MrBeast, best known for surprising video game streamers and restaurant workers with enormous donations and tips, also dabbles in goofy experiments, like seeing how many toy cars it takes to pull an actual car. (more…)

Bloomberg's new paywall isn't terribly remarkable, but the price--$35 a month--suggests a new type of walled garden. Danny Chrichton favors the paywall model, but...Incentive alignment is one thing, and my wallet is another. All of these subscriptions are starting to add up. These days, my media subscriptions are hovering around $80 a month, and I don’t even have TV. Storage costs for Google, Apple, and Dropbox are another $13 a month. Cable and cell service are another $200 a month combined. Software subscriptions are probably about $20 a month (although so many are annualized its hard to keep track of them). Amazon Prime and a few others total in around $25 a month.Worse, subscriptions aren’t getting any cheaper. Amazon Prime just increased its price to $120 a year, Netflix increased its popular middle-tier plan to $11 a month late last year, and YouTube increased its TV pricing to $40 a month last month. Add in new paywalls, and the burden of subscriptions is rising far faster than consumer incomes.I’m frustrated with this hell. I’m frustrated that the web’s promise of instant and free access to the world’s information appears to be dying. The return of media to "channels" is inevitable because the internet is infested with normalcy and the forces involved are too great to stop, but so is the return to bundling. It'll ride in on the horse of "all your paywalls, one low monthly fee."

Plunging scalding hot glassware into ice water is not very safe, but it does create tremendous pressure, enough to suck ten eggs into a jug with a mouth slightly smaller than an egg. (more…)

Amongst people who care deeply about typography and fonts -- which is, in our typographic age, probably a reasonable chunk of people online -- there's been a low-level war about spacing after a period. Specifically: When you finish a sentence, do you type one space, or two?There are many heated views on this matter.But recently, a couple of scholars decided to science this one out, and ... things did not turn out well for the one-spacers.As the Washington Post reports:So the researchers, Rebecca L. Johnson, Becky Bui and Lindsay L. Schmitt, rounded up 60 students and some eye tracking equipment, and set out to heal the divide.First, they put the students in front of computers and dictated a short paragraph, to see how many spaces they naturally used. Turns out, 21 of the 60 were “two-spacers, ” and the rest typed with close-spaced sentences that would have horrified the Founding Fathers.The researchers then clamped each student's head into place, and used an Eyelink 1000 to record where they looked as they silently read 20 paragraphs. The paragraphs were written in various styles: one-spaced, two-spaced, and strange combinations like two spaces after commas, but only one after periods. And vice versa, too.And the verdict was: two spaces after the period is better. It makes reading slightly easier.Mind you, the reading-speed improvement with double spaces was only 3%, so we're talking about a pretty tiny delta here.Small enough, in fact, that this study has not so much resolved this debate as fanned its eternal, eldritch flames. Over a Lifehacker, Nick Douglas notes that the study didn't really model the type of reading people do all day long: The text was typed out in a monospaced font with double-spaced lines, whereas the majority of reading we do online (and in print) is with proportional fonts, and rarely double-spaced. Meanwhile, Matthew Butterick wrote -- in a proportional font, bien sur -- a terrific essay looking at these questions from the perspective of typographers.Me, I'm a one-spacer. When I cut and pasted the text from the Washington Post into this blog post, I immediately noticed that the Post writers had composed their story using two-spaces, those sly dogs. (In a wonderfully meta turn of events, the reason I was able to notice this is that the "text" editing format in Wordpress, the CMS in which we write these Boing Boing posts, itself uses a monospace font. So maybe monospace isn't quite as dead, for composition, as one might think!)Anyway, the instant I saw the double-spacing, I aesthetically recoiled. Like any normal person would. So I dumped the text into Clean Text, a little Mac app I keep open all day long while I'm at work, because it's great for quickly cleaning up the wonky formatting of text cut-and-pasted off the web. It's even got a preset command for "Fix spaces", which of course means "take all double spaces, which are an affront to all right-thinking citizens of good conscience and discernment, and replace 'em with single spaces".And I hit it.(CC-licensed photo via J E Theriot)

I am heavily digging this ASCII art generator: Type in your text and it'll render it in one of several dozen ASCII fonts.A few of my favorites ...

