In Illinois, the prison authorities use a combination of mandatory financial disclosures and intelligence gleaned from opening prisoners' mail and sue anyone who might have any money for rent on their cells and the cost of their prison food. (more…)

The incredible Zach Mueller up to his old (and new) tricks again! See more at Mueller's cardistry company site Fontaine Cards.Previously: "Watch this mesmerizing floating cards magic"

See sample pages from this book at Wink.I began reading Amar Bari, Tomar Bari, Naxalbari whilst waiting for my connecting flight at Bengaluru airport and was inclined to continue reading it as turbulence took over the plane at 27,000 feet an hour later. For that was the power it held over me. Amar Bari, Tomar Bari, Naxalbari reads like a history lesson but with the many facts and stories that our teachers forget to tell us. Written and drawn by Sumit Kumar, the graphic novel is a story of how a series of events led to India’s communist uprising and how the term ‘Naxal’ originated. Having grown up on the evergreen Tinkle magazine and the historic Amar Chitra Katha series, I feel Sumit Kumar’s latest work is worthy of a mighty applaud and will go a long way in bringing back the appeal of comics (mainly satirical comics) to India.– Ushnav ShroffAmar Bari, Tomar Bari, Naxalbari

Emily Trunko, 15, lives in Copley, Ohio. She is the creator of The Last Message Received, a Tumblr that posts screenshots of final text messages from people. She receives the messages anonymously. Some of the messages are from people who died shortly after sending the messages. Others are from romantic breakups. She's got a book, deal, of course, and the New York Times profiled her.

Officer Jenchesky Santiago, of the Prince George's County, Maryland, police force was convicted of first-degree assault and misconduct in office. Santiago threatened a man, while holding a gun to his head, apparently to impress his friends. His police chief was less impressed and is recommending Santiago be fired.Via the Washington Post:

"Hey babe do you like the Porsche I am driving right now? Uh, you like that Porsche? Keys... obviously I'm the driver. Look..."Jamie Lee Sharp, 25, filmed himself stealing a Porsche "Boxer" in Gloucester. He immediately crashed it into a wall and got trapped inside, making it easy for police to pick him up.The Guardian reports that "Sharp was jailed for four years by a judge at the city’s crown court after pleading guilty to burglary, aggravated vehicle taking, driving while disqualified, drink-driving and driving without insurance. He was also disqualified from driving for three years."

No simpleminded origami project, when your kid is done folding this cardboard they'll have an Imperial trooper at their beck and call. My daughter has a blast making hers.Instructions are simple, and almost unnecessary. The lovely, cut and lightly stamped cardboard is pretty obvious about where it needs a fold, and the tabs seem to magically come together... as if guided by a mysterious energy. My kid is 8 and needed no help, honestly she pointed out a mistake I'd made on one leg. With focus comes great power.We also have Chewbacca ready to fold. His bowcaster is impressive.12" paper craft Stormtrooper via Amazon

If the sticker is missing, so is the phone number to report that the sticker is missing. Someone working for the state of Florida is a closet Situationist. How else can you explain this self-referential sticker, which seems to have no purpose? I'm sure there is another explanation, but I don't want to know what it is. [via]

@deepForger is a Twitterbot that creates paintings in the distinctive style of famous artists. Its work wouldn't fool an art expert (and is highly dependent on the appropriateness of the images given to it to process) but the best results exemplify the uncanny, transfixing insights of recurrent neural networks.It was created by Alex J. Champandard, who also wrote The Secret Manual to Creating Deep Forgeries, elaborating all the commands and settings you can use to tweak the bot's output. [via]

A study conducted at the University of Newcastle in England found that “For people with Type 2 diabetes, losing weight allows them to drain excess fat out of the pancreas and allows function to return to normal,” writes Professor Roy Taylor, quoted in The Telegraph.

This little gadget truly works double duty. It charges any device on-the-go using an ultra-fast USB that juices batteries at two-times normal speed. Then, using its smartphone app, Zus acts as a honing device for finding your car where you last left it. No more searching parking lots for hours, and no more running out of phone battery when you get there. You are totally, technically covered.

