Homelessness in America dwindled away after WWII, when the GI Bill and generous social programs seemed to finally get on top of a problem that had been with the country since its inception; but starting with Reagan's mass de-institutionalizations and cuts to social services, homelessness has only grown, a phenomenon America answered by criminalizing being alive, and pretending not to notice homeless people in encampments at the edge of more and more US cities. (more…)

Detective David Edward Abbott, a member of the Virginia-Washington DC Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force became Internet famous when he obtained a warrant to inject a child with an erection-causing drug so that he could photograph the child's erect penis and compare it to an image sexted to another child. (more…)

Sara from Sweden used the website Twin Strangers to find her doppelgänger, Shannon from Ireland. In this video, they meet for the fist time.[via]

Ehsan Abdulaziz, a married, 46 year old, rich Saudi property developer, says he invited an 18 year old woman to sleep on his couch, and later tripped and fell on her as she lay asleep, accidentally penetrating her vagina with his penis. (more…)

Neighbors of the Daybreak community, in South Jordan, Utah have been putting Amazon and UPS packages filled with rocks and other junk on their porches. The idea is that thieves will steal them, take them home to find they've got garbage instead of shiny new products, and swear off stealing other people's stuff for good.From Oddity Central:

Some Safeway customers in California and Colorado who used debit/credit cards have had their card numbers and PINs slurped up by criminals who then took the cards out for spending sprees. (more…)

People who bought Cards Against Humanity's Eight Sensible Gifts for Hannukah subscription were invited to take a survey at the end of the purchase, one that asked all kinds of weird, invasive questions -- naturally, CAH has published the results! (more…)

Boing Boing proudly welcomes Mando as a sponsor!Anyone who commutes to work in a major metropolitan center like New York, London, Paris or Berlin knows all too well about the challenges of getting from Point A to Point B. And urban dwellers struggle to choose between options that all seem to have drawbacks.Packed trains, busses and metro lines with unpredictable reliability, vehicle restrictions, expensive parking, and mind-numbing traffic, not to mention costs of either public or private transport, all have led commuters scrambling for alternatives.The traditional bicycle has emerged a strong contender for favored commuter method, especially as cities become more bike friendly with special lanes for two-wheel travelers, incentive schemes to motivate would-be bikers, and even convenient rental stations that allow easy access to bikes most anywhere you might need one.So while there are many reasons to consider biking to work, there’s one reason urban commuters have shied away from this alternative.“Sweat,” says Ben Jaconelli, owner of London-based Fully Charged bike shop near London Bridge. “People don’t want to arrive at work all sweaty and have to carry an extra set of clothes and then shower at the office. They want the most efficient and hassle free way to get to work, and humping across town on a push bike is not necessarily the best approach to achieve that.”The e-bike alternativeEnter the electric bike. Long considered a handy way for older or less active folks to enjoy the experience of biking, e-bikes struggled to gain widespread appeal, especially for the younger set. Boring, clunky designs, underperforming motors, and a general lack of coolness kept hipsters away. But e-bikes have entered a new era with bold designs, innovative technology, and an interesting set of suppliers entering the market, bringing creative, out-of-the-box thinking to how powered two wheel vehicles can revolutionize urban transport.Indeed, market forecasters are bullish on the e-bike market in Europe, with some predicting double digital growth in key markets such as the UK, France, Holland and Germany.James FitzGerald, owner of the popular e-bike retail chain Just E-Bikes, is seeing the trend take hold first hand. “Today’s electric bikes are cool and desirable. New manufacturers are changing the face of the e-bike market with truly breakthrough designs, like the Mando Footloose and for a lot of very practical and obvious reasons, the use of these vehicles is starting to take off.”But the cool factor cannot be underestimated.Mando Footloose IM raises the bar: “The iPhone of e-bikes”Entering a store like Fully Charged or JustEbikes the causal e-biker observer is astounded by the range of styles now available as powered two-wheeled vehicles. There are urban commuter bikes, mountain bikes, speed bikes, even utility cart-style bikes.One particular model that immediately jumps out is the Mando Footloose IM. It sports a futuristic looking design, emphasized by its most eye-catching feature – a chainless drive mechanism that makes even other e-bikes look like granny-mobiles. With the Mando Footloose IM there is no mechanical connection between the cranks and rear wheel and instead they are connected by an alternator. A 250-watt motor allows the rider to achieve speeds of up to 25Km/hour and a single charge of the handy 36-volt removable lithium ion battery pack will take you up to 60Km. It weighs in at a manageable 21 kilos.The bike’s stunning good looks – smooth clean lines and a range of sporty colors - has earned it the prestigious Red Dot and Good Design awards and its game-changing design is mesmerizing. But the underlying technology will make the geek in you salivate, too.The bike is made by Mando, leading automobile technology company in South Korea, which counts Audi, BMW and GM amongst it 4-wheeled customers. The company has applied its car know-how to the bike with advances such as the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) that monitors the bike’s condition and manages the system to optimize the bike.The rider uses the bike’s removable Human Machine Interface (HMI), a smartphone sized LCD computer module that mounts on the handle bars, as the dashboard for the bike. It provides the user with power, speed, maintenance and even health/fitness information. The HMI also allows the user to select preferred modes including acceleration mode (eco, normal, sporty, health) and pedal resistance mode (soft, medium, hard). The HMI communicates with the bike’s other systems to notify the user of changes in terrain, maintenance issues and battery level via its intuitive and bright display. In addition to being a useful source of information, once the user removes the detachable head, the bike is rendered unusable, thus providing an efficient security system as well.“As proud as we are of the unique aesthetics of the bike, it’ s a truly a performance machine as well,” says renowned British bike designer Mark Sanders, who has designed three generations of the bike for Mando. “It’s an ideal combination of form and function, an iPhone for e-bikes, if you will. And the reality this appeal to people who may not even consider themselves biking oriented. It’s more like a car on two wheels.”But you can use the bike lane. No sweat!The original folding Mando Footloose and the Mando Footloose IM are available immediately and information on where to buy can be found at www.mandofootloose.com.

