by Mark Frauenfelder on (#RA4A)
I went to college in Ft. Collins, Colorado. It was a sleepy place in the 1980s. For excitement, goat ropers would drive their pick ups around town and look for people with new wave haircuts to beat up. I went back to Ft. Collins last year to give a talk and it seemed to be a bit more lively than it had been when I was a student there. But apparently, it's getting a bit too lively for some residents, who pushed back against resident Brittany Hoagland's proposal to “decriminalize the female breast†by giving women the same right as men to go topless in public. (more…)
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Updated | 2025-01-27 07:32 |
by David Pescovitz on (#RA40)
Seems obvious, but... New research shows that the amount of gratitude expressed by spouses toward each other is a very good predictor of marital happiness."We found that feeling appreciated and believing that your spouse values you directly influences how you feel about your marriage, how committed you are to it, and your belief that it will last," says University of Georgia researcher Ted Futris.
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by David Pescovitz on (#RA2J)
This week, Michigan State University's Spartan Marching Band paid tribute to Marvel superheroes.
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#RA2M)
The DEA has been raiding medical marijuana providers in defiance of a recent bill that bars the Justice Department from using federal funds to "prevent such States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana." (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#RA0T)
Michael from Muckrock writes, "Like almost everyone else in the J. Edgar Hoover era, Alfred Hitchcock managed to catch the attention of the FBI, leading to a 16-page file. Did it investigate the rumored murders the Master of Suspense committed? Secretive ties to foreign states? Nope, mostly just the fact that, in one episode of Hitchcock Presents, a bad guy was briefly referenced to be a 'former FBI agent,' a plot point that the Bureau worked surprisingly hard to change ... perhaps worth of a Hitchcock treatment all its own. Read on for the full story." (more…)
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#RA00)
Back in 1975, Dick Cheney, the worst person in the world, was Deputy Chief of Staff in Gerald Ford’s White House.Here's a memo he wrote to Staff Secretary Jim Connor complaining that his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, also the the worst person in the world, was drinking too much coffee in the White House. According to Cheney's memo, Rummy was running up a bill in excess of $100 a month, which is around $450 in today's money.What was in that coffee? (more…)
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by Bong Bong on (#R9Y3)
Glowforge is a 3D laser printer that uses a beam of light the width of a human hair to cut, engrave, and shape designs from a variety of materials. In this video, Glowforge founder and CEO Dan Shapiro shows us how to make an acrylic Jackhammer Jill (Boing Boing’s mascot) in a matter of minutes. Check out glowforge.com/boingboing to find out what else you can make with a Glowforge and get a special $100 discount on top of the 50% off pre-order price. The offer expires this Friday Oct. 23 at 6pm PT, so order yours today! (‪sponsored post‬)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R9RF)
If you're poor in Jackson, MO and you get a fine that you can't pay, the City of Jackson will sentence you to a "pay or stay" forced labor farm where you will work off your debts at $58/day literally shoveling shit; the alternative is to sit in an overcrowded, jail notorious for its violent guards and filthy conditions and pay down your fines at $25/day. (more…)
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by Rob Beschizza on (#R9KZ)
A hiker in Norway found a 1200-year-old sword in excellent condition.
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R9H6)
It's not just the 11 million VW diesels that the company admits to having converted to secret mobile gas-chambers; VW is now probing whether earlier models also used the "defeat devices" that detected when they were being evaluated by regulators, lowering emissions temporarily, then ramping them up to forty times the legal limit later. (more…)
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by Rob Beschizza on (#R9H8)
Mint condition Apple Messagepad 110s are rare enough in their own right, but the clear plastic "Developers Edition" that just hit eBay is a real prize.
