Boing Boing

Sophia is an advanced social robot in her second year of development by Hanson Robotics. In this video, she's on a date in the Cayman Islands with actor Will Smith. He turns on the charm, goes in for a kiss but is immediately, awkwardly friendzoned by her. Last year Sophia was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon with her creator, former Imagineer Dr. David Hanson. On it, she tells Jimmy a joke and then plays Rock, Paper, Scissors with him:https://youtu.be/Bg_tJvCA8zw?t=2m20sP.S. You can follow Sophia on Instagram! I just did.https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg661Ikn2vF/?taken-by=realsophiarobot

"A cheetah decided to explore our vehicle on a safari I was leading for Grand Ruaha Safaris (in the Serengeti National Park," wrote wildlife photographer Peter Heistein on Instagram. "Another one jumped up on the hood and was staring at us through the windshield. They were just curious, we kept calm and let them go about their business. Quite a thrill to be this close! "Our guide Alex Mnyangabe... helped us through the encounter with instructions on how to treat the animal 'with respect.'"

https://vimeo.com/124474617Calyx is an amazing nonprofit, privacy-oriented activist ISP (they were the first ISP to successfully resist a secret Patriot Act warrant); they are notable for offering an unlimited, unfiltered, unthrottled 4G/wifi hotspot for a tax-deductible $400 year (mine has repeatedly saved my bacon). (more…)

As advanced atom smashers like the Large Hadron Collider come online, older ones are sometimes abandoned or, better, used for unexpected science experiments. Examples range from recording high-speed X-rays of the biological "motor" that flaps a fly's wings to finding an easter egg in a Degas painting. In the video above, Science Hack Day "global instigator" Ariel Waldman reveals how researchers hack particle accelerators for new uses.

For more than 15 years I've lived in Alameda, a lovely island city in San Francisco's Bay Area. Because we're surrounded by water, there's a boating community. Thus, we have marine stores. I am not part of the boating community, so I had never gone into any of these stores. That is, until today. Our local West Marine store is moving to another part of town, so they're having a big sale. I decided it was time to check it out. It was nicer than I expected. They're set to close at the end of March, so a lot of the shelves were barren. But there were still some neat nautical products left like international code flags, personal locator beacons, and boat beanbag chairs.Though, what really caught my eye were these bottles of fake champagne. They're for when you christen a boat. You just take the bottle and smash it against the vessel. They don't contain alcohol (one reviewer says it contains a "soapy liquid") and are scored to break easily.Read for yourself. Here's the product's description:Save the real champagne for guests and break this special christening bottle on your vessel’s prow. The bottle is scored around the middle and housed in a net to ensure that your first swing is a smashing hit. The result: cheers from the crowd when an impressive-yet safe-spray of imitation bubbly celebrates your boat’s dent-free debut.Watch and learn:https://youtu.be/fBSAwPqVIDEphoto by Rusty Blazenhoff

President Donald J. Trump today fired Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin, then tweeted that the White House doctor Ronny Jackson is his nominee to replace. (more…)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is running an excellent series on the potential and pitfalls of secure messaging app -- this is very timely given the ramping up of state surveillance and identity theft, not to mention anyone looking to #DeleteFacebook and transition away from Facebook Messenger. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2drwelVD4QwDale Lane's Machine Learning for Kids project uses extensions to the popular Scratch programming environment to teach the basics of machine learning to children. (more…)

In the USA, there are tens of thousands of teachers in open rebellion, in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona, Kentucky, and things are heating up in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa and Colorado. (more…)

Self-taught stop-motion filmmaker PES made his first animated short in 2001. It was a saucy little number called "Roof Sex" that featured furniture getting it on. The film won several awards and its success kick-started his career. The Oscar and Emmy-nominated director recently reshared this "Making of Roof Sex" video on YouTube, a fun NSFW-ish behind-the-scenes piece that was originally released in 2003. Here's the original (which is NSFW, primarily because of the sexy moaning):https://youtu.be/1aodpb3vFU0PES is currently teaching a course on stop-motion animation on Skillshare.

Hedgehogs dream of musical glory in these charming announcements for NPR's annual Tiny Desk Concert competition. (more…)

At Vintage Cassettes, "you will find the beatiful pictures of sealed compact cassettes." Cassettes from 1970-1990 are covered the most. Collecting vintage cassettes is a great hobby and brings all good memories back. Cassettes are organized by brands and then the years they were produced. We concentrate on the most important brands. This site try to cover three markets: US, Europe and Japan. We also added the History of Compact Cassettes located to the right. When I was a kid I wondered if METAL meant that it was specially made for taping, like, Megadeth. The companion site (with better images) would be The Tape Deck, which posts pictures of the cassettes themselves.

