One lesson to be learned from this gallery of 50 evil packages is to peer through the transparent parts of the box at an angle to see what's hidden behind the opaque parts.Biggest letdown I’ve had in a while tbh from r/mildlyinfuriatingI went ahead and exposed they ass. pic.twitter.com/6ZcbcN1J5G— BOBBY SMIFF (@BobbySmif) November 15, 2018Tea came in a pack of 4, faced forwards from r/assholedesignImage: u/3cuas Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH you are asked to spot the criminal danger in various scenarios.

The next CHI (computer-human interaction) conference is being held on May 5 in Glasgow, and will include a workshop called CHI4Evil, "Creative Speculation on the Negative Effects of HCI Research," in which scholars, researchers and practitioners are invited to "anticipate and reflect on the potential downsides of our technology design, research, and implementation" through design fiction, speculative design, and other tools.The call for papers asks submitters to "articulate a negative use or potential misuse of a technology; ideally focusing on technologies that are emerging now and that are relevant to the HCI community."It sounds like a fascinating example of "abusability testing", a new way of thinking about security-by-design that incorporates the ethical questions that have sparked the techlash. I'm looking forward to reading and watching the proceedings of this one.Motivation: The history of HCI reveals a sustained, if uneven, focus on the social consequences of technology. This is evidenced even by the CHI2016 theme: “CHI4good.” Now, the CHI community is experiencing a resurgence of interest in the ethical, social, and political dimensions of HCI research and practice. This growth is seen especially in research in areas such as participatory design, value-sensitive design, sustainability, feminist HCI, indigeneity, postcolonial computing, ethics, and social justice.We propose an inversion of this theme: “CHI4EVIL.” This inverted workshop will work to build our community’s awareness, and anticipation, of how technologies may contribute to concerning or ethically-questionable outcomes. Through exploring the negative possibilities and consequences of emerging technologies, we hope to comparatively learn more about what doing good means to the CHI community. Read the rest

Brian Ashcraft: Grande posted a photo of her tattoo. In Japanese, it reads, 七輪 (shichirin). You can see the pic photo (via Grande’s official Japanese Twitter), which has since been deleted from her Instagram. The kanji character 七 means “seven,” while 輪 means “hoop,” “circle,” “ring,” or “wheel.” However, when you put them together, the meaning is different! 七輪 (shichirin) is a “small charcoal grill” and not “seven rings,” which is written differently in Japanese.The mistake could have been avoided had she googled her new tat: Read the rest

SeaTube [via Metafilter] is a YouTube channel dedicated to time-lapse videos of ports. Enjoy the view from the boats themselves, gliding past landmarks and other vessels, while listening to relaxing yet squeaky music. Read the rest

Citizen Lab (previously) is a world-renowned research group that specializes in deep, careful investigations into the nexus of state and private surveillance, outing everything from the Chinese spies who took over computers in Tibetan embassies around the world to the bizarre deployments of state-level cyberweapons against Mexicans who campaigned for limits on sugary sodas.Some of Citizen Lab's most prominent and significant work has been their research on the NSO Group, an Israeli cyber-arms dealer that outfits governments and industry with sophisticated spyware used by some of the world's most brutal dictatorships -- and NSO Group was also implicated in the brutal murder and dismemberment of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.Now, Citizen Lab, working with the Associated Press, has revealed that unknown parties hired undercover operatives to approach Citizen Lab employees under false pretenses in order to pump them for information on their NSO Group research and to ask questions like “Why do you write only about NSO?” ”Do you write about it because it’s an Israeli company?” ”Do you hate Israel?”The undercover agents posed as "socially conscious investors" and it's believed that they secretly recorded the conversations they had with Citizen Lab employees. After twigging to the scam, Citizen Lab and the AP planned a sting, letting one of the undercover agents lure a Citizen Lab employee named John Scott-Railton to a meeting where they were set up to make their own recordings. At a signal from Scott-Railton the AP reporters approached the man and asked him why the company he claimed to work for didn't exist. Read the rest

Having served a whopping 16 days in office, Florida's Republican (shocker) Secretary of State Mike Ertel has resigned after the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper obtained photos of Ertel in blackface, dressed as a Hurricane Katrina survivor. After the Democrat texted the photos to him last week, Ertel, 49, identified himself as the white man in blackface and red lipstick, wearing earrings and a New Orleans Saints bandanna, and falsies under a purple T-shirt that had "Katrina Victim" written on it. The photos were taken in 2005, less than two months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, killing 1833 people. Governor Ron DeSantis said he accepted Ertel's resignation because "I don't want to get mired in side controversies."Florida Secretary of State Mike Ertel resigns after Halloween blackface photos emerge (Tallahassee Democrat) (Photo: Wikipedia) Read the rest

On Motherboard, Brian Merchant's (previously) new science fiction story The Convoy poses an eerily plausible future for political deepfake hoaxing -- with James O'Keefe-alikes running the show -- that skillfully weaves in elements of the Innocence of Muslims hoax with the current state-of-the-art in high-tech fakery. Read the rest

I'm surprised the record company hasn't filed a takedown notice and confiscated the bird for being an illegal recording of "Another One Bites the Dust."Another one bites the dust Read the rest

At this scale, light moves at a snail's pace.From the YouTube description: "This is the distance between Earth, the Moon and Mars with the correct distances but with Earth, Moon and Mars 20 times bigger (so you can see them!)." Read the rest

