This 3D printed house was unveiled today at SXSW in Austin, TX. A cement house like this – 650 square feet, single story – takes just 12-24 hours to "print."It's "the first permitted, 3D-printed home created specifically for the developing world," says New Story, the non-profit for international housing, who has partnered with the 3D-printed housing construction company ICON to create 100 of these homes for low-income people in El Salvador by next year if all goes as planned.According to The Verge:Using the Vulcan printer, ICON can print an entire home for $10,000 and plans to bring costs down to $4,000 per house. “It’s much cheaper than the typical American home,” Ballard says. It’s capable of printing a home that’s 800 square feet, a significantly bigger structure than properties pushed by the tiny home movement, which top out at about 400 square feet. In contrast, the average New York apartment is about 866 square feet.Not only is the ICON/New Story partnership making really affordable housing, but it's also making really cool-looking houses. Take a look inside:This isn't the first house to ever be 3D printed, but others before it “are printed in a warehouse, or they look like Yoda huts," Jason Ballard, co-founder of ICON, told The Verge. "For this venture to succeed, they have to be the best houses.” https://youtu.be/SvM7jFZGAec

Known worldwide for his incredible fingerstyle guitar covers of popular songs, Alexandr Misko performs a-ha's 1985 hit "Take on Me" in his latest video.The 20-year-old Russian musician writes, "This song is a tough one to play, but i tried my best!" (He's humble to boot!)Previously: Air-horn version of a-ha's 'Take on Me'

The Heritage Foundation ranks Singapore as the world's second-most "economically free" country; pro-capitalist economist Bryan Caplan says it approaches the "capitalist ideal." (more…)

Wireless networks are known to be fickle beasts, delivering inconsistent speeds and disconnecting throughout the day. However, there are steps you can take to bring your network—and browsing experience—back to 100 percent. NetSpot Pro for Windows allows you to visualize, optimize, and troubleshoot your wireless networks with any PC or Mac so you can get the best connection possible at all times, and it's on sale for $39 in the Boing Boing Store.With NetSpot Pro, you can analyze your Wi-Fi coverage anywhere you are or plan on being. Using the mapping feature, you can create a comprehensive heatmap of your network, cluing you in as to where the strongest and weakest points of connectivity are, as well as where dead zones might be lingering. Plus, NetSpot includes a troubleshooting tool, so you can diagnose and fix connectivity issues and get back online faster.Lifetime licenses to NetSpot Pro for Windows and Mac are available today for $39 in the Boing Boing Store.

It's not often a video game can create a vibrant open world, fill it with complex characters, and let you play your way through on high-octane adventure. In this regard, Mafia III is not like most games. You play as Lincoln Clay, an orphan and Vietnam veteran hellbent on revenge against the Italian Mafia in 1960's New Orleans. It's on sale now in the Boing Boing Store for $16.99.Jump in and explore a vast, open world ruled by the mob and corrupt officials with sights, sounds and intense social atmosphere of 1960's New Orleans. You can choose your own way to fight, from brute force to stealth tactics, and you can build a new criminal empire in your own unique way by deciding which of your lieutenants you reward and which you betray.Mafia III is on sale for $16.99, nearly 60% off the usual $39.99 retail price.

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I'm a big fan of Oakland psychedelic artist, Skinner. Back in 2016, I posted here on Boing Boing about his incredible animated video for High on Fire's "The Black Plot."I also love the work that pop-up book artist, Rosston Meyer, is doing with his Poposition Press. Last year, I did a review of his collaboration with Japanese pop artist Junko Mizuno, for her book, TRIAD.So, imagine my excitement when I heard that Meyer and Skinner were collaborating on a pop-up book illustrating scenes from the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The resulting tome is truly a mind-twisting artifact. Skinner's Necronomicon renders five scenes from Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Out of Time, The Call of Cthulhu, At The Mountains of Madness, and The Colour Out of Space. Each pop-up spread also contains two quotes from the work that drop down from the outside edges of each page. The whole effect is one of wonder, high-weirdness, and the kind of eyeball-popping, slavering insanity you would expect of anything associated with Lovecraft. And Skinner.Here's the video that Popsition released when they were taking pre-orders. It offers a look at some of the pop-up spreads and close-ups of the artwork.https://youtu.be/7yL626djYIgYou can order Skinner's Necronomicon directly from Poposition Press.