I use my Amazon Fire HD 10 every day. At $120 it is the bargain tablet I wanted.My bright red Amazon Fire HD 10" tablet is amazingly darn useful. Compared to the Apple equivalent I've saved $100s of dollars on features I didn't want to use. I bought this tablet as soon as it was announced, and it has become a pretty constant companion. (more…)

Fortnite Battle Royale, a 100 player last-person-standing video game, has become all the rage in my home. It is easy, and free, to hop in and play but takes a lot of strategy, and tactics to play well. These videos have been helping my daughter and I.I love Ben "Dr. Lupo" Lupo. Ben is a streamer whose giant heart made the Destiny community proud a few years ago. Lupo is smart, eager, friendly and completely aware that his audience is of all ages and sorts. You can watch Lupo without fear of misogyny or racism, which is a lot to say for white male streamer. You can also learn from him. Domeshot University is a series of videos Lupo has been creating that explain exactly what he is thinking, and why he is doing what he does he as plays Fortnite. He has helped my gameplay immensely.I've learned to make finding a shotgun my early focus, how to prioritize healing items, and a lot of 'how Dr. Lupo looks at the map.' This all really helps. Please keep making them, Ben!Look at how I've improved:https://youtu.be/IAqIf5WAuvII still have not won a solo match, but I came really damn close. The above video is me trying SO hard. I thought you'd enjoy my painful fail at the end. I think the other player got a lucky headshot.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOOTx2RJMg4My daughter loves Ali-A. This guy has more energy than the energizer bunny, gets that young kids are in the audience and speaks to the 11 year-olds of Fortnite. My kid currently has just as many Season 4 wins as I do (one in squads each,) so who am I to say no...

After listening to tons of racist and ignorant horseshit from NRA conference attendees, the owner of Dallas-area eatery Ellen's decided to donate a portion of this weeks proceeds to groups pursuing reasonable gun legislation. The NRA asked its members to eat elsewhere.Everyone wins except the people dead of gun violence.Via Share Blue:Ellen’s, a restaurant in downtown Dallas where the NRA is holding its annual convention, had a message printed on its customer receipts: “Thanks for visiting Ellen’s! A portion of this week’s proceeds will be donated to organizations dedicated to implementing reasonable and effective gun regulation.”Most Americans consider that a sensible message — especially following the mass shootings at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Parkland and the daily murders all around the country. But it angered the NRA.The group tweeted an image of an Ellen’s receipt. “Attn @AnnualMeetings attendees. Steer clear of Ellen’s in downtown Dallas! Why go there when there are so many other great choices.”Joe Groves, the owner of Ellen’s, said he added the message because of what he heard from NRA convention attendees. “I’m making a list of the vile, racist, moronic conversations overheard from NRA attendees eating at the restaurant,” he wrote on Facebook. “They don’t even speak softly.”He told the website Eater that the attendees have insulted his wait staff with racial epithets. One person reportedly asked a Latino staff member, “Your illegals are kept in the kitchen, right?”Another NRA fan reportedly told black employees they “don’t sound black” and asked if they were from India.“The only reason we need our guns is because of the blacks,” another attendee reportedly declared.But these repugnant statements are part of a pattern for the NRA and its supporters. The group has embraced racism and bigotry as part of its pro-gun advocacy.