The Free Software Foundation has announced the keynotes for its 2019 Libreplanet conference: Debian pioneer Bdale Garbee; Micky Metts from the MayFirst People Link Leadership Committee, Solidarity Economy Network and Agaric; Shuttleworth fellow Tarek Loubani who develops open source hardware, 3D printed medical equipment used in Gazan hospitals; and FSF founder Richard Stallman.This is a pretty fantastic lineup! I'm especially excited to see Loubani on the bill; I was the Shuttleworth Fellowship judge that chose him, a couple years back. I keynoted Libreplanet back in 2017 and found it to be an outstanding event.Keynotes announced for LibrePlanet 2019 free software conference [Molly De Blanc/FSF] Read the rest

An alarming story in the Washington Post about US residents going to Mexico for more affordable surgery and then contracting a deadly microbial infection.Tamika Capone thought she was making a smart call by traveling to Mexico for bariatric surgery. Her doctor had urged her to have the procedure to reduce her out-of-control weight and blood pressure. But her husband’s health insurance would not cover the $17,500 bill. After a friend got the surgery in Tijuana for $4,000, Capone decided to do the same. Nearly four months later, the Arkansas woman is one of at least a dozen U.S. residents who returned from surgeries in Tijuana with a rare and potentially deadly strain of bacteria resistant to virtually all antibiotics, say federal health officials. Some in the group recovered, but Capone, 40, remains seriously ill despite being treated with a barrage of drugs.Image: Nadia Buravleva/Shutterstock Read the rest

Trump's multi-trillion-dollar giveaway to the richest Americans and largest US corporations led to a rise in GDP, but it was a short-lived sugar-high: the major effect was a trillion dollars in stock buybacks that padded the bottom lines of super-rich investors who barely touch the real economy (you can only own so many super-yachts and operating costs are funneled through offshore flags-of-convenience anyway). But investment in "factories, software and new equipment" only rose modestly for a single quarter, and has now fallen again. "There hasn't been a huge surge in response to tax reform," said Eric Zwick, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who studies the interaction between public policy and corporate behavior.Real nonresidential fixed investment increased by just 2.5% in the third quarter, a sharp slowdown compared to 8.7% in the second quarter and 11.5% in the first quarter.It's not that business spending is weak. It's just not booming."It now appears the investment recovery was short-lived," Ethan Harris, global economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote in a report last week titled, "The investment boom that wasn't."The tax cut investment 'boom' is already over. Some say it never really started [Matt Egan/CNN] Read the rest

Though firms may worry about profits now that Trump's decision to let the world boil in its own juices rather than offend the hydrocarbon lobby (Coke may run out of water, Disney may run out of themepark-goers), the latest report from UK nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project shows that companies are also privately exulting in the new possibilities opened up by climate catastrophes and the ensuing hidden misery.For example, Apple speculates that people caught in disasters or forced to live in refugee camps will love their Iphones: "As people begin to experience severe weather events with greater frequency, we expect an increasing need for confidence and preparedness in the arena of personal safety and the well-being of loved ones. [Iphones] can serve as a flashlight or a siren; they can provide first aid instructions; they can act as a radio; and they can be charged for many days via car batteries or even hand cranks."Wells Fargo looks forward to continuing its criminal and predatory financial practices by extending credit to people whose homes are damaged or demolished by floods, fires, etc: "Preparation for and response to climate-change induced natural disasters result in greater construction, conservation and other business activities. [Our company]has the opportunity to provide financing to support these efforts."Home Depot predicts soaring demand for construction supplies in the wake of disasters and more air conditioners and fans as temperatures rise: "[We will see] higher demand should temperatures increase over time."Google thinks that Google Earth will grow along with curiosity about disasters around the world: "If customers value Google Earth Engine as a tool to examine the physical changes to the Earth’s natural resources and climate, this could result in increased customer loyalty or brand value. Read the rest

Writer/director Harmony Korine (Kids, Gummo, Spring Breakers) is back at the shore for Beach Bum, a stoner burnout comedy starring Matthew McConaughey with Snoop Dogg, Isla Fisher, Zac Efron, Jimmy Buffett, Martin Lawrence and Jonah Hill. The trailer reminds me a bit of Pee-wee's Big Adventure if the weirdo protagonist was on Sour Diesel instead of Purple Microdot.Beach Bum will premiere at SXSW and hit theaters March 22. Read the rest

With the World Economic Forum kicking off in Davos, Switzerland -- where the super-rich are already decrying Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's massively popular 70% tax-rate on earning over $10,000,000 -- it's a great time to revisit Anand Giridharadas's must-read 2018 book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, in which the former McKinsey consultant and Aspen Institute fellow catalogs the way that the super-rich have starved their host-nations of the funds needed to operate a functional civilization, and then laundered their reputations by dribbling back some of that looted booty in the form of "philanthropic donations" that always seem to redound to their personal benefit.In a long essay adapted from Winners Take All, published in The Guardian, Giridharadas uses Davos as a jumping off point to explain his thesis and update it for 2019's facts-on-the-ground. While this essay is no substitute for reading Giridharadas's book, it's an excellent introduction to his ideas.There is no denying that today’s American elite may be among the more socially concerned elites in history. But it is also, by the cold logic of numbers, among the more predatory. By refusing to risk its way of life, by rejecting the idea that the powerful might have to sacrifice for the common good, it clings to a set of social arrangements that allow it to monopolise progress and then give symbolic scraps to the forsaken – many of whom wouldn’t need the scraps if society were working right. It is vital that we try to understand the connection between these elites’ social concern and predation, between the extraordinary helping and the extraordinary hoarding, between the milking – and perhaps abetting – of an unjust status quo and the attempts by the milkers to repair a small part of it. Read the rest

