The Pong Project brings one of the first arcade video games back into the physical world through ingenious DIY engineering.

The landlords at City Park Apartments stuck memos on their tenants' doors last week, outlining a "Facebook addendum" requiring tenants to Friend the building on Facebook or lose their lease. (more…)

Today, Kraftwerk lost its vindictive, 19-year-long copyright suit against Sabrina Setlur, whose 1997 song "Nur mir" looped a drum sequence from Kraftwerk's 1977 "Metall auf Metall." (more…)

An official media organ of the North Korean regime has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, describing Democrat rival Hillary Clinton as "dull."

Reps from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Kiribati, Madagascar, Maldives, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Vietnam just gathered in Peru to announce the formation of the "Vulnerable 20" group, a coalition of 20 nations threatened by climate change. (more…)

In 2013, Gregory Sutton from the University of Bristol published an important paper demonstrating that bumblebees can sense electricity (his experiment trained bees to associate current in fake flowers with nutrients, and showed that bees preferentially sought out electrified flowers), but now how they sensed it. (more…)

For a decade, Canada's previous petro-tory government prosecuted scientists who publicly reported their results without first passing them through the party's commissars, almost as though reality had a well-known left-wing bias and couldn't be trusted. (more…)

Lawyer/poet/professor Seth Abramson cheats with some extremely long-ass sentences, but this is as cogent an explanation of why Sanders and his supporters are still fighting for the nomination as you could ask for. (more…)

Just end it already (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Singer Casey Daniel accused Skrillex and Justin Bieber of using a sample of her voice without permission, but the targets of her lawsuit seem to have a good defense: the sample was of another singer entirely, and Skrillex posted video showing how he produced it.Daniel's 2014 song Ring The Bell opens with a distinctive whooping cry from Daniel, repeated throughout:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VW5xIXdfgwYou can hear it—according to Daniel—in Bieber's Skrillex-produced 2015 megahit Sorry:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRh_vgS2dFEHere's Daniel, on Facebook:

Though he "harmed American interests," says Eric Holder, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaks "were also a public service." (more…)

A trailer has been released for the forthcoming Mosh Pit Simulator, by Sos Sosowki. Widely tipped as a candidate for computer game of the year, the VR title will be out later in 2016, and you can check out a playable version at Pixel Heaven in Warsaw, Poland, June 3-5..

Season six of HBO's Game of Thrones soldiers on, with family reunions both fortunate and unfortunate. Each week following the show, Boars, Gore, and Swords recaps everything that goes down in the world of Westeros. On this week's "Blood of My Blood," Ivan and Red are accompanied by the fantastic Lisa Corrao to discuss new religious converts, bringing your north of the Wall girlfriend home to your family, Arya's position as theatre critic, and puppets both figurative and literal.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.

Jedediah Voltzby's Somewhere Small sculpture series is composed of 25 tiny treehouses painstakingly built around houseplants, drawing on Voltzby's extensive experience as a props-master for films. (more…)

This interview with UBS whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld is as neat a case study in financial corruption as you could ask for: Birkenfeld's disclosures detailed 19,000 US tax evaders, including the bank's super-secretive list of "politically exposed persons," including people who laundered money for terrorists, and the US government threw him in prison (as well as paying him the largest reward in US history), declined to prosecute three quarters of those implicated, and then put him in prison. (more…)

Depending on how much credence you give to "whisper listings," there are between 27 and 50 $100,000,000+ houses on the market; last year, only two houses in that bracket sold worldwide. (more…)

The Library of America has just published String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis, a slim volume of beautifully written, never collected essays by one of the great tragic figures of American literature, David Foster Wallace, a self-described "near-great junior tennis player" during his own boyhood. (more…)

A new research report from Citizenlab painstaking traces the origins of a series of sophisticated hacking attacks launched at Rori Donaghy, a UK journalist for Middle East Eye who founded the Emirates Center for Human Rights, which reports critically on the autocratic regime that runs the UAE, and 27 other targets. (more…)

