Darktrace CEO Nicole Eagan's presentation to last week's WSJ CEO Council Conference in London included an anaecdote about an unnamed casino for whom her firm had done work; they uncovered a data-breach in which an insecure Internet of Things thermometer in the casino's lobby was used to gain access to the internal network, from which vantage the attackers were able to extract and steal a database of high rollers. (more…)

Regular readers will know I'm fond of tiny computers. During my search for one powerful enough to play games on, I found several beautiful and well-made options. But none were so wee as the Zotac Zbox EN1070K [Amazon], which is roughly the size of a Sega Dreamcast. I've had it for six months, now, and can report that it's great: easily the most enjoyable, compact, no-nonsense game-ready PC I've ever owned.Miniaturization is accomplished by using the MXM video card form factor originally devised for laptops. In the past, this would have resulted in a severe performance compromise. But current Nvidia models hit close to the numbers posted by full-size counterparts. Even with Zotac slightly underclocking the GTX 1070 (presumably for heat reasons), it benchmarks close enough to the full-size model that I doubt I could tell the difference side-by-side.There's even a model with the GTX 1080 [Amazon] in it, but it's twice the size of this one and I wanted small, and it turns out the 1070 is more than enough for every game I've tried, outpacing the GTX 970-equipped PC I upgraded from. The latest games on the highest settings on 4k monitors would be pushing it, I'm sure, but if you need that, maybe a PC the size of a hardback novel isn't in your future.There are compromises to bear in mind. Upgrading the i5 Kaby Lake CPU is possible, but I won't be chancing it for a long time -- it voids the warranty and requires almost complete disassembly. The MXM video card is easier to replace, but such things are not really consumer items and you'll have to pay outrageous money for something ripped out of a dead laptop to beat what's already in there. The ZBox isn't a console, but upgrading the gamey bits would be hard and expensive work.And beware the EN1070 (without the K) -- it's the 2016 model, with a significantly slower CPU and not much saved off the price. (The new ZBoz Q workstations use the same case too, by the looks of it)Upgrades to RAM and SSD (there's both an mSATA header and an M.2 slot) are very easy, though. With 32GB of RAM and a 512GB Samsung 960 Pro installed, this is an astonishingly powerful little box and I'm very happy with it. The price premium of smallness isn't terrible, but it is significant: about $250 over the cost of a similarly equipped Mini-ITX PC specced out with equivalent gadgetry within.The only annoyance, for me, is the case design. You'd think it'd be the sleekest most minimalist thing going, but it looks like an off-brand cable modem, right down to the plastic fins and haphazard port placements. There's no annoying gamer greebling or red-LED edgyiness, thankfully. It's well-engineered, too, easy to open up and add memory and storage. It comes with a fairly large power brick... but not XBox One large.I'm tempted to pad this out with benchmark charts, but the proposition here is simple enough, so there's no point bothering. If you want a genuinely powerful and tiny game-ready PC and you don't plan on frequent upgrades, just get this one.It's about $1130, and you'll have to bring your own RAM and storage. The bundled options on Amazon are a poor deal: get it barebones.Zotac Zbox EN1070K [Amazon] (more…)

Welcome Ed Piskor back to Boing Boing (previously), where he'll be offering an annotated page-by-page look at the first part of X-Men: Grand Design, his epic retelling of how Marvel comics' pantheon of heroes came to be. Here's page 3; read page 1 first — Eds.Director’s commentaryLong before the X-Men publisher was called Marvel it was known as Timely. The heroes (The Fin, Original Human Torch, Blonde Phantom, Blazing Skull, Angel, The Destroy, The Witness, and Vision) in the first panels represent the more popular creations from Timely's "Golden-Age". Because this comic is a veiled world-building exercise, I will take the opportunity to include characters from the extended Marvel pantheon into X-Men: Grand Design whenever possible.The Sub-Mariner tidal wave that engulfed New York City in the last strip provided me the opportunity to come up with some sort of explanation for how Charles came to have a giant estate and an even bigger disposable income (Danger Rooms and Blackbird Jets aren't cheap). As far as I know this has never been covered in a major way before, though we do know early on that his father is a scientist.Panel 4: The battleship floating over the submerged city, absorbing solar energy to then evaporate the water was a fun challenge to compose and I can live with the resulting illustration. As an artist, the beauty of such a project is that it really stretches one’s drawing chops with all that’s required. One page is World War II imagery. The next page is Egypt. The page after that is a superhero battle in New York City—you get the picture.Longtime Marvel fans will notice what looks to be an AIM agent in panel 5. I kinda wanted to suggest that perhaps the AIM terrorist organization is dealing in government surplus when doing weapons deals with super villains. Or maybe AIM even had some interest in getting NYC back on it's feet to make for future plundering opportunities?Panel 6 & 7 mentioning Howard Stark is a bit of admitted fan-service, but why wouldn’t Tony “Iron Man” Stark’s father have some business ties with Charles Xavier’s folks?The last panel is the product of a creepy idea that came to mind late one night before I officially started working on the project. What if Professor X’s psychic rapport ability began with him while still inside his mother's womb. I didn’t want to sell the creep-factor of what I saw in my mind’s eye with the final page because I want X-Men: Grand Design to feel more magical than grim.The first X-Men Grand Design collection is now available for purchase on Amazon! Stay tuned for another strip this time next week.You can pre-order X-Men: Grand Design, Second Genesis on Amazon today.

