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Dolan Darker (YouTube) welcomes the world to the web of 2018. https://twitter.com/fr3ino/status/1000166112615714816

Smishing: phishing with SMSes. Vishing: phishing with voice-response systems. A pair of Romanian hackers have been extradited to the U.S. after allegedly bilking unwitting victims out of more than $18 million in an elaborate voice- and SMS-phishing (i.e., vishing/smishing) scheme. [Tara Seals/Threatpost] (via Beyond the Beyond)

We can all take some comfort that even Disney, with all its money and creative resources, can fail. Take for instance, Disney's epic failure, a long-gone ride called Superstar Limo. The dark ride, that was once in California Adventure's Hollywood Pictures Backlot area, took guests in a sparkly purple limousine through a distorted version of Hollywood and Los Angeles. It was open just under a year and was later (and as you'll see in the video, hilariously) repurposed as the Monsters, Inc. ride.Kevin Perjurer of the YouTube channel Defunctland describes it as their "worst attraction ever" and offers this critical history of it. His video is 20 minutes long but worth a watch, as his research goes deep and this "Superstar Limo" truly has to be seen to be believed. Be sure to stay to the end to see the reactions of the cast of The Drew Carey Show and Rosie O'Donnell when they all took a whirl in it together.Also, in case you're curious, here's a look at the ride without commentary:https://youtu.be/-R6opiYy1HA

Russian speed-cuber Evgeny Bondarenko decided to tackle the biggest challenge on the market today: solving the 17x17x17 Rubik's Cube. Talk about concentration! (more…)

Transgender model and activist Munroe Bergdorf hosts the new Channel 4 documentary What Makes a Woman? Science and society are grappling with the complex and contentious topics of sex, sexuality, and gender. New research and evidence demonstrate that simplistic binaries are more complicated than previously believed. (more…)

Clifford Burgoni wanted to sell his system for cleaning 86,000 solar panels, so he made a cool drone video of the gear in operation. (more…)

This is Fred. Fred is free again.They may not be from space, but octopuses are still incredible, intelligent creatures. One California fishmonger in Morro Bay certainly thinks so.Earlier this month, Giovanni "Gio" DeGarimore, owner of Giovanni's Fish Market, bought a 70-pound octopus -- who has been named "Fred" -- for "a couple hundred dollars" just to release it back into the wild. And he says he'd do it again. The San Luis Obispo Tribune reports:DeGarimore said he didn't intend for his action to get as much fanfare as it has, but said he would be happy "if my little contribution can make a bigger difference in the world."That contribution includes no longer selling any octopus-related products on his website, which serves customers across the country, he said."It'll hit me in the pocket, but I'd rather stand for something," he said.(SFGate)image via Giovanni's Fish Market Facebook page Thanks, Laura!

Edwin Olding hacked together a Barbie Power Wheels Ford Mustang chassis with an old go-kart frame and a customized Honda dirt bike engine. This hot pink whip now races at 70 mph. From The Drive:Olding told The Drive, "I wanted to find the cutest Barbie Power Wheels car online and turn it into a drift kart." With the miniature Mustang's tiny electric motor and plastic tires, that would not be an easy task. Instead of trying to boost the Power Wheels' weak performance, Olding decided to chop out everything that wasn't the car's outer shell and drop that onto a pre-built go-kart found on Craigslist. That, however, presented its own problems. The kart's frame couldn't fit into the Mustang's 36-inch wheelbase, so it had to be cut down and welded back together.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists teamed up with the Norbert Zongo Cell for Investigative Journalism (Cenozo) to delve deep into 27.5 million files from the Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, Panama Papers and Paradise Papers to investigate how the super-rich in 15 West African countries have looted their countries' wealth and then smuggled it offshore through a network of tax-havens, even as their countries starve. (more…)

The 2016 elections were fraught and game-changing on many axes, but one important one that is still playing out is the split between the "left" (universal healthcare, steeply progressive taxation, no more wars of aggression, free higher education, and measures to remediate historical injustices on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc) and "liberals" (more representation in corporate board-rooms, responsible business practices, limiting profits from private healthcare companies, etc). (more…)

Businesses big and small use Microsoft Excel for everything from data visualization to bookkeeping, and chances are you've already had some exposure to this ubiquitous tool. Whether you're looking to improve your hiring potential or boost your Excel efficiency, the Ultimate All-Level Excel Bootcamp can get you Excel-savvy with nearly 70 hours of training, and it's available now in the Boing Boing Store for $29.Delivering four comprehensive courses, this collection will start you off mastering the Excel essentials, like sorting and filtering and configuring graphs and charts. Then, you'll advance on to more nuanced Excel concepts and dive into business analytics and data management using Pivot Tables. Make your way through the entire bootcamp, and you'll emerge with a new skillset to boost your employment prospects and efficiency.The Ultimate All-Level Excel Bootcamp was on sale for $35, but it's available for a limited time in the Boing Boing Store for $29.