[This post is sponsored by Glowforge. To get $100 off a Glowforge Basic, $250 off a Glowforge Plus, or $500 off a Glowforge Pro use the link glowforge.com/boingboing.]My 15-year-old daughter and I love retro video games. We often go a retro video game arcade in Pasadena, California, and we also play a lot of computer games from the 1980s and 1990s. We thought it would be fun to build a dedicated machine at home that we could use to play these retro games.After a bit of online searching, we found out it’s easy to use a Raspberry Pi, which is a $35 single board computer the size of a credit card, along with a free Linux based operating system called RetroPie that has emulators for every arcade and console imaginable. We could use a Raspberry Pi and RetroPie to play every arcade game we want. And with our Glowforge laser cutter, we could easily make an arcade cabinet for ourselves as well quickly make them for friends and family.In this 2-part video series, which was underwritten by our friends at Glowforge, I’m going to show you how we did it.Parts and MaterialsFirst, we bought all the parts and materials we needed to make the cabinet. We got a Raspberry Pi Model 3 B+, a 32GB MicroSD card, a power supply, a 10-inch HDMI monitor, a set of arcade buttons and a joystick, a pair of speakers, some cables and a box of various machine screws and nuts and standoffs. Read the rest

Grassroots Analytics is a small, obscure founded by Danny Hogenkamp, a 24-year-old who studied Arabic in college and had not been involved in politics until he joined the 2016 Congressional campaign of Colleen Deacon in Syracuse, a working-class single mom campaigning on economic justice issues.Working on that campagin, Hogenkamp realized that the ability to fundraise, primarily from big-money donors, was the most important factor in predicting a candidate's electoral success, and this puts candidacy out of the reach of many working class candidates who don't have connections to the donor class. Worse, this fact means that Democratic party institutions reject and discourage would-be candidates from the working class because of their inability to fundraise, preferring to give financial and logistical support to the candidates who need it least.The Deacon campaign relied on a labor-intensive, time-honored fundraising tactic: interns combed through the donor records of similar candidates elsewhere in the country and then googled their contact details to create lists of fundraising leads. Hogencamp made contact with another Democratic campaign worker, David Chase, who'd used his very modest programming ability to build a crawler that went through the records at Open Secrets and ranked donors by how much they'd given, and how often. Using skills he'd picked up interning at the CFPB in college, Hogencamp used zero-inflated negative binomial regressions to analyze Chase's data to produce "lists of individuals most likely to support a candidate given shared characteristics and shared views — ranging from race and ethnicity to a passion for yoga or universal health care."That's what Grassroots Analytics has done, and though it's received a cold shoulder from both the Democratic establishment and the Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution group, many insurgent, working-class candidates credit Grassroots with helping them to overcome the structural hurdles and raise the funds they needed to mount credible primary challenges and campaigns. Read the rest

What Remains of Edith Finch is free this month from the Epic store. I downloaded it last night and couldn't stop playing until I was done. It's a detailed, polished walking simulator that clocks in at 3 hours, so tightly orchestrated it feels like a genuinely interactive movie.It centers on Edith, a high schooler and the last surviving child of a family "cursed" by generations of tragedy. After her mother's death, she inherits the cosy yet unsettling manse she grew up in and sets out to uncover the family's secrets. This is to say, she wants to know why so many Finches died young and why her mother didn't want the stories told.It's obviously from the outset that something is deeply wrong with the family even as it is clearly a family full of love. The wrongness hovers at the margins of reason. It's reflected in the house, normal at the ground level but an alarming mass of ramshackle additions up top. Surely that would be dangerous, you ask yourself. Some of the family death vignettes really got under my skin. They're all elaborated in the telling to the point of magic realism and beyond, but when you sit and think about what was shown they unravel to mundane parenting failures, one after another after another. The elaborations thereby become part of the problem. But now I'm in danger of spoiling the game's secrets. Edith Finch maintains a tension between modern gothic mystery and the suggestion of a damaged family that mythologizes its subtly self-destructive currents. Read the rest

I am so sick of the fucking handwringing shit over those racist kids. Read the rest

Anti-porn troll Chris Sevier (previously) has built his career by convincing grandstanding Republican state lawmakers to introduce doomed, unconstitutional porn-tax laws that would require in-state ISPs to implement default-on censorship of "adult sites" (or, more specifically, "sites appearing an an arbitrary, unaccountable secret blacklist of allegedly adult material") and then charge $20/subscriber to turn off the filters.This is unconstitutional and stupid, which makes it perfect for patsy state Republican lawmakers (who are like federal Republican lawmakers, but even stupider and more bigoted and less well-versed in the Constitution) to introduce, grandstand over, raise money on, and then allow to die.The latest state Republican to field one of these bills is Rep. Gail Griffin [R-Hereford], whose HB2444, AKA the "Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Prevention Act" will use the porn tax to fund Trump's wall. Sevier wouldn't admit to Motherboard's Samantha Cole that he was behind this bill, but he did say that states customize his model legislation to suit their needs.Hereford is the majority whip in the AZ house. This bill demonstrates, yet again, the power of advocates for various causes to get identical (or very similar) legislation introduced at a state level. All it takes is one or a few lawmakers to introduce the legislation and create new talking points. It’s the same tactic that has been used by groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council and big telecom to pass industry-friendly bills in many states and anti-abortion activists like Americans United for Life to get more than 60 pieces of legislation considered in states around the country. Read the rest