Every time a conservative jackass accuses a high school kid of being "a crisis actor" remember this: someone hired actors to support an energy company's proposal. The actors were required to sign non-disclosure agreements. Some of the actors talked anyhow.Via The Lens NOLA:At least four of the people in orange shirts were professional actors. One actor said he recognized 10 to 15 others who work in the local film industry.They were paid $60 each time they wore the orange shirts to meetings in October and February. Some got $200 for a “speaking role,” which required them to deliver a prewritten speech, according to interviews with the actors and screenshots of Facebook messages provided to The Lens.“They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power,” said Keith Keough, who heard about the opportunity through a friend.He said he thought he was going to shoot a commercial. “I’m not political,” he said. “I needed the money for a hotel room at that point.”They were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements and were instructed not to speak to the media or tell anyone they were being paid.But three of them agreed to talk about their experience and provided evidence that they were paid to endorse the power plant. Two spoke on the condition that they not be identified, saying they didn’t want to jeopardize other work or get in trouble for violating the non-disclosure agreement.Another attendee, an actor and musician who played a small role on HBO’s “Treme,” told WWL-TV he was paid to wear one of the orange shirts at a meeting of the council’s utility committee.Paying people to create the illusion of grassroots support is known as astroturfing. Although it’s misleading, it appears to be legal. The Lens couldn’t find any prohibition against such activities, and Louisiana’s lobbying laws only cover money spent directly on public officials.But Councilwoman Stacy Head called what happened in those meetings “disturbing.” Councilwoman Susan Guidry, the only member of the Utility Committee to vote against the plant, called it “morally reprehensible,” saying, “I think it had a phenomenal impact on public opinion.”The two men who recruited and organized the actors, Garrett Wilkerson and Daniel Taylor, appear to be from out of town. In our story about the October hearing, Wilkerson offered an apocalyptic prediction about what would happen to New Orleans if the power plant weren’t built.It remains unclear who was behind the effort, but Guidry has a guess. “How can you not link Entergy to this?” she asked. “Who else would have paid all these people to come there and say they want a gas-fired power plant?”Entergy New Orleans did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The company told WWL-TV, “Entergy New Orleans did not pay anyone to attend.”Previously on Boing Boing:"Citizens" who speak at town meetings are hired, scripted actors

Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber made a landmark contribution to the debate about inequality, money, and wealth with his massive 2012 book Debt: The First 5,000 Years (a book that helped inspire my 2017 novel Walkaway). (more…)

One effect of the Snowden leaks is that the NSA now makes an annual disclosure of the extent of its domestic surveillance operations; that's how we know that the NSA collected 534 million phone call and text message records (time, date, location, from, to -- but not the content), which more than triples its surveillance takings in 2016. (more…)

In the decade since the UK rolled out its Great Firewall, the project of somehow dividing the entire internet into "good" and "bad" (or even "all-ages" and "adult") has run into a series of embarrassing gaffes, blocking rape crisis sites while letting through all sorts of ghastly porn -- and at every turn, the Conservative government's response has been to double down on internet censorship, expanding it from a parental filter to an opt-out porn filter, whose biggest backers have repeatedly demonstrated their technical incompetence. (more…)

Remember the fantastic attention experiment in which you have to count the times the basketball is passed? (If you don't know it, watch the video before reading the rest of this post.)In a recent paper in the scientific journal Acta Astronautica, University of Cadiz psychologists suggest that like the gorilla experiment, "selective attention" based on our preconceptions about possible extraterrestrials and how they may communicate may cause us to overlook evidence of their existence. Over at the SETI Institute blog, BB pal and astronomer Seth Shostak likens their argument to the gorilla experiment and counters that right now, the best thing to do is what we know how to do. And that's scanning the skies with antennae listening for signals:It would be heavy-duty hubris to claim that we have considered every possibility in our efforts to find aliens. We’ve certainly been myopic in the past. During the nineteenth century, European physicists suggested we could establish contact with Martians by turning gas lanterns in the direction of the Red Planet. The plan was hopeless, but not because the scientists were ignoring other possibilities. They simply didn’t know about radio or much about Mars, and proposed a reasonable experiment given the science understanding of the time.Sure, our preconceived notions of what would be good evidence of aliens — including radio signals, flashing lasers, or megastructures — might be blinding us to clues that, like nitrogen in the air, are all around us and yet overlooked. But to quote Dirty Harry, “a man’s got to know his limitations.” The men and women searching for extraterrestrials can do no better than to go with what they know.So while it’s easy to complain, as members of the public occasionally do, that scanning the sky with big antennas is old school and parochial, the fact is that sending information from star to star on a radio wave is fast and efficient...New ideas about how to search are important when they make a prediction that can be verified with a telescope or some other instrument. Succinctly put, the idea that we’re missing the boat would be more interesting if it were accompanied by a battle plan for finding boats."What can a fake gorilla teach us about the search for space aliens?" (SETI)

Wil Wheaton has publicly discussed his anxiety and depression before; I know several people whose lives were improved by reading what he had to say. (more…)

I survive spring allergies by rinsing out my sinuses. (more…)

