”Enjoy one of the most beautiful Star Wars films to date—that feels like the world’s biggest budget fan film.”

Banks have to report deposits of $10,000 or more to the IRS, so some fraudsters "structure" their transactions as a string of sub-$10K payments that escape the regulatory requirement. Structuring is also illegal, and the IRS has the power to seize funds that the agency believes were part of a structuring scheme, under the discredited "civil fofeiture" process through which an inanimate object is sued for being the proceeds of a crime, and then the owner of that object has to prove that the object is "innocent." (more…)

Researchers from MIT, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley, and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology published a paper in Science describing a solar-powered device that uses a new type of metal organic framework (MOF) to extract up to three litres of water per day from even the most arid desert air. (more…)

When the touch-sensors on phones capture your fingerprint, they're really only taking a low-resolution, partial snapshot and loosely matching it to a stored image -- which is how a research team from MSU and NYU were able to synthesize their Masterprints ("a fingerprint that serendipitously matches a certain proportion of the fingerprint population"), which drastically reduce the space of possible "guesses" that an attacker has to make to unlock a phone or other device. (more…)

Dr David Dao's lawyers have revealed the extent of his injuries as part of his pending lawsuit: "a broken nose and concussion and lost two front teeth." (more…)

Touchscreen games are perfectly fine when you're on the toilet, but if you want to really unlock the gaming capabilities of your iPhone, you need a little something extra.(more…)

I've been a huge fan of Steve Onotera, a Canadian Youtube vlogger and musician, since David posted his earlier video last year.I decided to support him on Patreon, and as one of the perks of my support, I got to choose a song for him to do a version of. Of course, I chose Final Fantasy, specifically the Bombing Mission theme from Final Fantasy VII. Not only did he do an awesome bluegrass rendition for me, he presented it complete with in-game combat visuals!Patreon has been a great way to support independent artists across a huge spectrum of genres, and a great way to discover and support musicians, authors, artists, and makers.See more of SamuraiGuitarist's work on Patreon, or his Youtube channel for more of his videos.

Anyone who remembers Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan can’t help but be at least a little choked up recalling the scene in which Spock sacrifices himself for his crew members. He regards Kirk with compassion before quietly delivering his epitaph, “I have been, and always will be, your friend. Live long and prosper.” Author Rich Michelson was fortunate enough to have his own friendship with Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy was a skilled photographer and Michelson was his gallerist, and from that professional relationship the two men became friends. Fascinating takes a look at Nimoy’s life from his boyhood with his Jewish immigrant family on Boston’s West End, his move to Hollywood and his rise to stardom after claiming the iconic role that he would later eschew, only to embrace once more. The book is clearly a labor of love with the emphasis on love. Nimoy is portrayed here as an outsider with an expansive heart, whose boundless empathy for his friends, family and neighbors ultimately extended to his groundbreaking portrayal of Mr. Spock. Michelson delivers a sensitive portrait of Nimoy as a struggling outsider, whether as a boy acclimating to his life in America and overcoming his first bout of stage fright or as an emerging actor discovering his voice. These experiences ultimately informed his portrayal of Spock, the alien whom everyone could relate to. Michelson’s book stands as a personal, open-hearted tribute to a man who has been, and always will be, our friend.Fascinating: The Life of Leonard Nimoy

Star Wars has teamed up with Omaze to raise money for Starlight Children’s Foundation and UNICEF.(more…)

This video gets more and more fun as it goes on. Passengers on the Bakerloo line on a London tube train were privy to a pop-up rave Monday night. At first, drum'n'bass MC Harry Shotta acts like an unsuspecting passenger, sitting behind a newspaper on a seat. He looks up in surprise as music suddenly blasts through a sound system and lights begin to flash. Then it turns into a full-on rave. Another DJ calls up Shotta and asks what his name is. When he answers "Harry Shotta" the passengers cheer, and then they are rewarded with a great show. Never has a subway ride looked so exciting.Unfortunately, after about 4 minutes in, police officers come on board to break up the fun. The passengers boo. But the train won't budge until the party is cleared. The police are civil (one officer even looks like he'd like to join) and the ravers are good sports. I wish I would have been there.More from The Guardian:

After the 2014 measles resurgence California passed some laws requiring students to be vaccinated. It worked!Via the L.A. Times:

To quote noted asshat Samuel Johnson, "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

An 8-year-old boy in Ohio had a craving for a Big Mac. Only problem was that it was 8pm and his parents were already asleep. So the resourceful lad went onto YouTube, spent five minutes learning how to operate a car, and then invited his 4-year-old sister to take a spin with him for a meal at McDonald's.Miraculously, he maneuvered the mile-and-a-half drive within the speed limit and didn't hit anything along the way. He then pulled into the drive-thru window, where the McDonald's employees thought it was a joke.According to New York Post:

The New Zealand Fire Service put together a terrifying interactive website showing how quickly a house fire spreads. They hung some clothes too close to a heater, and within a minute, the entire room was an inferno. Scroll up the ceiling for a sense of how intense it gets. (more…)

In a world where the airlines record-smashing profits comes from a small number of increasingly luxurious first-class seats, the entire focus of the industry is on figuring out how to convince just a few marginal customers to spend more for one of those profit-centers instead of deadheading in coach. (more…)

On inauguration day, 214 protesters were arrested in DC on felony riot charges, and now they face up to $25,000 in fines and up to 10 years in prison, though no one -- not the cops, not the prosecutors -- believes that more than a handful were involved in property damage or disorderly conduct. (more…)

One of the most exciting things Marvel Studios has ever done is hire Taika Waititi (What We Do In The Shadows, Hunt For The Wilderpeople) to direct Thor: Ragnarok.(more…)

Nobody messes with your family network. Nobody. And GlassWire Pro is a powerful ally in the fight to protect everyone on your network from snoops and hackers.Most antivirus products scan your files for traces of malware, but GlassWire Pro goes a step further by keeping constant tabs on your network access to stop threats at their source. You get notifications when your computer accesses new services or if any network system files change, and it tracks all network activity while you're away so you can verify nothing fishy happened during your absence.GlassWire Pro also enables monitoring of remote connections, so you can keep an eye on web hosts and file servers, as well as other computers on your network. With activity visualization and detailed logs, you can track threats easily. And most importantly, since you can use it with up to 3 PCs, it’s a great defense for less experienced users in your family.GlassWire Pro is available now in the Boing Boing Store.Explore more best-sellers in the Boing Boing Store:

Students at Missouri's Truman State University got a cool lesson in in a class about Leonardo da Vinci: a chance to turn his sketch for a self-supporting bridge into a working version. (more…)

Humans aren't the only animals affected by trippy optical illusions, as Ryan Kotzin (aka TheRealSquirrelWhisperer) demonstrates. It's interested to see his cat's eyes move around the page as the effect appears elsewhere.(more…)

Bill Kirby shares interesting stories about Augusta, Georgia history. Here, he discusses Lulu Hurst, a local teen girl who wowed audiences by overpowering any man who dared to accept her strength challenge.(more…)

Funny Or Die is ten years old this week. The comedy site's launch a decade ago almost didn't happen. Wired has compiled a definitive oral history of the site, right up through its most recent reset as Trump ascended to the Presidency.(more…)

WTF Just Happened Today? is a seven-day a week newsletter that summarizes the most important political stories of the day. And it's now available on Amazon Echo! Get the skill here.

In this article for Aeon, author Sandra Newman makes a strong argument for the need to treat rape the way we treat other crimes. But first she digs into the history of the many other ways in which rape has been conceptualized over the years:

The New York City Ballet charts ballet’s evolution from Paris 1661 to this month’s Here/Now Festival.

When Cosmo was auditioning models for this PSA on sexual harassment, 90% of the women who auditioned said they'd had a similar sexually inappropriate experience. It's one of six in the series. (more…)

Supermute looks like an effective way to avoid avoid spoilers. I'm going to use it to mute anyone who uses the words "cuck," "woo," "dank," "kek," or "lit."