Did Ridley Scott plan the most brutally delicious revenge against JPL or am I just making this stuff up?It's too soon to know for sure but lets go over what I think I know -Every year JPL has an open house in May or June, where the public is invited to tour their facilities. Scientists and engineers give live demonstrations of their technologies and run over children with tiny motorized vehicles.The JPL campus is absolutely gigantic and there would be no way for a person to see it all in one weekend. Each of their tour-able buildings are microcosms onto themselves that house massive amounts of information.They seriously put a lot of effort into this and everyone should go at least once. I was lucky to be one of the first visitors through the gates and for that I was thankful because lines of curious people seemed to stretch for miles.And what these folks didn’t know was that when they got through this line…There was a host of other lines waiting for them.And even when they got past the front gates…There were more lines going in all directions and there seemed to be lines to wait in line.To the untrained eye, this simply appeared to be a poorly planned event - but to those of us brave enough to see the fabricated truth I lay before you, it was clear as day. Ridley Scott was been behind it all!You see, if it wasn’t for his newly created movie about an astronaut who’s left for dead on Mars, the lines at the JPL open house wouldn’t have been half as long as they were. Coincidence? I think not!Here's some other stuff I most certainly made up, but think is true -Ridley Scott is a crazed, multimillionaire, movie director who's had it out for JPL for more than half a century. This is because they didn't let him shoot on their property for his West Hartlepool College of Art, film project in 1955.On that day, Ridley began laying out his complex, 2 step plan for revenge.Step 1 - To develop a film career that rivals Norman Rockwell in its longevity and in its ability to harness the power of propaganda. This, of course explains Mr. Scott's collaboration with Steve Jobs in the 1984 Apple commercial which was merely done to send a message to the powers that be at JPL.[embed]https://youtu.be/VtvjbmoDx-I[/embed]Step 2 - To satisfy his ever-growing, lifelong grudge against JPL, he needed to create films about science and rational thought so popular that people would blindly rush the JPL complex on a day of his choosing. He studied the technology and struck while the iron was hot. The timed release of The Martian couldn't have been better - for his revenge! These 2 elaborate steps, of course, were carried out for the purposes of ruining JPL's open house, while pushing his own agenda of selling tickets to his new blockbuster movie!This plan was pure genius because to most, it merely seemed like the folks at JPL just can't throw a party - and you really have to hand it to Mr. Scott. He's a patient chess player and we're all his pawns. It became absolutely clear just how powerful the man was when I laid eyes upon the exhibit we all traveled so far to see.The great hint that he was in control of everything was that at the Mars rover exhibit - there were no lines.The fleet of Mars rovers were in plain view from any angle of approach! It was a complete 360 degree experience and it made you wonder why the entire open house wasn't handled this way. But the answer is simple - the entire open house was an elaborate and frustrating commercial for his upcoming film.Well played Mr. Scott!A team running laptops set up rocky obstacles for the rovers to slowly climb over. Even though they were wearing JPL t-shirts, it was clear who they were truly working for. The speed at which these rovers traveled, served as a beautiful metaphor for what was to come. The craggy rocks represented the other installations at JPL's event, and the time it took to drive over them represented our lives invisibly melting away.[embed]https://youtu.be/GIu33R9Lg8g[/embed]I did some research on JPL while I was there and here's what I learnedThe Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and NASA field center located in Pasadena, CA.In 1939 a jet-assisted take off system (JATO) was funded by the United States Army for a mere $1000.00. The idea was inspired by the need to power planes that had too much weight and too little runway to take off. The grant was given to the very men who would later create JPL in November of 1943.Developing for the Army, they designed the MGM-5 Corporal, which was the very first guided nuclear warhead. Interestingly, a toy version made of die-cast metal was marketed to children to coincide with the British test firing in 1959.That must have been the greatest Christmas ever! A contemporary nuclear warhead in the palm of your hands – just imagine the thrill!After successfully launching rockets and satellites throughout the 40’s and 50’s, JPL was transferred to NASA in December of 1958 becoming the agency’s primary planetary spacecraft center. NASA had only been operational since October 1, of that same year.Every mission into space was taken in baby steps with each building on the learning of the last one. There were questions that had to be answered before they could satisfy JFK’s desire to get a man on the moon by the end of the 60’s.- How long would the journey take?- How would guidance systems and course correction function?- Could the vehicle remain at a constant speed until just moments from impact when it would have to go into slow vertical descent?The Ranger ProgramThe Ranger program was a series of unmanned space missions designed by JPL engineersto obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon.The missions were plagued with so many photography mishaps and launch failures that at one point, the program was called “shoot and hope”.In the end, there were 9 Ranger Missions and all told, they sent over 10 thousand images to Earth detailing the Moon’s surface.NASA had made close visual contact but now they needed to get onto the Moon.The Surveyor ProgramThe Surveyor Program lasted from June 1966 through January 1968 where 7 robotic spacecraft were sent to the surface of the Moon to prove that a landing was actually possible. If the dust was too deep, it would mean that astronauts couldn’t walk on the surface or land. The mission was a success and all seven spacecraft are still on the Moon to this day.Do you know how many lines I had to wait in to learn that stuff?Well thank God you didn't have to.But, I can’t tell you how inspired I’ve become after seeing JPL and its technology in person - even if I was manipulated by Ridley Scott. The fact that these astronauts traveled so far, and did so much for our country, makes me feel lucky I was able to make the 7.5 mile trek.I kinda feel like a hero myself.From this complex trip schematic you can see that I made the journey in just about 17 Earth minutes. I returned home with just enough rations to spare and with what I think is a remarkable tale.You can force us to stand in long lines in the blazing summer sun Mr. Scott, but you can't take away our desire to view technology other than mechanical crawly thingies and solar panels.I'm on to you sir.

