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What's the difference between a tulip auction, an English auction, a sealed bid auction, and a Vickrey second-bid auction? Preston McAfee, Chief Economist at Microsoft explains auction types.Bonus video: America's contribution to the English auction:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea7gn8hhEFA• The Ideal Auction (YouTube / Numberphile)

https://youtu.be/uXjJdv5fj5kJames Bridle takes a deep dive into the weird world of Youtube Kids videos, whose popular (think: millions and millions of views) genres and channels include endless series of videos of children being vomited on by family members and machinima-like music videos in which stock cartoon characters meet gory, violent ends. (more…)

Wealthy people whose homes were threatened by last month's Napa wildfires got better fire-suppression services than their poorer neighbors, thanks to private firefighters paid for through their insurance plans. (more…)

After a man called Connor Zion experienced several seizures, he became disoriented and attacked some of his family members, who called the police. Orange County, California Deputy Michael Higgins arrived, shot Zion nine times, approached Zion's motionless body, fired nine more shots into him at point-blank range, then, after a running start, stomped on Zion's head three times. (more…)

As I say at the start of our interview, Ev has founded an almost unreasonably long list of companies - and the three listed above each had huge impacts on the Internet, and on digital culture.A remarkably coherent theme connects these companies - as well as a fourth one, which didn’t really get off the ground. Each has brought people a global platform for spreading thoughts, opinions and more. Ranging from the succinct and casual chirps of Twitter, to the long-form, Spartan pages of Medium. All are discussed in our conversation, which you can hear by searching “After On” in your favorite podcast app, or by clicking right here:One of the Internet’s great early promises was the radical democratization of communication through digital tools. And that’s a promise it has largely delivered on, with significant help from Ev’s products. But Ev didn’t come to his life’s work as an idealist with a cogent vision, but rather as an entrepreneur testing out his umpteenth product idea. The one that finally caught on happened to be in this realm. It was blogger.com, which Ev described to me in a prior conversation as “a hunch, which turned into a side project, which turned into the real thing.” That Real Thing was - basically - the very phenomenon of blogging. Which Ev’s side project popularized, helped shape, and arguably even named. A few years later, Ev and a new crew of co-founders kind of half stumbled upon Twitter’s revolutionary model as well.But there was nothing inadvertent about Medium, which had as coherent a founding vision as any startup I’ve known. One it remains intensely loyal to. When he launched it five years ago, Ev described Medium as “a beautiful space for reading or writing - and little else.” Those words still fit. As do idealistic goals that Ev also enunciated on launch day, like creating a more informed citizenry, and increasing depth of understanding.Folks as prominent as presidents and anonymous as the stranger down the street publish 100,000 posts each week on Medium - virtually all of them far longer and deeper than Twitter’s 140-character blasts (and yes - more than the new 280 character blasts as well). Medium posts appear not on disconnected blogs, but in a networked hive of writing, whose algorithms seek to surface the most personally-relevant articles to its tens of millions of readers.Like Chris Anderson of TED, who was my guest last week, Ev has spent many hours reflecting on the dire state of discourse online, and how to elevate it. But he’s not running a not-for-profit. Indeed, Medium recently started pursuing a model which could be as huge and disruptive within its domain as Netflix has been to TV and film, or as Uber and Lyft have been to transportation-on-demand. That statement may be surprising, even to careful observers of Medium - and I’m not even sure if Ev himself would make it.But for now, Medium has a long way to go to deliver on Ev’s goals, and its first half-decade has not been a perfectly smooth ride. The company has shifted its model more than once, and recently went through a significant layoff, which Ev describes as the hardest thing he’s ever intentionally done. But Medium has ample reserves in the bank. It’s nowhere near the brink - and as you’re about to learn, Ev has a decent track record for reviving companies that have actually pitched over the brink, and into the abyss beyond.