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R9FY)
As university tuition has skyrocketed and bond-holders have become more and more reliant on student loan payments for a source of reliable passive income, successive US presidential administrations have taken it upon themselves to shore up those bonds by making it nearly impossible to escape from crushing student debt. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R9DT)
Paolo Kiefe writes, "I love 3D printing and the maker movement. I thought that you might like this design from an open hardware project called #3DBenchy that aims to create more public awareness for applied 3D printing. This is a photo-studio that makes it easy to hold a smartphone to consistently take photos and videos of objects." (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R9AX)
The DHS's newly released policy statement on the use of Stingrays (stationary fake cellphone towers used to track people in a specific location) and Dirt Boxes (airplane-mounted surveillance that tracks whole populations) represents a welcome, if overdue, transparency in the use of cellphone surveillance by federal agencies. (more…)
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by David Pescovitz on (#R7AP)
The jackalope, the mysterious cryptozoological combination of a jackrabbit with the horns of an antelope, has apparently been photographed at Ontario's Bruce Peninsula National Park.According to Gillian Sutherland-Jones, a resource management technician at the park, the creature was first spotted in spring by a camper. Sutherland-Jones suggests that the animal may actually be a hare with "a birth defect."Sure it is...(Mysterious Universe)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R79V)
After the 14 year old maker/tinkerer was arrested on bullshit terrorism charges in his family's adoptive home in the small Texas town of Inving, many Americans spoke up in support of him, including President Obama and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. (more…)
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by David Pescovitz on (#R79G)
Next season of Mythbusters is the last one. The fantastic television series starring our friend Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, and a wonderful cast of makers and explosives, will end after the 14th season, totaling 248 episodes and nearly 3,000 experiments. Congratulations, you guys. It was a fantastic run. You inspired, and will continue to inspire, huge numbers of people of all ages with your curiosity, wonder, and ingenuity."I’ve been going through genuine grief,†Adam told Entertainment Weekly. “Even food doesn’t taste as good.â€What will they do next?Adam: I’m definitely going to do more television, behind and in front of the camera. I love producing this show and figuring out how to structure the episodes. I’m going to jump into the website Tested.com. I’m looking forward to visiting Comic-Con.Jamie: There’s a scripted show we’re executive producing at CBS that was announced, and that’s exciting. I can’t talk about it yet, but when it comes out it’s going to knock some people’s socks off. As far as me personally, there’s some outside projects I’m starting to ramp up. There’s an Office of Naval Research project. I’m developing some new kinds of robotic firefighting vehicles to help with the massive forest forests we’re dealing with in the West. I’m keeping the M5 [special effects company]. I’m a builder, first and foremost. There are people I have to work with filming [Mythbusters] that are interested in how to build things for the sake of the story rather than what I’m trying to accomplish. I don’t want to sound sour grapes about it, but for a show, you have to tell a story. You present it in a way that’s interesting and easy to follow. But I want to circle back to actually doing build projects where I don’t have a bunch of film people getting in my way and manipulating what’s going on.
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by David Pescovitz on (#R77Z)
Jacob Smyth edited together all the footage available so far from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R780)
Petra Laszlo is the unpleasant human who tripped a Syrian refugee called Osama Abdul Mohsen as he walked past her with a child in his arms. (more…)
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#R75F)
Tara Tiger Brown is the founder of nonprofit organization LA Makerspace, the premier STEAM service provider for the Los Angeles Public Library. She’s also the co-founder of Kithub, creative electronics kits for kids, and co-founder of Connected Camps, which has online camps for kids including a Minecraft coding club. (more…)
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by Leigh Alexander on (#R73G)
Join a group forging through the desert in search of a pyramid, as your skin begins to blister mysteriously away. Or explore the ruins of a sigil-painted village as the slick bodies of giant hornets lurk, swollen and sleepy with blood. Wander the suggestion of a mysterious village in continuous rain, urged onward by a pale, sad voice.These are the delicate, expressive horror games of Kitty Horrorshow, whose works have become some of my favorite discoveries of 2015. Most people acquainted with games have specific ideas of what horror looks like—zombie crawls with scarce ammo, visually-dark psychological explorations punctuated by jump scares, or intentionally-clumsy relics dredged from the Japanese console age. Horrorshow's works—most of which can be completed in less than half an hour—feel delicate and literary by comparison. The fact technical sophistication isn't a primary focus makes the spaces she creates feel like abstract art—like the iconic monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey, forbidding in its plainness.CHYRZA is a slow meditation among blood-colored obelisks that builds dread toward a striking conclusion, and in Hornets Horrorshow draws incredible imagery with her words. We didn't review the striking Rain, House, Eternity at Offworld, but Kill Screen's Chris Priestman does an excellent job of describing how the restrained, atmospheric game provides a sort of subtle emotional processing, and how