This is adorable. Bill, Robert, and Mick -- three elderly gay gentlemen -- try on young people's gay words and phrases on for size in this video by INTO.Thanks, Moe!

Damjanski, a really witty digital artist, has released his latest work -- "The Age Gate".I won't give any spoilers, but it's pretty funny.

In 2003 Bill Gates tried to download Microsoft Movie Maker from Microsoft.com. His confusing, frustrating, futile experience prompted him to write a terrifically scorching email to the managers in charge of the project. It starts off pretty mild, with just a hint of the brutally funny sarcasm to come. ("I typed in movie maker. Nothing. So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist? So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.") It gets better from there. The best way to experience Bill's rant is by listening to Dave Ross of KIRO-AM/710 in Seattle give a dramatic reading:https://youtu.be/mhLikb6VPWUAnd if you read the finger-pointing, ass-covering, wheel-spinning internal email conversation between the people Bill flamed, you will understand why the product sucked so hard. Hey, Bill, welcome to the Windows user experience! It reminds me of what I still have to go though every time I try to connect my kid's Windows machine to a new hotspot.

Solenoids are common electromechanical devices. They're used in pinball machines to make the ball shoot away when they hit a bumper. If you've ever have the opportunity to touch an energized pinball bumper, you will immediately gain an appreciation for its explosive power.In this video, famous hardware hacker Jeri Ellsworth takes apart a pinball machine solenoid to show how it works.[via Hackaday]Image: Youtube screenshot

Sioo:x Wood Protection is a boring company. That doesn't mean its products aren't important. It's just hard to jump up and down with glee over wood protection. Nevertheless, the "world's most boring billboard" that Sioo:x installed in Malmö, Sweden is pretty cool. It's a triple sided outdoor display made of wood that's been treated with preservative. The billboard will remain outdoors for 12 years as a way to demonstrate the effectiveness of Sioo:x's treatment against long term exposure to the harsh environmental insults handed out by Sweden's unforgiving weather.

In 1969 Andy Warhol and John Wilcock launched Interview, "The Crystal Ball of Pop." True to its name, the magazine ran interviews of artists, actors, musicians, and celebrities.From The New York Times:Ezra Marcus, an associate editor at the magazine, said by email that the staff was notified in an all-hands meeting earlier in the morning that Interview, which was founded in 1969, was closing and filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.Phone calls to Brant Publications, which acquired Interview magazine in 1989, two years after Andy Warhol died, went unanswered.With its striking style, Interview had long wielded outsize influence in the industry, inspiring the look and feel of many other publications. But questions about the magazine’s fortunes have lingered for years, as it faced ever-thinning ranks and churned through staff.

Yeast has brought a lot of joy into the world, but its evolutionary origins were unclear until scientists did a worldwide genomic survey of the humble organism. Based on the genetic diversity of strains found in China, they concluded that its origin is almost certainly in that part of the world. (more…)

The White House Communications Agency, staffed with military information security experts, is in charge of making sure that the President's cellular phone isn't getting hacked by adversaries who might otherwise be able to listen in on his calls, capture his messages, intercept his search history, and remotely operate his camera and microphone. Donald Trump routinely ignores their advice. (more…)

A couple in Syracuse, New York have a 30-year-old son, Michael Rotondo, who is an unwanted guest in their house. He doesn't pay rent or any house expenses, he doesn't help out with the house chores, and he won't respond to five written requests from his parents to please move the fuck out already. They've even offered to help him out as he gets his new start, but he won't budge. So, at their wits' end, the parents are suing the boy.And it sounds like the millennial isn't just stubborn, he's a snot about it too. According to Mashable, he responded to the parents' reasons for suing (not doing chores or paying rent) with: "Under this legal reasoning, my parents probably should have sued me when I was a kid."They will all go to court later this month, about seven weeks before Mikey's 31st birthday.Image: Martin Taras. - DVD "Super Clásicos Infantiles"., Public Domain, Link

The ADL has sorted, sifted and studied a mass of English-language anti-Semitic tweets from last year. They dropped any that might be just ironic or meant in jest, not actually hating on us Jews, and came up with a mere 4.2 million statements of hate! The study and the collection of angry tweets will be made available to tech companies in hopes of improving automated systems for identifying hate speech online.