If you think flying United will leave you battered and bruised, just try booking a flight on United's mobile app. Useronboard presents the horrorshow in 149 slides. This is the best takedown of corporate idiocy since 2007's Yours is a Very Bad Hotel.

Why do shoelaces suddenly become untied? Mechanical engineer Oliver O'Reilly and his UC Berkeley colleagues have just published a scientific paper exploring this mystery of the ages. According to O'Reilly, understanding how simple knots work, and then don't, could lead to better knots for surgery, protect undersea optical networking cables from breaking, and enable more realistic animations of hair in computer graphics. From Nature:

After 70,000 people marched in Budapest against a new Hungarian law that targeted the liberal Central European University, the Hungarian government has dangled a possible escape rope: Education Secretary Laszlo Palkovics said that "CEU could issue diplomas if it extended a license agreement with its Hungarian sister school to teach its courses." (more…)

The Just Net Coalition -- whose membership roll includes leading human rights organisations from across the global south -- have written urgently to the World Wide Web Coalition and its founder, Tim Berners-Lee, calling on him to intervene to stop the Consortium from publishing its first-ever DRM standard, a system for restricting video streams called Encrypted Media Extensions. (more…)

Bruce Schneier takes to the pages of Technology Review to remind us all that while botnets have been around for a long time, the Internet of Things is supercharging them, thanks to insecurity by design. (more…)

Normal presidents hold Easter Egg Rolls on the White House lawn -- have done for 140 years! -- where 35,000 people come to watch headline entertainers and 4,000 local schoolchildren. This is not normal. (more…)

It's been a decade since Yahoo got raked over the coals by Congress for helping the Chinese government spy on journalists and dissidents, some of whom were then arrested and tortured. (more…)

You have almost definitely at least heard of Java considering it's one of the most commonly used programming languages on the web, responsible for the backbone of most (if not all) of your favorite sites. And, no, you don't need to major in Computer Science to learn it. A great start is with the 2017 Complete Java Bundle, available now in the Boing Boing Store.Whether you're a programming novice or an experienced web developer, learning or reinforcing your Java is an important step to launching or maintaining a career in web development. Since Java code runs on so many platforms, it’s a gateway into developing everything from Android apps to high-performance distributed systems.Over this bundle, you'll dive into the following courses:

Erika Larsen curates the best live shows I have ever seen. Bob Self puts on the most amazing events. Once a year the two of them throw Beyond Brookledge, an amazing private weekend of magic and mayhem. (more…)

Education secretary (and Ponzi-scheme billionaire heiress, anti-public-education crusader, and sister of notorious war criminal Eric Prince) Betsy DeVos just killed the recent Department of Education/Consumer Financial Protection Bureau guidelines that banned dirty bill-collectors from going after people with delinquent student bans.(more…)

Carla and I took a one-week trip to Tokyo. It was my sixth visit to Japan's capital, and it was my favorite so far. For the next few days, I'll be writing about recommended things to do there. See them all here.After our refreshing visit to the hot springs, we took a short train ride back to the Kichijōji neighborhood of Tokyo.Some of the train and subway stations have English on their maps, and some don't. It can be a bit of a challenge to get around, but the conductors speak English and are happy to answer questions. (The two photos below were taken at Yoyogi Station, not Kichijōji.)It was early evening, and we wanted to have dinner at one of the dozens of little 8-seat bars in Harmonica Yokocho, a grid of alleys next to the train station. It was crowded with pedestrians (the alleys are too narrow for cars) and the stores had red lanterns to entice customers. The coziness and intimacy here was magical. Most of the seats in the bars were fully occupied, but we eventually walked by one that had two open seats. A worker saw us looking through the window and waved us in.