The Washington Post created some interesting maps that show levels of diversification in various American cities. They categorize cities like Chicago as examples of legacy segregation, where cities like Houston indicate rapid diversification. (more…)

By way of the Daily Grail comes this fascinating bit of Pioneer spacecraft history. Kirby was among the artist asked to submit ideas for the plaques to be flown on the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes, launched in the early 1970s. Kirby's submission was vastly different than the very literal pictogram designed by Frank Drake, Carl Sagan, and Linda Salzman-Sagan and flown on the missions. Jack was not comfortable with the idea of giving some future Galactus GPS directions to our house. I would have included no further information than a rough image of the Earth and its one moon. I see no wisdom in the eagerness to be found and approached by any intelligence with the ability to accomplish it from any sector of space. In the meetings between ‘discoverers’ and ‘discoverees,’ history has always given the advantage to the finders. In the case of the Jupiter (Pioneer) plaque, I feel that a tremendous issue was thoughtlessly taken out of the world forum by a few individuals who have marked a clear trail to our door.My point is, who will come a-knocking – the trader or the tiger?In describing his approach to the art he submitted, he wrote:It appears to me that man’s self image has always spoken far more about him than does his reality-figure. My vision of the plaque would have revealed the exuberant, self-confident super visions with which we’ve clothed ourselves since time immemorial. The comic strip super-heroes and heroines, in my belief, personify humanity’s innate idealism and drivePersonally, I don't think we want "underwear perverts" (as Warren Ellis has called spandex supers) representing us, but you've got to love the idea of communicating "exuberant, self-confident super visions" of ourselves.

I used eight small disc magnets in this Raspberry Pi computer case that my daughter and I designed for playing the early 1980s game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, and I have 112 magnets left over. The pack of 120 costs $10. I don't know if they're neodymium, but they're strong for their size. I'm planning to use them, whenever feasible, as a superior substitute to screws in every 3D project I make. If you're attending Maker Faire this year, come to our talk and say hi. I'll give you a magnet, if I remember to bring them with me.

The Truck Surf Hotel is a modded Mercedes Actros outfitted with a hydraulically-expanding two-story inn. Inside is a living room, kitchen, four double rooms with bunk bed, one double room with a single larger bed, bathroom, and shower. Over the course of a week vacation package, the hotel travels to surf destinations in Portugal and Morocco. The trip is around $700-$900 depending on the destination and season; airfare not included. Truck Surf Hotel (via Uncrate)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB5TneZwY2s

Multiple Facebookers and ex-Facebookers risked lawsuits by revealing the company's longstanding problem with employees who abuse their access to Facebook's databases to stalk Facebook users, and its longstanding practice of binding all concerned to nondisclosure, keeping it a secret from the people who were stalked by its employees. (more…)

Diana A. Smith is a user interface engineer, and to show off her skills, she creates art using hand-coded HTML and CSS. The results are stunning.

I'm always afraid of getting cut off at the last minute by lane-changers who aren't paying attention. It's happened to me more than once when I'm in the car pool lane and some idiot stuck in a traffic jam decides to change lanes without looking, forcing me to slam on the brakes. Here's a guy who got cut off so harshly his car rolled on two wheels for a second. Glad he caught it on his dashcam.

It took maker Eli Peterson several weeks to make this silver and "nowhere near perfect" diamond engagement ring, making mistakes along the way that forced him to melt the ring back down and start over a bunch of times. But he's condensed his process into about three-and-a-half minutes to show us how he did it.

Deep brain stimulators -- pacemaker-like implants that deliver electrical impulses to specific regions in the brain -- are common treatments for Parkinson's and other neurological disorders. It's known that strong electromagnetic fields from the likes of ham radio antennae and arc welders can damage the devices. Now, researchers report the case of a 66-year-old woman whose deep brain stimulator was knocked out when lightning hit her apartment. Fortunately, the lightning shut off the device without damaging her brain. “The patient was not charging the battery of her IPG (implantable pulse generator) during the event, and the recharger for the IPG was disconnected from the power supply during the storm," the researchers wrote. "The recharger and IPG were therefore not destroyed. The patient realized that something was wrong only 1 hour after the storm subsided, when the dystonic tremor in her neck reappeared.”"Lightning may pose a danger to patients receiving deep brain stimulation: case report" (Journal of Neuroscience via Mysterious Universe)