it represents an evolution on her earlier portfolio.With each release her works grow in strength and efficacy until they stay with you. If you haven't played any of these games, there's no better time to try—again, you generally need less than an hour, and they are free or pay-what-you-want here."I feel pretty hollow if I'm not actively working on creating something," Horrorshow tells me. She'd planned to be a writer, but traditional channels had their limits: "I didn't just want to tell stories, I wanted to frame them with whole worlds the player could explore and inhabit."Like many modern independent developers, Twine was a "gateway drug" to the design space for Horrorshow, who grew up with games like Myst, EverQuest, Blood, Doom and Thief among her favorites. "I realized that I got a thousand times more satisfaction from creating environments with stories in them than I ever got from writing linear prose," she says. "Finally I decided to take a shot at making actual first-person 3D games, since I've always loved video games and was always most impressed by the ones that made me feel like I existed somewhere.""After a few flailing attempts to learn Unity I started working on the floating temple in Dust City. I imported a really simple column I'd modeled and quickly realized that if I wanted to, I could make it out of glass or marble or crystal or gold, I could make it the size of a skyscraper, I could duplicate it a thousand times. That was pretty much The Moment."Although for Horrorshow game development represents an evolution on linear writing, her writing is still the star of her work—to me, her game worlds feel like ideal vehicles to deliver poetry and prose in new ways. She cites Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Clive Barker, Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, James Tiptree Jr., and Joyce Carol Oates as some influences, as well as Lovecraft ("though not as much as a lot of people think")."I've spent most of my life being obsessed with Silent Hill, and I still feel like it's more of a home than most places I've ever lived," she says. "I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Porpentine, whose writing is impossible not to be changed by, particularly if the use of language is important to you.""I like to watch Thundercats and daydream about Third Earth, because that show is full of really fun, beautiful, imaginative environments. I read a lot about ancient civilizations, architecture, and the psychology behind things like horror and the uncanny, and that's usually pretty inspiring."Kitty Horrorshow says she explicitly set out to create horror games, which gratifies my own interpretation of her work. "I had fantasies of becoming widely known as some kind of modern Horror Mistress, like the video games answer to Wes Craven or Stephen King," she says. "Anymore though, I try not to lock myself down as much. If I get a story idea that I really love I'll go for it, horror or otherwise. That said, I think I've saturated myself in horror's ideas and motifs for long enough that I'll probably never get away from it completely or very far, which I'm okay with. The bottom line is I really want to create stories that are fantastical and that inspire wonder. Whether or not they do so by being frightening, I figure out at the time."If there can be said to be a unifying feature about her works, it's the way they all feel like mysteries—what motivates me through her strange and occasionally-surreal worlds is the desire to find out what happened, is happening, will happen. One of the common problems with popular horror is "the ending"—when to reveal a twist, how to conclude the experience thereafter—and I love the structural elegance with which Horrorshow tackles this challenge. "I suppose I sort of start with the answer and work backwards. When I have ideas, they're usually very broad and blunt ('A huge pyramid shows up in a desert and starts being a jerk')," she says. "As the writer I already know what's happening when the game begins, so as the game designer my job becomes imagining the player's starting perspective and figuring out how to portion out the information that eventually leads to their understanding.""Luckily for me, this usually isn't much harder than just writing a short story and then dividing it up into a paragraph or two at a time, and as long as the story's properly paced things work out okay," she says. "Every portion just needs to contain one more step, one additional idea or puzzle piece that will eventually paint the whole picture... I imagine I'm creating some kind of ruin or archaeological site that the player's visiting, but then try to work the player into the story of the place somehow, so that they're connected to the setting rather than just a visitor."The larger themes I've divined from the games I have played—thoughts on faith, community, depression—are "largely accidental", says Horrorshow, who says she never goes into creating something with the intention to deliver a "message or moral.""That said, I like to think there's an element of subconscious deliberation at work, because a lot of the time I'll get half-way through making a game, and then suddenly its 'meaning' will dawn on me," she says. "I like this approach because a lot of the time it's cathartic and surprising. I didn't realize what Rain, House, Eternity was really about until I had nearly finished it, and it was a powerful, deeply personal moment for me, and it also allowed me to make an ending that was much more appropriate than what I'd planned."Kitty Horrorshow is currently working on a haunted house story ("haunted houses are my all-time favorite horror idea)" presently titled Anatomy, which she hopes to release for Halloween. She also plans to collaborate with ceMelusine (another Offworld favorite creator) on a project she suggests horror fans will like.Her work is funded via Patreon, and she's just begun focusing on games full-time, so financial support will help to nurture and sustain Kitty Horrorshow's amazing continued works. Visit her page here and consider becoming a patron. Almost all of her games are available for free or pay-what-you-want from her digital storefront here.