Donald Trump was so eager for Vladi­mir Putin to attend his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, he personally wrote the Russian President a letter inviting him. Robert Mueller's investigative team somehow got a copy of the document. It is the first known communication that shows Trump trying to establish contact directly with Putin. (more…)

In a detailed Washington Post piece at the end of a bizarre political week, David Nakamura writes, “The White House dumped its South Korean ambassador nominee, State's top North Korean expert resigned; the NSC's Asia director was on paternity leave for 2 weeks. One man swooped in to fill the vacuum: Trump.”“In Trump’s decision on North Korea, the world glimpses a president who is his own diplomat, negotiator and strategist.An excerpt from the story of how we arrived at this bizarre point of United States/North Korean diplomacy, without a single Dennis Rodman in sight:Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration’s roster of Korean experts, already depleted, grew even thinner. The White House mysteriously dropped its choice for ambassador to Seoul. The State Department’s top North Korea specialist resigned. And the senior Asia director at the National Security Council was out the past two weeks on paternity leave.But when a high-level South Korean delegation arrived at the White House on Thursday afternoon for two days of meetings over the North Korea threat, one person swooped in to fill the vacuum: President Trump.In a stunning turn of events, Trump personally intervened into a security briefing intended for his top deputies, inviting the South Korean officials into the Oval Office where he agreed on the spot to a historic but exceedingly risky summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He then orchestrated a dramatic public announcement on the driveway outside the West Wing broadcast live on cable networks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I7FVyQCjNgdanah boyd's SXSW Edu keynote, What Hath We Wrought? builds on her essay from 2017 about the relationship of media literacy education to the rise of conspiracy theories and the great epistemological rift in which significant numbers of people believe things that are clearly untrue, from climate denial to flat-earthing. (more…)

Olivia Watts, a Melbourne-based circus performer, combines gymnastics with some sort of magic in this highly-skilled 6-hoop performance.

If you were hoping that a person you detest will get hit by a piece of the out-of-control Chinese space station when it crashes to Earth the in the next few weeks, I have bad news: The European Space Agency (ESA) says the "average American citizen is around ten times more likely to win the Powerball lottery than they are to be struck by a piece of the Tiangong-1 as it plummets back to earth."From SOFREP:There has only ever been one confirmed report of a person being struck by a piece of debris that fell from space in history: Lottie Williams, who was hit by a piece of a defunct NASA satellite as she walked through a park in Oklahoma in 1997. Despite holding what may be that singular distinction, William’s recollection of the incident may assuage any fears people may have about the Chinese space station’s reentry.“We were still walking through the park when I felt a tapping on my shoulder,” Williams told reporters. That tapping was actually debris that had survived reentry and made it all the way from orbit to her walking path. “The weight was comparable to an empty soda can,” Williams went on. “It looked like a piece of fabric except when you tap it, it sounded metallic.”

Corey King, a sheriff's deputy in Washington County, Georgia put out an arrest warrant for his wife, Anne King, after she posted on Facebook: "That moment when everyone in your house has the flu and you ask your kid's dad to get them (not me) more Motrin and Tylenol and he refuses." Anne King's friend, Susan Hines, commented on the post, calling Deputy King a "POS." "Give me an hour and check your mailbox," she wrote. "I'll be GLAD to pick up the slack."Deputy King told his ex-wife to delete the post. When she didn't, he requested a warrant to arrest both women on a charge of "intent to defame another, communicate false matter which tends to expose one who is alive to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, and which tends to provoke a breach of peace.CNN reports on what happened next, which shouldn't surprise you:The next day, a Washington County court magistrate issued warrants for both Anne King and Hines.The women were charged with "criminal defamation of character," processed and spent about four hours in jail before posting $1,000 bail.At their hearing, state-court judge stated there was no basis for the arrest and the case was dropped."I don't even know why we're here," the judge said, according to the complaint.Also not surprising, Anne King is suing for compensatory and punitive damages and Deputy King is saying it's not his fault; it's Magistrate Judge Ralph Todd's fault for actually issuing the warrants.