The data from Mass Shooting Tracker tell the tale: America averages more than one mass shooting every single day. 2015 is on track to be the deadliest year in American history, having already beat 2014, and likely to zoom past 2013's 363 mass shootings. (more…)

After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in which BP killed 12 people, millions of marine and land animals, and one ecosystem, two scapegoats were located to fit up for criminal manslaughter charges: the supervisors aboard the platform at the time of its explosion. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z38sj4zPIA#t=111Ifixit produce open repair guides for everything imaginable, in a variety of languages, and help sustain a global community of independent repairers who divert electronics from e-waste dumps and keep poor and marginalized people connected to their work, school and families. (more…)

Within hours or days, the UK plans to begin bombing Syria.After an extensive debate, UK lawmakers have voted 397-223 to join France in the US-led international military campaign against the Islamic State or ISIS, aka “Daesh.”(more…)

UPDATE:5:30 p.m. The New York Times reports that one of the three attackers "had worked at the facility and recently had a dispute with fellow employees, according to law enforcement officials. A witness has told police that although the gunmen had their faces covered, one of them sounded and appeared very similar to an employee who had left the facility earlier in the day. “They had their appearances covered but a witness believed it had been someone who worked there,” said one official."UPDATE:4:30 p.m. According to the most recent reports, one suspect is still on the run. One officer has been injured. The victims of the mass shooting were reportedly attending a Health Department luncheon; the attackers' motives remain unclear.UPDATE:3:38 p.m. Live footage shows SWAT teams converging on a stationary, shot-up black SUV in San Bernadino. According to police, it is the escape vehicle from the earlier mass shooting. One person within the vehicle "rolled out" and surrendered to authorities, they report. Two in the vehicle opened fire, one was reportedly shot and killed, and the other taken into custody. UPDATE:3:35 p.m. At least one pipe bomb was found at a house on E San Bernardino Rd., according to reporters citing police scanners, and nearby residents evacuated.In San Bernardino, CA, at least 14 people have been killed and 14 more injured after a mass shooting this morning. The San Bernadino police chief says authorities have “no idea” who or where the suspects are, and describes it as “domestic terrorism.” The suspect or suspects are said to have been well armed, with “long guns” and “body armor.” They came prepared, said the chief.(more…)

The nonprofit foundation that oversees development on Tor, the anonymity and privacy tool, has launched its first ever major cash fundraiser, seeking support for its crucial work. (more…)

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "Like many of my fellow nonprofit executives, the holidays are a mixed bag for me. Public Resource has enough money in the bank to get us through January. Like other nonprofits, Public Resource gets almost all our yearly contributions over the holidays. So, it's nail-biting time while I watch the gas tank get down to fumes." (more…)

https://youtu.be/9eWihRJDbmEhttps://youtu.be/ni-CpMXkfCsRudy Rucker sends us, "videos by Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling discussing their new anthology TRANSREAL CYBERPUNK: it's a thirty-year mind-warped ping-pong in which the authors are the characters themselves. As scholar Rob Latham puts it in his introduction, This book is unlike any other collaboration I know of in the field, ... the whole is not only greater than the sum of its parts, but wilder, and weirder, and more wondrous. Science fiction is the richer for it."