Big telcos and cable operators demand the right to impose data caps that punish their most enthusiastic customers for using too much Internet (with exceptions to the caps made for services that have paid bribes for "preferred carriage" of course), and they say that it's simple economics: if you use up more of a service, you should pay more for it. (more…)

Billionaire Pierre Omidyar "steps into the ring" in the long-running legal fight over privacy and journalistic freedom, fought lately between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media. The intervention, on Gawker's side--Omidyar is himself a media man, now--came after it turned out billionaire Peter Thiel was secretly funding Hulk's suit.Alternative subtitle: "No matter who wins, we news."Cast it in the comments. I'm thinking Kenneth Branagh as Denton, Michael C. Hall as Thiel, Christopher Lambert as Omidyar, Hulk Hogan as Terry Bollea, and any random carnie as Hulk Hogan.

The planter of this fir tree used railroad ties to create a deeply-embedded square border around it. As it grew, the roots took their shape, to be revealed after removing the now-rotten wood many years later.

I'm thrilled my kid loves the water, but she grows so fast that I'm afraid a wetsuit that fits in May will be outgrown by August. I've learned, however, that my child is not unique in this, and most surf shops have a rack of used, recently outgrown wetsuits.Sure, neoprene breaks down over time. Repeatedly wearing the same suit in the sun every day, without washing it or giving it any care, can kill a suit in one season. Most kids won't even come close and there are lots of suits that no longer fit available. If you wait until right after the weather changes and people start heading to the beach, you'll generally find plenty of used, kid-sized wetsuits at your local surf shop.Follow these quick tips, and you'll do fine:

Giant sharks? Pirates? A family of former Navy SEALS turned mercenary monster hunters? In Mega, Jake Bible, author of the well loved Zburbia series, takes to the high seas!Bible packs action, and comedy, into yet another genre taken to the extreme. A whole family of monster fighting, former Navy SEALS take on Somali Pirates, super whales, the CIA and a giant shark. Twists and turns will fly at you, training your mind to predict the craziest outcomes and still be wrong! I like Bible's brand of craziness.If you loved Bible's out of control Zburbia series, where a gated community survives the zombie apocalypse, you'll want to read Mega. I read these via Kindle Unlimited.Mega: A Deep Sea Thriller (Mega Series Book 1) via Amazon

We’d all love a 75-inch TV screen on which to view our favorite shows. But not all of us can drop the cash needed to get one of those broadcasting beauties (or even have the space needed to house them).Thankfully, there's an alternative. With the SainSonic Mini LED Portable Projector (only $59.99 in the Boing Boing Store), you can project a picture measuring up to 100 inches, virtually anywhere and without taking up valuable space.Just plug the SainSonic into any computer, game console or small TV, then point it at a clear wall to enjoy a big-screen experience at an affordable price. The SainSonic hooks up via HDMI, USB or SD card ports, meaning you’ll always have a way to connect.

Amazon has released Echosim.io, a browser based emulator of its Alexa Voice Service flagship unit, Echo.I've been playing with various voice service apps, trying to decide if they are at all approaching usefulness, and Amazon's seems the most able to do things. I am entertained by the idea of having something around the kitchen to reorder frequently re-ordered things, and play some music or podcasts. While this simulator isn't an always on option, and requires you press and hold a 'button' to make it work, it does show you good, or bad, Alexa is at answering your requests!It'll be nice when these voice assistants are more integrated.Echosim.io

You don’t treat all of your beliefs equally.For some, you see them as either true or false, correct or incorrect. For others, you see them as probabilities, chances – odds. In one world, you live in certainty, in the other, uncertainty.In this episode we explore why you gladly update some beliefs yet refuse to update others.Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudThis episode is brought to you by the MIT Press, publishing Suzana Herculano-Houzel’s book The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable. Read more about The Human Advantage and a few other new science, philosophy, language, and technology titles at mitpress.com/smart.This episode is also sponsored by Casper Mattresses – obsessively engineered American-made mattresses at a shockingly fair price. And now, you can get $50 toward any mattress purchase by going to

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If you want to add some real firepower to your programming repertoire, learn Java--one of the most adaptable, widely-used programming platforms around. You can easily do that with this Ultimate Java bundle, now just $69 in the Boing Boing Store.Across 14 lectures and 117 hours of content, the educators at online academy eduCBA will walk you through all facets of Java. You'll start by learning basic web development concepts, and work you way towards advanced technologies such as jQuery and JCreator.Once you’ve mastered Java, it’ll not only be a handy skill for growing your own website and app-based projects, but a marketable talent that’ll help you get any recruiter's attention. Jump on this deal now to lock in that over 90% discount before the offer ends.

