The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab (previously) is one of the most effective, most trustworthy expert groups when it comes to investigating the abuse of computers to effect surveillance and sabotage, so the launch of Security Planner, the Lab's peer-reviewed tool that guides you through the creation of a personal security plan, is a game-changing event. (more…)

In this video, we see some men park a red car, get out, and help themselves to some free tools in a white van parked next to them. But the tools weren't actually free, and when someone runs runs over to tell the men that economic theories advocating collective ownership of goods are riddled with logical flaws, the men jump in their car and start to drive away. But the forklift drivers sense something is wrong and spring into action, deftly maneuvering their forklifts to block the egresses. I wonder what the folks in the red car where saying to each other as this was happening?

All things being equal, a Democrat in a safe seat is likely to swing to the right, because doing so allows them to hoover up massive campaign contributions from rich people and corporate lobbyists and secure themselves cozy sinecures for themselves once they leave office -- all without risking their seat, because incumbents automatically get re-nominated and incumbents in safe seats always get re-elected. (more…)

Cindy Wilson of the B-52s has dropped a solo record called Change, and as the name suggests, it's nothing like what you'd expect from the founding member of a band best known for the one-of-a-kind, frenetic party sound of songs like "Rock Lobster" and "Loveshack." On Change, gone are Wilson's lusty wails about fish and candy, limberger or tin roofs rusted. Nowhere does she shriek like a sea creature, bang on her bongos or belt out the soaring harmonies heard on B-52s' songs "Roam" or "Juliet of the Spirits." Instead, Wilson's new effort is an ethereal dream-pop album featuring a subtle vocal performance of quiet harmony whispering and dancing over layers of pulsing synths, rolling rhythms and indie-rock guitars. From the low tempo "Sunrise" to the upbeat "Mystic" the songs on Change are quite wonderful--all the more so because Wilson's new direction is unexpected.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRYxvzS5BS4&w=560&h=315]Wilson is touring small clubs with her band comprised of fellow Athens, GA musicians Ryan Monahan, Lemuel Hayes, Suny Lyons and Marie Davon--all decades her junior--in support of the music they've created together. (She'll also be on the road in 2018 with the B-52s, who are celebrating their 40th anniversary and still going strong.) This snippet of the song "Corporeal" from a recent show in Washington DC perfectly captures Wilson and her band's celestial live performance:[videopress 4W7kKvXA]Get the album Change, as well as Wilson's Supernatural and Sunrise EPs, from bandcamp or iTunes.

It is routine for companies -- and even individuals -- to send emails with "beacons," transparent, tiny images that have to be fetched from a server. Through these beacons, companies can tell whether you've opened an email, whom you've forwarded it to, and even your location from moment to moment. (more…)

Any health-care system that depends on employers or wages is going to privilege the people with the highest-paid jobs (men) and take away power from people who do the bulk of unwaged work (women). (more…)

Risky play is good for kids: it lets them test their boundaries in an exhilarating, vivid way -- and it's been all but entirely engineered out of contemporary child-rearing. (more…)

LETTER ITo Mrs. Saville, EnglandSt. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17--.You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking, and the absolute lack of any monsters that she need worry about.I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I picture Dracula, mooning himself beneath a silvery orb; mummies and wolfmen ply me with Italian ices. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There--for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators--there snow and frost and hideous creatures out of nightmare are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light, other than a total lack of vampires? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle, repels bloodsuckers, and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man or "vampyr." These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death or undead and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river.This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years, to counteract my childish nightmares. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good Uncle Thomas' library, except for those small dioramas featuring monsters in various threatening poses. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father's dying injunction, a curse lifted from the Necronomicon, had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking (which makes me in a sense an UNDERTAKER). I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I feasted on the dead; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, want of sleep and sasquatch attack; I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage, and monstrology. Twice I actually hired myself as an under-mate in a Greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration.And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory and monster-stalking to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which, and the spectral haunts which will no doubt trouble the ship, will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing. I am also sometimes required to raise the spirits of the dead, and the flesh of them as well.This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia. They (the people, not the byakhee or vampire bats) fly quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an English stagecoach. The cold is not excessive, if you are wrapped in furs--a dress which I have already adopted, for there is a great difference between walking the deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins, though that might foil the action of certain predatory creatures of the night. I have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St. Petersburgh and Archangel, or even Archdevil.Farewell, my dear, excellent Monster I mean Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on you, Hell fling them upward, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and kindness.--Your affectionate brother, not a monster, I swear by God, and not the God of monsters but the regular God,- R. WALTON.Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Now with Extra Monsters): At Least One Monster Per Paragraph! This Is Our Guarantee! [Marc Laidlaw]