Troy Little, creator of the graphic novel adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has been keeping a diary of his book signing tour. This week: Hollywood, complete with unexpected celebrity cameos (Dan Harmon, Aubrey Plaza) and, of course, Singapore slings at the Polo Lounge, to begin our reenactment of the Fear & Loathing journey. (Previous installments: One | Two)

If you visit the Bournemouth, England bus station after midnight, you'll be treated to the fine squeaky sounds of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Why? According to the BBC, the music is part of a Bournemouth Borough Council strategy to "deter anti-social behaviour and rough sleeping, which could cause waiting passengers to feel intimidated.""The only way I can describe it is like how people are held at Guantanamo Bay," says resident Aron Kennedy. "If they're laying down in their sleeping bags and they've got this constant music going through their head, it'll make them go insane." ALVIN!!!https://vimeo.com/144050400

Last month, Frances Dinkelspiel's new book, Tangled Vines, cracked the New York Times' Best Seller list. It's a great read, since it mostly follows the events leading up to an arson-caused wine-warehouse fire in 2005, in which 4.5 million bottles of wine worth at least a quarter-billion dollars were lost.Dinkelspiel's account of that inferno, as well as the man who sits in jail for causing it, is riveting, but I found myself even more interested in the author's numerous references to an organization called the California Wine Association, which controlled as much as 84 percent of the state's wine business from 1894 until 1920. That means the C.W.A., as it was called, was in charge of millions of gallons of California wine that were stored in almost two dozen San Francisco warehouses, most of which were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and the fires that followed.