I'm in Berlin to speak at OEB, a conference on technology and education. It costs a hefty sum to attend the whole event, but my talk tomorrow at 1200h, "No Matter who's Winning the War on General Purpose Computing, You're Losing" is free. Just show up at the Hotel Intercontinental on Budapester Strasse and check in at the OEB desk with the password "PINEAPPLE" for a voucher that will get you into my talk.

Ryaa Walker's CHRONOS files are some of my favorite time travel novels! I have been eagerly awaiting Time's Divide, a new installment in her fantastic series!In prior installments, Kate learned the secrets of her familial skill with time travel, uncovered her father's dark plot to control the future, and befriended a small cadre of allies in her quest to save humanity! While her adventures have been hair raising, it is time for her battle to really begin. Her father Saul is moving to cull the human race, leaving only his adherents. Alliances are tenuous, trust is impossible, and that dude from an alternate timeline is still pining away for a woman who doesn't exist!If you enjoyed the earlier stories, Time's Divide is a must.Time's Divide (The Chronos Files Book 3) via Amazon, free via Kindle Unlimited

It's a hoax!This isn't the first time that a remix of the silent track's been targeted for copyright enforcement, but it never gets old. (more…)

The corruption in this story is so vile it's hard to know where to begin. The Alabama Justice Project reported that it has documents revealing that a district attorney in Alabama covered up a Dothan police department internal investigation that found that a "group of up to a dozen police officers on a specialized narcotics team were found to have planted drugs and weapons on [nearly a thousand] young black men" since the mid-1990s.Some of these wrongly-convicted men are still in prison.The police officers who reportedly planted the drugs and guns are part of a Neoconfederate organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center labels “racial extremists.” This group claims that the civil rights movement was a Jewish conspiracy and that blacks have lower-than-average IQs.The leaders of the narcotics team, Steve Parrish and Andy Hughes, currently have high ranking positions in Alabama law enforcement. Parrish is the Dothan Police Chief and Hughes is the Asst. Director of Homeland Security for the State of Alabama. Both men are pictured above at a Neoconfederate meeting with other narcotics officers. The district attorney is still in office.From Henry County Report:

The "child safeguarding" office of the London Borough of Camden sent parents a brochure listing warning-signs for "radicalisation" (code for "incipient terrorist recruit"). Some signs: your kid objects to government policy, especially foreign policy; "mistrusts mainstream media reports" and switches their screen quickly when adults approach. (more…)

See more photos at Wink Fun.Rush Hour Shift is an entertaining twist on the classic get-the-car-unstuck logic game. Instead of a single player working through pre-designed puzzles, now there are two players working against each other in a constantly changing landscape. The manual includes instructions for ten basic board set-ups to start. Following these instructions, players are positioned at opposite ends of the board while cars of different sizes and colors are placed between them. The object of the game is to get your car (Silver versus Gold) to the other side of the board.Each player is dealt four cards, and on your turn you play one of your cards and do what it says. There are four card types: Move, Shift, Slide, and Move & Shift. Move cards allow you to move any car (except your opponent’s car) the number of squares indicated on the card. You can also strategically split up the number among cars, so if you play a three you could move one car two spaces and another car one space, or you could move three cars one space. Shift cards allow you to move the board itself, and this is probably the coolest aspect of the game. The game board is built with three interlocking pieces, and when you play a shift card you can move either of the end pieces as far as you want. So you can literally remove the path from your opponent so they have nowhere to go. Slide cards allow you to move as many spaces you want until something blocks your path. If you’ve strategically cleared space in front of your car, you could theoretically cross the entire board in one move. Move & Shift cards allow you to both shift the board AND move a number of spaces. Using these cards in creative combinations will advance your card across the board while impeding your opponent's success.This game is actually very challenging. As soon as you think you have the perfect strategy to win the game, your opponent can play a shift card and move the board right out from under you. Since you have the ability to split up movement between cars, it’s possible to move yourself a small number of spaces while constantly putting cars in front of your opponent. The game has enough chance elements in it that it’s a fairly balanced game. Anyone who understands the basics of the cards has a solid chance of winning. The fun and the challenge is in adapting to the changes your opponent will throw at you.– Alex StrineRush Hour Shift

A Massachusetts woman learned that her 62-year-old husband had been having sex with prostitutes for the past eight years. The man decided he was a sex addict and sought treatment from a psychiatrist, Dr. Renee Sorrentino. She began treating him with Lupron, a drug that works by “turning down the sexual volume of the mind." New York magazine interviewed the man about what his life was like with Lupron. He said "it’s absolutely fantastic. I haven’t had an erection in over a year."