If American police were trained to do this sort of thing, how could they experience the joy of lethal escalation? [via]The British police don't use pikes, but they do have ways and means. Read the rest

UPDATE 1/20/19 7:25pm: Statement of Nick Sandmann, Covington Catholic High School junior, regarding incident at the Lincoln Memorial=====The story about an encounter between a group of high schoolers at a March for Life rally and Native Americans at an Indigenous People's March in Washington DC appears to be more complex than what was seen in a three-minute video and from news reports in the Washington Post, CNN, New York Times, and other major news media. After watching a much longer video that shows the lead-up and aftermath of the incident, it doesn't look like the high school students were harassing the Native Americans as was reported yesterday.James Martin, a Jesuit priest, an editor at large at America Magazine has excellent insight into the complexities of this still-unfolding story, which he wrote in the form of a Twitter thread:Thread by @JamesMartinSJ: "Re : I will be happy to apologize for condemning the actions of the students if it turns out that they were somehow acti […]" #CovingtonHighSchoolAnd while I don't agree with Reason all the time (I agree with their stance on civil liberties and disagree with their stance on unfettered free markets), this essay Jake Tapper retweeted is worth reading:.@reason: “Video footage strongly contradicts Native American veteran Nathan Phillips' claim that Covington Catholic High School boys harassed him. The media got this one completely wrong,” writes @robbysoave https://t.co/9Ki4iiTkQ9— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 20, 2019I'll continue to update this post as new information emerges. Read the rest

win98icons.alexmeub.com presents Windows 98's meticulously utilitarian and currently fashionable icons in an easy, no-nonsense way.Why are they so good?Rather than some designer’s flashy vision of the future, Windows 98 icons made the operating system feel like a place to get real work done. They had hard edges, soft colors and easy-to-recognize symbols. ... Maybe its nostalgia, but I still prefer the classic icons of Windows 98 over the shiny, drop-shadowed icons of later years. Read the rest

Firefox's screenshot tool has a lot going for it, but after two days of trying to use it I gave up and went back to using Ksnapshot (now Spectacle) for the near-constant screenshotting I do, all day long: that's because when you hit "save" in Firefox's screenshot UI, it didn't save it to your hard-drive, rather, it uploaded it to a Mozilla server, which, in addition to being time-consuming and stupid, was also a potential huge privacy risk (if, for example, you were screenshotting a sensitive document to retain for later).Thankfully, this will be fixed, after months of user complaints, as part of the shut-down of the Test Pilot program, which runs the servers that the screenshots were uploaded to. On Zdnet, Catalin Cimpanu calls this a "dark pattern," and it's easy to understand why: so many online services try to trick you into using the cloud, storing data remotely even when there's no good reason for it, to train us to use other peoples' computers rather than our own.I don't know that Mozilla has that same motivation, but this really was a terrible piece of UI with real risks to users, and it's so good to see it finally dying in a fire.You can turn off the antifeature right now by going to about:config and ticking on the extensions.screenshots.upload-disabled setting.Firefox to remove misleading button after months of complaints [Catalin Cimpanu/Zdnet] Read the rest

Motherboard's blockbuster story about mobile carriers selling your realtime location data into a marketplace where bounty hunters and other villains can buy it for just a few dollars has triggered an urgent, national conversation about the fact that, in the year since the first stories about this emerged, the carriers have not only failed to live up to their promises to put a stop to it, but seem to have made it even worse.So naturally, the Congressional committee that oversees the FCC -- which regulates the carriers -- wants to be briefed on this so that they can do their job, serve the American people, and get this situation under control.But to do that, they need to hear from Ajit Pai, the former Verizon executive whom Donald Trump installed as Chairman of the FCC. And Pai says he's staying in his office with his giant novelty Reese's mug, and Congress can go fuck themselves, because there's a shutdown on, and this isn't "a threat to safety."What's more, the FCC committee that has been investigating this issue has stopped all work, because again, having the location of every US cellular phone owner being tracked in realtime and sold for a few dollars to any scumbag with a credit card "is not a threat to safety.""Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai refused to brief Energy and Commerce Committee staff on the real-time tracking of cell phone location[s]," Pallone said in a statement yesterday. "In a phone conversation today, his staff asserted that these egregious actions are not a threat to the safety of human life or property that the FCC will address during the Trump shutdown."Pai's office defended the decision when contacted by Ars today. Read the rest

"Every time you switch your attention from one target to another and then back again, there’s a cost," Cal Newport said in a New York Times interview. "This switching creates an effect that psychologists call attention residue, which can reduce your cognitive capacity for a non-trivial amount of time before it clears." Newport has a new book that explores this and related ideas, called Digital Minimalism.From the New York Times:The second rule is to “embrace boredom.” The broader point here is that the ability to concentrate is a skill that you have to train if you expect to do it well. A simple way to get started training this ability is to frequently expose yourself to boredom. If you instead always whip out your phone and bathe yourself in novel stimuli at the slightest hint of boredom, your brain will build a Pavlovian connection between boredom and stimuli, which means that when it comes time to think deeply about something (a boring task, at least in the sense that it lacks moment-to-moment novelty), your brain won’t tolerate it.Image: Photographee.eu/Shutterstock Read the rest