On Saturday April 7, celebrate the wonder of space exploration during the Yuri's Night bash taking place under the Space Shuttle Endeavor at the California Science Center! Special guests include astronaut Nicole Stott, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and many more. Among dozens of far out talks and stellar interactive experiences, I'll be there playing the Voyager Golden Record, the iconic message for extraterrestrials launched into space 40 years ago. (My friends Tim Daly and Lawrence Azerrad and I co-produced the first ever vinyl release of the Voyager Record and we were honored with a 2018 Grammy award.) I hope to see you there! Tickets: Yuri's Night L.A.And of course if you're not in Los Angeles, there are Yuri's Night happenings all over the planet!

Julian Verland's "HP Joelcraft," an unholy union between the spine-tingling words of HP Lovecraft's "Nemesis" and Billy Joel's "Piano Man" music. Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night, I have liv’d o’er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight;And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright...(Thanks, UPSO!)

Intrepid vernacular photography collector Robert E. Jackson curated a delightful selection of creepy, fun, and funny vintage photos of the Easter Bunny. More at Flashbak.

I generally don't wear French cuff shirts, but I like the idea of Uncrate Supply's Lighter Cufflinks, $70. Problem is, I'd most certainly fiddle with them, leading to scorched sleeves or worse.

Privacy Badger is EFF's free privacy plugin; it blocks trackers and ads from companies that practice "non-consensual tracking," in which your browser's "do not track" instructions are not honored. (more…)

This automated watch winder automatically winds my favorite watch!I rarely wear a watch, I just don't remember to put them on any more. My favorite watch is a self-winding one and when I did go to put it on it has always stopped. I never remember to set the watch until I actually tried to use it, and then it is too late.I decided to try one of these self-winding gadgets, and it works. Once a day the mechanism spins the watch in the correct direction for about 5 minutes. The watch stays wound and my superlative chronometer with a perpetual movement keeps moving.I use the app Emerald Time to set my watches to an atomic clock. [Newly Upgraded] Versa Automatic Single Watch Winder with Sliding Cover via Amazon

People who buy sex toys generally want "high-quality, ergonomically designed toys that are intuitive to use," but Silicon Valley keeps delivering "innovative" and commercially unsuccessful sex toys whose selling-points are their "flashy apps and connectivity." (more…)

New Zealand set about expelling any Russians who might be spies, but couldn't find anyone who fit the profile. Apropos of nothing, there is a subreddit called "Maps Without New Zealand" dedicated to world maps that omit the island nation, as if the creator simply forgot that it existed or never knew in the first place.

Timothy Miller of Spirit Ironworks shows how to use a induction heater to heat metal extremely quickly. (more…)

A group of Chinese computer scientists from academia and industry have published a paper documenting a tool for fooling facial recognition software by shining hat-brim-mounted infrared LEDs on the user's face, projecting CCTV-visible, human-eye-invisible shapes designed to fool the face recognition software. (more…)

When Grey Heron surfaced this month selling anti-Signal and anti-Telegram surveillance tools at a UK trade show for cyber-arms-dealers, sharp-eyed journalists at Motherboard immediately noticed that the company's spokesman was last seen fronting for Hacking Team, a disgraced Italian cyber-arms-dealer that provided surveillance weapons to some of the world's cruelest dictators. (more…)

This LEGO Camper Van is far more accessible than the VW branded one.Growing up in Southern California instilled a love of all things camper van in me. My daughter loves our VW Westy so much that she cried when I suggested selling the ol' bus last year.There were peals of joy when she saw this kit!LEGO Creator Sunshine Surfer Van 31079 Building Kit (379 Piece) via Amazon

Courtesy the International Comet Quarterly, here's a list of meteorite strikes that focuses on situations where the meteorite hit something -- ranging from houses to cars to mailboxes and even a dog. There are a surprising number of tragic deaths; I can't imagine what the odds are of being maimed or killed by a meteorite, but it's got to be awfully high.A sample from the list:(CC-licensed photo via Pixabay)

A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 2,237 subjects found that the majority of Americans (59%) "do not trust Facebook to obey US privacy laws." (more…)

While it sure is a sight to behold, there’s much more to this magazine than meets the eye. I met Steve and Tanya, the duo at the top of the Singapore counterculture scene best known for curating Kult, the top local alternative art magazine and galley, and learned more about EYEYAH!Their new initiative aims to leverage their global network of 1000 plus artists to produce engaging multimedia content, events, and social campaigns to “inspire children, changing perceptions and provoking new points of view”.Their flagship creation, EYEYAH! Magazine, was launched this January. The first issue brings together interactive artwork, launches a social campaign for kids to contribute their own pieces, and comes with six visceral stickers. It kicks off with the below invitation where the authors rightly proclaim the magazine to be the “Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Wild Wild Web” and overall does a kickass job of teaching kids about the Internet.Though they just launched the first issue in January, selected pages are already being distributed to local schools in a black and white zine format, spicing up education about the Internet in participating local schools. While the magazine and curriculum are currently only available in Singapore, there are plans for a global launch later this year (which I am helping their team with). For now, you can check out their website to learn more about the magazines, prints, and tees they have to offer.