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by David Pescovitz on (#R72M)
Infamous occultist, drug addict, and mountaineer Aleister Crowley also wrote more than 70 dark, and darkly comedic, short stories, including five that have never been published until now. Wordsworth Editions have released a new edition of The Drug and Other Stories expanded to include these unseen works, titled Ambrosii Magi Hortus Rosarum, The Murder in X. Street, The Electric Silence, The Professor and the Plutocrat, and The Ideal Idol. From The Guardian:
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by Gareth Branwyn on (#R6XS)
See sample pages from this book at Wink.“The Great Khan is dead.†So begins the rich backstory to Golem Arcana, an exciting new hybrid miniatures and computer game. The world of the game, Eretsu, is thrown into turmoil at the death of its powerful leader as the Khan's Gudanna Dominion attempts to retain its power while the neighboring Durani decide that it's time to try and seize control of a now-fractured world.The golems in the title refer to monstrous magical constructs that each empire summons to prosecute its wars. Knights ride into battle upon these giant, terrifying creatures. Each of the factions in the game use different substances as the material basis for their golems – bone, flora, blood, stone – and this gives each of them slightly different abilities, limitations, and appearance. The materials also influence the color schemes of the armies (e.g. blood magic-made golems are red, stone golems are gray, etc.). This helps keep the miniatures straight on the board (there are also banners and banner poles that you can use to further identify your forces).While Golem Arcana is a pretty straight-forward tabletop wargame where you build and field points-based armies, play out various attack and defend scenarios, and resolve combat with percentage dice, there is something very special going on with this game. In addition to the six gorgeous pre-painted miniatures and very lovely game components and terrain tiles, you also get a Bluetooth-connected wand which communicates with a free app you download to your phone or tablet.The Golem Arcana wand uses RFID technology embedded in the game board, character cards, and bases of the miniatures to create a tabletop/computer hybrid experience. The app acts as a rules tutorial and manual, a combat resolution calculator, and a referee to let you know if you're allowed to do what you're attempting to do. It also contains an archive of scenarios to play and it updates those scenarios, so the rules, the scenarios, and the background can evolve and change over time. The app even aggregates actual game data and the background story of the game will change over time based on the outcomes of actual games you play. Harebrained has now expanded the technology of the game to accommodate up to 8 players and they're planning on adding the ability to play against remote players over the Internet in the future.How the game works is fairly simple (once you get the hang of it). You lay out your battlefield as indicated in the scenario and then move your golems around as you wish (attempting to achieve whatever objectives the scenario outlines), and you engage in combat as needed. To move a miniature, you first tap it on its base with the stylus, tap the action you wish to perform (shown on icons around the base), and then tap the tile or miniatures you wish to perform the action on. That's it. The app keeps track of what's going on with the board (you, of course, have to physically move the models yourself), it resolves combat and magic spells, and it gives you information on golem health, bonuses and penalties, special rules, and so on. Another unique feature of this hybrid game is the unseen characters of the Ancient Ones, the gods of Eretsu, who can be evoked to grant special powers to the players.Another stand-out of the wand and app integration is that the app allows you to background some of the more complex aspects of the rules, but if you want to see all of what's going on, say how all of the combat statistics are being factored, touching the two buttons on the wand reveals the accounting that's going on. This allows typical non-gamers to enjoy playing Golem Arcana and for newbies to ramp up to more complexity. Once you fully understand all of the interplay of the stats for each golem, you can start having fun conjuring up your own armies. Besides the golems that come in the starter box there are many other golem model expansion packs available as well as additional map tile sets.As impressed as I was with much of this game, it did feel at times like the “hardware overhead†was cumbersome. The Bluetooth signal kept getting lost and we had to recycle