Google's decision to provide AI tools for use with US military drones has been hugely controversial within the company (at least a dozen googlers quit over it) and now the New York Times has obtained internal memos revealing how senior officials at the company anticipated that controversy and attempted (unsuccessfully) to head it off. (more…)

Porsche's can be a tricky car to maneuver if you've never driven one before (I know – I parked cars for private parties as a teenager and panicked every time I got into a Porsche), but how a hotel valet managed to park a Porsche Carrera underneath an SUV poses a real challenge to the imagination. The scene was so bizarre, a bystander thought they were shooting a movie.The valet, working at a Hyatt Regency in Sydney, Australia, took the Porsche out of its park position and immediately hit the orange car that was in its way. He then, apparently, accelerated, nosing his way underneath the SUV until the SUV was resting comfortably on top of the Porsche. In the process, a third car was pushed into some posts.According to CNN:

As a kid, my favorite photos in the Guinness Book of World Records were the massive McGuire Twins on their motorcycles, the guy with the crazy long fingernails, and of course Robert Wadlow (1918-1940) who at 8'11" is considered the tallest person in human history. Above is amazingly weird film footage of Wadlow taken in the 1930s.

Last April, the Kremlin ordered a ban on the private messaging app Telegram, blocking millions of IP addresses that formed Amazon and Google's clouds in order to prevent users from accessing the service; not only was it an ominous moment in the evolution of the internet as a system for oppressive control, it was also an object lesson in how internet concentration has made the internet more susceptible to censorship and control. (more…)

I'm obsessed with Manhattanhenge, the two nights a year when the sunset aligns with the prevailing east-west streets of the New York City grid, a phenomenon that Neil deGrasse Tyson named in 1992. (more…)

Tyler Hulett shot "River of Fire" at Kilauea before the previous eruption, but it still stands as some of the best lava timelapse out there. (more…)

If you're tired of dropping anchor offshore and having to take a dinghy or worse from your yacht to the beach, the Iguana Yacht may be for you. It has a tank-like continuous track system built into the ship's hull, allowing the operator to go from sea to land without scratching up the bottom of the boat. (more…)

Sesame Street lawyers are not happy that Jim Henson's son Brian has a raunchy puppet film coming out called Happytime Murders. After they filed a suit against the film, Henson retained a crack puppet lawyer named Fred (above) to defend them. (more…)

This striking visual profile of a worker at the gargantuan Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works by director Evgenii Bakirov features Vladimir, The Metallurgist. The Russian title (горновой [the mountain]) is Vladimir's nickname. (more…)

Poundland is a British discount retailer where everything costs a pound. Thameslink is a British railroad operator suffering from freqently late or cancelled services. Ferrero Rocher is an inexpensive but fancy chocolate snack famously marketed with the line "Why, ambassador, with these Rocher you are spoiling us."Last week, a traveler mocked Thameslink by tweeting a photo of its sad cancellation-strewn departure board with the quip "Why, Ambassador ... with this fine service you are really spoiling us."Thameslink, in a tweet later deleted, replied "Very sorry Kevin. Appreciate at the moment the service is less Ferrero Rocher and more Poundland cooking chocolate."Poundland chocolate responded to defend the quality of their chocolate, issued a legal threat, and suggested that Thameslink travelers might not reach their destination: "You’re ‘off the rails’"The BBC reports that apologies were subsequently issued.

Black Light Visuals travels to music concerts and lets festival-goers dip their arms into vats filled with their fluorescent dyes, leaving them with marbled appendages that glow in black light. (more…)

We've previously seen what Space Mountain looks like with its lights on from the vantage point of the Wedway Peoplemover. Now, we get to experience the roller coaster with the lights on as if we were riding it in this POV video by Theme Park University.I have two personal things to say about this:1. In the early 1980s, my mom and I took a ride on WDW's Space Mountain when its lights were on. I don't remember why the lights were on but we talked about it for years afterwards. I was 12 years old at the time.2. Earlier this year, I took my 13-year-old daughter to Disneyland and we rode Space Mountain, in the dark. I hadn't ridden it in many years because the line is always so long and I'm sad to report that it made me queasy because it was so dark. My kid, however, loved it, got in the single rider line and rode a few more times.(reddit)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIxuxfsSGNI&feature=youtu.beThe Bayou Vista Wal Mart put up a new pole in its parking lot and vehicles struck it ten times in a week. The pole was given the nickname "Patrick" and is now protected by an honor guard of shopping carts. There are no plans to relocate it.