Vsauce3's Jake Roper reveals the wondrous perceptual paradoxes of "impossible objects" from Escher's cube to the Penrose triangle.(via Laughing Squid)

The BBC reports on the deluge of spelling errors in official White House communications, from amusements such as "Air Force Once" to dangerous mistakes such as this week's accidentally-on-purpose suggestion that Iran still has a nuclear weapons program.Less than a month after taking office, the White House misspelled the name of British Prime Minister Theresa May three times in a press release announcing her visit.Her first name was spelled repeatedly with no "h" which, the Independent noted, is the name of a pornographic actress who starred in films including "Whitehouse: The Sex Video" and "Leather Lust".Mr Trump later made a similar mistake in a tweet, when he tagged a Sussex woman (whose Twitter account had only six followers) with a similar name to the politician.They are countless—there's simply no-one there in possession of both literacy and authority. My favorite is "lasting peach."

Comcast has found a new way to stem "cord-cutting" (cutting off your cable TV subscription in favor of subscription services like Netflix, or, as in my case, in favor of giving up on watching TV altogether); in markets where they are a monopoly or duopoly, they will reserve their highest-speed internet offerings for customers who agree to pay extra for cable channels that they don't want or need -- if all you want is internet access, Comcast will relegate you to its slow lanes. (more…)

In 1932 a quartet of Bronx gangsters set out to murder a friend of theirs in order to collect his life insurance. But Michael Malloy proved to be almost comically difficult to kill. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll review what one observer called "the most clumsily executed insurance scam in New York City history."We'll also burrow into hoarding and puzzle over the value of silence.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Four sources tell the Washington Post that special counsel Robert Mueller told Donald Trump's lawyers that he could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, if Trump didn't voluntarily come in for an interview to tell what he knows about Russia, collusion, obstruction, and whatever else investigators want to know. (more…)

This 115 piece first aid kit is perfect for keeping in your car. It's small but has sterile eye wash, conforming bandages in assorted sizes and shapes, adhesive plasters, first aid tape, wound dressings, crepe bandaging, an instant ice pack, a thermal blanket, a non-adherent pad, knuckle and fingertip fabric strips, elbow and knee bandages, safety pins, gloves, tweezers and scissors, all in a long-wearing green nylon bag. You have to be a Prime member to get it at the sale price of $7.

Kernit is a font inspired by the work of Jim Henson. [h/t Akimbo_NOT].It's Nice That:Full of curves, with the counters and eyes of the letters appearing squished, Kernit is full of energy, as if it could spring off the page. “Our goal was to build a voice that is both unique and true to Henson’s work and visual style,” they explain. “Each letter and character is meant to capture the same imagination, fun and whimsy which we came to love in his creations.”As well as its obvious influences in its name and the colour palette of its specimen, Kernit was inspired by a host of Henson’s characters as well as the bold typography of the 1970s: an era of rounded edges. For example, Milton Glaser’s iconic “I love New York” logo with its curved serifs debuted in 1973.

After publicly admitting he prescribed hair loss drugs to the wildly maned US President, Doctor Harold Bornstein claims his office was raided by White House aides.Via NBC News:In February 2017, a top White House aide who was Trump's longtime personal bodyguard, along with the top lawyer at the Trump Organization and a third man, showed up at the office of Trump's New York doctor without notice and took all the president's medical records.The incident, which Dr. Harold Bornstein described as a "raid," took place two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had prescribed a hair growth medicine for the president for years.In an exclusive interview in his Park Avenue office, Bornstein told NBC News that he felt "raped, frightened and sad" when Keith Schiller and another "large man" came to his office to collect the president's records on the morning of Feb. 3, 2017. At the time, Schiller, who had long worked as Trump's bodyguard, was serving as director of Oval Office operations at the White House.