the power on the stylus (hopefully not a common problem). And touching the bases of the model to issue commands can be really annoying. You have to hold the model in place (see photo) and touch the wand to the edge of the base at a 45-degree angle. If you have multiple models surrounding your golem, this can get awkward. Luckily, the RFID-stickered Golem Cards, which contain all of the character stats, can also be tapped to issue commands. This is much easier and I think it would be wonderful if Harebrained included a second copy of each Golem Card so that both players could have their own and their opponent's cards on their side of the table. That way, you could enter most of the game commands by tapping the cards rather than having to tap out your actions on the models' bases.For all that this game offers, including a piece of dedicated computer hardware and very lovely pre-painted minis, it's amazing that you can get Golem Arcana for only $55. The expansion packs can be a bit pricy, from $20 to $78 on Amazon, but you only need another pack or two to be able to field a satisfying number of forces as you move deeper into the game and try to claim Eretsu and declare yourself the next Great Khan.Golem Arcana
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by Laura Hudson on (#R6QK)
If you like adventure games and have a few minutes to spare, the latest creation of Leon Chang should be your next distraction—and you don't even have to leave Twitter to play it.Just watch the animated GIFs, and click on the links to make important, heroic choices about whether or not to pet cats, fight turtles, or go to the bathroom.(more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R6J3)
Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "The privacy-killing law CISA -- which gives legal immunity to corporations when they share your private data with the U.S. government -- is back on the Senate floor after Internet activists have successfully delayed it many times. This could be our last chance to stop it for good." (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R6D3)
It's Back to the Future day, the day in 2015 that Marty McFly travels to in the distant hoverboard future. Hoverboards remain nonexistent-to-bullshit, but Thinkgeek does make a very nice $25 Flux Capacitor car-lighter USB charger with one 1A USB port and two 2.1A ports, as well as a credible animated light-show (which you can turn off when the novelty wears off).
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R6A7)
Derek Bruff teaches a first-year college writing seminar in mathematics, an unusual kind of course that covers a lot of ground, and uses a novel as some of its instructional material -- specifically, my novel Little Brother. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R65D)
The Conservative Party's "anti-radicalisation" laws call on teachers and other public servants to report brown children who espouse "radical" ideologies -- and now the other shoe has dropped, with the Family Division of the Judiciary promising to steal those children from their parents. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R63Q)
Russell Stover's innovative Eskimo Pie treats were the smash-hit of 1920, and represented the culmination of long and careful experimentation with different techniques for adding a chocolate coating to ice-cream. (more…)
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by David McRaney on (#R60E)
Reframing is one of those psychological tools that just plain works. It’s practical, simple, and with practice and repetition it often leads to real change in people with a variety of thinking problems.It works because we rarely question our own interpretations, the meanings we construct when examining a set of facts, or our own introspections of internal emotional states. So much of the things the anxiety and fear we feel when anticipating the future is just the result of plucking from a grab bag of best guesses and assumptions, shaky models of reality that may or may not be accurate and will likely pan out much differently than we predict.Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – SoundcloudThis episode is brought to you by The Great Courses. Get 80 percent off Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior presented by Professor Mark Leary along with many other fantastic lecture series by visiting this link and ordering today!This episode is sponsored by Wealthfront, the automated investment
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by Rob Beschizza on (#R5YB)
Typedrummer is exactly what it sounds like: type letters into the window and hear them interpreted as rhythms. "qhkh," for example, results in a standard 4/4 rock beat in the default sample set (q is a kickdrum, h a hat, and k a snare). You can switch to another sets, too, taken from the song Fool by Moon Bounce. Creator Kyle Stetz:
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R5W8)
Last summer, thousands of organizations and individuals wrote to ICANN to defend domain-name proxies that keep registrants' personal information private -- a crucial facility used by people in danger of political or personal reprisal, from people fleeing gender violence to dissidents documenting human rights abuses. (more…)
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by Rob Beschizza on (#R5TJ)
The creators of a crowdfunded food-scanning gadget have threatened to sue Pando Daily after the website reported its failure to deliver the device.Depicted in a crowdfunding pitch as a keychain-sized scanner that tells the operator the true composition of processed food, Tellspec raised $386,392 in a 2013 indiegogo campaign."Our team has created the world’s first consumer handled device able to scan food at a molecular level," the blurb goes, promising to identify calories, macronutrients, allergens, fiber, sugars, and the glycemic index, "with one simple scan."Its portability and claimed capabilities raised eyebrows, and the creators later admitted that the "model" depicted in the demonstration was not something that would end up in buyer's pockets.“The device shown in this video is a 3D model representing the future industrial design of the TellSpec scanner,†the company said in a press release, confirming that it was “not a working device.â€But with the original delivery date now blown, even the bulkier version shown in a later video failed to end up in pledgers' kitchen drawers, drawing fire from backers.In response, Tellspec's CEO, Isabel Hoffman, sent Pando a rambling, typo-strewn letter claiming that legal action would be forthcoming if the site's criticisms were not retracted.
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R5S5)
The barely-edible cattle-slurry battles are heating up in Asia! Move over, Burger King Japan's Red Burger and Black Buger; McDonald's China is selling a burger with a bun that looks like it was made from cement. (via Super Punch)
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by Ruben Bolling on (#R5QD)
FOLLOW @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.And FURTHER, please join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE for advance access to comics and more stuff.READ Ruben Bolling's new book, Alien Invasion in My Backyard: An EMU Club Adventure! AND PRE-ORDER THE SECOND BOOK IN THE SERIES - IT COMES OUT ON NOVEMBER 3: Ghostly Thief of Time: An EMU Club Adventure!Thank you.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R5NH)
It's been ten years since Danny O'Brien, Suw Charman and I announced the formation of the UK Open Rights Group at the 2005 Open Tech conference and asked the assembled people to pledge to pay £5/month to help fund a UK-based digital rights group that would fight for their rights online -- and everywhere. (more…)
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by Rob Beschizza on (#R5NK)
A nondescript, forgotten box is probably the real source of all your wi-fi woes: the router. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R479)
Bobby Glushko writes, "Something's going on at the University of Toronto's Robarts Library. A concerned group of citizens is investigating a conspiracy hiding facts about the mysterious and controversial past of this masterpiece of brutalist architecture. At the same time a noble, if shadowy, society is working to keep its secrets hidden." (more…)
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by Jason Weisberger on (#R417)
The lack of a universal charging cable is one of my biggest gripes as an iPhone user.I never have there right combination of chargers and connectors with me on any given trip, so this $9 dual charging cable is a real boon.Charging is easy. iTune recognizes my iPhone when I plug it in, GoPros mount instantly. The zipper for managing the loose cable ends is a pretty good idea and saves me from headphone-like tangles. All in all, I am getting everything I want out of the cable.Charging 2 devices at once via my MacBook Air is not the fastest thing on earth, but that may be more a function of the port and then cable. I'll try it with a high speed charging port soon!TOTOP IPhone 6 Cable, 2-in-1 USB Nylon Braided 2.0 Cable Zipper, 8 Pin Micro USB Cable via Amazon
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by Jason Weisberger on (#R3ZC)
Last September Noise Pop, Boing Boing and Joie de Vivre Hotels hosted Widowspeak at Chicago's fantastic Hotel Lincoln as part of our Good Measure tour!The next installment will feature Surfer Blood in Miami, on November 7th!