It looks like the "credible" terror threats that led LA to shut down its entire school system came in a rather incredible form: anonymous email sent via internet meme sewer cock.li. (more…)

Freedom of the Press Foundation has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Justice Department for all correspondence the agency has had with Congress over proposed FOIA reform bills that died last year in Congress, despite having unanimous support of all its members.(more…)

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reports that conservatives are more likely to be strict about classify geometric shapes than liberals are.From Mental Floss:

In the 1860s Chicago underwent an amazing transformation in which dozens of buildings were moved around the city and gangs of men raised giant hotels and banks on jackscrews. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the city's astounding 20-effort to rid itself of sewage and disease.We'll also hear about how dangerously close the U.S. and the Soviet Union came to nuking each other, and puzzle over the importance of a ringing phone.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! (more…)

Cables fray, and chargers disappear into thin air. Even if you don’t need a replacement, snag a backup to store in your bag while you’re on-the-go. This MagSafe 2 Power Adapter for MacBook Air is so smart that its magnetic DC connector disconnects without harm should you snag it or trip over it, and its clever design allows for neat, compact storage.(more…)

We're in the midst of the rainy season in Portland, Oregon when a thick, soporific sheet of gray wraps itself around the city like a wet wool blanket and doesn't let go till Spring. The moment I step outside my door, I realize I've made a mistake: the sky has opened up, and raindrops are spilling out so quickly that I instantly abandon my plan to go running, turn on my heel and head back inside.When I sit down at my computer and open the game Lovely Weather We're Having, it's raining there too. It's not a coincidence. The game is designed to mirror the weather outside your window, mapping the real-life sunshine, rain and snow of the world around you to a surreal neighborhood that looks sculpted from clay and littered with candy-colored trees and geometric shapes.You begin the game standing outside of a house—your house, presumably—but you can't go inside. That's because this is "a game about going outside," or at least that's what it says on the tin. But I nonetheless think of Lovely Weather We're Having as a game about home, not just because it creates a place for your digital avatar to live, but because it simulates in one of the most pleasurable things about having a home: the moment when you return to it. It encourages you to leave, so that you can have the satisfaction of coming back.https://vimeo.com/136570202Wandering around your surreal little neighborhood is a very sensory experience: grasses rustle, mushrooms sing at your touch, and stones make satisfying, rubbery thunks when I kick them. There's a puppy that always trails a few steps behind you, whose fur changes color with the temperature. If you wait till evening, shadows will fall over your strange little town, and many of your neighbors will go to sleep.Admittedly, there's not a lot to do in Lovely Weather We're Having. You can talk to the locals, wander around through the modulating meteorology and see what might have changed along with the weather. That's it. When you tire of it, you stop playing.But that's also part of its charm. It's not a game designed to be played for eight hours straight; it's one where you check in, see what's new, and check out again. It encourages you to step away, so that when time has passed you can experience the pleasure of the moment of return—the comfort of what is familiar and the novelty of what has changed.The same could be said of Neko Atsume, the unexpectedly popular cat collecting game where you leave out food and toys on a digital porch to attract a menagerie of digital felines. But here's the catch: the cats won't appear until you leave. You can check back in later, though, and you should, because that's exactly when the kitties will show up to curl up in cardboard boxes and bat at balls of yarn. If you miss them—well, you miss them.Lovely Weather We're Having has even more in common with Animal Crossing, another neighborhood simulator whose charm comes from its parallels to real life. Your town and its anthropomorphic residents live in real-time, which means that if a llama in the game says her shop closes at 10 PM, then it really does.If a notice says that a festival is taking place in your town on a specific date, you'd better turn on the game that day, or it'll go on without you. Send a friend a present through the Animal Crossing post office, and it won't reach its destination for hours, or even till the next day. It's not because the game can't deliver it sooner, of course. It's because waiting for it not only makes its eventual arrival feel more gratifying, but also more organic.Unlike the somewhat nefarious delays of pay-or-wait games that encourage you to drop real-life cash to fast forward through waiting periods—I'm looking at you, Farmville—the passage of time in what I think of as homecoming games isn't an artificial constraint designed to frustrate or manipulate you for profit. Instead, it's a far more natural rhythm coded into your play, and one that implies something important about how we interact with our intimate spaces: that the spaces we create from them each time we leave them are part of what gives them meaning.There's something comforting about the way these games mirror both everyday rituals of departure and return, the rhythms and cycles of change that thread through our real lives. The sun rises and sets, the weather changes, things and people grow and shift and disappear in the moments when we aren't looking. We measure those changes by holding them up against the yardstick of the familiar, against the backdrop of the physical structures that shelter us and anchor us in the world.Instead of trying to hold you in their thrall for as long as possible, homecoming games create spaces where time has to pass in order for, well… time to pass. You plant some seeds, send some mail, see what's new with your neighbors, put out food for the cats—and then go back to the real world and live your life. It's soothing and gratifying in a way that a more frenetic life simulator like The Sims will never be, specifically because The Sims encourages you to fast forward through the moments when your character leaves the house or goes to sleep, eliding over any interval of rest or absence. It's easy to feel like your avatar never really stops—and by extension, neither do you. Often, it means you won't want to.Take it from someone who works from her home, and often finds herself in deeply dysfunctional rhythms: home shouldn't be the place where you spend all your time, because when it is, it's a lot less fun to be there. The pleasures of home—both in games and in life—lie not in it being a place you never want to leave, but rather in being a place you want to leave, because it makes it so much more satisfying to come back to again and again and again.