800 years ago today, on Nov 6, 1217, the Charter of the Forest was sealed by King Henry III, making it "the first environmental charter forced on any government" in which were asserted "the rights of the property-less, of the commoners, and of the commons." (more…)

The BBC's pidgin service is aimed at West African audiences; it is a pure delight. (more…)

Last month, Juli Briskman, 50, flipped off the presidential motorcade passing her as she bicycled in Northern Virginia. A photo of Briskman's gesture went viral and last week she was fired from her job at Akima LLC, a government contracting firm. Even though she wasn't at work or wearing clothing that linked her to the company, her bosses claimed that she violated their social media policy:“Covered Social Media Activity that contains discriminatory, obscene malicious or threatening content, is knowingly false, create [sic] a hostile work environment, or similar inappropriate or unlawful conduct will not be tolerated and will be subject to discipline up to an [sic] including termination of employment.”From the Washington Post:It gets even more obscene.Because Briskman was in charge of the firm’s social media presence during her six-month tenure there, she recently flagged something that did link her company to some pretty ugly stuff.As she was monitoring Facebook this summer, she found a public comment by a senior director at the company in an otherwise civil discussion by one of his employees about Black Lives Matter.“You’re a f------ Libtard a------,” the director injected, using his profile that clearly and repeatedly identifies himself as an employee of the firm.In fact, the person he aimed that comment at was so offended by the intrusion into the conversation and the coarse nature of it that he challenged the director on representing Akima that way.So Briskman flagged the exchange to senior management.Did the man, a middle-aged executive who had been with the company for seven years, get the old “section 4.3” boot?Nope. He cleaned up the comment, spit-shined his public profile and kept on trucking at work.

A fantastic behind-the-scenes clip from Blue Planet II:The Blue Planet II team dive to over 700 meters to see what happens to a whale carcass on the seabed. Whilst filming sharks as they feast, the sharks start to take a worrying interest in the submarine!

Dutch filmmaker and artist Frans Hofmeester "has been filming and photographing his children Lotte and Vince since birth. Every week the images are shot in the same style. With this footage he creates time-lapses which show the aging of his children within minutes."Here's a time-lapse of Hofmeester's son from 0 - 14https://youtu.be/mXjFMX-uhzk

Samsung's latest ad, "Growing Up," is the latest in the Samsung vs Apple phone war, and it's fun to watch. Samsung's boldness in trying to lure Apple users reminds me of the olden days when Apple launched its "Switch Campaign," directed by Errol Morris, aiming to attract Windows users into the Mac camp (in which Mark was the first "switcher"!). What goes around comes around!

This man stuck his neck out to show how this car's sliding door wouldn't hurt him. Oops.

The LEGO Star Wars advent calendar is literally the only thing even tangentially related to Jesus I will buy this year.This set has a cute BB-8 in a Santa hat, the Millenium Falcon, a Y-wing, some troopers of various generation and a bunch of other stuff! The number of things is somehow related to the days folks waited for Jesus to rise from the dead and demand colored eggs, or something. I am super unclear on this advent thing, but every year I love this set!LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar 75184 Building Kit (309 Piece) via Amazon

An orblike auditorium nicknamed The Eye sits at the center of the new Tianjin Binhai Library that can hold up to 1.2 million books. (more…)

Here's a fun little project with wooden matchsticks: weave them into bracelets using no glue. (more…)

Spike, founder of Chicago's Iron Circus Comics, found these adorable monsters from an age when money, traditional technique and unusual subject matter first met.https://twitter.com/Iron_Spike/status/927459191081590784

Chameleons are a non-native species in Florida. They've gotten a foothold through illegal "chameleon ranching" by breeders. Enter reptile enthusiasts who call themselves herpers and who go out at night to catch these free-range invaders for fun and profit. (more…)

Ken Hermann went to the flower market in Kolkata, where he snapped these cool portraits of flower sellers with their wares. (more…)

The semi-independent Oregon Tourism Commission has created a playable version of the classic Apple ][-era adventure game Oregon Trail to promote Oregon tourism. (more…)

https://youtu.be/MkVV2hvuQdM1.4TB/13.4 million documents have leaked from Appleby, the offshore law-firm that is part of the "magic circle" of firms employed by the super-rich to manipulate their finances; the documents are supplemented with another "offshore provider"'s files, and the company registries of 19 tax havens. (more…)

Pilot Amol Yadav upped and said, one day, that he would construct an airplane on the roof of his apartment building in Mumbai. But how will you get it down, friends asked..."I really don't know," he told them. Mr Yadav, who flies twin-engine turboprop planes for a living, is nothing if not obstinate. The five-storey building, home to his 19-member joint family, didn't have a lift, so they lugged factory lathes, compressors, welding machines, and an imported 180kg (396lb) engine up the narrow stairwell to the roof. Braving sticky summers and torrential monsoon rains, Mr Yadav and his motley crew - an automobile garage mechanic and an expert fabricator - worked under a tarp shed on the unkempt 111.5 sq m (1,200 sq ft) roof, less than half the size of a tennis court. In February last year, his six-seater propeller plane was ready.