It's been six years since investigative journalists published their expose accusing London's Metropolitan Police of colluding with the UK's construction cartel to blacklist workers who complained about unsafe working conditions, abusive bosses and wage-theft, as well as union organisers and other "troublemakers" -- this week, the Met confirmed that its officers were an active part of the illegal blacklist. (more…)

After you #DeleteFacebook (here's step-by-step instructions, because they make it damned hard), you'll be wanting to replace the services it provided like instant messaging, event planning, and social news sharing. (more…)

A statistical analysis of the unsolved Zodiak killer cipher shows that it is like fake ciphers and unlike true ones, such as the Zodiak's other, cracked ciphertext. In the chart above, created by Tom S Juzek, the red dot is the unsolved cipher, the purple dot the solved one, the other squares known-true ciphers and the diamonds known-fake ciphers. [via r/codes]In my view, the most likely explanation is that the cipher is a ruse. Serial killers tend to be subject to hubris, as Douglas points out in his excellent book on the subject [html link]. It must have been a shock to the Zodiac Killer when he learnt that his z408 cipher had been deciphered so quick, by two hobby cryptographers. To prove intellectual superiority, he needed another cipher, one so strong that couldn't be deciphered, certainly not as easily as z408. I think the Zodiac Killer was unable to produce such a cipher, which is why he chose to take another route: He decided to cheat. The Zodiac Killer created a fake cipher that no-one could ever decrypt. If you're wondering why the cracked Zodiak cipher is way past the rest of the "true" ones, it's because they all involved more randomness than his--never roll your own crypto. Be sure to read Juzek's post as it's staggeringly thorough, yet interesting to someone like me who knows nothing of mathematics. Compare to Craig Bauer's solution, which Juzek describes as "far fetched."Here's the original, if you'd like to take another futile stab at it:

Welcome to the convergence point in a venn diagram of video games, youtube and J.G. Ballard.A very short comparison between BeamNG and reallife traffic accidents. That's pretty much how much attention I spend to detail when I recreating reallife dash cam crashes in beamng.Someone should make a forensics/legal-type show using BeamNG.Previously: Cult driving simulator spawns YouTube genre of automotive chaos

Exhibit A (above) is the Jovivi Handmade Natural Rose Quartz Gua Sha Scraping Massage Tool Massage Wand For Acupuncture Therapy Stick Point Treatment. It is 10cm long, $14, and comes with a free bag.Exhibit B is a 99c song titled "The Crystal Healing Dildo (Original Mix)" by an artist named The Real Kim Shady. It has the parental advisory sticker and is on YouTube with 415 views and the description "no copyright intended." There are no comments. I haven't listened to it.2 results for "healing crystal dildo" [Amazon.com]

After interviewing Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie and other CA sources and reviewing leaked documents, the Washington Post has pieced together the story of how the dirty-tricking electioneers worked their way Republican political circles, as billionaire founder Robert Mercer opened doors for them with other notorious GOP billionaire backers, with an able assist from newly minted national security adviser John Bolton, a notorious war-criminal with close ties to terrorist groups like MEK. (more…)

Here's Chris Baraniuk on people who make their own mechanical watches, from scratch: an intricate and delicate traditional craft that is, for once, not lost to time.He started reading forums, researching tools and materials, and checking out where parts could be acquired, such as cases, dials, hands, strap and movement. “It becomes like a big jigsaw puzzle, you try to work out what pieces will fit together,” he says.Thanks in part to the availability of information over the web, many people just as curious as [Matthew] Wright have embarked on their own home-made watch projects. And some have even launched businesses as a result. But how easy is it to get started?A quick hit on Google will bring up a wave of results that can kick things off for enthusiasts. There’s the Reddit Watch forum, the TimeZone Watch School, which offers courses via the web for a price, discussions on the WatchUSeek forum, and hundreds of YouTube videos aimed at makers.People can buy kits for assembling watches or individual parts online with relative ease, too. This is the exact rabbit-hole that Wright fell down when he started researching.“You see other people who’ve made little changes to watches, they’ve changed dials or whatever, and the next thing, I stumbled across websites where you can buy the cases completely empty,” he recalls.Pictured here is a watch made by Mike Hamende, who also took the photo. I once almost managed to put together a Lego kit and I'm still proud of myself.