In June 1980, "Weird Al" Yankovic first performed "Won't Eat Prunes Again" on The Dr. Demento Show. Shortly after, he rocked it live at Cal Poly. Audio evidence above.(via r/ObscureMedia and Weird Al Wiki)That was such a dirty trickBoy, it really made us sickWell it looks like we've been done in by the pruneStill the memory lingers onI been livin' in the john'Cause I've had the runs since Monday afternoon

It'll buff right out.

The 1936 All-American Soap Box Derby is a fascinating look at the ethos and mores from the height of the soap box derby craze. While it's cool to see maker culture valued and celebrated, it's certainly not very inclusive. (more…)

Lauren Ko of LOKOKITCHEN in Seattle bakes up pies and tarts that are so creative that fans might feel bad slicing into them. (more…)

A nearly 132-year-old message-in-a-bottle was found in late January (or was it?). Here's the story: While walking around Wedge Island in Western Australia, beachcomber Tonya Illman discovered the old bottle in the dunes. Inside was a tightly-bundled scroll with a piece of twine around it which Tonya and her husband Kym took home to dry out in their oven. Once the note was dried out enough, they unrolled it and learned the bottle's message, dated June 12, 1886, was in German. Some people believe the find is part of an elaborate marketing hoax staged by Kym, a known "ambush marketer" in Perth. Still, according to BBC News, the couple got the note to an expert who confirmed its authenticity:Dr Ross Anderson, Assistant Curator Maritime Archaeology at the WA Museum, confirmed the find was authentic after consulting with colleagues from Germany and the Netherlands."Incredibly, an archival search in Germany found Paula's original Meteorological Journal and there was an entry for 12 June 1886 made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard. The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message," Dr Anderson said.The handwriting on the journal, and the message in the bottle, also matched, he added.The bottle was jettisoned in the south-eastern Indian Ocean while the ship was travelling from Cardiff in Wales to Indonesia, and probably washed up on the Australian coast within 12 months, where it was buried under the sand, he wrote in his report.Thousands of bottles were thrown overboard during the 69-year German experiment but to date only 662 messages - and no bottles - had been returned. The last bottle with a note to be found was in Denmark in 1934.The message and its bottle will be on display for two years at the Western Australian Museum in Perth, courtesy of the Illman family.-- Oldest message in a bottle found on Western Australia beach -- Wait, Did F1 Driver Daniel Ricciardo’s Parents Help Fake Finding That 131 Year Old Message In A Bottle?-- Perth businessman Kym Illman says bottle find not ‘shonky-ed up’screenshots via Kym Illman

Woodworker John Malecki created this amazing river table with a massive piece of gnarly claro walnut and a lot of elbow grease. The end result is worth all the effort. (more…)

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A valiha is a special zither traditionally made in Madagascar from a local type of giant bamboo. It has a lovely sound, and there's a clear throughline from traditional songs played on a valiha to music of the Caribbean. (more…)

Hyperallergic reports that a prankster festooned a Guggenheim Museum toilet with gold yarn, an apparent response to the 2016 gold toilet installation at the same museum (above). (more…)