That's really earie.(posted by BanksyBhoy to r/pics)

That's the question you'll answer with the Adobe CC Lifetime Mastery Bundle. Adobe’s Creative Cloud is a quintessential part of any designer’s toolbox, and this bundle will teach you how to use it for everything from web design to motion graphics. This collection has over $300 worth of professional training, and you can name your price when you buy it from the Boing Boing Store.With these 9 courses, you’ll learn how to manipulate raster and vector images like a pro, as well as create layouts for websites and print materials. Once you’re comfortable with static graphics, dive into motion and animation using After Effects.The following sessions are included:Photoshop CC Masterclass, Parts 1 & 2Illustrator CC Masterclass, Parts 1 & 2Total Training for Adobe Dreamweaver CCInDesign CC: EssentialsBecome a Motion Graphics Designer Using After EffectsMastering Adobe Bridge CCGetting Started with Adobe After Effects CC 2015You can pay what you want for the Adobe CC Lifetime Mastery Bundle when you order it here.

Austinites! You have two more nights to catch Plurality of Privacy Project in Five-Minute Plays, "an artistic and cultural dialogue around our divergent understandings of privacy." (more…)

Hurry! There are only five balls of sterling silver yarn available from Tiffany's ($9,000 each). It's part of their "Everyday Objects" line which also includes a $10,000 silver bird's nest with (Tiffany) blue eggs, a $1500 18k gold paperclip bookmark, and a $1500 silver coffee can. (Alanna Okun)

Star Trek has many spinoffs, but they all happen within a fairly shallow focal plane: consider how controversial it was to set DS9 on a space station instead of a starship, or how radical it seemed for Discovery to not star the ship's commanding officer. Tiffany Kelly got eight SF writers to cook up more intriguing adventures in America's favorite future.I like the ideas from Rob Boffard, Annalee Newitz andd Charles Yu, who each want a look at invisible levels of Klingon and Federation society. Newitz wants to see Klingon scientists and workers navigating the military elite's endless honor games; Yu wants to make a hero of a green-visored Ferenghi number-crunching his way through the Federation finances, a moneyless socialist energy economy that must yet do business with a universe that runs on gold-pressed Latinum. (Together, the eight proposals seem almost like a critique of Star Trek's practical limitations as television SF.)

You can throw this silicone dishwand in the dishwasher. (more…)

Creator of the Cherpumple (and other retro-fabulous foods) Charles Phoenix has a new book that celebrates "classic & kitschy American life & style." It's titled Addicted to Americana and it looks amazing!Here's a look inside the book (click on image to embiggen):The book is available for $22.32 on Amazon.Charles is also on a book signing and comedy slide show tour (mostly in California). If you've never seen him perform, please do yourself a favor and get thee to one of his shows. They are a hoot.

Shoppers drawing their firearms to help stop a more aggressive 2nd amendment rights enthusiast did not. Shoppers report panic, while the local police suggest the investigation was slowed up to 5hrs.If one draws a weapon, they become a suspect and create more work for the boys in blue.Via the Denver Post:When a gunman opened fire inside a Walmart in Thornton Wednesday night, shoppers screamed and ran for cover — and others pulled out their own handguns.But those who drew weapons during the shootings ultimately delayed the investigation as authorities pored over surveillance videotape trying to identify the assailant who killed three people, police said Thursday.Although authorities said “a few” individuals drew handguns, they posed no physical hazard to officers. But their presence “absolutely” slowed the process of determining who, and how many, suspects were involved in the shootings, said Thornton police spokesman Victor Avila.

Want to join the revolution, but find the idea of customizing used or surplus clothing beneath your social station? Barneys of New York has just the jacket for you: a classic M65 with anarchist symbols and some shopworn slogans already drawn on it. And it's a deal at 375 of your filthy capitalist dollars!Alpha Industries' M-65 field jacket is constructed of olive cotton-blend canvas. This military-inspired piece is detailed with assorted handwritten graffiti, a checked pattern pocket, and anarchy symbols at the front and back.(Try $25 for the jacket, steal the sharpie, and update your lines!)https://twitter.com/Cillyman/status/823046754123780097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Farts-and-entertainment%2Fwp%2F2017%2F02%2F02%2Ftodays-protest-signs-are-sharper-meaner-funnier-and-live-on-long-after-the-rallies%2F

High school math teacher Joe Howard wrote to me about his latest video. He said:A recent video has been circulating of a 4th grade teacher showing a method of multiplication and let me tell you--the parents who commented freaked out. Some went as far to say that this is what is wrong with our country these days. In this video, I show a couple ways of approaching a two digit multiplication and talk about how the method she shows actually could help students with some high school math concepts. I also offer four pieces of advice for how parents can talk to their elementary school students about math. Not sure if this is the type of content you would share, but I think it's extremely important. We are losing kids at the elementary level. We need to have positive, encouraging messages coming in early.