This is a fun video introduction to feeding yourself in Japan, even if you don't know Japanese. Really, it's pretty easy to get food in Japan if you're a foreigner, but this video shows you different options, from konbini (convenience stores, which are much better than the ones in the US), to chain restaurants (again, usually tastier than US chains), to shopping mall food courts (beautiful and mind bending), and actual non-chain eateries.

Did the scene in the new IT movie where Pennywise bites Georgie's arm, only for the camera to cut to an exterior shot of the drain, leave you frustrated and hankering for more? If you want to dwell on the boy's dismembered fate on an indefinite basis, this animatronic prop at the TransWorld Halloween & Attractions Show in St. Louis this week should be right up your sewer. You might be fortunate enough to see this at your local haunted house this fall, the laughing and shaking and screaming as an endlessly looping moment.I usually love the pop-culture grand guignol transgressive trash of modern Halloween horror, but I really hate this! A sense of amazed wonder subsiding to cold dismay. There's something very 2018 going on here. It doesn't have anything to do with our lives but we all know that terrible things will soon be happening and we've developed a very strange language to accomodate ourselves to the prospect of it. Here's the top comment on the YouTube thread:Funny Vine Videos | FVV3 hours agoCan we feature your video in our YouTube channel ? Please make sure to email me at funnyvinevideos.fvv(at)gmail(dot)com I have a great offer for you $$$ Am I just getting old? Tell me if I'm just getting old.

Naomi Klein's l(ooooo)ongread in The Intercept about the state of play in Puerto Rico is the comprehensive summary of the post-Maria fuckery and hope that has gripped America's colonial laboratory, the place where taxation without representation, austerity, chemical weapons, new drugs, and new agribusiness techniques get trialed before the rest of America are subjected to them. (more…)

There are a lot of comedy specials on Netflix and I do my best to watch them all, as I have a voracious appetite for seeing professional comedians perform their craft.Now, I don't normally do this but I feel compelled to share the one I watched last night with you. It's called Gad Elmaleh: American Dream and it's showing on Netflix right now. This is the first special the Moroccan-born comedian has done in English, though apparently it's rehashed material from his 2016 French language Gad Gone Wild. It doesn't matter. He's gone ahead and created something wonderfully funny for us to enjoy without having to read subtitles. His unique insight on everyday American culture and the quirks of our language really had me laughing. His observational humor is Seinfeld-esque (though distinctly his own) and, in fact, he's been described many times as "the Jerry Seinfeld of France." Amazingly, Elmaleh's debut appearance on American television was just two years ago. He recounted on Seth Meyers' show the first time he met Seinfeld in person, on his then-home turf of Paris:https://youtu.be/WnH7nuKvbpo

A Fly Jamaica Airline crew member tried to smuggle $160K worth of cocaine in his pants, from Montego Bay into John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. His ingenious transport method for the nearly nine pounds of cocaine failed to trick agents for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (more…)

We see these lawmakers representing the NRA, and not their constituents. We see our “leaders” making excuses and refusing to act. On Saturday, they’ll see US. pic.twitter.com/7OGttnRSsz— March For Our Lives (@AMarch4OurLives) March 21, 2018America will be marching to end gun violence on Saturday, March 24. #MarchForOurLives. “Have you registered to vote? RSVP’d for the march? Signed the petition? You can do it all at marchforourlives.com.” https://twitter.com/AMarch4OurLives/status/976514096693735424https://twitter.com/AMarch4OurLives/status/976894746118512641https://twitter.com/AMarch4OurLives/status/976618936602185731

The inimitable Dave Pell, managing editor of the Internet, shares 20 quick (and brilliant) insights about the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal. Here are a few:2. Facebook is constantly urging you to share your immediate thoughts and reactions to every life event. We were a couple days into the company’s biggest challenge before Facebook’s creator shared any of his thoughts on the matter. There’s probably a lesson in that...11. You read the stories about Cambridge Analytica and you think, Damn, these guys are total geniuses who can control our minds. You watch the undercover video of the Cambridge Analytica execs and you think, Damn, these guys are seriously some clown-ass schmucks. Like always, believe what you see...12. If Facebook really manipulates our thoughts, they must want us to be really pissed at Facebook...19. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. The only privacy policy that matters is your own."The Flight of the Zuckerberg" (via NextDraft)

Use code QAXI6QOK at check out and get this power outlet tester for $5 on Amazon. It'll indicate if an outlet is wired correctly and, if not, what the problem is.