40-year-old Raji Afife Azar ran a LEGO theft and fencing operation in Portland, Oregon. Aided by the Fred Meyer market's Retail Theft Unit, Portland PD put a stop to this brick bandit.Via the Portland PD's statement on the arrest:This investigation began in early 2018 when Fred Meyer's Organized Retail Theft Unit Investigators learned Azar was the leader of a fencing operation that involved the theft and sale of merchandise from multiple stores in the Portland metropolitan area. During the investigation, the Fred Meyer's Organized Retail Theft Unit worked with the Northwest Organized Retail Crime Alliance and learned Azar had solicited multiple people to steal from various business throughout the area.During this investigation, undercover investigators were contacted by Azar on multiple occasions. The undercover investigators posed as theft suspects that would sell stolen merchandise to Azar at a fraction of the manufacturer's retail suggested price. On Thursday, April 26, 2018, Azar requested undercover investigators, who he believed were theft suspects, sell him approximately $13,000 in stolen merchandise. The undercover investigators met Azar in the 10300 block of Southeast Washington Street with the supposed stolen merchandise. After Azar purchased the stolen merchandise from undercover officers, he was taken into custody without incident.Once Azar was taken into custody, a search warrant was served at his family's residence in the 2000 block of Southeast 102nd Avenue. During a search of the residence, investigators located a large quantity of stolen Legos and other stolen merchandise (photograph provided with press release). Investigators with the Fred Meyer's Organized Retail Theft Unit estimate the recovered stolen value of the Legos and other toys taken from Portland area Fred Meyer stores to be approximately $50,000 -- this estimate does not include merchandise that was recovered at the residence that came from other retail stores.Based on information learned during the investigation, detectives believe Azar would solicit the theft of items from stores through websites such as Craigslist and OfferUp. Azar would meet with individuals who stole items, purchase the stolen merchandise for pennies on the dollar of what the item was worth, then advertise and sell the stolen merchandise on Craigslist, EBay, and OfferUp. As part of Azar's fencing operation, people who often times suffered from addiction to opioids and other drugs would enter stores and steal items to sell to Azar. Azar would in turn buy the stolen merchandise for a small percentage of the items' actual worth and sell the stolen merchandise at a large profit for himself.Image via Portland PD

When the Cambridge Analytica scandal first broke -- and along with it, the news that the company had boasted of using deceptive and illegal tactics to sell Brexit -- Parliament asked Mark Zuckerberg to show up and account for himself. He told them to go fuck themselves. (more…)

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect this month and will completely overturn the way that businesses gather and circulate data about internet users. (more…)

Apple products are fairly intuitive, but when it comes to moving data from one device to another, the process isn't quite as easy as it should be. Whether you're upgrading to a new device or trying to move some media from your phone to your Mac, iMazing 2 gives you the tools to seamlessly wrangle your iOS data. You can get it in the Boing Boing Store for $24.99.This all-purpose tool lets you browse and manage your backups, extract and print your text messages, and drag and drop songs to your iPhone without jailbreaking your device. You can quickly update a new iPhone with your old data by copying everything or selecting the content to transfer and copy your music back and forth between iPhone, iPad, iPod, and your computer. What's more iMazing 2 lets you export media, like photos and video, without having to go through iCloud or iTunes.Universal licenses iMazing 2 are on sale in the Boing Boing Store for $24.99.

I tried to quit Facebook, but couldn't, not really, not yet. We know that in some respects we can't quit, because it keeps profiles on everyone anyway, but there's more to it than that. It's got its hooks deep into our relationships with friends and families. As Sarah Jeong writes, it performs work for us.Facebook had replaced much of the emotional labor of social networking that consumed previous generations. We have forgotten (or perhaps never noticed) how many hours our parents spent keeping their address books up to date, knocking on doors to make sure everyone in the neighborhood was invited to the weekend BBQ, doing the rounds of phone calls with relatives, clipping out interesting newspaper articles and mailing them to a friend, putting together the cards for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas, and more. We don’t think about what it’s like to carefully file business cards alphabetically in a Rolodex. People spent a lot of time on these sorts of things, once, because the less of that work you did, the less of a social network you had. ...It’s hard to pin down what Facebook is because the platform replaces labor that was previously invisible. We have a hard time figuring out what Facebook actually is because we have a hard time admitting that at least part of what it supplanted is emotional labor — hard and valuable work that no one wants to admit was work to begin with. To leave Facebook is to create work for friends and family. However easy you think you can make it for them by doing labor yourself, they'll no longer be able to depend on Facebook to make reciprocation easy and thoughtless. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I tried leaving Facebook. I couldn’t [The Verge]