Politifact ran the math on Gwen Graham's Washington Post story comparing numbers of 2018 US school shooting deaths vs 2018 US armed service combat deaths to-date. Schools have seen more deaths than combat this year. Politifact, however, reminds us that combat-zones should be be more dangerous than public school.Combat zones should be more dangerous, but are not. How incredibly we are failing.Poltifact:Graham wrote, "So far this year, more students have been killed in schools than soldiers in combat zones."On the numbers, she is right. This year at least, within Graham’s stated parameters, exactly twice as many students have died in school shootings than military personnel have died in combat zones.It is important to know, however, the likelihood of being killed in a combat zone is still vastly higher than it is in a school.The statement is accurate but needs additional information. That meets our definition of Mostly True.Earlier this month my daughter, aged 11, spent an afternoon sheltering-in-place at her school. There was an unrelated-to-school incident of domestic violence a block or two away. The sound of shots appropriately sent the school into 'save the kids' mode. My daughter huddled in a corner for 3.5 hours. This is not the school experience our kids should have: wondering when it will be their turn to die.

Every three years, the US Copyright Office asks America about the problems with Section 1201 of the DMCA, which bans breaking DRM even for legal reasons, and America gets to answer with requests for exemptions to this rule. (more…)

From the late 1970s on, the Chicago School economists worked with the likes of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Augusto Pinochet and Brian Mulroney to dismantle antitrust enforcement, declaring that the only time government should intervene is when monopolists conspired to raise prices -- everything else was fair game. (more…)

Handheld radios might seem a bit archaic, but in an emergency situation, few things will keep you as reliably connected to the outside world. This Emergency Multi-Function Radio & Flashlight takes the utility of the tried-and-true radio and combines it with a powerful flashlight and self-sufficient energy system. It's available in the Boing Boing Store for $18.99.In addition to its bright, built-in LED flashlight, this multi-functional radio features a large solar panel on top and a hand crank, so you can charge it without batteries. It's handheld and easily packaged, making ideal for packing away in an emergency kit. And, it can even charge USB devices via the onboard battery.You can shore up your disaster-relief kit with the Emergency Multi-Function Radio & Flashlight, available in the Boing Boing Store today for $18.99.

John Carreyrou broke the story of Theranos' epic medical fraud. At Wired he now takes a sharp look at its dysfunctional corporate culture, excerpted from his new book on the corrupt Silicon Valley unicorn's spectacular downfall, Bad Blood [Amazon].Not all of it was Elizabeth Holmes, either. COO Sunny Balwani was a quietly stupid office tyrant:[Theranos'] device remained very much a work in progress. The list of its problems was lengthy.The biggest problem of all was the dysfunctional corporate culture in which it was being developed. Holmes and Balwani regarded anyone who raised a concern or an objection as a cynic and a nay-sayer. Employees who persisted in doing so were usually marginalized or fired, while sycophants were promoted.Employees were Balwani’s minions. He expected them to be at his disposal at all hours of the day or night and on weekends. He checked the security logs every morning to see when they badged in and out. Every evening, around 7:30, he made a flyby of the engineering department to make sure people were still at their desks working. With time, some employees grew less afraid of him and devised ways to manage him, as it dawned on them that they were dealing with an erratic man-child of limited intellect and an even more limited attention span. Holmes, by contrast, was savvy yet unreasonable. And it got worse after high-ranking staff quit rather than be party to Theranos going public with its unreliable tech...The resignations infuriated Holmes and Balwani. The following day, they summoned the staff for an all-hands meeting in the cafeteria. Copies of The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho’s famous novel about an Andalusian shepherd boy who finds his destiny by going on a journey to Egypt, had been placed on every chair. Still visibly angry, Holmes told the gathered employees that she was building a religion. If there were any among them who didn’t believe, they should leave. Balwani put it more bluntly: Anyone not prepared to show complete devotion and unmitigated loyalty to the company should “get the fuck out.”You look at all this and wonder at the legal event horizon, for corporate executives, beyond which nothing is truly forbidden. But then you realize that Theranos was a just billion-dollar version of Amy's Baking Company.

