Concrete Problems in AI Safety, an excellent, eminently readable paper from a group of Google AI researchers and some colleagues, sets out five hard problems facing the field: robots might damage their environments to attain their goals; robots might figure out how to cheat to attain their goals; supervising robots all the time is inefficient; robots that are allowed to try novel strategies might cause disasters; and robots that are good at one task might inappropriately try to apply that expertise to another unrelated task. (more…)

If you love Ridley Scott's sci-fi masterpiece, Blade Runner, the minutia of film, and nerding out over typography, prepare to have your neck bolts blown. Dave Addey runs Typeset in the Future, a website dedicated to the typographic elements found in sci-fi films. He has previously examined the titling, signage, logotypes, text messaging, and visual displays found in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon, and Alien. Here, he turns his typographical attentions to Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi classic, Blade Runner.In 5,000 words and hundreds of screen caps, Dave goes through every scrap of textual content seen in the film. What's equally amazing to the point of the piece-- typographic analysis--is how much you learn about every other aspect of the film. This one narrow skew of the movie reveals so many other angles and tangents. Blade Runner is a film I already know too much about and I still learned so much more and had numerous "ah-ha" moments.

If you’re working to build your web programming knowledge, you know you have a lot of ground to cover. With literally dozens of languages, platforms and environments available to coders, mastering all those technologies can be a daunting task.Up-and-coming coders can start learning some of the most fundamental programming study areas with this Web Hacker course bundle - and right now, you can get it for any price you want to pay.Offer to pay any amount and you’ll immediately get access to two courses:

Nehala says: This is "what happens when someone mail-orders a lynx, which ends up destructively urinating all over the small apartment, is maladjusted, and is terrified of visitors, or in this case, a housesitter."

In 2009, President Obama pledged to "restore science to its rightful place." He said, "We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science."Today, the White House released an Impact Report listing 100 things that Obama has made happen with the support of many people across research, policy, education, and, yes, maker culture. Here's the full Impact Report. A few examples from the list:

When I was little, my mother had a 1960s sit-under hair dryer with a huge translucent plastic hood that I'd imagine was a variation on a Star Trek Transporter. But that hulking machine had nothing on these vintage hair dryers from the first part of the 20th century. These would have provided me with years of science fiction fantasies and nightmares. See more at Dangerous Minds.

Over the span of half a century, Brooklyn impostor Stanley Clifford Weyman impersonated everyone from a Navy admiral to a sanitation expert. When caught, he would admit his deception, serve his jail time, and then take up a new identity. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we'll review Weyman's surprisingly successful career and describe some of his more audacious undertakings.We'll also puzzle over why the police would arrest an unremarkable bus passenger.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

Follow @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.Please join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for early access to comics, and more.And/or buy Ruben Bolling’s new book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. Book One here. Book Two here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga Vol. 1

A bounce house at a birthday party in Niagara County, New York flew off into the sky before descending on power lines in a shower of sparks. Now that's entertainment! (No, nobody was inside at the time.)"I'm willing to bet that it wasn't properly secured just because I've done thousands of rentals and I have never had one problem. Either that or some sort of crazy wind gust, but I highly doubt that, most of the time when they're properly secured there's no problem and you know it's a fun amusement device for kids," Michael Gersitz, proprietor of Party in Buffalo Bounce House Rentals, told WIVB.

A little kid figures out how to break out of his self-imposed prison.

Three minutes of heartbreak from Gothamist: train a deep-learning facial recognition system on the expression of these New Yorkers as the subway doors slam in their faces and you will plumb the very depths of the human soul. (via Metafilter)

New research from the University of Utah and Cornell University suggests that couples involved in egalitarian marriages, at least as chores are concerned, have more sex. (Note that the study is only about heterosexual marriages.) This new study appears to counter a 2014 New York Times Magazine article titled "Does Gender Equality Kill Sex Lives?." For this work, the Utah and Cornell researchers compared a 2006 marital satisfaction survey with data from 1992-1994. From a news release about the paper:

In 1605 an English Catholic man named Guy ("Guido") Fawkes joined 12 other Catholics in an attempt to to blow up the Houses of Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes was caught red handed in the cellar of the Parliament. He was tortured an executed. Here's how his signature appeared, before and after torture.In those days, England didn't take kindly to Catholics, especially ones who tried to kill Queens and members of Parliament. I recently read Simon Singh's excellent The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography which has a chapter about Mary Queen of Scotts who, while under house arrest in the late 1500s, sent encrypted messages to a group of Catholic men conspiring to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and put Mary on the throne. The men were captured and gruesomely executed in front of a crowd of gawkers. As Elizabethan historian William Camden wrote, the conspirators were “cut down, their privities were cut off, bowelled alive and seeing, and quartered.” Mary, being a Queen, was merely beheaded.