My dog had some pretty massive surgery. Pet insurance did what it was supposed to do.I will start with the absolute shame I feel: the first thing I said to my veterinarian, as she told me my 125 lb Great Pyrenees rescue, Nemo, likely needed double CCL (cranial cruciate ligament) surgery, was "Fuck, what will that cost me?"My first thought should have been "How the fuck will get a very sedated 125 lb dog with a sawed on knee up three flights of 23 total stairs?" because, as my veterinarian pointed out: "This is an athletic injury, your insurance should cover it. Go see the specialist."Slightly prior to adopting puppy Nemo, 4 and a half years ago, I was dating a woman who had suffered greatly for her Dane. Her giant dog had bone cancer and hip dysplasia. While she encouraged me to adopt a giant breed dog, she also cautioned me to get pet health insurance. I did some research and the provider in 2014 that won my business was Trupanion. I also added the PT/Recovery rider to Nemo's insurance. I can not pinpoint why he got that rider, but PRAISE THE FSM! I did not add that rider for my Maine Coon Cat, Heart, or the darling Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Zuul. I bought them both the basic plans.I was momentarily reassured that I had insurance. I am emotionally unable to not do whatever my pet needs when it comes to medical care. Read the rest

Anti-vaxxers are winning the war on life. Measles outbreaks are happening with increasing frequency.US News and World Report:In late December, one person who was sick with the highly contagious viral infection visited several stores and restaurants in Malibu, Pasadena and Santa Monica while contagious, the Los Angeles Times reported.Officials said there is no remaining risk in those areas, but people who may have been near the infected person should watch for any symptoms of the illness, which is spread through cough or sneeze and causes fever, red eyes and a rash. Most people who haven't been immunized will get measles if they are exposed to the virus, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said."If you think that you or someone you know has been exposed to or has measles, contact your healthcare provider by phone right away before going in," Dr. Muntu Davis, the county's health officer, said in a statement.The alert comes amid a slew of measles outbreaks in recent months, nearly two decades after the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S.New York, for example, has seen more than 160 cases since September and is experiencing what Dr. Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner, called "the largest measles outbreak that New York state has had in recent history," CNN reported.In 2018, a total of 349 cases in 26 states and the District of Columbia were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up from 120 cases in 2017. Read the rest

A man carrying a firearm in his carry-on luggage got past the TSA screeners at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and flew with it to Narita International Airport on January 3. This occurred during the government shutdown, after "hundreds of TSA agents from at least four major airports had called in sick," according to CNN. The man, flying on Delta Airlines, had apparently forgotten that the gun was in his bag. Once he remembered he was carrying it, he informed Delta, who then reported it to TSA. It's not clear when the passenger disclosed this information to Delta.Via CNN:"TSA has determined standard procedures were not followed and a passenger did in fact pass through a standard screening TSA checkpoint with a firearm at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on the morning of January 3," the release states.The security breach came two weeks into the government shutdown, during which TSA agents have been required to work but have not received paychecks. CNN first reported on January 4 -- a day after the breach -- that hundreds of TSA agents from at least four major airports had called in sick.TSA, however, denies that the shutdown had anything to do with their security lapse, claims that they were completely staffed that day, and states that they will "hold those responsible appropriately accountable."Image: US Department of Homeland Security/Flickr Read the rest

I've just returned home from Star Trek: The Cruise, a truly extraordinary fan event for lovers of Science, Science Fiction, and the future.You really want to be on the next one.Longtime Boing Boing friend Wil Wheaton headlined the third annual cruise, which this year featured stars from every series of Star Trek from The Next Generation onwards. They, along with thousands of die-hard Star Trek fans took over an entire cruise ship for a week (flying the flag of the United Federated of Planets no less), Taking part in everything from photo and autograph sessions, Science Lectures from experts in the fields of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Game Shows, Q&A sessions, and even a narrated performance of the Scopes Monkey Trial transcript.But the real reason you should go isn't one of those events.There's a unique culture behind Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision of a utopian future attracts a certain type of fan, and there's something special about putting thousands of like-minded people and the actors who portrayed their most beloved Star Trek characters on a ship for a week. Wil Wheaton put it best in his initial address during our sendoff: "I have been a fan of Star Trek my entire life. [...] I learned everything that was important to me from the values that Star Trek taught me: I learned to be honest, I learned to be honourable, I learned to be kind. My whole life I've wanted to live in that world that we imagined when we worked on Next Generation, and that I loved to watch when I was a little boy. Read the rest

Polymathic genius Jack Black has a new channel on YouTube, which is great, but what's even better is Finn M-K's piano accompaniment to Black's thanks-for-signing-up announcement. Read the rest