Leeds's Lou Lou P's Delights made these Ring-themed J-horror doughnuts in honor of National Donut Day. (via Seanan)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR3lXEH80NwThe short movie Uncanny Valley is a beautifully made, effects-heavy science fiction film about virtual reality "addicts." It starts a little slowly, but just as soon as you think you've got the gag, the movie veers off into some extremely interesting territory. (via JWZ)

For years, the DEA relied on a Riverside, California magistrate judge, Helios Hernandez, to write illegal wiretap warrants, making Hernandez the national champion of wiretapping warrants, signing off on five times more than any other judge in America. (more…)

The successful Kickstarter raised enough money to put Volume One of the anthology in print, featuring 21 Hugo-award-nominated stories.

Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics! (more…)

Itch lets you download and play indie games on Windows, Mac and Linux.

John Edward Parsley, 62, of Gonzalez, Texas, was charged with assault and battery Monday after ramming a hotel lobby with his truck. Taking aim at two women staff at the Alva Comfort Inn in Oklahoma, he plowed into their reception desk as they dive away in the nick of time.Why? Because his credit card had been declined, forcing him to pay cash.Parsley was also charged with malicious injury to property and is being held on $1m bond.MSNBC:

The EFF has just settled a case against the Drug Enforcement Agency on behalf of its client, Human Rights Watch, which sued the Agency over its decades-long program of illegal mass surveillance. (more…)

Ever get into an online argument about someone with brown skin who'd been senselessly slaughtered by state-appointed law officers and start to feel like you're talking with someone who's not quite in possession of the full complement of human empathy? (more…)

Researchers examining a possible link between antidepressants and autism found that women who took the psychiatric medications while pregnant were far more likely to have autistic kids.Women in the study who took antidepressants during the last six months of pregnancy were 87% more likely to have a child later diagnosed with autism. Researchers say the link was most prevalent with women on the class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs. Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft are some of the more common SSRI drug brand names.Does the new study prove antidepressants cause autism? No. Correlation is not causation, and science is complicated. But increasingly, autism research is focusing on factors that may contribute to the disorder before birth.(more…)

Jurors in Baltimore, Maryland are now deliberating whether a police officer is guilty of manslaughter and assault in the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died from a spinal cord injury that took place while he was in police custody last April. We know about Gray's death in part because someone took video of his arrest. His family says the police killed him, and it's hard to imagine they're wrong.(more…)

DJ Riko is back with another year's worth of holiday mashups: Merry Mixmas 2015 (MP3). (more…)

Gaby Dunn, co-star of the YouTube channel Just Between Us, explains the dismal economics of being a mid-list YouTube star.

