky narration about such topics as necromancy and the "Witches Sabbat" is a joy. Read the rest

Fold N Fly is a visual database of paper airplane designs, sortable by aerodynamic properties (distance, airtime, etc), and difficulty of folding. Some pretty exotic designs, too! (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

WhatsApp, the messaging application business owned by Facebook, said on Friday it is “taking immediate legal action” against companies responsible for a flood of political spam ahead of Brazil's presidential elections. Campaign propaganda has flooded social media in Brazil ahead of an Oct. 28 run-off vote in the presidential election.Brazil's Folha (in Portuguese) is the best primary news source on this story. WhatsApp's legal action today immediately follows a Folha report a couple of days ago that various companies (funding sources) linked to the extreme-right-wing frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro paid social media firms to send hundreds of millions of messages to Brazilian voters' phones that attacked Bolsonaro’s rival, former São Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad.Here's a machine translation of Folha's late-Friday update:One day after Folha published a report showing that companies are funding political message campaign as mass-messages (Spam) on WhatsApp, the company sent out legal notices to Quickmobile, Yacows, Croc services and SMS Market agencies to stop their activities. And in related reporting at Quartz by Luiz Romero, a bombshell report in Brazil linked fake political disinfo on WhatsApp to Brazil’s presidential frontrunner. In other words, just like Trump in the USA in 2016.An exposé by Brazil’s largest newspaper could dramatically change the South American country’s already volatile presidential election.Folha reported that firms linked to far-right frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro have hired social media companies to send hundreds of millions of messages to voters attacking Bolsonaro’s rival, former São Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad, and his Workers’ Party. Read the rest

Three brothers flying from Bangkok to Dubai on Emirates were robbed of $2,600 during their flight. They had left their seats to help their father, also a passenger, who had become ill on the flight. When they returned to their seats, they noticed that someone had cleaned out their wallets.According to The Nation:After they informed the flight crew of the incident, a stewardess brought them to the first class kitchen. There, she took pictures of the remaining cash they had since these had the same serial numbers as those stolen.After landing, police searched the airplane, and the men’s baggage and wallets were taken for inspection. They were instructed not to touch their belongings. Eventually, police were able to match a fingerprint from a bill in a wallet with that of the steward’s.Turns out, the 37-year-old flight attendant had stolen the money, bought a $272 bottle of duty-free perfume during the flight, and then, when he realized the jig was up, tried flushing the money down a toilet before the plane landed. Needless to say, he was arrested. Getting robbed on a plane isn't uncommon. Make sure to keep an eye (or your ass, if you're sleeping) on anything valuable while you fly. Image: Max Pixel Read the rest

SOPA has come to Australia: under Communications minister Senator Mitch Fifield's Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2018, rightsholders will be able to tell search engines which results they are allowed to show users, and will expand the country's censorship system ("copyright blocking orders") by allowing rightsholders to have any website censored by claiming it is a "mirror" of an already-blocked site, without having to show evidence for their claims.Two major media companies -- Foxtel and Village Roadshow -- are behind the measure. They are already the major users of Australia's copyright censorship system.Currently, if a copyright owner wants to block a new mirror or proxy site, under the current rules it is subject to judicial oversight. One of the early points of conflict between rights holders and telcos was over the issue of a “rolling injunction” to deal with new avenues of access to sites. The court rejected a push to allow rights holders to have ISPs block additional domains, URLs or IP addresses simply by issuing a notice to a telco already subject to an injunction.Fifield’s statement hints that the government will allow copyright owners to avoid returning to court if they want to block new proxies and mirrors. Entertainment companies have indicated they are keen to find ways to minimise the court costs associated with anti-piracy injunctions.New anti-piracy laws to target search engines [Rohan Pearce/Computerworld] Read the rest

The Sesame Workshop is reporting that long-time Sesame Street puppeteer Caroll Spinney has announced his retirement, noting that he's performed on the program since its 1969 premiere. Spinney has played the roles of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for nearly 50 years!After five decades as the heart and soul of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, it’s impossible to entirely separate the man from the characters he so vibrantly brought to life. Big Bird visited China with Bob Hope in 1979. He’s danced with the Rockettes, and with prima ballerina Cynthia Gregory. He’s been feted with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, celebrated with his likeness on a U.S. postage stamp, and named a “Living Legend” in 2000 by the Library of Congress. Performing Big Bird has taken Caroll to China, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has performed on hundreds of episodes of television, starred as his big yellow avatar in the feature film Follow That Bird, and conducted symphony orchestras throughout the United States, Australia, and Canada. Spinney even met his wife of 45 years, Debra, on the Sesame Street set in 1973.Not to worry, Big Bird and Oscar are not going anywhere. They will be played going forward by puppeteers Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson, with Spinney's blessing.Also, if you haven't seen the 2014 documentary about Spinney titled I Am Big Bird, I urge you to do so. It's a truly beautiful portrait of a deeply creative man who chose to live his most authentic life. Read the rest