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Hypothesis: "Where's my fucking iPad prop? I need m...Just give me some fucking paper or something! Wait, not that, oh for FUCK'S SAgood morning and welcome to BBC News."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=31&v=J-gf_bxV00sThe Week catches up on a few years' worth of "minor to major" edits to well-known sad or dark songs, upsetting the mood to happy or humorous effect. Embedded here is The Godfather theme, which when modified sounds rather like the theme tune to the arcadian British show Last of the Summer Wine, about old Yorkshiremen enjoying their endless retirements.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyVq85xrTCYSomeone should make that sound tragic and sinister instead, a sort of "Last of the Middlesborough Vodka."Also:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ppoRHBtwCY&feature=youtu.be&t=2m27s

Joey deVilla says of this sign found in a Thailand boba tea bar, "I can’t tell if they’re trying to be edgy or just got a bad translation."

Jeremy Kun, a mathematics PhD from UI Chicago, created this portrait of computer science pioneer Alan Turing using ellipses.I made an art thing. It's Alan Turing algorithmically approximated by ellipses, in six panels. pic.twitter.com/VlzhIeZEGK— Jeremy Kun (@jeremyjkun) October 16, 2017

In 1869, two men were digging a well on the farm of William Newell in Cardiff, New York when they discovered the body of a ten-foot-tall man buried in the earth. Unfortunately, the famed Cardiff Giant was actually just a statue that Newell's cousin had buried in a hoax meant to provoke discussions around religion while bringing in a ton of cash from people who desperately wanted to believe that biblical stories of giant humans were true, or were simply jonesing for a dose of wonder. From Smithsonian:Hull was an atheist, a controversial stance for that time in American history, and “though he lacked any formal education, greatly admired science.” He wasn’t wealthy, either, and his plan for the Cardiff giant included both striking it rich and proving a point about the relationship between science and faith.The giant was sold to a group of businessmen and went on tour. Eventually, its popularity attracted the attention of the age’s greatest huckster, P.T. Barnum. After the businessmen wouldn’t sell him their stony cash cow, Barnum created a replica and began showing it as the real thing. The owners of the authentic “giant” tried to sue Barnum, but according to Rose, the judge hearing the case just said “Bring your giant here, and if he swears to his own genuineness as a bona fide petrification, you shall have the injunction you ask for.” In other words: You can’t really have a fake of a fake. "The Cardiff Giant Was Just a Big Hoax"

Contrary to Jeff Session's alternative fact that pot is a gateway to hard drugs, a study reveals that Colorado has had a drop in opioid deaths since it legalized marijuana for recreational use in 2014.From Reason:Since legal recreational marijuana sales began in Colorado in January 2014, the state has seen a 6 percent drop in opioid deaths, according to research published in the American Journal of Public Health. The drop follows 14 years of rising opioid deaths, going back to the first year for which the esearchers had data.That suggests yet another argument for marijuana legalization: Pot might stem and even reverse some of the trends unleashed by America's decades-long drug war....A [different] 2014 study found that from 1999 to 2010, states that had medical cannabis laws had a nearly 25 percent lower "mean annual opioid overdose mortality rate" than states that prohibited medical cannabis."Because chronic pain is a major indication for medical cannabis," those researchers wrote, "laws that establish access to medical cannabis may change overdose mortality related to opioid analgesics in states that have enacted them."

You will never be as cool as Steve McQueen, but for around $500,000, you could win the actual Hinchman race suit and Bell helmet he sported in Le Mans, the classic 1971 auto racing film. It's up for bid at Sotheby's on December 6 as part of the New York - Icons auction. Of course you'll still need to save your pennies for the blue #20 Gulf-Porsche 917K that last sold at auction for $14 million.(via Uncrate)

(drumroll) Ok, so here's a special message as we wrap production! #starwars A post shared by RealRonHoward (@realronhoward) on Oct 17, 2017 at 9:04am PDT