Newitz, who co-founded IO9 and recently moved to Ars Technica has already published marvellous, book-length science non-fiction, but now she's publishing her first sf novel! (more…)

Stephen Bassett is the only lobbyist of his kind in Washington DC. He's working to get the government to admit that it has proof of extraterrestrials visiting our planet. “I want to see disclosure by the New Hampshire primary,” says Bassett who has been working the issue for nearly two decades. From the Washington Post:

Police swarmed a Paris kindergarten today after a teacher claimed that a man wearing a balaclava stabbed him in the throat while yelling that the attack "was for Daesh." But the Paris prosecutor's office has just told CNN that the man "made up the attack." The teacher is in the hospital with non-critical wounds but it's not clear how they were actually caused.Here's the original story: "French teacher stabbed by man claiming to be from Islamic State" (The Guardian)

Efficiency, productivity, and agility are increasingly valued career skills. Cultivate your own with this e-learning bundle from the expert instructors at eduCBA.(more…)

Adventure Machine is an online music-remixing widget by Madeon, whose album Adventure came out earlier this year. Similar to Novation's Launchpad gadget, you click different buttons in the grid to turn different loops on and off, thereby creating your own remix of the tracks. (more…)

Lenny Pozner's young son died in the Sandy Hook mass killing. Conspiracy theorists believe the killing was staged. Pozner's efforts to educate them, to prove that his son died, only resulted in relentless trolling and harassment. Yet he keeps trying: “I’m going to have to protect Noah’s honor for the rest of my life,” he says.

There are a lot of secure messaging apps out there, and more every day. They're vital and the sector is vibrant, but if you want to help groups and individuals keep their work private from repressive states or any other authoritarian agency of reprisals (e.g. reactionary, violent parents of queer kids), there are a lot of neglected areas that aren't messaging-based that could use your work. (more…)

MRA Dilbert takes the comic strips of Scott Adams and puts actual Scott Adams quotes in as dialogue. Grimly amusing, if you're familiar with Adams' online persona; startlingly unpleasant if not. [via @waxpancake]

A town meeting in Woodland, North Carolina heard public comments on a proposed solar farm in which citizens, including a retired science teacher called Jane Mann spoke out against the proposal. (more…)

Silent movies were preceded by stern/comic etiquette messages reminding viewers to take off their hats before the show, lest they interfere with other viewers' enjoyment. (more…)

Redditor Two Plus Two is Fore thinks it was made by stacking and frosting different-colored sheet cakes, cut into rings and combined to make the pattern. (more…)

A new report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies finds that America's cities are unaffordable even for renters with incomes of $45,000, making 2014 the record-breaking year for "cost-burdened renters." (more…)

When you choose Limefuel’s Blast for portable power, you choose a battery that charges twice as fast as the competition.(more…)

The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 is set to kick in, and with it will come an extended term of copyright for designer objects, such as furniture, which will endure for 70 years after the creator's death -- meaning that you'll need a license to post photographs of your own belongings. (more…)

https://youtu.be/kIncwvQlSdoCrank it up and freak out your dogs, people! (more…)