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark](more…)

Beat the average price to take home the complete learn to code bundle, covering all major programming languages and frameworks. Plus part of what you pay will go to Project HOPE, promoting wellness and saving lives around the globe. It's the gift that keeps on giving.Here's everything included in the bundle:1AngularJS: From Zero to Hero$299 Value2Become a Professional Python Programmer$199 Value3Build Responsive Real World Sites with HTML5 & CSS3$199 Value4Become a Certified Web Developer$199 Value5Learn Linux in 5 Days & Level Up Your Career$197 Value6PHP & MySQL Web Development From Scratch - Build 5 Projects$149 Value7Advanced Ruby Programming: 10 Steps to Mastery$99 Value8Git Complete: The Definitive, Step-By-Step Guide$99 Value9Learn Cloud Computing with AWS$99 ValueFrom HTML5 to Ruby to Python & Beyond: Become a Developer with 92+ Hours of Instruction!

All Hail Lumio!If you want a stylish lamp that turns on in a cool way, that you can carry around in your backpack and disguises itself as a book when not in use, then look no further.You’ll fall in love with Lumio at first sight and the fact that it shines for 8 hours a charge, is a dream come true for nighttime readers like me.There are so many words to describe this masterpiece of invention –What do you think of the word inspiring?How about the word versatile?Does the word surprising float your boat?All those words and more are appropriate for this little beauty and here’s a special little trick I just discovered. There are powerful, hidden magnets in the Lumio that allow me to hang it on metal objects.When not in use, it looks just like an every-day book that’s been super-glued to my desk - nothing strange at all right? What I’ve found is that when people come into my office, it’s inevitable that they’ll ask about it.What I like to do is not say a thing.Instead I slowly open the book, which turns on the light.The backside of the book also has a magnet that holds it in place. And by the time it’s open, my guests are asking where they can get one for themselves and I can’t say I blame them. It’s just awesome and the creator, Max Gunawan, deserves 2 corner offices because of it.As I first explored my Lumio, I marveled at the wonderful detail designed into every touch point. Even the packaging is fantastic!The box that holds it all together has a special compartment for a leather strap and an external magnet system that’s handy for hanging the Lumio from wires and hooks.The pages are made of pleated Tyvek which is a very strong plastic that’s thin but difficult to tear. Tyvek was first discovered in 1955 by the DuPont company and was made popular in the 70’s by the band Devo.Their outfits were made of the same stuff and though they were pretty cool, the Lumio sports the Tyvek way better. Those Devo guys never glowed or pleated.I may be a bit biased because I’ve spent far less time with Devo than I have with my Lumio.In fact, I’ve spent way too much time walking around my office just looking for a spot to hang her up.I often find myself setting up compositions when everyone goes home to their families. Even when the lights go out, you can find me fiddling with lady Lumio.I have to admit though - I have a problem.I am consumed.But just look at her! She’s so flexible!She even wraps around metallic corners for God’s sake! It’s no wonder I’m so in love with this product.Not to change the subject-Did you know that people used to be afraid of being buried alive because it was common to be falsely pronounced dead? It became customary to bury people with a string in their hand that was tied to a topside bell – just in case. There were many patents created for “devices indicating life in buried persons” and I’d like to show you the prettiest one I’ve ever seen.A real dandy huh?! So elegant and yet so simple.After looking through many of these patents, I now know what I’d like to be buried with, and no, it’s not a bell or other noise making device. I’d like to be buried with my Lumio. It might be nice to do some of that night reading I droned on about earlier.But then if you were to go through that trouble, you’d have to also make sure I had a book or two. I mean, what good is an awesome light source in a dang coffin if you have nothing to read.On second thought, just make sure I’m not buried alive ok?Thank you.Go Lumio!

Morrissey is this year's winner of the Bad Sex in Writing award.The famously unpleasant singer-songwriter, whose autobiography was published by Penguin Classics in an act of enragingly ironic-self regard, clinched the title with a passage from his debut novel, 'List of the Lost.'