Nyree Holmes is a senior at Cosumnes Oaks High School in Sacramento County. When Mr. Holmes tried to express his African heritage by wearing a kente cloth (a cultural cloth from Ghana) to his graduation ceremony, school officials insisted he remove it.When he refused, school officials called sheriff's deputies to kick the high school senior out of his graduation ceremony.Police Escort Black Merit Scholar Out of Graduation After Refusing to Remove Kente Cloth

Thinkgeek's launched a trinity of Star Trek: TNG swimwear for the summer: $60 one-piece suits (sciences blue; ops gold, command red); $40 cover-up rompers; and $50 "Deanna Troi" rashies/swim shirts (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.The Botanical Treasury: Celebrating 40 of the Most Fascinating Plants through Historical Art and Manuscripts

Kevin Sheehan, a koi enthusiast in the UK, has been ordered by the local housing association to remove the fish pond in his backyard.A spokesman for Sovereign Housing said: "This is not about burglars, this is about making sure our homes are safe places for our residents and any visitors to the property. We're also liable if someone does trespass on the property."

Chinese engineer Song Youzhou has been trying to get traction for his straddling bus, a huge elevated bus that goes over, rather than through, traffic, since 2010. (more…)

In Millionaire Migration and the Taxation of the Elite: Evidence from Administrative Data, Stanford sociologist Cristobal Young builds on his substantial research on "millionaire migration," to show that only a small minority of millionaires move when local taxes go up -- far too few to represent a net loss to the tax coffers. (more…)

Inequality in Children’s Contexts, USC Sociologist Ann Owens's paper in American Sociological Review (Scihub mirror), investigates the factors that contribute most to the unequal lives of wealthy and poor American children, and concludes that the single most significant factor is the neighborhood that the children's parents live in. (more…)

In 1991 the dome of the Unzen Volcano in Japan collapsed. This video captures the pyroclastic flow. The running guy's scream is more chilling than the Wilhelm scream.From Wikipedia:

Every year, the Senate passes a secret bill (that is, a bill whose text is a secret during its debate) that re-authorizes intelligence agencies' surveillance powers; this year, someone (possibly chairman Richard Burr, R-NC and/or Tom Cotton, R-AR) has snuck in an amendment that would give the FBI the power to demand warrantless access to Americans' email and browsing history, using National Security Letters, a controversial, widely used secret police order. (more…)

Wells Fargo has been widely criticized for its predatory, deceptive practice of targeting black mortgage borrowers with subprime mortgages (whose teaser rates ballooned into unsustainable long-term rates after a few years), rather than offering those borrowers much cheaper and better mortgages that would not have led to widespread bankruptcy, foreclosure, and the destruction of hardworking families' live savings. (more…)

Many years ago, EFF co-founder John Gilmore and I were discussing the prevalence of botnets, which are commonly used to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that overwhelm websites with floods of traffic; John said that if the botnets were really on the rise at the reported rate, we should expect to see a massive crash in the price of DDoS services, following simple supply/demand logic. (more…)

A lovely demo by MIT researchers Xiao Xiao and Hiroshi Ishi of Andante, a system for interactive music learning:

I wish Scott Barry Kaufman had been my college professor. Scott told me that he gives extra credit for daydreaming in his classes. That would have been an easy A for a space-case like me.Scott is the scientific director of The Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The Imagination Institute’s mission is to “make progress on the measurement, growth, and improvement of imagination across all sectors of society.” One of the ways it’s doing this is by conducting retreats with different groups of people — such as educators, evolutionary psychologists, standup comedians, and futurists — to learn how they use their imaginations in their work.In May 2016, I participated in The Imagination Institute’s two day “futurists retreat,” held at Institute for the Future’s Palo Alto headquarters, where I’m a research director. I arrived on Tuesday and met the other participants. Leading the retreat along with Scott was Jane McGonigal, IFTF’s director of game research and development. Jane’s a game designer and author of two New York Times best-selling books about self-development though imagination, creativity, and play. We were joined by IFTF staffers Tessa Finlev, Dylan Hendricks, Sarah Smith, and Kathi Vian, along with futurists Stuart Candy and Jamais Cascio, Imagination Institute’s Elizabeth Hyde, and James W. Hovey of the Eisenhower Fellowships.What follows is my account of the retreat, and the five memorable insights I gleaned from the experience. (more…)

Vintage interview with Jonathan Wolff, composer of the iconic Seinfeld theme (and music for Caroline in the City, Full House, Saved by the Bell, and many other shows)."I started with (Seinfeld's) voice... and took a meter from his delivery, and made that the tempo of the Seinfeld Theme," Wolff says.

Last weekend, at Beyond Brookledge, I had a chance to hang out with actor, comedian, and proud sword swallower Brett Loudermilk! Brett is a high energy, fantastic performer with a pretty intense sense of irony. He keeps me laughing.I'll keep my magic to card tricks, but if you want to learn to swallow a sword...

Anonymous Analytics describes itself as "a faction of Anonymous" that uses its "unique skills to expose fraud and corruption among public companies." (more…)

In Evaluating the privacy properties of telephone metadata, a paper by researchers from Stanford's departments of Law and Computer Science published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors analyzed metadata from six months' worth of volunteers' phone logs to see what kind of compromising information they could extract from them. (more…)

Earlier this week, I wrote about the legal threats from Landis and Gyr against the Freedom of Information service Muckrock, which had received documents from the City of Seattle detailing the workings of Landis and Gyr's smart-meter system, which Seattle has purchased from them at public expense. (more…)

But Jacky Chen, who manages the Jinhua Partytime Latex Art and Crafts Factory, believes that Trump will win and his mask will sell out. (more…)

Have you tried to find a box of Cracker Jack lately? You can buy boxes online or if you trudge to Costco (and are forced to purchase a bulk package of 24 boxes). Other than that I haven’t seen Cracker Jack come in anything other than a bag for ages.I don’t like change, particularly when it’s for the worse, as it often is because almost everything these days is dictated solely by how many more fractions of a penny a large corporate entity like Frito-Lay (which owns Cracker Jack) can squeeze out of any product. You consistently pay more and get less. You know about that, right? For years large corporations have been reducing the size of the package and simultaneously increasing the price — this happens with cereal, detergent, soup, you name it.Invented in Chicago in 1896 by German immigrant brothers Frederick and Louis Rueckheim, Cracker Jack starting coming with a prize in 1912, and by 1916 Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo were appearing on the box.Here’s how I remember Cracker Jack — TV commercials with Jack Gilford and a box with delicious candy coated popcorn (as in molasses and caramel) and peanuts (but never quite as many peanuts as you wanted) and a small toy prize in an envelope. Sometimes my memories linger on the large box, which sold for a quarter, known as the “Pass-Around Pack,” which contained many more peanuts.https://youtu.be/aolAuPIGTeMhttps://youtu.be/HNQwg4-KMfcThe prizes were, of course, the best part. Here’s a link to the website of C. Carey Cloud, who designed hundreds of prizes for Cracker Jack.And you can see a lot of the metal prizes (yes, metal!) that were given away in those little envelopes on the website of collector Larry White.But now there really are no more prizes because Cracker Jack announced last month (in a way, of course, that is designed to make it seem as if they’re giving you more instead of less) that what you will get in your bag of Cracker Jacks is a QR code. Let’s just have the company itself shovel its own bullshit:

This little Cree flashlight has a very bright beam, especially when you use it with a 14500 battery (rechargeable Lithium Ion) battery. It has a pocket clip and adjustable focus. It also works with a single AA battery, but it won't be as bright. It's just $3.35 on Amazon with free shipping/

When Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, they acquired Java, Sun's popular programming language, pitched from its inception as an open standard for the networked computer. (more…)