I’m guessing there aren’t many of us who are terribly concerned that Skynet will unleash its army of Terminator robots on us. But to hear tech visionaries like Bill Gates and Elon Musk tell it, there’s probably good reason to worry that computers will one day become too smart for our own good.We already know the Internet is segmenting us into distinct groups based on economic, social, educational, geographic, political and behavioral classifiers, among others. Internet titans rely on these classifiers to “filter” the world for us – which really means they are deciding what stories and opinions we read, which ads and offers we see, and the type of opportunities we receive. They also decide for us what we don’t see.But they are only just warming up; companies like Facebook and Google are racing to develop artificial intelligence technologies to expand their "deep learning" capabilities. These new technologies will be used to mine our data to more accurately assess who we are and what we want, and – to hear the Internet giants tell it – deliver elegantly tailored experiences that help us better understand and interact with the world around us.Scott Allan Morrison's Terms of Use is available from Amazon.There would be nothing inherently wrong with this if we could be absolutely certain the companies that control this technology will act only in our best interests. But if not, we could all be susceptible to manipulation by powerful systems we couldn’t possibly understand. Some academics have even raised the specter of techno-social engineering and questioned whether we are moving into an age in which “humans become machine-like and pervasively programmable.”There is no shortage of Silicon Valley insiders who share these concerns. That’s right. Some of the very coders, network architects, security experts and entrepreneurs who are driving big data to new heights understand better than any of us the full consequences of the trade-offs we all make when we provide our data to companies that provide “free” Internet services. And quite a few of these insiders are quietly freaking out.I know this because I spoke with dozens of them while writing Terms of Use, my upcoming novel that explores the dark side of social media. They understand how easy it is to segment us, model our behavior and interests, predict our wants and needs, and potentially manipulate our thoughts and actions. In fact, the seeds of some of the signature lines in my novel were planted by these insiders.One engineer told me he was disturbed by the ease with which he and his colleagues casually mine our data, almost on a whim, to see what patterns they might discover, which in turn could give rise to algorithms and models that exploit our personalities and behaviors in ways not yet imagined. “We do it because we can. And because it’s a competitive advantage,” he explained.Another told me that one big Internet company he worked for had backed up and stored every single piece of data you and I ever left on its servers. The company didn’t dare delete anything because executives and engineers couldn’t possibly imagine all the uses they might discover for our data in the future. We are leaving breadcrumbs for these companies to exploit next year, or perhaps next decade.Several contacts shared with me the same “what if?” What might happen if and/or when market forces pressure these profit-driven companies to develop ever more sophisticated algorithms, which could in turn underpin new services not necessarily built with users’ best interests in mind?Here are a few scenarios they came up with:What if one of the big social networks started offering background checks that predicted and ranked the suitability of job applicants based on each candidate’s data set – regardless of whether the information was “public” or not?Many of us are starting to use wearable computers on our wrists. What if your insurance company could marry your biometric data with your health history and genetic profile and was able to, for example, predict you were 10 times more likely than average to suffer a heart attack? Might you one day be required by your insurer to live a certain lifestyle in order to minimize its financial risk?Another contact, who did classified work for one government agency (he couldn’t possibly say which one), offered a different but equally chilling twist. Sooner or later, he predicted, we will all come to fully understand that we won’t be able to say, search, browse, buy, like, watch or listen to anything without our actions and thoughts being sliced, diced, and churned through powerful analytical systems. And then what? Will we, creeped out and perhaps a little afraid, start to second-guess our every move? Will we self-censor our speech and behavior to avoid being labeled?The profit-driven companies that dominate the Internet insist the trust of their users is of paramount importance to them. And yet, these are often the same companies that keep moving privacy goalposts and rewriting their terms of use (or service) to ensure they enjoy wide latitude and broad legal protection to use our data as they see fit.Yes, some of these scenarios seem pretty far out there. But not to some of the Silicon Valley insiders I count as friends and contacts. They understand the consequences – certainly better than I do – should these powerful technologies be misused. And I couldn’t have written Terms of Use without them.Scott Allan Morrison was a journalist for almost twenty years, covering politics, business, and technology in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Morrison arrived in Silicon Valley as a reporter for the Financial Times during the darkest days of the dot-com crash. He later covered the Web 2.0 boom for Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal. Over the course of a decade, Morrison covered most of the world’s top tech companies and chronicled many of Silicon Valley’s greatest stories, including the rise of Internet insecurity and the explosion of social media. Before setting his sights on journalism, he spent four years teaching English and traveling in Southeast Asia. He speaks fluent Spanish and very rusty Mandarin. He lives in Northern California with his wife and his hockey sticks.

In my latest Guardian column, I tell the story of my recent lecture at West Point's Cyber Institute, where a young cadet took me aside as asked what I thought of their plans for joining the NSA. (more…)

Sophie's parents tapped their friend, Megan, to turn a Chewbacca doll into a Princess Chewbacca birthday cake, using the "Barbie cake" method, and making Sophie's third birthday just the bestest. (more…)

A new stencil/pasteup in the notorious "Jungle" refugee camp in Calais, France depicts Steve Jobs with a satchel and a classic Macintosh. (more…)