This is not a review of the finest theater visit I’ve ever had, but more of a recap of my emotional journey through it. During my two-day connection with the illusionist Derek DelGuadio's show I felt surges of amazement, fear, pride and relief - and I guarantee that my experience was different from the other attendees.In this show an audience member’s experience is as personal as they want to make it – and mine was very much so.As I watched, there were moments when I wished I had a time machine to go over what had just happened – and in a strange way my wish came true. You see, at one point of the show I was kicked out of the theater while the rest of the audience saw the finale that I could only imagine.I was escorted out the side hatch and asked to come back the next day with a documented recollection of what happened so far - and a theory of how I thought things would play out after I was removed. To be honest, at this point I felt pressure because of what was ahead of me – I now had homework.On my way home, I took a detour through the streets of Hollywood while looking for a certain golden brick but came up empty handed. When I settled into my den, I began writing in the journal that DelGuadio gave me and didn’t stop until my story was recorded.If what I’m describing here seems strange to you, it’s simply because you haven’t yet seen In & Of Itself - and you really should. Once you do, you’ll want to witness it again and again, because there’s so much personal storyline that you'll miss the first time around.And when you do see it, do yourself a favor and try to get thrown out when the time is right. I’m convinced that you’ll have a better experience for having done so but be warned, it can only be done on your first viewing – it just wouldn’t make sense otherwise.The Honest CreatorDerek DelGuadio is a writer, magician, performance artist as well as the sole star the show. His resume is ridiculous and I really don’t understand how he’s been on the Earth for only 31 years.In & Of Itself is a meaningful experience that stays with you long after you’ve walked (or been kicked) out of the theater. The maze of story threads that he weaves are truly personal to Derek but by the end of the show it will all relate to you - and what's more is that you'll most likely leave wiser than you arrived.His story is unveiled through a series of intertwining chapters with artistic and thoughtful magic pieces throughout. But this is not a magic show – it’s an unforgettable experience that has magical elements to support it.During the chapter in which Derek flawlessly handles a deck of playing cards, he invites you to detect how the impossible is being accomplished as he tells you how he’s doing it. Over and over again, he slowly peels cards from the deck dealing seconds, bottoms and using a technique that Dai Vernon himself traveled across the country to learn.All of this is done with the calmness of Buddha as he shares his story of how he learned the very thing he invites you to poke holes in – but in the end, he is bulletproof.Though the through line is the same from night to night, there are key points that morph with every performance due to participation of random members of the crowd. At one point of every show, Derek invites one lucky person to publicly guess the finale but in the end, it just makes the true reveal more impactful.Derek, with his creative partners Frank Oz, Michael Weber, Glenn Kaino and Mark Mothersbaugh have created the 7-layer bean dip of finales that gets more and more satisfying as the next phase engages. Penn Jillette sat in front of me at last night’s showing and though his business is magic and he has seen thousands of performers – his smile never left his face. For him and everyone else, it was the perfect combination of seasoned manipulations and compelling story.

I tried Starbucks cold brew, and it is the worst tasting coffee I've ever had. Cold brew tastes like 2 day old giant urn coffee at a civic event! Remember Folgers? Imagine Folgers on ice.Even so! Some folks are suing Starbucks over an alleged conspiracy to short their coffee, thus keeping costs down. The bitter mermaid attempted to have the suit dismissed, as they happily remake any beverage when asked. It appears shitty coffee aficionados will have their day in court, fighting for their last sip of poorly made coffee.Via the SF Chron:

There's no information about the makeup artist who transformed a young woman into a Wattie wannabe. Check out the process photos.