When the original Nuggets collection came out in 1972 on Elektra Records….it was a BIG thing. Collecting some of the greatest garage and psych recordings from the 60s, the record took a period of music that was only, at most, seven years old and celebrated it as if it were straight from Tut’s tomb (with a third eye hovering above) holding it up as a pantheon of one of recorded sound’s greatest (drippiest?) evolutionary eras. Found within the grooves were not songs from the mega bands of the time, like the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, or The Jimi Hendrix Experience, but instead bands that emerged from the garage…bands with no-hits, regional hits and the occasional national hit. Bands with names like The Chocolate Watchband, The Blues Magoos and The Magic Mushrooms. Dig it, man? Bands that were making music that realized, musically and lyrically, the free, rebellious, acid visions that bled from the streets and the clubs of both the big cities and the small rural lands across America. Nuggets made the music accessible, influencing the tastes of the next generation of music freaks (and influencing musicians as well). With the success of Nuggets came more volumes. A box set. Another box set featuring European Nuggets. All releases killer. ll presenting the drooling enthusiast with wonderful psychedelic sounds excavated from oblivion. And there were other great compilation series adding to the conversation: Pebbles (VOLUME 3!), Back From The Grave, Acid Visions, Psychedelic Pstones, anon. With each release, a feeling of amazement that there was still quality music to be mined from a relatively brief era.Flash forward to this past Summer….the 50th anniversary of the Summer Of Love. Celebrations of flower power everywhere and with them, a slew of music reissues and compilations. None of them very good, most mere embarrassing marketing ploys (the Monkees comp, which does not even include their psychedelic masterpiece Porpoise Song, needs to be avoided).Which makes it that much more amazing that the Summer saw the release of yet another volume of Nuggets, one that continues the genius of the past volumes. Transparent Days: West Coast Nuggets (Rhino Records) was compiled by friend and musicologist premier Alec Palao. It is hard to believe Palao pulled off what is another four sides of amazing nuggets from the 60s, many that have been completely lost in time. And in classic Nuggets fashion, it features both bands unknown and bands that have become celebrated over the years by the now-playing crowd.For this set, Palao plays archeologist with the Warner Brothers “family of catalogs” including Valiant Records, Reprise, Autumn, Elektra and York Records. He breaks his compilation up into four thematic sides: Folk Rock, Garage Punk, Pop-Psych, and Psychedelia, providing thoroughly researched liner notes that properly frame each side and each song. The comp comes in a strange-yet compelling gatefold package with a dada-esque cover, sleek clear vinyl and a pull-out Acid Test-inspired poster showcasing the editorial content. Like the best Nuggets releases, it is hard not to mention so many stand-out tracks. So let’s take a few. The title track comes from the enigmatic ensemble The West Coast Pop Art Experimental band. It is a wistful groovy little number, opening the record by asking the listener “Tell me what to do. Tell me how high to go.” OK—let’s go really high. Let’s go high with the Peanut Butter Conspiracy and their build-up groover "Time Is After You" where the beat-poetic driving chorus is followed by a mysterious sound…of someone taking a hit? No. no way….not here. But then the lyrics start blending into each other… things begin to change… maybe there is something to this wacky tabbacky they were espousing back then. There is the sing-song jingle-jangle of the Dover’s "I Could Be Happy" and the also catchy "Bye Bye Bye" by the Tikis, featuring harmonies by Harper’s Bizarre vocalist and future Van Halen producer Ted Templeman. The Association, one of the most well-known bands of the era present here, breaks its squeaky clean image with a dark, journeying number wonderfully titled "Pandora’s Golden Heebie Jeebies": “And I will see the sparrow/That need no longer fly/And all that will be left for me to do/Is die.” Yes, even popsters can ride a bummer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B7sV8uyhwwThe Garage Punk side blasts off with the sizzle guitar driven you-really-got-me-now feel of "Make It Easy" by the Collectors followed by the For-Your-Love vibed "I'll Sell My Soul" by the Mohave Dessert’s sun-warped Allies. Oh yeah. The side also features an instant garage rock classic, Art Guy’s "Where You Gonna Go." Fuzz. Fuzz everywhere. Fuzz all over "She's My Baby" from The Mojo Men, fuzz taking hostage The Ballroom’s cover of "Baby Please Don't Go," which ends in a cacophony of amped-up nonsense.Are you getting the picture? The compilation is filled to the brim.The psychedelic side is the e-ticket ride however, starting out with the driving "Come Alive" from the collector-scum-bag embraced "Things to Come." It is followed by The Glass House’s haunted "House of Glass," driving rhythms and organ that reminds us that there is “No need to hide/in a house of glass/Love can be seen/ And it’s such a gas.” The Bonniwell Music Machine (really the same The Music Machine that had the hit with "Talk Talk") Captain Beefhearts its way through the barrage that is "The Eagle Never Hunts the Fly" followed by the Electric Prunes rarity "Shadows," in its original Mono splendor, featuring the growls of James Lowe and the heavy electric guitar sounds of Ken Williams, together defining the band and in some ways the sound of whole era. The instrumental liquidation of The Ceyleib People’s Changes paves the way for the often forgot fragile epic "Your Mind and We Belong Together" from Los Angeles’ favorite sons Love, finishing the side and the comp.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QqV07fNq9UThere is no denying that this Nuggets is very much like the final Game Of Thrones novel that we did not even know to look forward to. It is thoroughly satisfying. And while we live in an age where musicologists rule and new lost collections of bygone day recordings are commonplace in the racks of your local record store, there is something extra special about a new Nuggets compilation, one that courageously continues the mind bending tradition, started so many years ago, of saluting the lysergic laminations of a tripping period of time that was like no other.Transparent Days: West Coast Nuggets (Amazon)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEEi2FvptSw