"PC Building Simulator" is ... kind of what the name suggests, yes? A sim in which one builds PCs.I admit I'm intrigued. Sort of? As this review at Motherboard notes, the game has a "career" mode where you play the role of someone who inherits your uncle's PC-repair business, and is given increasingly complicated tasks ...As you can see, my idiot uncle sold this poor guy a PC but forgot to apply thermal paste to the CPU. For this job, I had to open the PC, unplug the CPU fan, apply thermal paste, and then put the CPU fan back in. To make sure that the computer is working properly, I also had to install and run 3DMark, a real-life piece of software that tests a computer's performance by running 3D graphics demos.One of the cooler things about PC Building Simulator is that it uses a lot of real brands. Some parts are fake, I'm assuming, because the developers couldn't get the necessary licensing deals. For example, PC Building Simulator seems to take place in some kind of utopian alternate dimension where everyone uses an operating system called Omega, which I'm assuming is a Linux distro that magically runs all PC games. But there are also a lot of real parts. I installed real EVGA GPUs and even worked on the Master Cooler brand PC case I have at home.This is all fine, but I realized that PC Building Simulator really wasn't fucking around when it actually demanded I sit through the entire 3DMark test before I could finish the job. Poor DR Waterman only got an average 8 frames per second, but the PC was working now so it's not my problem. Besides, since this job is the repair shop's fuckup, I'm not even going to get paid for my time here. Thanks a lot, uncle Tim.The only question I have is: Can you play a simulated version of "PC Building Simulator" on one of the PCs you build inside the game?

Did Paul Manafort reach out to Russia to ask for help? Did Donald Trump offer Mike Flynn a pardon?Special counsel Robert Mueller has dozens of questions for President Donald Trump about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and obstruction of the investigation led by Mueller. They include questions on “any efforts made to reach out to Mr. Flynn about seeking immunity or possible pardon.” Another question will make headlines tonight: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?” As the Times notes, “No such outreach has been revealed publicly.” (more…)

When cleaning off slides for scanning, or the lenses on cameras that haven't been made for decades, I use PecPads.I used to ruin positives when trying to ready them for scanning. Then I was told about PecPads. I have not ruined a slide in years and years. I also use the non-abrasive gauze-like pads to clean the lenses on my treasured Rolleis.I use microfiber clothes on my glasses, but superstition keeps me using PecPads on photographic equipment.PEC-PAD Lint Free Wipes 4"x4" 100per/Pkg via Amazon

Nitrile gloves are a cheap way to keep your hands clean. I've used them for bike and car work, clearing rat traps, wiping cat puke, cleaning grills, and countless other tasks. Amazon has a good deal on these textured nitrile gloves: 100 for $14.

https://vimeo.com/105542404Gleg is a cyber-arms-dealer based in Moscow, selling zero-day vulnerabilities it has uncovered in widely used systems to companies that want to weaponize them. (more…)

LaTeX is the venerable, gold-standard layout package favored for scholarly papers, especially technical papers; back in 2009, Hanno Rein released LaTeX Coffee Stains, an extension to draw a variety of coffee-cup rings on your paper; the code has been improved by community contributions over the years and is very robust and full-featured! (via Evil Mad Scientist Labs)

In a White House press briefing with Nigeria's president Muhammadu Buhari at his side, U.S. President Donald Trump said he believes a summit with North Korean president Kim Jong-Un will happen, and that Singapore and the Korean DMZ are possible sites for the historic summit. (more…)