Henri is a black cat with an "interminable sense of ennui." He unwittingly came across some internet fame back in 2007 when his caretaker Will Braden posted the first video of him in what would become a short, and quite popular, web series.Now, the feline philosopher has announced his retirement. Well, the time has come. My final video with the annoying thieving filmmaker is here. Now, I will finally be able to officially retire in peace and work on my philosophy without interruptions. I plan on writing the great feline-american novel. I thank all of you for your support and adulation.Merci, Henri.In order, here is the series:https://youtu.be/0M7ibPk37_Uhttps://youtu.be/Q34z5dCmC4MThis one was voted the "best Internet cat video" in 2012https://youtu.be/IiYUzYozsAQhttps://youtu.be/R_fUsssnHPwhttps://youtu.be/egtvaWzIh7ohttps://youtu.be/ELtzZ5lJnBkhttps://youtu.be/Q8jJuTYfa_Ehttps://youtu.be/OUtn3pvWmpghttps://youtu.be/mXfMWMTLgtIhttps://youtu.be/OMOga8x6aLkHenri also has a book: Henri, le Chat Noir: The Existential Musings of an Angst-Filled Cat(Neatorama)

I still buy multi-packs of the red egg. My daughter is into Aaron's Thinking Putty, but I find Silly Putty to be the ultimate fidget toy.Lifting newsprint ruins the putty, so buy a few eggs at once.Original Silly Putty Pack #104-48 6 Pack via Amazon

Showman Mat Ricardo (previously) writes, "I've always thought it was a shame that the resurgence in cabaret and variety shows has tended to be adult-centric. Late night sexy circus shenanigans are all well and good, but variety shows should be for everyone - so I did something about it!" (more…)

Alt-right darling Jordan Peterson is a big fan of hierarchies, which he says are innate to the human condition, something he knows because lobsters have social hierarchies. (more…)

Husqvarna's remote-controlled demolition robots remind me of the machine art performances that Survival Research Laboratories has staged since 1977.Husqvarna bills its machines as "remote workmates ready to tackle your heaviest, most challenging jobs."Compare that to what Survival Research Laboratories founder Mark Pauline told me in a 1993 interview:"The real message of machines isn't that they're helpful workmates," Pauline said. "Like any extension of the human psyche, machines are scary things," he says. When you take the scary human psyche and magnify it hundreds or thousands of times with technology, it's really nightmarish."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcMFycei5Pw(via Uncrate)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94TP4FcWJucIndia's national elections are only a year away, and things aren't looking good for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an authoritarian war criminal who has a mutual love affair with US President Donald Trump. (more…)

Ana Suda and her friend, Mimi Hernandez, were born in the United States. They live in Montana. On early Wednesday morning they went grocery shopping. A uniformed Border Patrol agent heard them speaking Spanish to each other and demanded to see their identification. When they asked him if they were being racially profiled he said, “Ma’am, the reason I asked you for your ID is because I came in here, and I saw that you guys are speaking Spanish, which is very unheard of up here. It’s the fact that it has to do with you guys speaking Spanish in the store, in a state where it’s predominantly English-speaking." He detained the women in the store's parking lot for 35 to 40 minutes before letting them go.When the Washington Post contacted US Border Patrol for a response, a spokesperson said, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and officers are committed to treating everyone with professionalism, dignity and respect while enforcing the laws of the United States. Although most Border Patrol work is conducted in the immediate border area, agents have broad law enforcement authorities and are not limited to a specific geography within the United States. They have the authority to question individuals, make arrests, and take and consider evidence.”Image: Washington Post Video screenshot

Last week, the New York Times revealed that an obscure company called Securus was providing realtime location tracking to law enforcement, without checking the supposed "warrants" provided by cops, and that their system had been abused by a crooked sheriff to track his targets, including a judge (days later, a hacker showed that Securus's security was terrible, and their service would be trivial to hack and abuse). (more…)

Two days ago, the Senate voted to overrule Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and restore Net Neutrality; it was an incredible victory, but unless the same motion passes in the House, it's a symbolic one. (more…)

Tokyo artist Monde created a set of bookends for last week's Tokyo Design Festa that are tall, narrow dioramae containing detailed miniatures of the narrow laneways of Tokyo, with street furniture, signage and cobblestones; alas, these don't appear to be production items (and would need some kind of weight or underbook tongues to serve as effective bookends), but they're lovely to look at! (more…)

Why do 87% of Americans hold a favorable view of Net Neutrality? Not because the vast majority of the country has become wonkishly interested in the intersection of competition policy and telcoms regulation: it's because they care about the internet. (more…)

My daughter has sculpted our likenesses as LEGO Brickheadz.The LEGO Brickheadz Brick Me kit is fairly awesome. My 11 year-old spent an hour or so on each of these, and was excited to point out she put a cool surfer logo on my hat.Amazon currently has these 708 piece sets for $24, which is below list price.LEGO BrickHeadz Go Brick Me 41597 Building Kit (708 Piece) via Amazon

Little doggo pissed this turtle off chewing on his shell (?) and he aint getting away easy!