Actor and contortionist Doug Jones got his start in show business as a mime. His big Hollywood break came in the late 1980s when he got the role of McDonald's moon crooner, Mac Tonight. Thirty-one years later, this career "man behind the mask" earned the honor of being onstage with Guillermo del Toro as he accepted the "Best Picture" Oscar for The Shape of Water. Why? Because Jones played the film's "Amphibian Man." https://twitter.com/actordougjones/status/971523351519797248Great Big Story recently released this (literally-revealing) video portrait of Jones, calling him "the most famous actor you’ve never seen:"You might not know his face, but you’ve seen his work. With over 150 movie and TV credits to his name, Doug Jones has been every creature, monster and villain known to Hollywood. From the Amphibian Man in “The Shape of Water,” the Silver Surfer in “Fantastic Four” to the Thin Clown in “Batman Returns,” Jones has been spicing up your movie-watching experience for the past three decades.And for the earworm, here's Mac Tonight:https://youtu.be/0c4_b5PHWg8

Coca-Cola will soon be offering a canned cocktail, a "Chu-Hi," to its Japanese market. The Coca-Cola Chu-Hi will be the first beverage in the brand's 130-year history made with alcohol, a popular distilled shochu in this case. SoraNews24 reports:Chu-his (also called “sours”) are so popular that they’re sold in cans, regularly bought by customers looking for something sweeter (and also generally cheaper) than beer, while still delivering a similar 4-to-8-percent dose of alcohol. It’s not all that unusual for pubs in Japan to offer “coke-his” on their menus, either, which mix shochu with cola, either Coke or one of its competitors’ substitute products.Likewise, even in the West Coca-Cola has long been used in cocktails. Still, it’s going to be a little startling to be able to buy official, from-the-factory alcoholic Coca-Cola, which might be why only Japan is going to be graced with the canned adult drinks. “This is [a] modest experiment for a specific slice of our market,” Coca-Cola Japan president Jorge Garduno said in regards to the new venture, which indicates that the Coca-Cola chu-hi probably won’t see release in the rest of the world.photo by Mike Mozart, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Economist and maths communicator Tim Harford (previously) presents a riff on Harold Pollack's aphorism that "The best financial advice for most people would fit on an index card," and comes up with a complete set of rules for statistical literacy that fits on a postcard. (more…)

This 3-ounce Bluetooth speaker is highly rated on Amazon (and Fakespot gives the reviews an A grade for authenticity). It also comes with a built in mic so you can use it as a speakerphone. It's normally $13 but if you use the promo code Y98TGMLD at checkout it is only $7.

A group of CMU researchers have created a generalizable approach to converting the model files generated by 3D design packages into knitting patterns that can be fed into a variety of computerized knitting machines, which then "print" the solid by knitting it. (more…)

This week Victorville, California police arrested a 14-year-old boy who dressed up in a sheriff's uniform, put emergency lights on his grandfather's car, and drove around "responding" to various crimes. After the real police pulled him over, they searched his room and found "counterfeit money, simulation firearms, ballistic vests and other law enforcement related items." No word on whether the youngster had cultivated cop speak. From the Merced Sun-Star:Police also realized the teen had a busy night before he was pulled over: He had pulled over a woman in a fake traffic stop, and asked for her identification, police said. The teen let her off with a warning.During a separate incident that day, the juvenile turned on his emergency lights, drawing a 16-year-old out of a home. The dressed-up teen told the 16-year-old he was responding to a domestic disturbance call. But when the imposter was told no one had made such a call, he left the scene, police said.

I prefer to think that the name and description for the "Podcast Co-Host Sleeveless Top in Fog" was written by a neural net:Even a late night in the studio deserves your best style effort. Show you agree by sporting this black top to record your next episode! Boasting a notched neckline and deep blue trim down the center, this loose 'n' flowy ModCloth namesake label top makes your outfit just as clever as the insights you share with your digital audience.[via]

Tickets just went on sale for Burger Boogaloo, Total Trash Productions' annual rockin' two-day music festival. This year's lineup is impressive with DEVO headlining on day one and The Damned on day two. John Waters serves as the fest's host for its fourth consecutive year.The show takes place June 30 and July 1 at Oakland's Mosswood Park. Ticket prices range from $99 to $269. If you go, be sure to check out Francis Lau on Saturday. He's a young musician from the 3 O’Clock Rock kids' music program.https://youtu.be/zxr_EDgcD5Q