Swimming pigs, splashing horses, and diving bulls await in this lovely roundup of animals swimming, some of whom are a bit surprising to see taking to water so eagerly. (more…)

A turner's cube is a traditional machinist's exercise to test consistency and tolerances when milling metal. But this two-millimeter cube in a cube in a cube in a cube in a cube is next-level skill. (more…)

In late April, I posted about a stand-up comedian who cannot speak without the assistance of his synthetic computer voice. His performance won over the audience at his Britain's Got Talent audition.Now, Lost Voice Guy (aka Lee Ridley) is back on stage for the competition show's semi-finals with another brilliant set.His performance landed him a spot as one of the two acts to head to the finals (!) this Sunday:https://youtu.be/liZ7cnigLPs

Bethesda released a teaser trailer for their next game in the Fallout series, Fallout 76, and man, I am so ready for it.Having been around to play Fallout Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics in the late 1990s all I wanted was more Fallout. Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas definitely scratched that itch (New Vegas is one of the best RPGs of all time, and yes, I will fight you over it.) Fallout 4, I loved. It was a departure from the feel of the games that came before it, but it wasn't long until I got into the rhythm of the game. It's hands-down one of my favorite games of all time. Despite my love affair with the series, there's a VERY good chance that Fallout 76 will be an entirely different animal than anything that's come before in the franchise. A big clue to this is smack dab in the middle of the game's title: Vault 76. In Fallout 3, Vault 76 was listed in a Citadel computer terminal as being a "control" vault. It makes sense: with every other vault encountered in the Fallout Universe has been screwed with by Vault-Tec scientists, subjecting the vault's occupants to a wide array of social experiments. Vault-Tec would need a control vault to illustrate what sane, well adjusted vault dwellers who were left alone with everything they'd need to survive a nuclear disaster would look like. There's a good chance that anyone coming out of this vault would be healthy, mentally stable and well supplied.So of course, things will go terribly wrong.Even more interesting than seeing the game churn out a story based on exisiting lore, there's whispers from Bethesda's camp that Vault 76 could be a multiplayer experience.From Kotaku:

Grey Gardens is one of the greatest documentaries of all time, and one of its subjects is style icon Little Edie Beale. YouTube channel The Ultimate Fashion History created a great bio and analysis of the eccentric recluse's impact on fashion. (more…)

Nike's new "Benassi JDI Fanny Pack" slide sandals may be the perfect footwear to don while sporting another hybrid fashion choice, the shirt-shirt.Summer's looking stylish AF!Ok, I'm only half kidding, these slides are not that bad. In fact, they'd be great for stashing keys and other small items. (That shirt-shirt tho... that's gotta go.)As far as I can tell, the sandal's release date has not been set yet.(The Cut)image via US11 via Sole Collector

Colin writes, "Parvus Press is funding IF THIS GOES ON, an anthology of political science fiction on Kickstarter. The anthology is edited by Cat Rambo, author and president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. It features thirty original stories dealing with the long-term impact of the policies and politics of our current elected leaders. Contributors range from long-time authors of SF like Nisi Shawl and Andy Duncan to award-season favorites Sarah Pinsker and E. Lily Yu and relative newcomers like former NFL Kicker Chris Kluwe."