A press release from the DPRK announced that leader Kim Jong-Un and aides hiked up Mt. Paektu, on the Korea-Chinese border, to celebrate the 2,744m mountain's significance in the republic's history. Nice shoes, Jong-Un!

Lego makes storage containers that click together like standard bricks (Amazon), coming in a range of sizes and all the classic lego colors, from single-nodule pencil cups to four- and eight-nodule boxes.They suggest using it to store normal lego bricks, which makes me want a range of miscroscopic legos that may be stored inside the normal ones, with these tiny ones concealing a further inner layer of quantum-scale legos.

IBM Plex is the company's first bespoke typeface. They put together a behind-the-scenes look at how and why the creative team developed this as an open-source type. (more…)

Animation student Islena Neira had just five days to prepare a two-minute piece for coursework at Ecole des Métiers du Cinéma d'Animation in France. The result is Insomnia. (more…)

Broccoli is a beautifully designed new magazine for women who love weed. The online version is free, or you can get it mailed to you. No word on whether the glossy pages would make good rolling paper. (more…)

A security researcher reports finding keylogging software preinstalled on 460 models of HP laptop, including those in the EliteBook, ProBook, Pavilion and Envy lines. It's part of the keyboard driver suite and disabled by default, but accessible to anyone who otherwise compromises the machine.

Martin Salisbury's The Illustrated Dust Jacket, 1920-1970 is a wonderful overview of the innovative illustrators who prompted many a book purchase with their lovely design work. (more…)

If the recent post on square dancing's racist history brought back memories of learning to do-si-do in gym class, perhaps this calisthenics regimen will resonate, too: Go, You Chicken Fat, Go!, performed here by the University of Evansville. (more…)

Programming was women's work: the six who ran Eniac, America's first digital computer, were women. But not for long.

The de Havilland Comet, unveiled in 1952 to great acclaim, was beset with technical problems that grounded the entire fleet by 1954. One of the big design flaws? Square windows. (more…)

Designer, maker and writer Hillary Predko's "Kipple Field Notes" is five short essays on the nature of stuff in the 21st century, its relationship to justice, the environment, cities, intergenerational strife, housing, and geopolitics. (more…)

Yesterday, the DNC's Unity Reform Commission unanimously adopted a resolution that slashed the number of superdelegates -- appointed officials who, in aggregate, hold the balance that determines the winner of the Democratic primaries -- from 715 to 315, and requiring the remaining superdelegates to cast votes that reflect the wishes of their states. (more…)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Erica Portnoy and Jeremy Gillula analyze a FCC's recent Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that served as precursor to the order to kill net neutrality and explain how fantastically, totally wrong it gets the internet -- not on a mere philosophical level, but on a nuts-and-bolts, bits-and-bytes technical level. Literally, the FCC doesn't know what the internet is. (more…)

Hang around libertarians long enough and eventually one of them will start talking about "public choice theory" (I last heard it raised by a prominent libertarian scholar to justify corporations imposing adhesion contracts on their customers to force them to buy expensive consumables and service). It's a kind of catch-all theory that can handwave away any negative outcome from unregulated capitalism, the "freedom" of which is key to a kind of libertarian thought, above freedoms like "the freedom not to starve to death". (more…)

Albania's Shkëlqim Fusha likes to hide in the shadows, but his cousin, Tirana chief prosecutor Petrit Fusha, is implicated in a massive corruption scandal whose cover-up involved assassinating a 17-year-old boy -- in what is surely an unrelated coincidence, Tirana is where Fusha has made billions in no-bid city contracts. (more…)