Long held by French ex-patriot Jean-Noel Frydman, France.com has been taken from his control. Emails are bouncing and the URL has been forwarded to the government tourism site. Frydman is suing his ISP, domain registrars and the Republic of France to get his domain back.Via the Verge:Frydman first registered the domain in 1994, less than three years after the World Wide Web became publicly available. “I was at a crossroads professionally, and I wanted to discover something new,” Frydman says. He found his way to BBS boards and the still-young web, recognizing the possibilities immediately. “I could see it was a new frontier. And like the frontier, if you went in early, you could stake a claim.” A French expat, he was drawn to France.com.The site went through a number of incarnations, briefly offering France-based news (including Le Monde) for paying subscribers before eventually settling on a travel agency model. For most of its history, the site has offered travel tips alongside packaged vacation deals. With roughly 100,000 visitors a month, Frydman could easily support the site on commissions. He had registered other domain names, too. But over the years, he sold them off, and France.com became his only project.The French tourism bureau was friendly with Frydman, even giving him a “Best Website” award in 2009. But in 2016, the foreign ministry seemed to have a change of heart. He says they made no effort to buy the domain from Frydman (although he would have been unlikely to sell), but argued in court that the domain was rightful property of the government. Who should France.com belong to, if not France? In July 2016, the High Court of Paris agreed, ordering Frydman to transfer the domain or face a fine. The ruling that was upheld by an appeals court in September 2017, and it’s currently being appealed to France’s highest court.Frydman still expected to maintain control of the domain while the case was going forward, even if he faces a fine for holding out. But sometime between September and March, France served an order directly to Frydman’s registrar, Web.com, which was enough to convince them to transfer the domain. Making matters worse, the transfer shifted the registration from Web.com to OVH, a French registrar that may be less responsive to US courts. (Web.com did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Director Ron Howard and the stars of Solo: A Star Wars Story tease us with more context and scenes from the forthcoming film out on May 25.

Andrew Hill was stand-up paddleboarding off Gracetown, Western Australia when a pod of dolphins interrupted his fun. “Eight or nine of them decided to catch that wave and surf straight at me, which has happened lots of times in the past to me and generally they just take off to one side left or right,” Hill told PerthNow. “It's good to see dolphins. Surfers like seeing dolphins, but obviously I'd prefer them to stay a little bit further away than they did yesterday.”I'm sure they'd prefer the same of Mr. Hill.

Giant Chinese companies are outfitting millions of employees -- everyone from factory workers to military personnel to pilots and train drivers -- with special uniform hats containing an unspecified neurological sensor package claimed to be capable of detecting "depression, anxiety or rage" as well as "fatigue and attention loss with an accuracy of more than 90 per cent"; the practice is largely unregulated. (more…)

As you recall, after the Parkland school shooting in February that killed 17 people including 14 students, the NRA was adamant that schools would be safer if it were staffed with gun-toting faculty members. “To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun,” is the mantra of NRA CEO Wayne La Pierre. So it's pretty incredulous that when Mike Pence speaks at the NRA's forum this weekend, all guns will be banned from the event. According to Politico:The NRA posted a disclaimer on the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum event page, saying that due to Pence’s attendance, Secret Service will be responsible for event security. Therefore, “firearms and firearm accessories, knives or weapons of any kind will be prohibited in the forum prior to and during his attendance."Needless to say, the Parkland survivors are taken aback. "The NRA has evolved into such a hilarious parody of itself," Parkland survivor Cameron Kasky tweeted.The NRA has evolved into such a hilarious parody of itself. pic.twitter.com/6Pw6NTQAe6— Cameron Kasky (@cameron_kasky) April 28, 2018Others responded to the tweet with the same astonishment over the NRA's hypocrisy:Wait wait wait wait wait wait you’re telling me to make the VP safe there aren’t any weapons around but when it comes to children they want guns everywhere? Can someone explain this to me? Because it sounds like the NRA wants to protect people who help them sell guns, not kids.— Matt Deitsch (@MattxRed) April 28, 2018With a convention full of so many “good guys with guns” wouldn’t this be the safest place on earth?— Peaches #trumpophobe (@fingerbobs) April 28, 2018The Secret Service is in control of security. The NRA is yeilding to them. That said, the NRA should uninvite Pence. My point being, too bad the NRA isn't as concerned about the safety of students as they are about the Veep's. Longtime former NRA member.— Ken (@kemios) April 28, 2018And from one of the victim's father:On so many levels, this is enlightening. According to the NRA, we should want everyone to have weapons when we are in public. But when they put on a convention, the weapons are a concern? I thought giving everyone a gun was to enhance safety. Am I missing something? https://t.co/f4wgNhJ7RI— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) April 28, 2018According to NRA/Secret Service logic, more guns equals safer schools, but no guns equals safer conventions. Makes about as much sense as everyday politics in America.Via Sacramento BeeImage: Gage Skidmore/Flickr