Why does Elon Musk think that AI is going to kill us all? Why do so many "rationalist" techbros assume that he's right? (more…)

https://youtu.be/IMPKe-GJSh0It's been nearly three weeks since the publication of Efail, a critical set of attacks against PGP/GPG-encrypted emails that was so hard to mitigate that EFF's recommendation was to stop using it for mail altogether until a solution could be worked out. (more…)

Romance author Faleena Hopkins earned the wrong kind of notoriety when she registered a trademark on the word "cocky" for use in romance novel titles and then began indiscriminately threatening to sue her peers for using this common trope. (more…)

Gary Price writes, "The Library of Congress announced today that collector and entrepreneur Stephen A. Geppi (owner of Diamond Comic Distributors) has donated to the nation’s library more than 3,000 items from his phenomenal and vast personal collection of comic books and popular art, including the original storyboards that document the creation of Mickey Mouse." (more…)

I don’t know anyone with a broader purview on the crazy range of medical developments that are vying to extend or radically improve our lives than Daniel Kraft. Daniel is a physician-scientist, an entrepreneur, and also a healthcare futurist. He founded and runs the annual Exponential Medicine conference, which is one of the largest truly cross-disciplinary gatherings of life science researchers and innovators in the world. He also founded and runs the medical faculty at Singularity University – a truly unique academic institution, which could only have sprouted from the soil of Silicon Valley.When Daniel does a presentation, he’s the opposite of that speaker we’ve all seen who does everything possible to pad their words and their slides to fill their up time. With Daniel, I always feel like there’s an entire presentation lurking behind each & every slide he puts up on the screen. He just has so much surface area, because those two very complementary jobs of his put him in touch with hundreds of startups and researchers every year. Daniel is particularly deep in medical devices – ranging from consumer-grade gear to tools that only turn up in research hospitals. And as an oncologist, he’s of course deeply informed about cancer.We discuss all of this in the new episode of the After On podcast, which you can hear by clicking below:If you enjoy this episode and would like to check out some of its 26 siblings, head on over to my site. Or, you can click here to get it in iTunes or Apple’s Podcasts app; or just type the words After On into your favorite podcast player. You’ll find episodes connected genomics, synthetic biology, neuroscience, consciousness, robotics, privacy & government hacking, cryptocurrency, astrophysics, drones, and a whole lot more.Image: Shutterstock/Oleksandr Derevianko

This video footage released by Entertainment Tonight is certainly telling. They cut to the chase around 1:25 seconds in.

Here's the third part of my reading (MP3) of Petard (part one, part two), a story from MIT Tech Review's Twelve Tomorrows, edited by Bruce Sterling; a story inspired by, and dedicated to, Aaron Swartz -- about elves, Net Neutrality, dorms and the collective action problem.MP3