In this courtroom footage, an accused man executes his cunning plan: smash up a computer. (more…)

Hellen Die admits that her recipe for Alien facehugger pudding-cups "isn't easy": you have to make egg-molds that you cover with pastry and decorate to resemble HR Giger-esque Alien eggs, then use more pastry to sculpt the facehuggers, make a custom pistachio pudding mix with ground up Vitamin B-2 caps, assemble, paint (with food-safe pigments), mix a slip of vodka and B-2, pipe the eggs full of yellow custard, and dust with pop-rocks just before serving for that wonderful fizzing effects. (more…)

Daphne Caruana Galizia, one of the lead journalists on the Panama Papers story, has been assassinated by a car-bomb in the town of Bidnija in northern Malta. (more…)

This isn't suspicious, no, not at all. On Saturday, David Orr of Bloomington, Indiana posted a photo of his entry in a local pie contest on Twitter and immediately got a big reaction. Why? Because Orr used the words "No Spiders in Here" as his apple pie's crust. https://twitter.com/anatotitan/status/919376013704007681The internet had a few things to say about it:Orr then posted a photo of another entry in the contest, one with (plastic) spiders on it:https://twitter.com/anatotitan/status/919582945236733952By Sunday evening, his totally spiderless pie was nearly gone. https://twitter.com/anatotitan/status/919734024209424386Oh yeah, he only won SECOND place in the contest. Robbed, I tell you!

RetroPi makes adorable 3D-printed replicas of old, large computers for you install new, tiny computers within. [via]

A deadstock DeLorean mechanic's jumpsuit turned up on eBay, and it's yours for $199. Better grab it quick or you'll be outtatime.Original Delorean Corp. Stock - DELOREAN MECHANIC'S UNIFORM - for the original KAPAC liquidation stock. I purchased this unbelievable find directly from KAPAC in the early 1990's once they got hold of the remaining Delorean bankruptcy inventory. It is new, never worn. It was sold to Delorean dealer's for mechanic's to wear as their uniform when servicing this amazing vehicle. They had a couple of these and I bought all that they had. I have worn mine to Delorean conventions - it is a great piece of Delorean history!

Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond called the Labour Party an "existential challenge to our economic model"; to which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said, that is "absolutely right" and that Labour would destroy the current model, which "allows homelessness to double, 4 million children to live in poverty and over a million older people not getting the care they need." (more…)

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Vaquita CPR is the international effort to save the "pandas of the sea," critically endangered and super-cute vaquitas, the earth's smallest species of porpoises. Only 30 are believed to live in their range in the northern Gulf of California. (more…)

Excited to stumble upon this recently-released documentary on a real '80s phenomenon: 30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story*.In the 1980s a bunch of underground cartoonists parodied a popular doll. The resulting commercial product tapped into the international kid zeitgeist. That young generation felt, rather than knew, that this product spoke to the rebellious nature they had for the corporate pop culture that was being fed to them. To quote Art Spiegelman, "We were bringing the counter culture to a new generation of kids, only it was the candy counter."You can watch it on Amazon, like I will right now.Update: I just watched it and it's fantastic. It goes deep into the GPK story, from start to finish. As a pop culture nerd, I have to say that I loved every minute of it. *This is obviously NOT to be confused with The Garbage Pail Kids Movie from 1987. That is a whole 'nother beast.

This summer in Montreal I stopped by the Drawn & Quarterly book store on 211 Bernard St. Visiting the store was one of the highlights of my trip to Montreal, and it is definitely worth checking out.Drawn & Quarterly has published comics by some of my favorite authors, such as Dan Clowes. They also carry many awesome books and comics at the store from other publishers. I had a lot of fun looking through some books of R. Crumb's art. The store has a lively atmosphere and often hosts events. On the store's site, you can find out about upcoming events at the bookstore.I interviewed Alyssa who works at the bookstore. She told me the store has been open since 2007. Each of the staff members has a section of books that they have chosen for the store. The events that take place at the bookstore are often author readings, and book, poetry, and comic book launches. There's a stage and chairs in the back of the store for these events. These events happen often and the store is one of the most popular places in Montreal to attend a book launch.

Republican congressional candidate Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera is super lucky because she is friendly with intelligent space creatures who once took her on a ride in the flying saucer when she was a little girl. It's nice to see a semblance of sanity returning to the Republican party.Via NY Post:Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera — a 59-year-old entrepreneur running to replace retiring Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen — said she remained in contact with three aliens, one male and two females, since the extraterrestrial joyride when she was 7 years old, according to a resurfaced 2009 television interview.“I went in,” Rodriguez Aguilera told America TeVe. “There were some round seats that were there, and some quartz rocks that controlled the ship – not like airplanes.”Image: Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera (right) with Ivanka Trump / Facebook

In The Guardian, my Institute for the Future colleagues Marina Gorbis and Sam Woolley write about social bots as a threat to democracy:Social media platforms may be able to track and report on political advertisements from foreign entities, but will they divulge information on pervasive and personalized advertising from their domestic political clients?This is a pressing question, because social bots are likely to continue to grow in sophistication. At a recent roundtable on the Future of AI and Democracy, several technology experts forecast that bots will become even more persuasive, more emotional and more personalized.They will be able to not just spread information, but to truly converse and persuade their human interlocutors in order to even more effectively push the latter’s emotional buttons.Bring together advances in neuroscience, the ability to analyze massive amounts of behavioral data and the proliferation of sensors and connectivity and you have a powerful recipe for affecting society though computational means."Social media bots threaten democracy. But we are not helpless" (The Guardian)