Dialect coach Sammi Grant gives a crash course in a dozen different accents including my favorite, the Transatlantic accent. (Think Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. More on that here.)"I’m legally blind and one of the reasons I got into dialect coaching is because I love to hear people’s voices and help people find the range of their voices," Grant says.(via Laughing Squid)

Say you’ve ditched your frozen dinners, gotten swept up in foodie culture, and, with new found enthusiasm, eat out and order seafood. You wax poetic about the merits of sustainable fish farming, but your smile suddenly wanes when your server brings the fish — whole. Or maybe you’re a college student embarking on your very first unpaid internship company lunch meeting. You arrive at the office looking sharp in that smart new number you scored off the clearance rack, only to discover that the boss has a hankering for barbecue. Or maybe you simply love food and self-improvement and are dying to find a new book to meet your niche! Whatever the case may be, How to Eat a Lobster has you covered. The book’s guidance is served up in three courses, each packed with easily digestible bites of how-tos. Tricky Techniques covers dissecting and devouring everything from escargot to pig’s head. Etiquette Enigmas finesses table manners like sipping soup and dividing up a bill. Foodie Fixes goes inside after the bite with tips for handling spicy food and bad breath. It’s even small enough to fit neatly in your bag in case any unanticipated food adventures pop up and leave you scratching your head over which fork to use. If you plan to sneak away to reference check your etiquette in a bathroom stall, just be sure to read the How to Excuse Yourself section before you take your seat at the table. How to Eat a Lobster: And Other Edible Enigmas Explained

Marine Le Pen says that she is not like her father, the notorious fascist political leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right National Front party (she excommunicated him from the party, but remained chummy enough to borrow millions from him for her presidential bid). (more…)

The UN's International Organization for Migration says that human traffickers paid to smuggle migrants out of sub-Saharan Africa are selling their "clients" to slavers in Libya, who ransom them to their families, starving them and working them to death while they wait for the money to come in. (more…)

Companies in the EU and China have been caught offering to commit fraud to launder sales of mass surveillance weapons to Al Jazeera reporters posing as representatives of autocratic regimes under sanction for gross human rights abuses; these weapons would allow their users to target and round up political dissidents for arbitrary detention, torture and murder. (more…)

With two days to go until the close of the World Wide Web Consortium members' poll on finalising DRM and publishing it as an official web standard, the UK Open Rights Group is asking Britons to write to the Consortium and its founder, Tim Berners-Lee, to advocate for a much-needed, modest compromise that would protect the open web from the world's bizarre, awful, overreaching DRM laws. (more…)

Sculptor/machinist Chris Bathgate (previously) has just come off a year of making small, clever pieces, and as a palette cleanser, he's produced the most ambitious piece to ever emerge from his workshop: Sculpture BM 792314, with over 1,000 individually machined precise parts. (more…)

A pair of social scientists from UCSD and Yale conducted an NIH study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology on the link between Facebook use and mental health, drawing on data from the Gallup Panel Social Network Study combined with "objective measures of Facebook use" and self-reported data for 5,208 subjects, and concluded that increased Facebook use is causally linked with depression. (more…)

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the Proud & Mighty INNER HIVE, for exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, and much more.GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”A book for the curious and adventurous!” -Cory Doctorow) Book One here. Book Two here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Quick recovery on the part of this woman, who was studying a gadget of some kind when she was supposed to be reporting the news.

A shooting took place in a classroom at North Park elementary school in San Bernardino today, around 10:30am local time. The shooter has been 'taken down,' local TV news is reporting in Southern California. The shooting is reported to have been planned as a murder-suicide. Two fatalities reported as of 11:15am PT. The shooter is said to have been related to the teacher who was shot dead. Two children injured in the shooting incident were airlifted to a nearby hospital. 600 children from North Park are being evacuated to Cal. State Univ. San Bernardino.(more…)

Former CEO John Stumpf (a major villain in the subprime scandal) previously lost $41m out of the $200m he made overseeing a multi-year fraud that stole from 2,000,000 of the bank's customers -- now he will have to repay another $28m. (more…)