A 53-year-old Florida woman was arrested and charged with a DUI, though she wasn't really driving, but rather drunk riding a horse down a road.Breath samples showed that her blood alcohol level was that of .161. Florida's legal limit is .08. According to NBC News:"Ms. Byrne was obviously not in any condition to be on the road," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a news release. "She not only put herself and the horse in danger, but also anyone who was driving on the road, which is typically very busy."Byrne was charged with DUI and animal neglect for endangering and failing to provide proper protection for the horse.This isn't Byrne's first arrest. She's had 5 felony and 10 misdemeanor charges, including charges for drug possession and animal cruelty. And yet, even with a history of animal cruelty, she somehow still has a horse to drunk drive. Image: Polk County Sheriff's Office

My home is lightly blanketed with Amazon Echo Dot listening stations. I tried to use Alexa, the digital assistant to re-order my favorite black tea. Now I am ready for the zombie apocalypse. (more…)

Ethan Persoff will be speaking about the John Wilcock comic at The New School's Parsons School of Design, on Tuesday November 7, 7pm.Visit Scott Marshall's website at http://scottmarshall.org.

In a small-scale study, researchers have shown that algorithms can analyze brain scans to determine whether an individual has suicidal thoughts. During the study, the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University scientists mentioned words like "death," "trouble," and "carefree" to individuals undergoing fMRI scans of their brains. Apparently those kinds of words spur different brain activity in people who have suicidal thoughts compared to those who don't. The hope is that a better understanding of brain function in suicidal people could lead to better tests to assess risk of suicide and improved psychotherapy. From IEEE Spectrum:For the study, the researchers recruited 34 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30—half of them at risk, and the other half not at risk, of suicide. They showed the participants a series of words related to positive and negative facets of life, or words related to suicide, and asked them to think about those words. Then the researchers recorded, with fMRI, the cerebral blood flow in the volunteers as they thought about those words, and fed the data to the algorithms, indicating which volunteers were at risk of suicide and which weren’t. The algorithms then learned what the neural signatures in the brain of a suicidal person tend to look like. Then they tested the algorithms by giving them new neural signatures to see how well they could predict, based on learning from other subjects, whether someone was suicidal or not. The classifier did it with 91% accuracy. Separately, the classifier was able to identify, with 94% accuracy, which volunteers had actually made an attempt at suicide, versus having only thought about it. "Machine learning of neural representations of suicide and emotion concepts identifies suicidal youth" (Nature Human Behavior)

On Wednesday, the CIA released nearly 500,000 files recovered from the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan hideout. According to the CIA's web page, the files are "temporarily unavailable pending resolution of a technical issue." From Wired:Hailed by researchers and international relations experts as a valuable gesture of transparency, the stash offers a window into the former Al-Qaeda leader's approach and plans, and insight into the terrorist group's global organizational structure, global network, and allies.It also contains hallmarks of any person who uses the internet: copies of venerable film classics like Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Final Fantasy VII, episodes of Tom and Jerry, an IMAX version of Mysteries of Egypt, a download of the Charlie Bit My Finger viral YouTube video, a Mr. Bean episode, and 28 crocheting tutorials—including one for an "iPod Sock."“It’s like, ‘ooh Osama bin Laden is a Tom and Jerry fan!’ And maybe he is, it’s quite possible. I like Tom and Jerry, too,” says Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the editor of its Long War Journal, which got early access to the trove from the CIA. “But I suspect a lot of the sort of frivolous or the personal stuff was more for his family...."Other gems include a lot of clip art, a video called "HORSE_DANCE," numerous episodes of a Jackie Chan television show, image files of the Yahoo logo, a few "funny cat" videos, and an image of a cute stuffed animal monkey.And yes, there was also porn.