The Disconnect is a literary magazine published on the web with a fun wrinkle: You can only read it if your wifi is off.You can load the magazine by going to its URL, but once you're there, it displays a message telling you "Please Disconnect from the Internet".I duly turned off my wifi, started reading the first issue, and got to the note from the editor and founder, Chris Bolin:This magazine started with a simple thought experiment: what if a piece of the internet made you leave the rest behind?We created The Disconnect to embrace positive aspects of the internet—ease of dissemination and access—while pushing against some of its nefarious features, like ubiquitous distractions.The theme of this issue is straightforward: humans and our technology. Every piece in this issue describes an encounter with technology, whether it’s intentional or inconsequential, constructive or devastating. You’ll find a poem about a conflicted hunger for silence, a tale of monetizing the dead, and an exposition of the future of digital divides.This is not a Luddite rallying cry against modernity. Technology is ingrained in our lives for good and for ill. This is nothing new: humans have altered their reality with technology for millennia, from spoken language to the written word, from agriculture to electricity. We believe that the way to a better life is forward, not backwards. Let’s thoughtfully critique our world, not naively eschew it.It's a very fun concept! It's part of a whole pile of recent design experiments that tweak our relationship to the always-on interwebs and the casinofied psychologies of social media, ranging from Rob's txt.fyi (which I wrote about here) to Ben Grosser's experiments in "demetricating" Facebook and Twitter, or tools for removing retweets by Andre Torrez and Robin Sloan.As for the writing itself in The Disconnect, I've only started reading the first issue, but I've really enjoyed the opening piece, "Rescue" -- a bleak and moving sci-fi short story by Brian Mihok.(A tip of the hat to Brian Bennett for pointing this out to me)

Today's video games are technological marvels, boasting life-like graphics and immense open worlds. But, there's still something to be said about the games we played when we were younger, like Tetris and Snake. While not nearly as advanced as today's triple-A titles, nostalgia alone makes them a treat to play every now and again, and it's in this same retro spirit that the Wanle Gamers Console For iPhone was created.https://player.vimeo.com/video/252978627This iPhone case turns your smartphone into an old-school gaming handheld, with ten classic games like Tetris, Tank, Snake, Formula One Racing, and more pre-installed. Its ultra-slim design cuts down on bulk, while the raised buttons make gaming more accessible and help protect against bumps and falls in combination with its hard plastic construction.The Wanle Gamers Console For iPhone is available in the Boing Boing Store today for $33.99.

I am having too much fun reading A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published in 1788 to provide definitions of the sort of vile, unmannerly slang employed by 18th-century streetfolk.It was created by William Grose, and as The Public Domain Review notes, Grose's goal was to craft a dictionary of all the naughty words that Samuel Johnson deemed too grody for his famous dictionary a few decades earlier. As they continue ...While a good deal of the slang has survived into the present day — to screw is to copulate; to kick the bucket is to die — much would likely have been lost had Grose not recorded it. Some of the more obscure metaphors include a butcher’s dog, meaning someone who “lies by the beef without touching it; a simile often applicable to married men”; to box the Jesuit, meaning “to masturbate; a crime, it is said, much practised by the reverend fathers of that society”; and to polish meaning to be in jail, in the sense of “polishing the king’s iron with one’s eyebrows, by looking through the iron grated windows”. Given this was the era of William Hogarth’s famous painting Gin Lane (1751), it’s not surprising to find the dictionary soaked through with colourful epithets for the juniper-based liquor: blue ruin, cobblers punch, frog’s wine, heart’s ease, moonshine, strip me naked. The Grose dictionary also contains hundreds of great insults, like bottle-headed, meaning void of wit, something you can’t say about its author.The whole dictionary has been beautifully scanned here by the Internet Archive.

Oculus Rift headset users were unceremoniously dumped out of virtual worlds and back into the real one, yesterday, and it was all because of an "expired certificate". The workaround, until they fixed it: setting the clock back.Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell promised a quick fix on Reddit, which was released late last night. Rift is back online as of ~12am. This was a mistake on our end, and we apologize. Folks impacted by today's downtime will be provided with an Oculus store credit. More details to follow soon. Thanks again for everyone's patience as we worked through this one.