It’s strangely reassuring when the National Examiner tells us that Princess Diana’s ghost was “caught at Harry’s wedding,” and that Nostradamus predicted that the "Hawaii volcanoes signal END OF WORLD!” It’s comforting, because it’s so easy to dismiss the obtuse ramblings of a 16th century seer and a white reflection of light on a wedding photo as errant nonsense unworthy of a second thought. It’s harder to parse the rest of this week’s fact-challenged dubious tabloid offerings, which purport to be truthful while being so very far from it.“Meghan & Harry Having Twins!” screams the National Enquirer cover story, with a photo of the newly-anointed Duchess of Sussex with a “baby bump” helpfully circled with a giant yellow arrow pointing at her bulging belly. Is it churlish of me to point out that, after a little research, I find that this photo was taken in 2014? Before she met Prince Harry. If, after four years of pregnancy, she is still barely showing, that’s an impressive testament to her dieting will-power and the fortitude of her uterus.To be fair, the story inside the Enquirer employs a photo of Meghan taken days after her May 19 wedding where her “baby bump” reportedly makes an “early appearance.” Did the 29 million Americans and 18 million Britons who watched the Royal wedding on TV all miss this self-evident pregnancy? Of course not. It’s just the way a dress can hang sometimes when Meghan arcs her back. Yet inspired by the four-year-old “pregnancy” photo, the Enquirer team of psychic reporters concludes that Meghan is having the “first Royal twins in 588 years!” Which makes you wonder why Nostradamus didn’t see this coming.Equally dubious is the Globe cover story: “Robert Blake: Grant Jury Murder Confession!” You might be forgiven for thinking that the former star of TV’s Baretta has been hauled before a Grand Jury and admitted his role in the shooting death of his wife Bonnie Bakley in 2001. And you’d be wrong.Despite its lurid headline, the story actually reveals that it’s only a private investigator claiming that a grand jury should be empaneled and Blake should be forced to confess that he was behind the slaying. Blake was acquitted of Bakley’s murder but found responsible in a civil suit filed by her children, but has never admitted any responsibility for the crime. Yet the Globe tops its two-page spread with the headline: “Robert Blake Comes Clean!” No, he doesn’t. How stupid do these tabloids think their readers are? (Don’t answer that – it’s rhetorical..)The Royals continue to captivate the tabloids, and the Globe follows its succession of improbable scoops by "Palace insiders" with its latest “world exclusive” spread: “Humiliated Queen Bans Meghan’s Kin!” It’s nonsense on so many levels. Firstly, Meghan is hardly on speaking terms with most of her family members who have been making disparaging comments about the newly-inducted member of the Royal family. She was never going to invite her half-sister Samantha Grant to a Burger King joint, let alone a palace, having not spoken in decades. The same could be said for the cousins who have been mouthing off from a great distance while cashing in on the Markle name.Secondly, while the Queen could conceivably be “banning them from the palace,” that would be Buckingham Palace, and she could hardly stop Meghan inviting relatives, or whoever she wants, to the home she shares with Harry on the grounds of Kensington Palace or their country cottage on the Sandringham estate. And did the Queen really call Meghan’s family “American trash”? The Globe cover is clear that she did. But inside, the report claims: “Maids have heard the queen muttering under her breath they’re ‘American trash.’” That’s an impressive piece of reporting: the Globe not only has moles hidden within Buckingham Palace, but has them close enough to hear what the Queen mutters under her breath. Right. And would the Queen really ban Meghan from seeing her father, Thomas Markle? Expect to see father and daughter reunited before long.Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s ongoing divorce still has the tabloids mesmerized, and this week the Enquirer tells us that Pitt has introduced his latest girlfriend to his children – “And Angie Hits the Roof!” Jolie “continues to lash out at him,” reports the rag. But it’s quite a different tale in the Globe, which claims that the duo are “Hot Again!” and are “Calling off divorce and rebuilding family,” following a “sizzling reunion between the sheets,” according to an unnamed source. Both stories seem about as likely as Nostradamus’s prediction that the Kilauea volcano portends the end of the world.And there are more cataclysms to come, the Examiner gleefully reports. Yellowstone Park’s “Super-volcano” will experience “an apocalyptic super-eruption,” an asteroid strike will cause “global mayhem,” and a comet’s arrival will coincide with “great violence.” Good old Nostradamus, always the life and soul of the party.People magazine devotes its cover to the new Duchess of Sussex, revealing “Meghan’s New Life!” This amounts to wearing panty hose, undergoing protocol lessons, and "making baby plans,” which one suspects she wouldn’t need if she were already pregnant with twins.Us magazine prepares to shame its readers in preparation for summer with a selection of mostly female celebrities displaying “My Best Body!” and sharing their “workout secrets!” though I’m at a loss to imagine why “workout secrets!” merits an exclamation mark. People mag shows its populist touch by showcasing five unknown non-celebrity women who each lost more than 100 pounds in weight, most going from obese to merely fat, and then squeezes each of them into a swimsuit for a photoshoot, which seems like cruel and unusual punishment after months of self-deprivation.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us to tell us that Bella Hadid wore it best (well, duh), that TV financial news anchor Maria Bartiromo “played the accordion growing up” (a skill she has sadly lost), that actress-singer Olivia Holt carries facial oils, ketchup and lip gloss in her Bvlgari purse, and that the stars are just like us: they buy groceries, picnic, and struggle with umbrellas on windy rainy days. Riveting, as ever.The most useful information to come out of this week’s tabloids hails from the Examiner story about America’s oldest man, Richard Overton, who at 112 claims to smoke a dozen cigars and drink four glasses of whiskey daily. He shares his longevity secret with readers, and it’s a tip worth taking to heart: “Just keep living,” he says. “Don’t die.”Onwards and downwards . . .