Michael Steven Sandford, 20, was arrested at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas after he tried to take a gun from a police officer. He said he'd been thinking about killing Trump for a year.From BBC:

The fun-loving stunters of Improv Everywhere staged a fabulous stunt in New York City's Bryant Park: they set up a crowd of "grads" in caps and gowns with a stage and a podium, then sent the "dean" out into the park to beg randos to step in and serve as emergency commencement speakers, filling in for a last-minute cancellation. (more…)

R Crump's "Point the Finger" series of comics about his disgust with America appeared in the first run of Hup! in 1989. (more…)

A funeral home in Ottawa, Canada, is using a new body eco-friendly disposal technique called Alkaline Hydrolysis, which leaves only a coffee-like slurry that can be simply poured down the drain.

The city of Cleveland has revealed its crowd control plan for next month's Republican National Convention, a heavily policed, fenced off 3.3 square-mile "event zone" -- the size of Baghdad's Green Zone -- with fenced-off protest areas far from the convention itself. (more…)

Samuel R Delany is one of the most important figures in science fiction; one of the first prominent black writers in the field; the first out, queer writer; a titan of imagination and a prose stylist without compare. (more…)

Contemporist gathered up some of the most innovative sculptured ceilings from around the world, like the Colombian Ice Cream Shop Von Glacet above. Below: New York's Innuendo Restaurant.(more…)

Everyone processes grief differently. One attendee at this year's Electric Daisy Carnival wore these fabulous kandi bracelets "honoring the 49 lives taken at Pulse." Orlando nightclubs were packed with defiant crowds. (more…)

A pending "anti-terrorism" bill in the Duma would require all apps to contain backdoors to allow the secret police to spy on the country's messaging, in order to prevent teenagers from being "brainwashed" to "murder police officers." (more…)

BBC Radio 4's sketch comedy programme The Now Show has just posted a special podcast focused on Thursday's EU-UK referendum called The Vote Now Show: EU and Yours (MP3); it's both hilarious and intensely factual, which is a sadly compatible state of affairs.

On June 15, exactly 3 days after Omar Mateen shot 49 people dead and wounded 53 more in Orlando, the National Rifle Association released this video on YouTube urging Americans to buy more AR-15 assault rifles.(more…)

He's been called “one of the most loathsome characters in American history.” Roy Cohn made his bones working as a prosecutor in the Rosenberg espionage case, and served as Senator Joseph McCarthy's right-hand man for years. He helped send the Rosenbergs to the electric chair for spying, and helped Richard Nixon become president. Roy Cohn was also Donald Trump’s lawyer and mentor for 13 years.(more…)

This guy used sticky tape, a candle, a tin can lid, and scissors to make a spare key. He skipped the part where he cut the business part of the key, though.

https://youtu.be/G_mqDD1rMaE?t=10sSerious question: Isn't one of the primary purposes of our government to protect American lives? Because today, our government chose not to. Again.One week after 49 Americans were shot to death in an Orlando nightclub, the Senate today voted no on four different measures to limit gun sales. At least they're consistent. Each time there's a mass shooting, and they occur with alarming frequency and regularity, our politicians do nothing. They tweet thoughts, talk on TV about prayers, and take absolutely zero action.(more…)

Astronomers using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and its extended K2 mission, as well as the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, have discovered the youngest fully formed exoplanet ever detected. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars beyond our sun.(more…)

Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory is the world's largest radio telescope. Arecibo is an icon of science. It's where scientists proved the existence of neutron stars was proven, discovered the first binary pulsar, made the first direct image of an asteroid, made the first discovery of extrasolar planets, and of course transmitted the Arecibo Message, an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence. And right now, the Arecibo Observatory is facing demolition due to budget cuts. Nadia Drake attended meetings this month in Puerto Rico to where scientists, staff, students, and the National Science Foundation discussed the telescope's fate and why it needs to be saved. From Natalie's wondrous "No Place Like Home" blog at National Geographic:

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin’s specialty are avant-garde films that use the techniques of silent cinema to disorient the viewer. He’s good at it. I was first introduced to his work in Tales of the Gimli Hospital, fine viewing for a dark night in an isolated location. His work is never “easy,” and requires patience and interest. Maddin’s latest project is something unique in the history of cinema, and only made possible by access to it on the Internet. Maddin introduces Seances:

It's amazing what we can learn to make our work more interesting to others, and to ourselves. (YouTube via Atlas Obscura)