A huge wooden penis has been, er, erected atop Mount Oetscher, 6,211 feet in the Austrian Alps. From Metro:The Oetscher ski lift operators were equally puzzled by the penis, but seemingly embraced the artwork as a future tourist attraction. One wrote jokingly on social media: ‘With us, not only winter is coming.’The operators have however asked the ‘creative artist’ to ‘secure the object sufficiently’ as they fear it might not withstand a storm.

Tragically, cartoonist Brian Fies and his wife Karen lost their home in the recent Calistoga Fire. Brian shares their heartbreaking tale in his webcomic A Fire Story.He writes:My house burned down. I made a comic about it.That seems to be how I handle trauma. It's kind of a feature and a bug.This is quick, loose work...I'd be pleased if you'd consider this as a journalistic dispatch from the front.and...My family, pets and I are all fine--a lot better off than many others. There's not a person in the county who hasn't been touched by this disaster. Karen and I know at least a hundred people burned out of their homes, including a lot of cops, firefighters, and government staff who've been working hard for others all week.See the entire webcomic here. (RED)

On The Dr. Oz Show Thursday Nov. 2, former child actor Corey Feldman publicly outed Jon Grissom as molesting him in the 1980s. During the show, he called LAPD to turn in his abusers. In the interview, he stated, "This guy -- on his ­MySpace page and his Facebook page -- has got pictures of me and Corey Haim. He still taunts it, and flaunts it.”Grissom appeared in two films that Feldman starred in, License to Drive (1988) and Dream a Little Dream (1989).Feldman is currently crowdfunding a film that would tell the story of his life:People have long awaited a response from Corey as to what exactly happened in his childhood. In his book, Coreyography, Corey describes what happened but it isn't clear who exactly the predators are. The best way, he feels, in order to tell the whole story, is for Corey to come forward in the form of a film about his life. We are embarking on a dangerous and exciting journey to get to the bottom of the truth. However in doing so there are great security risks.Previously: Barbara Walters tells Corey Feldman "you're damaging an entire industry" when he warns of Hollywood abuse

Who is Tom, and why has he been decreed the chooser of onions?Tom knows bestTop image: Obed Hernández

In a wide-ranging interview with CCCB Lab, Kim Stanley Robinson (previously) discusses the origin of his climate-inspired, critical science fiction, which envisions futures in which the climate catastrophe arrives and precipitates the long-overdue crisis of capitalism. (more…)

What a huge bummer. David Corn is the guy who broke the 'Steele Dossier' story, and did a great job of it. (more…)

Brian Upton is an old hand in the game biz, from design to dealmaking, and presented "30 things I hate about your pitch" at the Game Developers' Conference. Though it concerns the specific interests of independent and small-business game outfits trying to raise money, the lessons seem oddly universal to science fiction and fantasy in general. Number 1: "I don't give a crap about hearing ... 20 minutes of the political situation on some fantasy continent."(If, on the other hand, you love just sitting there drooling over elaborate yet generic fantasy backstories, you might be interested in the procedurally-generated fantasy map-maker that Upton used to illustrate his point.

Turn up your speakers! The music really makes it. [via]

Machine-learning-based image classifiers are vulnerable to "adversarial preturbations" where small, seemingly innocuous modifications to images (including very trivial ones) can totally confound them. (more…)

The DHS's old "IDENT" database is full, with 240,000,000 records in a system designed to hold 200,000,000; so they're paying arms-dealers and erstwhile comic-book superheroes Northrop Grumman $93,000,000 to develop a new system called Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART), which will grow to encompass biometrics for 500,000,000 people, including hundreds of millions of Americans. (more…)

Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox band teamed up with Wayne Brady (Whose Line Is It Anyway?) to bring us this 1930s jazz style cover of Michael Jackson's 1983 hit "Thriller," complete with zombie tap dancers.The band is currently on a worldwide tour.For nostalgia's sake, here's the music video for the original:https://youtu.be/sOnqjkJTMaA

This stunning line of geologically-inspired jigsaw puzzles, named Geode, is the creation of Massachusetts-based generative design studio and retailer Nervous System. As described in their blog:Geode is a jigsaw puzzle inspired by the formation of agate, a colorful banded stone. Each puzzle is unique, emerging from a computer simulation that creates natural variations in the shape, pieces, and image. Hundreds of lasercut plywood pieces intertwine to form a challenging, maze-like puzzle. Each geode is a slice of an algorithmic rock.The puzzles are intricately cut in birch plywood, completely unique from each other, and available in two sizes (approx. 180 pieces for $60 and 370 pieces for $95).https://vimeo.com/239518266(My Modern Met)