Andrey Avgust's speculative redesign for America's heroically ugly paper money reimagines greenbacks as modern plastic banknotes, similar to the more daring bills in Australian and UK currency, with UV-readable serials that are repeated in QR codes with PGP-signed hashes. (more…)

We all know that the TSA maintains a secret watchlist of suspected terrorists who are somehow suspicious enough that they can be denied the right to fly or be subjected to humiliating screenings (but not suspicious enough to charge with any crime), but it turns out that that TSA has another watchlist of problem fliers -- people who've complained about TSA screeners, as well as people who are accused of having "assaulted" screeners (the definition of "assault" includes women who've removed screeners' hands from their breasts). (more…)

Jessica Pressler's long, gripping profile of con artist Anna Sorokin (AKA Anna Delvey) has all the making of a first-rate grifter novel, where the likable, unflappable rogue is revealed by inches to be a sociopath, a broken person who can't herself tell truth from fiction. (more…)

I've had very little experience with Linux but now that I'm using Raspberry Pis (a cheap single board computer that runs Linux) I need to know how to use Linux. Online how-tos are good, but Linux for Makers, by Aaron Newcomb, is better. In fact, this book is pure gold. It assumes zero prior knowledge of Linux. Everything is clearly explained. I learned how to install Raspbian Linux on an SD Card (Raspberry Pis use SD cards as their hard drive), log the output of a script, schedule jobs with cron, use lots of different commands, write scripts, use PI with IFTTT, and lots more.

I’m starting a petition to have Arkady Babchenko henceforth referred to as "Journalism Jesus," Because holy shit, he just returned from the grave.Less than 24 hours after it was reported that the vehemently anti-Putin journalist had died on the way to hospital after being shot in the back outside of his apartment in Kiev, Ukraine, Babchenko strolled into a press conference being thrown by the Ukrainian government, like a boss of all bosses. It seems that a hitman, hired by the Russian government to permanently silence Babchenko for the sum of $40,000, decided that instead of pulling a trigger on the contract, he’d let Ukraine’s security intelligence people in on what was supposed to be happening.I say "supposed to," because things definitely did not go down the way that Mother Russia allegedly wanted them to.From the New York Times:

It's been five years since David Graeber's original, groundbreaking essay on "bullshit jobs" (socially useless busywork that everyone -- including the holders of bullshit jobs -- knew to be a tremendous waste of time), and now he's got a whole book on the subject (if you're in LA, you can see me interviewing him about it on June 13). (more…)

Dillion Burch, 22, was arrested for telling guests at Disney's Contemporary Resort in Orange County, FL, that an "active shooter" was on the premises. He videotaped the guests' reactions with the intention of posting them to his YouTube channel. As a result, the resort was locked down. Police found Burch hiding in some bushes on the property and arrested him for disturbing the peace and disorderly intoxication.Via Orlando Sentinel.

According to the Trump administration, Hurricane Maria killed 64 people; according to a careful, peer-reviewed study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the death toll was 4645. (more…)

One of my favorite TV shows as a kid had a rockin' 80s style theme, 3-2-1 Contact made science exciting.https://youtu.be/KmQWtGn889EThe very first episode opens with the making of this fantastic track, but they re-cut it several times over the life of the show. I have a hard time picking a favorite. Which is yours?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZDhkcJQoFUI also loved the Villa Allegre theme.

The Internet of Things morphed from a ridiculous answer in search of a problem ("why do I want my fridge connected to the internet?") to a source of Black Mirror-style modern absurdities ("someone pushed a load of internet porn to my fridge") to an existential threat ("my fridge just joined a world-killing botnet"). (more…)

How much money are teachers in the US paid? The correct answer, of course, is "not enough." As nationwide teacher strikes continue, HowMuch created infographics showing the average annual teacher salary by state. Above is the elementary school infographic.

jamaps created a map that shows all the main roads in Britain and nothing else, giving the vague impression of something weirdly biological.