Artist Marija Tiurina created this tasty backgammon set by repurposing a fancy Jaques London set to look like meat: (more…)

Truth bears little relation to this week’s big tabloid exclusives, which give fake news a bad name.“Surrounded by traitors!” screams the National Enquirer cover. “Donald & Melania Fight Back!” No, they don’t. The official magazine of the Oval Office complains at length about the “backstabbers” attacking Trump, but then offers no instance of Trump or Melania hitting back. It’s just a paranoid rant that sounds like it could have been dictated by Trump himself.“Prince Harry’s love child wrecks wedding!” proclaims the Globe cover, and it’s true that an illegitimate child could throw a spanner in the works of Harry and Meghan Markle’s coming nuptials. But this soufflé of a story cites an unnamed woman and her unnamed child and their unnamed lawyer supposedly writing privately to Kensington Palace. Despite the appalling lack of detail, the rag manages to include a photo of a red-haired four-year-old “chip off the old block,” without actually stating the obvious: that it’s a random red-haired child, and not Harry’s. Yet another story conjured out of thin air that somehow eluded the massed Royal press pack in London.Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher is “homeless” and “living in van!” states the Enquirer, with photographic evidence of the actress sitting outside her vehicle sipping tea and reaching for a book by the beach in Malibu. The Enquirer tries to duck the minor detail that this “homeless” actress still owns her $7 million Los Angeles mansion, and maybe just enjoys hanging in her retro VW van at the beach for a few hours. In related news, I’m homeless and living on a stool inside a Starbucks in Los Angeles.In a “world exclusive,” the Globe reveals that “two new witnesses” heard Natalie Wood’s “dying screams!” The witnesses turn out to be the same ones who told their story in publications worldwide back in 2011. I suppose the Globe can call it a “world exclusive,” because no other publication is about to rehash such old news.More in the I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it column from the Enquirer: Jennifer Aniston asks Brad Pitt to be her baby daddy (as if); Prince Charles orders a $100,000 facelift for wife Camilla (too little, too late); Branch Davidian leader David Koresh is alive, having left a dead imposter behind and escaped the cult's conflagration (presumably by slipping past hundreds of FBI and ATF agents and 400 reporters, and having a body double given the same dental work as himself); and child beauty pageant poppet JonBenet Ramsey was killed by two men (says the rag that previously claimed she was killed variously by her parents and brother).“Oswald didn’t kill JFK!” screams the National Examiner, which reports that a “hi-tech study of bullet fingerprints shows he really was a patsy!” This is a typical wishful-thinking tabloid story, inspired by the merest sliver of fact: a British company, West Technology Forensics, announced in late February that it has developed a technique for pulling latent prints off old bullet casings. Though the technique has never been used successfully on any evidence more than 20 years old, MailOnline.com reported that the forensic technique could be used to solve old crimes which “might include the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy.” Well, that’s good enough for the Examiner, which in the space of a week decided that the FBI dug out the shell casings left behind by Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas School Book Depository, ran tests and found his fingerprints were not on the casings. Yet scientists admit the new test only works 68 percent of the time, so the absence of Oswald’s prints proves nothing other than the flights of fancy to which the Examiner can rise.People magazine brings us the Parkland school shooting survivors who “have to speak for those who died,” tells the coming out story of a collection of LGBTQ athletes, actors and others, and relates the dramatic story of a prep school sex assault victim. But just when you’re about to mistake it for a serious magazine, People devotes its cover to “The Bachelor Betrayal!” (just the same as the last Bachelor betrayal) as walking cardboard Arie Luyendyk admits “I made a huge mistake . . .” Then the mag devotes a staggering 34 pages to Oscar coverage of gowns, jewelry, and Hollywood vacuousness.Fortunately we have Us magazine’s crack team of investigative reporters to tell us that Keira Knightley wore it best (and still ended up looking like a waiter at the Ritz), that Christina Hendricks loves knitting, “especially cable-knit sweaters,” that TV’s former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay carries Advil, lipstick and keys in her YSL purse, and that the stars are just like us: they take taxis, shop for food, and hit the makeup counter. Revelatory, as usual.The most useless story of the week appears in the Enquirer, under the headline: “How to Save Yourself from Dementia!” It suggests that readers get plenty of sleep, exercise regularly, eat fish and avoid artificial sweeteners. But the reality is, if you’re reading the Enquirer, you’re probably already well on your way to dementia anyway.Onwards and downwards . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDnhgWkcsQ4In Packets, Please, you are the boss of CosmoCast, a corrupt, post-Net Neutrality ISP; your job is to "boost, throttle or disconnect" people based on their activities -- you can boost Trump's tweets, disconnect political dissidents, and throttle rival video-on-demand services, working at breakneck speed to keep the packets flowing in the way that optimizes the internet for your shareholders at the expense of your users. (more…)