Astronomers have detected the collision of a pair of dead stars, called a kilonova, that caused a cosmic ripple of gravitational waves around 130 million years ago. It turns out these kinds of massive explosions forged most of the gold, silver, and other heavy elements in our universe. From Nadia Drake's story in National Geographic:First theorized by Albert Einstein in 1916, gravitational waves are kinks or distortions in the fabric of spacetime caused by extremely violent cosmic events. Until now, all confirmed detections involved a deadly dance between two black holes, which leave no visible signature on the sky.But with this latest event, teams using about a hundred instruments at roughly 70 observatories were able to track down and watch the cataclysm in multiple wavelengths of light, allowing astronomers to scrutinize the source of these cosmic ripples for the first time.“We saw a totally new phenomenon that has never before been seen by humans,” says Andy Howell of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s an amazing thing that may not be duplicated in our lifetimes.”Unlike colliding black holes, shredded neutron stars expel metallic, radioactive debris that can be seen by telescopes—if you know when and where to look.“We felt the universe shaking from two neutron stars merging together, and that told us where to go and point our telescopes,” says Howell, whose team was among several that chased down the stars tied to the gravitational wave signal."In a First, Gravitational Waves Linked to Neutron Star Crash" (Nat Geo)

Some models of Russian GAZelle Next commercial vans and trucks have Tetris integrated into the instrument cluster as an Easter egg. Here's the Google translation of the YouTube poster's instructions of how to bring up the game: 1) Turning the ignition on2) Start a car3) Three times the right turn signal4) Two times distant5) Five times on the clutch6) raise the speed to 2000and at that moment we light the arrow to the left

Radioactive toys for kids? Hell yes! In 1947 these Kix Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb rings were all the range.For .15 and a box top you could have your own wearable spinthariscope. The advertising claimed you could see atoms smashing themselves to smithereens inside this ring. It also declared the action perfectly safe. The polonium alpha particles were smashing against a zinc screen. The half-life of the polonium was super short. My ring does not work. Hell, it can even be a real pain in the posterior removing those red plastic fins, just so you can see the "reaction chamber."I like it.

Tired: cosplaying the carpet at Dragoncon (even if you do get bonus points for attracting spurious copyright threats from the venue!); Wired: cosplaying the venue itself!. (via Neatorama) (more…)

Alexis Madrigal describes What Facebook Did to American Democracy and why it was so hard to see it coming. Foreign exploitation of Facebook's ad system in the 2016 election was just the end result of Facebook's filter bubbles and its wildly successful efforts to get media to fill them. tl;dr: the horse was already dead before Russia flogged it.The information systems that people use to process news have been rerouted through Facebook, and in the process, mostly broken and hidden from view. It wasn’t just liberal bias that kept the media from putting everything together. Much of the hundreds of millions of dollars that was spent during the election cycle came in the form of “dark ads.”The truth is that while many reporters knew some things that were going on on Facebook, no one knew everything that was going on on Facebook, not even Facebook.Facebook's uncanny method is to trickle enough traffic to publishers so they chum it constantly with Facebookish content, but not so much that publishers can assimilate Facebook visitors into their own audience. Unfortunately for this clever and destructive arrangement, the new far-right sites represented such a cohesive emergent affinity group that Facebook's machinery was co-opted.It's said (usually on Twitter) that no-one is better than Nazis at exploiting a libertarian dropout's ideological impostures. This sort of thing usually strikes me as pompous and vague, but Facebook so perfectly embodies it I'm going to need two leftist energy bars for breakfast this morning.

US CERT has privately circulated an advisory warning key stakeholders about the imminent publication of Key Reinstallation Attacks (KRACK), which exploit a heretofore unknown flaw in the WPA2 wifi security protocol, allowing attackers to break the encryption and eavesdrop upon -- and possibly inject packets into -- wireless sessions previously believed to be secure. (more…)

Mike Monteiro writes about his experience of Twitter over the years, and the growing failure of its leadership to take responsibility for what it has become....when companies tell you they need to be more transparent it’s generally because they’ve been caught being transparent. You accidentally saw behind the curtain. Twitter is behaving exactly as it’s been designed to behave. Twitter, at this moment, is the sum of the choices it has made. Even when the coop is covered in chickenshit, the chickens will come home to roost. Twitter never saw Donald Trump as a problem, because they saw him as the solution. Trump is key because his threats have long passed the nebulous, never-quite-defined point where Twitter tends to eject toxic internet celebrities. So it looks like cowardice is at hand: Twitter's brass won't take him on because they're scared of him. And the obviousness of it is unraveling the last faith anyone has in Twitter to get anything significant done about the broader problems of abuse, harassment and general addicted-to-misery behavior on the site.I still love Twitter and think it could be fixed, and that the people in charge of it are in an "impossible" place where all options lead to pain. I hope they wake up and find the strength to deal with it.