MIT researchers designed and prototyped small, autonomous boats that they think could go a long way to improving urban mobility and reducing traffic in cities with waterways like Amsterdam, Bangkok, and Venice. The 3D-printed hulls are rectangular to enable them to more easily connect with each other. Each side features an independent thruster to increase its agility. From MIT News:

A group of guys from the YouTube channel Life OD first crafted a working tire out of $80 worth of duct tape, then they daisy-chained 100,000 rubber bands together to make another one.Why? Apparently, because they can.https://youtu.be/I5M2KQpeTv4(Likecool)

Weezer revealed their cover of Toto's 1982 hit "Africa" on Tuesday.It was a matter of "giving the fans what they want," as the Weezer fan Twitter account @weezerafrica began suggesting the band "bless the rains down in africa" late last year. https://twitter.com/weezerafrica/status/938406456302489600In early December, Noisey reported that a 14-year-old Cleveland girl named Mary, "who has been learning Weezer songs in her School of Rock cover band," was behind the account.

Five years ago, New Yorkers got to participate in the city's first bikeshare experiment, the Citibike, and people were very worried! (more…)

Have you tried turning it off and on again?The FBI sent out an urgent bulletin advising anyone with a home or small office internet router to immediately turn it off and then turn it on again as a way to help stop the spread of a malware outbreak with origins in Russia.(more…)

The designers at luxury fashion house Balenciaga are taking "dress in layers" a smidge too literally with their Double Shirt.The striped garment is part of their Men's Fall 2018 collection and features a long-sleeved shirt attached to a boxy, short-sleeved shirt.But wait, there's more. They've designed it so if you decide to wear the long-sleeved shirt, the short-sleeved one hangs off the back. And if you wear the short-sleeved one, the long-sleeved one hangs off the front. So basically you're getting two shirts in one, which is good because the Double Shirt costs $1490.If you're looking for a more economical shirt-on-shirt option, try their T-Shirt Shirt for $1,290.This gentleman decided on the shirt-shirt's DIY version:https://twitter.com/AH_Mike/status/1000890766053457920I suggest pairing shirt-shirts with couture Crocs.

A working paper from a pair of political scientists analyzed World Values Survey data to trace the rise of support for authoritarianism in America to a growing sense among white people that democracy's commitment to giving everyone a vote would soon erode their privilege, as the growing population of racialized people started to vote for fairer policies. (more…)

Ambien manufacturer Sanofi issued a masterfully worded public statement on Wednesday in response to recently-fired ABC TV star Roseanne Barr's latest Twitter meltdown.In a series of wackadoodle tweets she posted late last night, 'Roseanne' blamed Sanofi's prescription sleep medication for the racist tweets that got her eponymous show canceled. (more…)

A Canadian man born in Kazakhstan has been sentenced to five years in prison for crimes connected to the massive Yahoo security breach that U.S. federal agents say was directed by Russian government spies.“Karim Baratov, an FSB go-to guy for webmail hacking, was sentenced to 5 years in prison this morning, less than the nearly 8 years sought by the Justice Department,” says Daily Beast's Kevin Poulsen.Below, why 5 years in prison is actually a good outcome for Baratov, who is 23.(more…)

If you've been to San Francisco lately, no doubt that you've seen the 1,070-foot architectural monstrosity known as the Salesforce Tower. The new skyscraper is hard to miss as it's now the tallest building in the city's skyline and because it looks like a big, shiny phallus.You can't escape it. It can be spotted from nearly everywhere you go in the city. I can even see it from various points in Alameda.Married couple Nikki and Stone Melet noticed it too. They were so amused by it that they started the site "Just the Tip SF" as a humorous way to document what I have dubbed, the "TechBro Dick."Nikki told ABC7News, "I was dropping my daughter off at school and I saw the tower. I was driving down the street and I saw the tower. I'm like, this is crazy, you can see the tip from everywhere."People are encouraged to send in their own photos of "just the tip" from wherever they may see it.photo by Rusty Blazenhoff, taken from Pier 39 pedestrian bridge