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by Cory Doctorow on (#R3MD)
Michael Froomkin writes, "We Robot is a cool conference that brings together lawyers, engineers, philosophers, robot builders, ethicists, and regulators who are on the front lines of robot theory, design, or development. The 2016 editioni will be in Coral Gables, Florida on April 1-2, 2016 at the University of Miami School of Law. The main conference will be preceded by a day of special workshops on March 31. Full details at The We Robot 2016 conference web site. " (more…)
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by Laura Hudson on (#R3KS)
As concepts for games go, this is a new one: propelling a regenerating fungus through a long series of puzzles by surgically destroying it and forcing it to regrow. And it works. Mushroom 11 is one of the more fascinating reinventions of the platform game in recent memory, the sort of game that feels new beneath your fingers—that asks you to move and think in ways you don't expect—but makes instinctive sense nonetheless.As the player, you operate a glittering circle that annihilates any part of the fungus that falls beneath it, like an insect incinerated under a microscope. But life always finds a way, and so the organic mass will grow away from your burning gaze, allowing you to propel it forward through crevices, over obstacles, and even into the air. https://youtu.be/KVe76XebJcwWhile there are times when you'll need to move quickly to avoid falling into lava, which will indeed obliterate you, most of the time it's better to be deliberate than it is to be fast. Although you can't control the fungus precisely—it often feels like squeezing a tube of green toothpaste—you can trim it like an oozing bonsai until it eventually does what you want. You can even divide the goop into different parts, use them to independently trigger different elements of a puzzle, then simply erase the part you don't need and move on.The game doesn't announce any particular plot when it begins, and would probably be just as fun even if there were no story at all. Still, some hints reside in the reddish, dystopian landscapes and burned out buildings that frame each level, and how you spend most of your time negotiating structures that seem to be made by humans and yet encounter no humans at all. The game description promises that you will ultimately "understand the true nature of the devastation from which you emerged," but regardless, the real pleasure lies in the creeping, oozing journey, not the destination.Created by Untame, Mushroom 11 is available on Steam for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#R3E8)
I'm not much of a drinker. I like to have an occasional sip of my wife's wine when she has a glass. I do enjoy opening wine bottles, though, and this opener by Brabantia is my favorite. It's easy to use, and pretty fool-proof. You just place it over the neck of the bottle and turn the knob. The teflon-coated screw grabs the cork and pulls it out. The plastic model is $11 and the stainless steel model (the one I use) is $18 on Amazon.
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by Xeni Jardin on (#R38F)
Prosecutors for the county of Los Angeles say they will not file charges against a Saudi prince recently arrested for sexual assault at a gated mansion on the edge of Beverly Hills.A civil lawsuit filed in L.A. County Superior Court on Sept. 25 says he attacked multiple women inside the home for several days.(more…)
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by David Pescovitz on (#R371)
Fantastic vintage graphic, minimalist, and op art paperback covers animated by Henning M. Lederer. See the full video below. More GIFs over at Dangerous Minds! For the source material, check out the Julian Montague Project and Book Worship.https://vimeo.com/141891887
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#R347)
Nick Gillespie of The Daily Beast offers up a list of compelling reasons to fear for a Biden presidency. Biden is a military hawk, a willfully-ignorant drug warrior, an academic cheater, and a plagiarizer. "On top of that," says Nick, "he's been silent on the issue of domestic surveillance, torture, and other niceties of today's modern warfare."
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by David Pescovitz on (#R32P)
Many more tips on Ian Fleggen's classic "Professor Shoelace" site.
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by Xeni Jardin on (#R32R)
At the Black Hat hacker convention in 2013, Former NSA director Keith Alexander asked hackers to help the NSA come up with ways to protect Americans' privacy and civil liberties."How do we start this discussion on defending our nation and protecting our civil liberties and privacy?" Alexander asked the Las Vegas crowd. "The reason I'm here is because you may have some ideas of how we can do it better. We need to hear those ideas."(more…)
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by David Pescovitz on (#R2ZZ)
Brandon Hodge has a world-class collection of ouija board planchettes and other devices for talking with the dead. My favorite Fortean filmmaker Ronni Thomas shot this mini-documentary about Hodge and his magical museum. (Morbid Anatomy Presents)And below, my favorite Ouija Board scene from a movie, "The Exorcist" (1973). Captain Howdy!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qK58CZslAs
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