Boars, Gore, and Swords podcast recaps Game of Thrones S6E09, "Battle of the Bastards" The sixth season of HBO's Game of Thrones reaches its penultimate episode, with an awesome, climactic battle leading to the comeuppance for which we've all been waiting. Each week following the show, Boars, Gore, and Swords recaps everything that goes down in the world of Westeros. To discuss this week's "Battle of the Bastards," Ivan and Red are joined by writer Maggie Tokuda-Hall to discuss what make-up you bring to the negotiating table, the gender dynamics of war councils, how Daenerys/Yara is the new greatest ship, and Ramsay's fate still being better than he deserves.To catch up on previous seasons, the A Song of Ice And Fire books, and other TV and movies, check out the BGaS archive. You can find them on Twitter @boarsgoreswords, like their Facebook fanpage, and email them. If you want access to extra episodes and content, you can donate to the Patreon.

Earlier this month, I gave the afternoon keynote at the Internet Archive's Decentralized Web Summit, speaking about how the people who are building a new kind of decentralized web can guard against their own future moments of weakness and prevent themselves from rationalizing away the kinds of compromises that led to the centralization of today's web. (more…)

Shannon Kirkley, of New Jersey, was arrested in Wesley Chapel, Florida, after hiding a number of LEGO sets in a toy treasure box, and paying only for the box. Kirkley admitted to having pulled variants of this caper across the country. Via a FOX affiliate:

Like many youtubers, the incomparable, fast-talking, sharpie-doodling mathematician Vi Hart (previously) was stunned by the Orlando shooting of Christina Grimmie, a Youtube singing star who broke out into the mainstream, and who was murdered by a man who attended her public appearance. (more…)

I needed a microSD card reader that'd let me review photos and video from digital cameras on my iPad, or iPhone. This $21 HonkTai iReader does the trick!I don't like to carry my laptop on motorcycle trips, and this lets me check out a days photos, edit them, and clear storage space for the rest of the trip. After installing HonkTai's app via the Apple Store, this iReader easily loads photos and videos back and forth from MicroSD and SD cards and your iDevice.It also has a MicroUSB connection and will work with Android devices, as well as act as a regular USB card reader for your laptop.HonkTai Lightning iReader via Amazon

The Wigglegram subreddit has oodles of examples of 3D GIF images made by taking photos from different vantage points and looping them.

Fumio Sasaki, a 36-year-old editor in Tokyo, sold or gave away his collection of books, CDs and DVDs, as well as most of clothes and other possessions. He told the Guardian: “Spending less time on cleaning or shopping means I have more time to spend with friends, go out, or travel on my days off. I have become a lot more active.” Read more about Sasaki and other Japanese minimalists, many inspired by Mari Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing/\.

All the news about the "Stairway to Heaven" lawsuit reminded me of this lovely arrangement of another creative dispute: Radiohead's "Creep" vs. The Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe." (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.The Art of Finding Dory

The Young Ones was a fantastically funny, surreal, and anarchic British sitcom in the 1980s about four students who shared a house. There was punk Vyvyan, anarchist Rick, hippie Neil, and ladies' man Mike. But if you looked very closely, you might have spotted... another. If you looked very closely you might have spotted a curious hirsute individual hidden in every episode of the first season. Over at the Daily Grail, John Reppion explores this wonderful Easter egg of 1980s cult television. And if you don't know The Young Ones, hit YouTube now and thank me later. From the Daily Grail:

Gordopolis says: "I've been to a lot of yardsales, pretty sure this was a first."

Mojoptix designed and built a sundial that displays the time in its shadow. You can download the 3D printer files on Thingiverse, or buy one on Etsy.

Lisa Rein writes, "In less than a year, Timothy Leary was imprisoned in three differentcontinents--and it could've been worse. After escaping from a Californiaprison with the help of the Weatherman Underground and the Brotherhood ofEternal Love, he and Rosemary fled Algeriafrom a 'revolutionary bust' by Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, onlyto be jailed in Switzerland when President Nixon personally demanded hisextradition back to the U.S." (more…)

Toronto's public libraries have followed New York and Chicago's lead in offering wifi hotspot lending to low-income families, allowing them to "check out the internet" and take it home with them. (more…)