When Donald Trump announced that he would "drain the swamp" by filling his cabinet with lobbyists, billionaires, and political operators, we all braced for an onslaught of rules that benefited the fattest of cats at the expense of everyone else, but Gary Cohn outdid himself. (more…)

Grey Heron is a new cyber-arms dealer offering to sell hacking tools to governments; it is fronted by Eric Rabe, who previously represented the disgraced, hacked Italian malware company Hacking Team, notorious for selling spy tools to governments that used them to target dissidents who were tortured and murdered after they were outed. (more…)

The Anker PowerCore is on sale on Amazon for $40 today, and you can get it for $35 if you click the link that says "3 Applicable promotions" to the right of the product photo. This is the one I use when I'm walking around an unfamiliar city all day and need to use my phone's map to help me get around. I keep it in my daypack with a charging cord dangling out. With 20000mAH it'll last for a very long time without having to recharge it.

If you have a dashcam, you don't need to worry about scammers pretending you hurt them in an accident, as demonstrated by this driver who encounters a spectacularly unconvincing scammer who jumps on the car's hood and throws himself on the ground. The driver takes it in stride and keeps going as if nothing happened, because nothing happened.If this strikes your fancy, here's a compilation of car insurance scam fails:https://youtu.be/09MK6qLPWOg

Apparently officials at San Francisco International airport are size queens. When selecting vendors for the terminals, SFO uses gross revenue as an indicator a business can handle their scale.Evidently an Oakland area sex shop is too small.Via ABC7:Nenna Joiner owns Feelmore Adult Gallery in Oakland. She says she wouldn't offer products banned by the TSA, like handcuffs and ropes but thinks some customers would like sex toys and lubricants. When airport officials opened the new, luxurious Terminal 3 in January 2014, then Airport Director, John Martin, promised passengers "a uniquely San Francisco, SFO experience."As part of that plan they offered local small businesses year long leases for pop ups. Joiner hasn't applied because the airport requires retailers have $250,000 in revenue, too much for some the program is designed to help. Joiner has asked the Airport Commission to lower the threshold to $150,000. "It's not to say I'm not looking for a handout, but it's also looking for evening the playing field," she said.In a statement, Grier Mathews, the Marketing Manager for SFO says the purpose of the $250,000 level is, "Ensuring that the retailer has a sufficient level of business activity and can operate in a high-volume airport environment."

This Saturday (3/10) from 5pm-7pm, my friends at San Francisco's Tunnel Records + Beach Goods are kindly hosting a Voyager Golden Record Party with complimentary beverages! I'll be there to talk about the iconic message for extraterrestrials launched into space on a phonograph record 40 years ago. My friends Tim Daly and Lawrence Azerrad and I co-produced the first ever vinyl release of the Voyager Record this year and we were honored with a 2018 Grammy award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package. Tunnel Records will have the Voyager Golden Record 3xLP Box Sets and 2xCD-Book edition available for sale. Can't make it? You can also order directly from our label Ozma Records.