Keeping development environments in sync across multiple machines can be painful, if not downright impossible due to inherent limitations of mobile devices. Instead of relegating that beautiful new iPad to email and Netflix, you can use it as your daily driver with a subscription to Codeanywhere.This cloud-based web IDE is available for Android, iOS, and any desktop computer with a reasonably modern browser. Whether you’re learning to write code with only a cheap tablet, or just want to make your developer tools more mobile, Codeanywhere gives you full access to your very own container with several dev stack presets. It supports a wide array of essential tools like SSH and SFTP for secure file transfer, Git for code version control, and it even lets you do pair programming with multiple simultaneous users.Codeanywhere works with over 75 programming languages, and a lifetime subscription is just $89 when you order it from the Boing Boing store.

Kleptocrat is an Ios-only mobile game that challenges players to play as billionaire tax-dodgers, who construct ruses to hide their money from the tax authorities in the countries where the state guards their wealth, educates the workforce, and keeps everyone from dropping dead of infectious diseases. (more…)

The theory behind Margaret Thatcher's sell-off of publicly funded council housing under the "right to buy" scheme was that poor people would buy their houses and then the structural factors keeping them poor would vanish in a puff of smoke, and the poor people would stop being poor (also, and as a completely unintentional side-effect, owning a home is correlated with voting for Tories and renting is correlated with voting Labour, but again, that was totally not what old Maggie was thinking, honestly). (more…)

Giant Grass Design recently did a successful crowdfunding round to create eco-friendly bamboo toy vehicles. These look like lots of fun! (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=tFUKsthR-Ts&app=desktopChad Kroeger, a Youtuber whose persona is a kind of stoner party-bro, attended a City Council hearing to discuss a plan to prohibit house parties and gave a passionate speech in defense of these parties as a way of helping lost young men realize their full potential; once gaveled out of the speaker's box, his confederate took the stand and continued. This is genius, Andy Kaufman-grade performance art. We howled with laughter in my house. (Thanks, Alistair!)

Corey Robin (previously) wants you to know four things about the Republican plan to add 1.5 trillion dollars to the US debt and transfer trillions more to the richest Americans. (more…)

Our space camp instructor promoted me to Chief Research Scientist during our Mars mission for what I like to think was my competency and professionalism as Capsule Communicator during the previous day’s mission.I brought absolutely none of those qualities to our “base” on Phobos in a mock set-up designed for 9 to 11 year olds. After detailing rocks from the Mars' moon’s “surface,” I was tasked with conducting an experiment involving a chemical reaction inside a Ziploc baggie. Having spent most of my education nodding off through chemistry class, I was completely unfamiliar with my task. So I should have expected I would mix the wrong chemicals after carelessly picking up a different bottle. No explosion on our end, but instead of causing a reaction that would cool the bag and make it inflate, I created a substance now known as “space gravy.” It’s unfortunate Sodium Bicarbonate and Sodium Polyacrylate look so similar.Slightly less unfortunate was meeting my first astronaut. The final night of camp happened to feature a dinner to honor Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt 45 years after his mission.Dr. Schmitt, 82, a former U.S. senator from New Mexico and a geologist, is the only scientist to add his footsteps to the surface of the moon. He also happens to be a climate change denier. “Unfortunately, science at least in the United States has become biased to what governments want to do and that’s not objective science,” Schmitt said during a press conference before his dinner. “Science is really the process of questioning what you think you know.”It seemed a bit hard to personally reconcile Schmitt’s incredible NASA and science background with his current stance on science and climate change. I’m still unapologetically glad I had the opportunity to be in the same room as an Apollo astronaut.Schmitt also says the U.S. Space Program should be focused on returning to the moon, then setting our adventure sights on Mars for exploration – not terraforming it.It’s also a starkly different vision with what many other space experts are expecting from future missions. Television shows like National Geographic’s Mars are detailing a future a little over a decade away when the first colony will be thriving on the red planet.“We can [complete] the basic terraforming of Mars where we raise the temperature high enough so that there’s flowing water on the surface at least in day time,” said Stephen Petranek, author of How We’ll Live on Mars, during a press junket earlier in the day promoting the show’s upcoming season.“To have an environment, with the exception of the fact that we can’t breathe the air, but an environment which can be very similar to southern Canada. We can have that in 30 years. We can probably have it in 20 years. It depends how much money you’re willing to spend.”Petranek also pointed to how Huntsville’s Space Camp has even become heavily focused on the Mars initiative in the last few years. I’m not sure if I learned enough at Space Camp to decide what the future of U.S. and private space programs will be able to achieve and give a proper estimate. That didn’t stop the camp from giving me an “advanced” space academy degree.However, what I did learn is that astronaut ice cream is sold at the center’s gift shop. I should have considered myself lucky when I couldn’t find it at the cafeteria the previous day.