I just read Marco Arment's lament for the dire state of the USB-C ecology, where you never know if any given machine, gadget or cable will do the thing you want it to. I thought about all the ports in my life, over the years, and my experiences of the moral qualities thereof.Previously: Shopping Cart Alignment Chart

Turns out it's not just cats who like to watch videos on smartphones. InsecthausTV played one for a praying mantis, who responded in quite a catlike manner. (more…)

Springing from the august tradition of esoteric programming language Brainfuck, behold the mind-mangling power of JSFuck. (more…)

Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers are making the rounds to support The Long-Awaited Album, including this stop at NPR. (more…)

Tens of millions of Americans have had packages stolen from their porches and mailboxes. Now major online retailers are looking at novel ways to deliver packages to car trunks, lockboxes, and even inside locked homes. (more…)

I'm going to brag about my friend Kyle Kesterson for a minute. A few years back, I listened to him tell his story on stage at Dent, a fabulous retreat we both attend. I was immediately captivated by him and we soon became friends.Without a doubt, he's one of the most incredible, soulful human beings I've ever met AND he's a true multi-creative with an endless imagination. A big win-win in my book!Right now he's blogging about his past "30-day challenges," times in his life when he's pledged to do something consistently for a month straight. In his latest "30-day challenge" blog post, he shares about that time when he committed to drawing one doodle a day.He writes: As I started to get into doodling in my late teenage years, and more specifically, intricadoodling, the world around me changed, and the sickness of Pareidolia really started to take hold."Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to a stimulus, usually an image or a sound, by perceiving a familiar pattern where none exists (e.g., in random data)."Basically, everywhere I look, I see faces and characters hidden in objects, stains, clouds, light, and the really obscure relationships among objects overlapping. They can haunt me, tease me, keep me from feeling lonely, make me laugh, and make me appreciate the power of perspective...As I'd walk around during my day, if I saw an interesting shape, I'd just snap a pic on my phone, then sometime later that day, sit down for 10-60 minutes and bring it to life to show how I saw it. It was my daily 👁 Spy.Here's a peek at those doodles:Aren't they fun?Go check out all 30 drawings at his blog. Then, go to his Instagram feed to follow his many adventures with his dog, Bean.

Pep rallies were never this cool at my school. Watch the dance team at Walden Grove High School in Sahuarita, Arizona slay it with their energetic interpretation of The Wizard of Oz.(Pee-wee Herman)

Happy Sunday!

Jake Tapper explains to the United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, why folks care if he called Orange Julius a "moron." Tillerson doesn't care.

Bellevue Theatre Amsterdam's Sunday with Lubach sets their scopes on the NRA.

Telcos provide API access to your phone's location, along with your name and address, writes Philip Neutstrom. With two links, to danalinc.com and payfone.com, he shows that these sites can access this data when your phone connects. The pages are demos for the API and serve some of the data provided back to the visitor.In 2003, news came to light that AT&T was providing the DEA and other law enforcement agencies with no-court-warrant-required access to real time cell phone metadata. This was a pretty big deal at the time.>But what these services show us is even more alarming: US telcos appear to be selling direct, non-anonymized, real-time access to consumer telephone data to third party services — not just federal law enforcement officials — who are then selling access to that data.>Given the trivial “consent” step required by these services and unlikely audit controls, it appears that these services could be used to track or de-anonymize nearly anyone with a cell phone in the United States with potentially no oversight.It knew my name and address and more besides, and located to me to a few hundred feet's accuracy. I certainly never knowingly opted-in to it.