Dropbox has published a set of guidelines for how companies can "encourage, support, and celebrate independent open security research" -- and they're actually pretty great, a set of reasonable commitments to take bug reports seriously and interact respectfully with researchers. (more…)

Writing for Bloomberg Businessweek, Paul Ford says Facebook's "not-a-breach" of personal information on 50 millions of its users is just the latest example of why it's time for a digital protection agency.Facebook’s recent debacle is illustrative. It turns out that the company let a researcher spider through its social network to gather information on 50 million people. Then the Steve Bannon-affiliated, Robert Mercer-backed U.K. data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica used that data to target likely Trump voters. Facebook responded that, no, this was not a “breach.”OK, sure, let’s not call it a breach. It’s how things were designed to work. That’s the problem....How might a digital EPA function? Well, it could do some of the work that individuals do today. For example, the website of Australian security expert Troy Hunt, haveibeenpwned.com (“pwned” is how elite, or “l33t,” hackers, or “hax0rs,” spell “owned”), keeps track of nearly 5 billion hacked accounts. You give it your email, and it tells you if you’ve been found in a data breach. A federal agency could and should do that work, not just one very smart Australian—and it could do even better, because it would have a framework for legally exploring, copying, and dealing with illegally obtained information. Yes, we’d probably have to pay Booz Allen or Accenture or whatever about $120 million to get the same work done that Troy Hunt does on his own, but that’s the nature of government contracting, and we can only change one thing at a time.Photo of Mark Zuckerberg: JD Lasica, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

John Dowd, the lead attorney for President Trump in the Russian inquiry, quit today. Here's Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman, in the New York Times:Mr. Dowd, who took over the president’s legal team last summer, had considered leaving several times in recent months and ultimately concluded that Mr. Trump was increasingly ignoring his advice, one of the people said. Under Mr. Dowd’s leadership, Mr. Trump’s lawyers had advised him to cooperate with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russia’s election interference and possible ties to Trump associates as well as whether the president obstructed the inquiry. The president has instead in recent days begun publicly assailing Mr. Mueller, a shift in tone that appears to be born of the president’s concern that the investigation is bearing down on him more directly.

This is Akira 100% and he likes to play with balls, silver ones. Wearing just an oversized golden sequined bowtie, this Japanese entertainer removes that metal tray covering his junk at the perfect moments when the pendulum swings. These are genital-free videos, though they may still be NSFW.I imagine these tricks took many many takes. https://youtu.be/0Y0y873dQcQ(Dangerous Minds, Kraftfuttermischwerk)

In this video, a room full of deejays (including a few world champs) create a cacophony of noise by using vinyl to reconstruct classical music. They call themselves the Philharmonic Turntable Orchestra and are described as the "world's first ensemble performance using only turntables and mixers." They recommend putting on headphones before hitting play. Here's its behind-the-scenes video:https://youtu.be/J2KK3vqJqogThanks, Stewart!

John "Bolton" Mustachio, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a hot pick to become Trump's National Security Advisor when he gets around to firing the current one, appeared recently in a bizarre video beseeching Russia to loosen its gun laws.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPM-FXHj5gAThe episode, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the common cause that Russian and American gun rights groups were forming in the years leading up to the 2016 election through former National Rifle Association president David Keene. Keene appointed Bolton to the NRA's international affairs subcommittee in 2011. ... The Bolton video appears to be another plank in a bridge built by Russia to conservative political organizations inside the United States. It's unclear why Russian leaders wanted to curry favor with the NRA, but Torshin and Keene appeared to have developed close ties over in the years prior to the 2016 election.

German pastry chef, gamer, cosplayer, and Twittizen, Sonja decided to make a batch of edible candy RPG/polyhedral dice. She posted pictures on Twitter and all the nerds came running to her yard. Realizing she might have a hungry market on her hands, Sonja has quickly opened up an Etsy store, the cleverly-named, Sugar and Dice.Batches of the dice are Isomalt sugar and are edible. They can either be "eaten as a hard candy bonbon or dissolved into a hot cup of tea or coffee." Sonja points out that they are not balanced and not perfect on all sides, so they can't really be reliably used in gaming.A set of 7 dice (1 each of d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d100, and d20) will run you £18, shipped to the US (and take 1-2 weeks). Not exactly penny candy, but a cool novelty and a unique, fun gift for a gamer friend. I will definitely be getting some. A set of these will make a nice gaming night prize.

This may look like grasslands, but it's a horse carefully positioned and beautifully photographed by Lee Diegaard, part of her Equuleus series. Below: Copper Valley. (more…)