I was just introduced to an excellent game called Roller Coaster Challenge that melds puzzle solving, creativity and fun. It's a logic-based, free-form, build-it-yourself kit that tasks you to get from point A to point B by using a limited number of coaster parts.Every level in the game challenges you to build new structures while building on learned concepts. As you complete tasks, you’ll be surprised by what’s possible and it will make you want to go off the grid and create your own layouts.As you can plainly see from the video below, John's "Blue Flash" invention was no doubt inspired by this game.[embed]https://youtu.be/PGRgXWsL-_Y?t=13s[/embed]My wife tutors children who have a very difficult time focusing but Roller Coaster Challenge captures their attention and instantly gets them into the concentration zone.

John Bisbee spends his days turning common steel nails into wonderful works of art. This short documentary by American Craft Council tours his Maine studio. (more…)

Instead of seeking vulnerabilities in computer systems for illicit access or valuable data theft, white hat hackers expose security flaws to help companies keep their users safe (and collect lucrative bug bounties). If you’re looking for an exciting challenge, or an opportunity to protect the world from cyber criminals, information security is the perfect place to work. You can learn the fundamentals of ethical hacking with this pay-what-you want course collection.In addition to getting an overview of common security infrastructure, you’ll learn how to perform expert penetration tests on websites, mobile applications, and networks. You’ll explore industry-standard hacking tools like Metasploit, and even study social engineering techniques to extract information from people without ever touching the command line. The following sections are included in the bundle:

Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is a former top Verizon executive and now he's about to hand Verizon billions of dollars in public subsidy by striking down net neutrality rules, which is a really funny coincidence! (more…)

Wired's new Guide to Digital Security is an excellent addition to the genre of simple-to-follow how-tos for reducing the likelihood that you'll be victimized by computer-assisted crime and harassment, and that if you are, the harms will be mitigated. (more…)

In 2015, Nick and Sarah Jensen publicly swore that their religious beliefs would force them to divorce in protest if Australia enacted marriage equality laws that allowed for same-sex marriage. This week, Australia passed such legislation, but the Jensens were evidently lying, and now Nick Jensen told the press (by text-message!) that they meant their "public comments regarding civil divorce never envisaged me separating from my wife, but rather our marriage from the state." (more…)

Wonkette writer Robyn Pennacchia went on a brilliant Twitter rant about the strange history of square dancing, which is not an old American tradition, but rather a 20th century hoax that Henry Ford and Dr Pappy Shaw created to get white people to stop dancing to music made by black people. (more…)

Trump's neutracidal FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says he wants to kill net neutrality and replace it with "disclosures," where ISPs tell you, somewhere in the fine print, how they're fucking you. That way, you can just choose a good ISP and the bad ones will be punished by the market. (more…)

CropLife America (pesticide lobbyists); the Financial Services Roundtable (lobbyists for Citigroup, Jpmorgan, etc) and Lockheed Martin (largest arms-dealer in the world) are just some of the entities throwing lavish parties for Congresscritters, Senators, administration officials and their staffers this Christmas. (more…)

This week's Patreon PR fumble (the company changed what kinds of support are permissible and the way fees are paid and then said it was good for creators, when it clearly wasn't) prompted people to take a closer look at Patreon and its business. (more…)

California's abalone, once thought to be bouncing back from astounding levels of over-fishing, are again in trouble. Environmental conditions have led to mass starvation and are dramatically reducing this beloved sea delicacies chances of survival. In response the already limited recreational fishing season will be cancelled.Via CA Diver:

Pope Francis thinks the English version of the Lord's Prayer "is not a good translation." He's specifically referring to the line, "lead us not into temptation," which is something he says God wouldn't do, but rather "it is Satan" who leads us into temptation.According to DW News:

In Household Wealth Trends in the United States, 1962 to 2016: Has Middle Class Wealth Recovered?, an NBER working paper by NYU economics professor Edward N. Wolff, we get an analysis of the annual US governmental Survey of Consumer Finances, revealing that the share of national wealth owned by the richest one percent of Americans has risen by three points since 2013, to more than 90%, the highest level in half a century. (more…)

Hillary Diane Andales is a high school student in the Philippines. Her video, called "Relativity & The Equivalence of Reference Frames," won the 2017 Breakthrough Junior Challenge prize, launched by Priscilla Chan and her husband. Andales will get a $250,000 post-secondary scholarship, and her teacher gets $50,000.

White folk in Utah's San Juan County claim that districts drawn to actually represent the local demographics unfairly discriminate against them.Via The Salt Lake Tribune:

This holiday season give the gift of history.My friend Kevin Segall runs the greatest movie and TV memorabilia shop around, Collector's Shangri-La.Kevin has some amazing additions to his collection of signed movie posters, as well as scads of collectables from all our favorite shows.Check out Collector's Shangri-La!

https://youtu.be/S9JGmA5_unYHash functions are important in data security. SHA-256 (Secure Hash Algorithm) converts text of any length to a 64-digit hexadecimal number. Play around with the hash generator here by copying and pasting text into it.Here's a Shakespeare quote:

The "inappropriate behavior" that caused Rep Trent Franks [R-AZ] to resign from Congress wasn't fondling or hugging or pressuring his staffers for sex: it was pressuring his female staffers allow him Franks and his wife to use their uteruses to gestate their children. (more…)

Flying home for the holidays will always be a stressful endeavor, but these mobile accessories can help make the delayed flights, slow security lines, and bad WiFi a little more tolerable. Everything listed here can be had for 15% off their usual prices when you use code GIFTSHOP15 at checkout:MicFlip Fully Reversible MicroUSB Cable: 3-PackJust because you don’t have an iPhone, or an Android with USB-C doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the simple joy of a reversible charging cable. These MicFlip Cables feature a unique shape that works with any microUSB device, no matter which way you plug it in. A 3-pack normally goes for $37.99, but you can take 15% off with code GIFTSHOP15.Universal Waterproof Solar ChargerThis power bank is equally usable off the grid as it is in an airport gate without outlets. It’s totally waterproof in the event of an emergency sea landing, and will withstand accidental drops when you’re dashing to catch your connecting flight. This Universal Waterproof Solar Charger powers two devices simultaneously, and is 15% off its usual $13.99 price with GIFTSHOP15.OMNIA TA502 Travel AdapterIf you’re visiting friends or family outside of North America, you’ll definitely want an OMNIA TA502 Travel Adapter. It’s hardly bigger than your normal phone charger, but it houses 5 different standard international plugs behind a clever sliding mechanism. Keep your battery topped off in over 150 countries with this power adapter for $39.99 — and save 15% when you enter GIFTSHOP15 with your order.VPN Unlimited: 3-Yr SubscriptionExtensive use of free public WiFi can put your privacy at risk, but you can stay safe on the go with a subscription to VPN Unlimited. This virtual private network has servers in over 39 different countries, so you can encrypt your connection almost anywhere in the world. It offers unlimited high-speed bandwidth, and works on up to 5 devices at once. With code GIFTSHOP15, you can get an additional 15% off our usual $29.99 price on a 3-year subscription.Mighty: The First On-The-Go Spotify Music PlayerThe Mighty Player is the perfect cure for expensive in-flight WiFi — it saves up to 8GB of Spotify tunes locally for offline playback. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, and can play music for 5 hours on a single charge. Its MSRP is $85.99, but it is available in the Boing Boing Store for 15% off with coupon code GIFTSHOP15.