Most jobs don’t demand much in the way of serious technology proficiency, but knowledge of Microsoft Office is all but required for any position that involves a computer. If you’re looking to add a few more in-demand skills to your resume, both eLearnExcel and eLearnOffice are being offered together in the Boing Boing Store to teach you how to use every member of the Microsoft Office Suite. (With a special focus in Excel.)This bundle includes eight courses dedicated to each software in the Suite. With eLearnExcel, you’ll get expert training to help you build spreadsheets the right way. In addition to earning a continuing professional development (CPD) certificate to show off to potential employers, you’ll learn how to craft complex pivot tables, write bulletproof formulas, and compile data into beautiful reports. After immersing yourself in Excel, eLearnOffice will guide you through the lesser-known parts of PowerPoint, Word, OneNote, Outlook, and every other piece of productivity software that comes with an Office365 subscription.To help you become the resident Microsoft guru at your next job, a lifetime subscription to eLearnExcel and eLearnOffice is currently $49.BUY NOW

Though Puerto Rican law prohibits ownership and bearing of most long-guns and especially semiautomatic weapons, the streets of the stricken US colony now throng with mercenaries in tactical gear bearing such arms, their faces masked. They wear no insignia or nametags and won't say who they work for, apart from vague statements in broken Spanish: "We work with the government. It’s a humanitarian mission, we’re helping Puerto Rico." (more…)

Since the 1990s, North Korea has aggressively pursued development -- and importation -- of CNC mills, the ubiquitous makerspace staples that automatically machine complex forms out of blocks of metal, wood, plastic and other materials. (more…)

It's been nearly a decade since the first proof-of-concept demos showing that keys could be reproduced on 3D printers from distant, angled photos surfaced, and six years since the first parametric Openscad models that could turn easy key-measurements into working house-keys appeared. (more…)

Trisha Weir writes, "In the wake of the massive fires in Northern California, one of the biggest problems was a lack of centralized infrastructure for information. A group of engineers at a non-profit maker space in Sebastopol banded together to make Sonoma Fire Info, a website with information on evacuations, shelters, donations and support, and have been working around the clock to update it with verified information from a variety of sources."

Under US copyright law, creators who have signed away their copyrights for the "full duration of copyright" can still get their rights back from publishers under something called the "Termination of Transfer," which is a hellishly complex and technical copyright provision that is almost never used, since it requires that creators wait decades and then successfully navigate all that complexity (even knowing how many years you have to wait is complicated!). (more…)

Strawberries are delicious, but is DNA extracted from strawberries delicious? Chemist NileRed extracted some DNA using food safe ingredients, then dried it and tasted it so we don't have to. (more…)

Keith Calder has been looking around on Reddit and has found a string of messages from baffled, distressed women whose male romantic partners literally don't wipe their asses because touching themselves between the cheeks might make them gay. (more…)

You probably remember indie Canadian band Walk off the Earth from their 2012 viral cover of Gotye's "Somebody that I used to know." In the video, five band members cover the song by playing just one guitar... all together. Well, they're still doing their thing, and by "doing their thing," I mean "covering pop music in clever and unusual ways."They pull out some wacky instruments for their latest, a fun and entertaining cover of Outkast's 2003 hit "Hey Ya!"The band starts a U.S. tour in March 2018.(reddit)Previously: "Little Boxes" performed on little boxes

Python is an amazingly versatile programming language. Aside from being a primary tool for both data scientists and web developers, it’s also very well-suited for building network infrastructure. To teach you how to build, maintain, and secure software for distributed computer systems, this Python Network Programming Bundle is currently available in the Boing Boing Store.Throughout the 28 hours of video content included with this collection, you’ll learn the fundamentals of Python programming while writing a wide variety of apps for networks. Get introduced to essential concepts like SSH/Telnet communication, task automation, and basic information security, and discover how to use Python scripts to remotely configure hardware, scan networks for threats, and maintain device inventories.If you’re looking to gain practical programming experience working with business-critical IT systems, take a look at the Python Network Programming Bundle. Pick it up today in the Boing Boing store for $24.BUY NOW