The Fyre Festival documentary premieres on Netflix on January 18 and I can't wait. If you remember the Fyre Festival, you definitely weren't there... because, y'know, it didn't happen. And I'm glad, because if it did, we wouldn't have this fantastically ridiculous story. From NetFlix:Created by Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, Fyre Festival was promoted as a luxury music festival on a private island in the Bahamas featuring bikini-clad supermodels, A-List musical performances and posh amenities. Guests arrived to discover the reality was far from the promises.Chris Smith, the director behind the Emmy Award Nominated documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, gives a first-hand look into disastrous crash of Fyre as told by the organizers themselves.Read more Boing Boing posts about the Fyre Festival. Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has some stiff competition when it comes to dance videos. Twitter user @katiemgould missed her flight in Atlanta and had to wait four hours for another plane. But rather than sit around in a bored stupor, she took advantage of the airport and made this MTV-worthy music video to "You Make My Dreams," by Hall & Oates. I missed my flight and it was 4 hours until the next so this is what I did pic.twitter.com/BPHMU9q5km— lil hunny (@katiemgould) January 10, 2019 Read the rest

It’s a fresh and shiny New Year filled with hope and possibilities, but the same ol’ exaggerations, fantasy and fact-challenged nonsense as ever proliferates in this week’s tawdry tabloids. And as ever, they dig deep into the past for "news" we’ve seen many times before.“This Man Killed Diana in Paris Tunnel!” screams the National Enquirer cover story about the death of a Princess, naming Parisian limo driver-bodybuilder Le Van Thanh. But Thanh was identified as the driver of a Fiat Uno that possibly clipped Diana’s limousine at least as far back as 2007, has been photographed numerous times, and to this day being at the scene of the 1997 accident. So much for its “World Exclusive.”“Burt Reynolds Murdered This Man – and got away with it!” proclaims the Globe cover, accusing the late Smokey and the Bandit star of battering to death business manager David Whiting in 1973. The coroner ruled the death a drug overdose, but tabloids speculated at the time that Reynolds may have killed Whiting in a love battle over British actress Sarah Miles. What’s new 45 years later? Only that Reynolds is now dead and can’t sue. So much for its “World Exclusive.”You want up-to-the-minute news? “Julia Roberts has abandoned long-suffering hubby Danny Moder” and has “run straight into the arms of old friend George Clooney,” claims the Enquirer. For the TV-viewing millions who watched Julia Roberts cuddling, laughing and kissing with Danny Moder at Sunday’s Golden Globes Awards, we can only assume that it was actually George Clooney in disguise. Read the rest

Chrome security engineer and EFF alumna Chris Palmer's State of Software Security 2019 is less depressing than you might think: Palmer calls out the spread of encryption of data in transit and better signaling to users when they're using insecure connections (largely attributable to the Let's Encrypt project); and security design, better programming languages and bug-hunting are making great strides.Palmer also identifies the rise of tech worker protests over unethical projects (drones, censorship in China, etc) as a major advance, even if you don't agree with their specific goals, saying it's "good news that our generation of engineers is growing beyond the 'I could build it, so I did; what are consequences?' mentality."On the downside, Palmer is less bullish about the prevalence of C++ ("untenably complex and wildly unsafe"); worried about Meltdown, Spectre and related bugs; and the proliferation of scams, crapware, and stalkerware.He's also in the camp that does not believe that proof-of-work provides good security and predicts dire environmental backlash against the cryptocurrencies that rely on it.Missing from Palmer's analysis: the security debt created by massive silos of overcollected data in the hands of incompetent firms facing overmatched adversaries (Equifax was the beginning, not the end); the role of state vulnerability hoarding in promoting insecurity; and the growth of mandates banning working crypto from China to Australia.Still, I see people really shipping software improvements that seemed impossible 20 or 10 or 5 years ago. We really are making progress. Here’s what I want to see in 2019:* Throwing away the idea of using ‘engagement’ as the sole or primary metric. Read the rest

Donald Trump's border wall vs. the historic La Lomita church in Texas, which dates back to 1852.

Did you know all those hundreds of thousands of U.S. government workers who aren't getting paid during Trump's 18-days-and-counting shutdown still have to show up for work, even if they are not getting paid? Hard to believe, right?But true. U.S. law says public employees are not allowed to go on strike. Federal workers are forced into what one union leader called “involuntary servitude” during the ongoing government shutdown.Here's an excerpt from an Atlantic explainer on the law behind this:Eric Young is the president of the union that represents the approximately 30,000 employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons who are working during the government shutdown.Young’s members, scattered at 122 facilities located in largely rural areas across the country, aren’t being paid and don’t know when their next paycheck will come. Like the leaders of virtually every federal-employee union during the past three weeks, he has condemned the shutdown and its toll on innocent workers as “unconscionable.”“My personal opinion,” Young told me over the phone from his office in Arkansas, “is that it constitutes involuntary servitude.”Neither Young nor any of his partners in union leadership, however, will urge their members to do the one thing that would seem most natural for employees facing the same treatment in the private sector: If they don’t pay you, stay home.“We can’t call or advocate for a strike,” Young said.Since the enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, federal employees have been legally prohibited from striking. That law was intended to prevent public-sector workers from leveraging a work stoppage that could cripple the U.S. Read the rest

Etsy seller Timothy "Cthuluforyou" Kostelnik sells a wide variety of tentacle- and eyeball-themed housewares, but few match his $38 mutantini glass for sheer encrustation with pseudopods, viscera and staring, disembodied eyes; it makes a hell of a sludgabilly accessory. (via Creepbay) Read the rest