"Use a material for what it's capable of doing," Samia Halaby says. "You don't make something out of wood that should be made out of Iron."She's not dinking around in Duluxe Paint either like that hamfisted hack from Pittsburgh did back in the 80s. Halaby is coding generative, animated art in AmigaBasic!The Guru Meditation: "Samia Halaby is a world renowned painter who purchased a Commodore Amiga 1000 in 1985 at the tender age of 50 years old. She taught herself the BASIC and C programming languages to create "kinetic paintings" with the Amiga and has been using the Amiga ever since. Samia has exhibited in prestigious venues such as The Guggenheim Museum, The British Museum, Lincoln Center, The Chicago Institute of Art, Arab World Institute, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Sakakini Art Center, and Ayyam Gallery just to name a few."

Stormy Daniels' new lawsuit against Donald Trump says their "hush agreement" is invalid because 'David Dennison' (the president's sex pseudonym) never signed it.Donald Trump never signed the nondisclosure agreement that his lawyer Michael Cohen arranged with porn performer Stormy Daniels, according to a lawsuit filed by Daniels today in Los Angeles and later obtained by NBC News. (more…)

EFF-Austin's Jon Lebkowsky writes: "Every year while thousands flock to a certain large festival that temporarily colonizes Austin, EFF-Austin throws a honking big geek soiree. Keynote speakers are this year are Caroline Old Coyote and Michael Running Wolf, Native American VR/AR activists who are using technology to preserve their culture and heritage. Additional speakers include EFF Investigative Researcher David Maass discussing police surveillance, government transparency, and legislation in California, former EFF-Austin president Jon Lebkowsky, Carly Rose Jackson with Texans For Voter Choice, and Vikki Goodwin, Democratic candidate for Texas House District 47. Also music by Michael Garfield, Pilgrimess, and UBA, plus custom video game consoles, lockpicking, and cosplay." (more…)

Retina-X sold a bunch of spyware apps (PhoneSheriff, TeenShield, SniperSpy and Mobile Spy) that they advised parents to sneak onto their kids' devices, jealous men to sneak onto their girlfriends' devices, and bosses to sneak onto their employees' devices, in order to covertly track their location data, steal their photos and videos, and spy on calls, keystrokes and texts. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iV1sAxPuL0All new cars are equipped with "Connected Vehicle" signaling technology, which allows them to send messages to other cars and to traffic lights and other fixed road infrastructure to help improve road signaling and, eventually, guide self-driving cars. (more…)

It's pretty clear that whoever designed the four teaser posters for Disney's Solo: A Star Wars Story, drew a great deal of inspiration from the 2015 album covers designed by Hachim Bahous for Sony Music France’s Legacy Recordings. From Quartz:Imitation is an inevitability, says graphic design historian Steven Heller. “If something is good, it will knocked off,” he says. “Look at I ❤ NY. Look at Coke and Pepsi. Look at the ripoffs around the world for Starbucks.”Heller says there appears to be enough visual similarities between Balhous design and Disney’s posters to make it seem like a copy: the condensed fonts, the weathered, textured background, the color palette, and the photo treatment of characters from the movie displayed inside the letters.But of course, Balhous isn't the first designer to fill letters with images. Quartz offers the following examples of prior art:[caption id="attachment_578018" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Saul Bass’s rejected poster for “The Shining” (1980); Philip Castle’s poster for “Clockwork Orange,” (1972); Saul Bass’s poster for “The Cardinal” (1963)[/caption]Bahous wants credit and compensation from Disney, but if he takes it to court it will be an uphill fight. From Quartz:Designers need to satisfy two criteria to win a court case: They need to show “substantial similarities” (which Bahous arguably does in his Facebook post), and they need to prove that the designers had access to the original design work (in this case, his Sony CD covers). This could involve asking the Star Wars poster designers to show their inspiration boards or unpack their conceptual process at the trial. An added complication is the fact that Bahous is in France and there’s is no “international copyright” standard followed by all countries, as the US Copyright Office explains.