It's true that the 1% have accumulated a massive share of America's national wealth; but just as significant is the cohort of professionals -- "well-behaved, flannel-suited crowd of lawyers, doctors, dentists, mid-level investment bankers, M.B.A.s with opaque job titles, and assorted other professionals" -- who style themselves as the "meritocratic middle class" but who actually represent the top decile of American wealth, with net worths from $1.2m to $10m. (more…)

If you are an oligarch or criminal looking to exfiltrate and launder your money, London property markets have been your go-to asset class: London lux is real-estate that behaves like cash, thanks to the long line of oligarchs and criminals who'll pay cash for your safe-deposit box in the sky on a few hours' notice, should you need to liquidate ahead of a purge or an indictment. (more…)

For women, getting dressed in 14th-century Europe was apparently a full-time job.So. Many. Layers.That someone – probably some dude that never had to wear the stuff – thought it was a good idea to complicate things by making it so that you couldn't get dressed without assistance from a family member or servant? Ugh.

https://youtu.be/fhHL8_7k82YFor the second year in a row, the MIT Media Lab is giving out a no-strings-attached cash award of $250,000 for "disobedience" that benefits society; the prize is a reaction to MIT's shameful historic instances of throwing disobedient researchers under the bus, from Aaron Swartz to Star Simpson to bunnie Huang. (more…)

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The Senate has successfully voted to overrule FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and save Net Neutrality (provided that Congress and Trump agree); the vote was a squeaker on near straight party lines: all the Dems and independents voted to keep Net Neutrality, and they won the day thanks to help from three Republicans who split from their party: Susan M Collins [R-ME]; John Kennedy [R-LA] and Lisa Murkowski [R-AK]. (more…)

Jiz Lee, Stoya, Nikki Darling, and Asa Akira talk about representation, the marketing of white women vs. women of color in adult movies, and how porn is still a very white industry. And unfortunately you have to click much deeper to find real, respectful diversity."What Porn Stars Want You To Know: We Don't All Look the Same" (Iris)

We live during a time where cyberattacks regularly make news headlines, so it should come as no surprise that cybersecurity professionals are experiencing a surge in demand at even the entry level, making now the ideal time to learn the tools of the trade if you're considering a career switch. The 2018 Supercharged Cybersecurity Bundle offers 12 hours and more 2,700 pages of instruction on the matter, and it's on sale in the Boing Boing Store for $29.99.Regardless of your experience level, this collection is designed to guide you through the tools and techniques these experts use to keep networks secure. You'll get insight into penetration testing techniques and learn how to test a corporate network against threats using cutting-edge tools, like Kali Linux 2. From mobile forensics to Python script development, you'll take your knowledge further in more nuanced fields and emerge ready to tackle today's cyber threats.The 2018 Supercharged Cybersecurity Bundle is available in the Boing Boing Store for $29.99.

Earlier this month, Parliament sternly warned Mark Zuckerberg that if they continued to ignore their polite requests for him to testify, they'd issue a "summons" that could result in his being dragged to Westminster in chains the next time he set foot in the UK. (more…)

FOR THE KIDS IN YOUR LIFE, AND THEIR SUMMER READING: Get Ruben Bolling’s hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. "The EMU Club inhabits exactly the world I always hoped to live in when I was 12, when the answer to questions like 'Where did I put my toy' led inevitably to alien conspiracies and secret underground tunnels. A book for the curious and adventurous!" -Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Little Brother"The type of non-stop action and improbably hilarious fun that only a kid could dream up. ... The EMU Club's adventures perfectly capture the intersection of imagination and wonder - the crossroad that's so often found in cardboard boxes, pillow forts and backyards everywhere."-GeekDadGet Book the First, Alien Invasion in My Backyard, here. Get Book the Second, Ghostly Thief of Time, here. -More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Yiwu International Trade City in Yiwu, Zhejiang, China is the largest wholesale consumer market in the world. This documentary looks at the people who look after its countless booths. (more…)