Brutus Patutus is described by his human as a “goofy, loving, American Bully 🤪.”He lives his best life in Orange County, enjoys opening things, and really likes it when mom gives him a pig ear for a treat. Watch below. View this post on Instagram I love pig ears 🐷 . . . . . #pitbull #pitbullsofinstagram #puppiesofinstagram #dogs #dogsofinstagram #standardbully #americanbully #aw #instagood #instagramdogs #reaction #bully #bulldog #california #remybloodline #pitbullpuppy #cute #pitbullmom #pitbullpride #bullybreeds #pitbulladvocate #pit #bulldoglife #adorabull #americanbullies #americanbully #americanpitbull #brutusA post shared by Brutus Patutus (@brutusthabully) on Jan 5, 2019 at 8:10pm PST Follow Brutus on Instagram. Read the rest

For more than 100 years, New York City's Tony-award-winning Drama Book Shop has been a stalwart of the city's thronging theater community; but like so many independent bookstores, it has struggled (it recently announced that it would have to leave its Times Square location on January 20 due to rent hikes).Enter Lin-Manuel Miranda and three of his collaborators from Hamilton, who have joined with the city to save the store and re-open it in Midtown next fall.Miranda spent his boyhood reading plays he couldn't afford to buy while sitting on the floor between the store's shelves, and he met his collaborator Tommy Kail there, and worked on the score and libretto for "In the Heights" on the premises.The new owners of the store are Mr. Miranda; Thomas Kail, the director of “Hamilton”; Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer; and James L. Nederlander, the president of the Nederlander Organization, which operates the theater in which the show’s Broadway production is running. They purchased the store from Rozanne Seelen, whose husband, Arthur Seelen, had bought it in 1958. (He died in 2000.) Ms. Seelen said she sold it for the cost of the remaining inventory, some rent support in the store’s final weeks, and a pledge to retain her as a consultant.Lin-Manuel Miranda and Friends Purchase Drama Book Shop [Michael Paulson/New York Times](Image: Nathan Hughes Hamilton, CC-BY) Read the rest

There are more houses for sale in San Mateo County, Santa Clara County and San Francisco County than at any time since 2013; inventory in December was up 113% year-on-year, and asking prices have fallen by 12% since their peak.It's the most expensive real estate in America, and widely considered recession-proof due to the startups, universities, and other draws that bring buyers to the market. But increases in inventory are driving prices down: the number of properties with price cuts in December rose 455% year-on-year. As Wolf Richter notes, the market may come back if the 2019 IPO season -- Uber, Palantir, Lyft, Airbnb -- is successful and creates a bunch of fresh-minted millionaires, but with a market crash on the horizon, this is a big if.With inventories for sale rising, as sales are slowing, a whiff of competition is settling in among sellers, who have to determine where the market is today, not where it was last year, and if they want to sell their property, they have to price it where the buyers are. But buyers aren’t where they were a year ago, and the bidding wars have receded into history, and mortgage rates have jumped from a year ago. The right property, priced right will sell. But if it’s priced off the market, it will likely sit. This is starting to sink in. And sellers are cutting their asking prices.In December, the number of properties on the market with price cuts in Silicon Valley and San Francisco combined skyrocketed by 455% from a year earlier to 444. Read the rest

David Shaerf, a professor of English and cinema studies at Michigan's Oakland University, is fanatical about Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. He's so fanatical that he made a documentary about Moby Dick fanaticism. The film is titled "Call Us Ishmael" and in it, Shaerf joins the devotees who gather annually in New Bedford, Massachusetts to read Moby-Dick aloud, without stopping. He interviews the likes of Frank Stella who spent 15 years making a piece of art for each of the book's chapters. He talks with the likes of Laurie Anderson who developed an entire live performance and tour titled "Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick" and Matt Kish, the librarian/illustrator who drew "Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page." Now, Shaerf is seeking help via Kickstarter to get Call Me Ishmael ready for release by clearing the music, legal fees, and insurance before he can hand it off to the film's distributor. It sounds like a whale of a project and I look forward to seeing the film!"Call Us Ishmael" (Kickstarter, thanks Ora Pescovitz!) Read the rest

Ipek Irgit mass-produced a novel bikini design, making millions and soon getting into furious legal fights with anyone who would dare copy it. In fashion, there is a fine, sometimes indistinguishable line separating inspiration and theft. Most apparel companies try not to get distracted by items that are derivative of their own. The trend cycle moves so quickly that experts tend to believe the best use of resources isn’t litigation, but creating next season’s styles.Ms. Irgit, though, could not abide the idea of rival versions of colorful crocheted bikinis. But then—spoilers!—a competitor tracked down the Brazilian beach artist, Solange Ferrarini, who was the true creator of the Kiini. Katherine Rosman's story in the New York Times makes a ripping yarn of the decade's wildest and wooliest design theft.Photo: Jens Mortensen / The New York Times Read the rest