Swett is a beautifully-named town in South Dakota, and all of it is yours for $250,000. The community is completely abandoned, according to Fortune, and comes complete with a bar, a museum, and a haunted house. It sounds like the bar is open, though, serving that corner of the state's passers' by. (more…)

I once built and housed a full-size MAME cabinet, but soon came to resent its enormous presence in my house and got rid of it. Since then, I've dreamed of having something with the right controls and no cables, but less…maximalist. The Starforce PI looks like it might be just the ticket.Described as "an Electronic Tabletop Mini-Arcade featuring microswitch controls, arcade video & audio, and a portable formfactor," the Starforce PI is being kickstartered by creator Marcel J. de Haan.

Lisa Rein writes, "On November 12th, The Intercept published a story about one of its SecureDrop uploads: 70 million records of prisoner phone data. The hack exposed that at least 14,000 phone calls between prisoners and their attorneys had been improperly recorded, and neither the calls themselves or the millions of metadata records about the calls were being stored securely." (more…)

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I have an editorial in the current issue of Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery, a scholarly journal for computer scientists, in which I describe the way that laws that protect digital locks (like America's DMCA) compromise the fundamentals of computer security. (more…)

https://vimeo.com/145335290The Ford Foundation's Michael Brennan discusses the many studies showing how algorithms can magnify bias -- like the prevalence of police background check ads shown against searches for black names. (more…)

Katherine W was seven when her third-grade teacher issued Chromebooks to her class. Her dad, Jeff, is a serious techie, but the school's tech choices didn't sit well with him. He was able to get Katherine an exception that let her use a more private, non-cloud computer for the year, but the next year, Katherine's school said she would have to switch to a laptop that would exfiltrate everything she did to Google's data-centers. (more…)

The predominantly white police of predominantly black and Latino, Tea-Party-governed Kern County, California kill more people per capita than any other force in America. The Guardian's Jon Swaine, Oliver Laughland and Mae Ryan have produced an amazing, deep, interactive profile of a force whose killings are investigated internally and cursorily recorded in a poor, remote area with high unemployment and a meth epidemic. (more…)

Taser inventor Jack Cover named his gadget after a zapper from Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle, a 1911 YA science fiction novel by Victor Appleton that tells the story of a hero who travels to Africa to get rich by killing elephants for their ivory, and who encounters racist caricatures of "natives" who he fights off with his "electric rifle." (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug58yeMqNCo&feature=youtu.beIf you have to travel with a suit and don't fancy ironing it when you arrive, you can use one of two methods (depending on the size of your suitcase) to pack it so that it unpacks ready to wear. (more…)

The Trans Pacific Partnership is the largest "trade deal" in history, negotiated in secret and encompassing many issues unrelated to trade, including rules that make the Internet less secure, easier to censor and spy on, and more subject to corporate dominance. (more…)

A Wikipedia editors has been suspended after he organized a meeting with the Russian Federal Drug Control Service (as well as Rospotrebnadzor, a consumer rights watchdog, and Roskomnadzor, a media watchdog) to set terms under which "the expert opinion of authorized government bodies" would be inserted into Wikipedia entires on “socially sensitive” topics. (more…)

The Hong Kong-based toymaker/crapgadget purveyor didn't even know it had been breached until journalists from Vice asked why data from its millions of customers and their families were in the hands of a hacker, and then the company tried to downplay the breach and delayed telling its customers about it. (more…)

Scott Smith and his family moved from the USA to the Netherlands and discovered that despite living in the most heavily surveilled moment in human history, neither his old country nor his new one can figure out how to relate to them. (more…)

The Mozilla Foundation stopped active development of the Thunderbird stand-alone email client in 2012, a year before Edward Snowden's revelations about mass email interception by spy agencies sparked an exodus from webmail platforms. (more…)

Jeanne Theoharis, an academic who wrote the biography The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, reminds us that the historical account of Rosa Parks as an apolitical seamstress who was too tired and exasperated to go to the back of the bus is a fiction: Parks was a brave, committed lifelong race and gender activist who risked her life and livelihood for a cause that she championed ferociously from an early age and never abandoned. (more…)

https://youtu.be/W4BzJm4-Wo0“Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name lyrics "and now you do what they told ya" sounds like 'break the chicken nuggets, daddy' in Japanese,” says Redditor seasalty_. “A television show made a video about it.”

How to calm a crying baby? Just let the little guy watch this video.(more…)