“The honorable Nancy Pelosi of California, having received the majority of the votes cast is duly elected the representative for the 116th Congress.”And after those words were spoken, cheers and clapping and a standing ovation for the Speaker-Elect.(AP Photo/Cliff Owen) pic.twitter.com/GPbWIK2adQ— Colin Campbell (@colincampbell) January 3, 2019Nancy Pelosi is now @SpeakerPelosi. Again.Today, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became Speaker of the House of Representatives for the second time in her political career, after earning a majority of votes from her Democratic colleagues.Since 2003, Pelosi has served as the top Democrat in the House. In 2007, she became the first female Speaker ever.She cleared the majority threshold required to retake the gavel easily from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who today officially becomes the new Republican leader.No final tally yet, but Nancy Pelosi just locked in the votes to be speaker. Dem vote breakdown:12 voted for someone else (Brindisi, Crow, Cunningham, Golden, Kind, Lamb, McAdams, Rice, Rose, Schrader, Sherrill, Spanberger)3 voted "present" (Cooper, Slotkin, Van Drew)— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) January 3, 2019Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi of Baltimore, Maryland is making history again, leading the most diverse Congress in history. She did not come to play. Pelosi is gonna (metaphorically) cut Trump's head off and feed it to his dyin' ass.Actual photo of Nancy Pelosi returning to Congress pic.twitter.com/4yKPBjy5Zh— Paul Rudnick (@PaulRudnickNY) January 3, 2019Heck yeah.Earlier today, Congresswoman Pelosi spoke on NBC's 'Today' about what a Trump impeachment would mean. Read the rest

This paraglider is prepping for a cross-country trip across New South Wales, Australia with 39 other pilots when a dust devil decides to have some fun with him. He's tossed across the sky, out of control, as his wife, also a pilot, screams in the background. Fortunately, in the end, the paraglider safely lands. Read the rest

Even though cheese is pretty disgusting when you think about what it is, most cultures enjoy eating the coagulated mammary secretions of hoofed animals. Even bleu cheese (which is little more that moldy fat) is considered good eating by a lot of people. But when it comes to cheese infested by maggots, most folks draw the line.Not the residents of Sardinia. They go for casu marzu, a festering pile of rotten pecorino cheese teeming with squirming fly larvae. Stashed away in cupboards and under counters at open-air markets due to its contraband status, casu marzu is a cheese in which flies have been permitted — actually, encouraged — to deposit eggs. When the thousands of eggs hatch, the maggots eat the cheese and release an enzyme, triggering a fermentation process that causes the fat in the cheese to putrefy. By the time the cheese is ready to be consumed, it’s a gluey mass that creates a burning sensation in the mouth. Because the maggots will attempt to leap into the cheese eater’s eyes, conventional wisdom dictates that you should cover the cheese with your hand when you raise a piece it to your lips. Squeamish casu marzu gourmands who don’t want to ingest live maggots can first place the cheese in a paper bag and seal it. When the maggots become starved for oxygen, they jump out of the cheese and writhe in the bag, making a pleasant pitter-patter sound. When the sound subsides, that means the maggots are dead and the cheese is ready to eat. Read the rest

As populism and a tilt to the political right has prompted many nations to question once welcoming immigration and refugee policies and embrace xenophobia, a nation with a centuries long reputation for insularity has decided to move in the other direction. With its rapidly aging population and an underwhelming birthrate, Japan is opening its doors to large-scale immigration.From The New York Times:Under a bill approved by Parliament’s upper house in the early-morning hours, more than a quarter-million visas of five-year duration will be granted to unskilled guest laborers for the first time, starting in 2019.Under the new measure, between 260,000 and 345,000 five-year visas will be made available for workers in 14 sectors suffering severe labor shortages, including caregiving, construction, agriculture and shipbuilding.The measure also creates a separate visa category for high-skilled workers, who will be allowed to stay for unlimited periods and enjoy greater benefits, including permission to bring their families to Japan.As The New York Times points out, over the next 25 years, Japan's population is set to shrink by 16 million people, or 13 percent. During the same period, the number of old folks in Japan will increase to make up 1/3 of the population. This leaves an incredible vacuum of caregivers, laborers and other positions that must be filled. Not everyone is thrilled with the country's fresh, welcoming approach to immigration. But their feelings on the matter are moot: unless the Japanese start having a shitload of babies, which they're not, the nation will be in a serious bind when the bulk of their current population becomes too old to be able to keep the nation's infrastructure and businesses humming along efficiently. Read the rest

The Marxist Society of Peking University were getting ready to celebrate Mao's 125th birthday when the university administration abruptly deposed its leader, Qui Zhanxuan, and replaced the Society's leadership and upper cadres with 32 ringers largely drawn from the Communist Youth League or the Chinese Communist Party.The ensuing student protests ("Give us back our Marxist student society, resist violence on campus") were violently suppressed, with protesters beaten and dragged away, and at least nine arrests, including Qui.The takeover follows an earlier, unsuccessful attempt to shut down the society: in September, the revelation of a secret plan to de-charter the Society sparked protests that scuttled the plan.It's part of a mounting internal struggle in China between Marxist student groups who object to the concentration of power and wealth into the hands of Party-connected oligarchs who run exploitative factories and other concerns, and the CCP, which -- despite recent anti-corruption purges -- is primarily a vehicle for ensuring political stability while China's plutocrats consolidate ever-larger shares of the nation's wealth into their hands, even as wildcat strikes sweep the nation.The national crackdown on student organizers has been designed to terrorize Communist student movements who are too young to be held in line by memories of the massacre of student activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989.The CCP regime, which has all but abandoned its socialistic phrase-mongering, is terrified at the prospect of students politicizing the struggles of workers. The CCP represents the interests the super-wealthy oligarchs who have been profiting from the processes of capitalist restoration since 1978 and is well aware that it is sitting on top of a social time bomb. Read the rest