Nicolas Damiens and Julien Sans thought it would be cool to offer inspiring fonts based on the scrawl of some of their favorite recording artists like Bowie, Lennon, and Cobain, whose handwriting appears on the cool cover of his published journals (above). IP lawyers put the kibosh on their SongwritersFonts project real quick-like. (more…)

At Chemistry Blog, Nick Uhlig explores the chemistry of William Gibson's classic novel Neuromancer.

Michael Klimkowski looks so much like unctuous megachurch proprietor Joel Osteen that strangers come up to him for autographs. Watch him throw on a suit and head out to Osteen appearances and events for a little mischief. (more…)

Matt Bentkowski was stuck in traffic on Interstate 285 East near Atlanta, enjoying "a front row seat" when a driver behind him decided the shoulder would do just fine as a lane.P.S. Instant Justice YouTube is obviously a lot of fun, but there's plenty there you might not want to bother with first thing in the morning.

Ok, show of hands: who here's been eaten by a hippo? Anyone? No? Then you'll want to keep reading, because Chris Broughton has and his story is frigging horrific.While he was in his twenties, Broughton ran a business that saw him guiding tourists down the Zambezi river, near Africa's Victoria Falls. During the years that he worked this gig, Broughton had made it a habit to avoid a particularly grumpy male hippo while he and his clients were out on the water. Hippos, you see, are wicked territorial. The beast had launched a couple of half-assed attacked against him and his customers in the past. No damage was done, but it was enough to make him wary of pissing the hippo off.On one occasion, Broughton took a group of tourists out on the water along with three apprentice guides that he was showing the ropes to. One of the apprentices was attacked by the hippo, flinging him into the air. Broughton ordered the other two guides to get the tourists to safety while he went after his apprentice. What happened next, told in Broughton's own words, is absolutely insane.From The Guardian:

YouTuber JerryRigEverything had a chance to fire some bullets at a bullet-proof car. The physics are interesting to watch as the energy disperses into the materials in slow motion. (more…)

Freddy, the host of a Dutch show from the early 2000s set in an aboriginal area of Vanuatu, is shown dyeing his hair blonde. A couple of the tribe's elders are curious about what he's doing and soon want to have their hair dyed blonde too. Once they get their "banana" hair, they can't wait to show the rest of the tribe.(reddit)

A drone captured this aerial peek of Disneyland's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge (aka "Star Wars land") as it stood at the beginning of last month. I was just at the park this past weekend with my daughter and we caught glimpses of its construction while riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. As you'll see, the future planet of Batuu is ginormous (14 acres in total).The Disney Parks Blog reports:

Three hundred and fifty bucks doesn't seem unreasonable for this kids' electric VW T1 Camper Van. The red-and-white two-seater IS an officially licensed product, so it may be of decent quality. Not only does it have working head and tail lights but it also goes forward and in reverse. It can only handle up to 110 lbs., so grownups will just have to get a real one (or get this T1 fridge). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALYb9I-zbv8(The Awesomer)

A young Quakers group in Nottingham, England released this 30-minute podcast of a silent meeting, complete with the ambient room sounds. John Cage would be proud. From The Guardian:

Researchers "accidentally" engineered a natural enzyme found in a Japanese waste recycling plant to eat plastic waste. According to the scientists from the UK's University of Portsmouth and the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the enzyme, Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6, degrades polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the material used to make plastic bottles and other crap. The photo above is an electron microscope image of the enzyme degrading PET plastic."We hoped to determine (the enzyme's) structure to aid in protein engineering, but we ended up going a step further and accidentally engineered an enzyme with improved performance at breaking down these plastics," NREL's lead researcher Gregg Beckham told CNN. From the University of Portsmouth:

My sister-in-law Mary Loquvam was thinking globally and acting locally long before urban homesteading became hip and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch grew to double the size of Texas. In the last decades, she's pioneered recycling programs at airports, led efforts to revitalize the Los Angeles River ecosystems, and directed the L.A. Audobon Society. Now living in Bellingham, Washington, Mary and her neighbors have transformed an unused plot of land along the highway into the nonprofit York Community Farm where they've grown and distributed hundreds of pounds of dry beans, potatoes, and winter squash to the community. The real centerpiece of their effort, Mary says, is their farm internship program that provides "living-wage, resume-building, meaningful work experience for underserved members of our community- our recently-incarcerated, homeless, and veteran folk."Mary and her York Farm friends have just launched a Kickstarter to fund a greenhouse so they can grow food year-round and build an aquaponics system that "has much greater per acre yields, and uses 90% less water, than traditional land-based farming.""York Community Farm envisions being a catalyst for development of a social benefit aquaponics industry where the bottom line is not generating revenue for stockholders but, generating living-wage jobs for struggling communities in our region and beyond," Mary writes.I love their slogan: "Improving lives through dirt therapy!"Please help York Community Farm build a greenhouse by supporting their Kickstarter!

Companies House, the UK registry of companies, is widely known to be filled with fraudulent registration information about directors, addresses and ownership, and it's this willingness to tolerate fraud that has made the UK one of the first ports of call for criminals and looters looking to launder their fortunes. (more…)

A 19 year old in Nova Scotia wanted to learn more about the provincial teachers' dispute, so he filed some Freedom of Information requests; he wasn't satisfied with the response so he decided to dig through other documents the province had released under open records laws to look for more, but couldn't find a search tool that was adequate to the job. (more…)

Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai made Elizabeth Pierce -- ex-CEO of Alaska fiber networking company Quijntillion -- one of his "broadband advisors" and now she's in jail on charges of having run a $250,000,000 fraud. (more…)

The United States and Britain today accused Russia of launching a new wave of internet-based attacks targeting routers, firewalls and other computer networking equipment used by government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure operators around the globe.(more…)

A little over a year ago I pieced together my own 'low-rent' Peloton spinning cycle. This cheap spinning bike has become an invaluable tool managing my so-called fitness, as well as the pain my degenerating discs provide. (more…)

A federal judge rejected a request from President Donald Trump and from Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer, for a temporary restraining order to keep federal prosecutors from reading files seized in 'no-knock' FBI raids last week.(more…)

Cory gave me a pair of Native Jeffersons about five years ago, and ever since, I hardly wear any other kind. They're made of the same kind of rubber as Crocs and, in my opinion, look nicer. I never wear socks with them, but my feet don't stick like they would if I wore traditional shoes without socks. They are great for going through TSA checkpoints -- no laces, just slip them off. I have about five pairs in different colors. Once a month or so I run them all through the dishwasher to clean them.Amazon often sells them for as little as $20 a pair.

In New York today, a judge ordered Michael Cohen to reveal the name of a third client, someone who didn't want to be named. It's Sean Hannity.(more…)

Dianceht is a company in Mexico that makes such realistic prosthetic body parts, it's almost impossible to tell they're not the real thing. Started in 2005, Dianceht makes custom-made silicon-based fingers, ears, toes, hands and other body parts, which take several days to hand paint. Fingers include fingerprints, veins and freckles. As far as prices go, a finger or toe costs around $750, while an ear or nose will set you back approximately $1,432.

The EPA broke the law by installing a $43,000 soundproof phone booth for agency head Scott Pruitt. It's just the latest in Pruitt's series of flagrant wastes of taxpayer money on extravagant purchases, including luxury travel. No other EPA leader has required a soundproof booth, but Pruitt told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that “It’s necessary for me to be able to do my job.”From The Washington Post:

If you only wash your hands after using the bathroom, think again. It's not just toilets and bathroom hand-dryers that are loaded with poop particles. Sorry to burst your bubble, but fecal bacteria is all around us.And to drive the point home, here's a list of popular poopy hot spots, compiled by Popular Science:1. On computer keyboards

32,000 people "invested" $660 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) for a token called Pincoin. Now, the seven seven Vietnamese nationals behind the unregulated ICO, which operated as a ponzi scheme, are nowhere to be found.From Tuoi Tre News:

After a Royal Palm Beach man crashed his car, he wanted police officers to check his dashcam to prove it was the other driver's fault. But his dashcam showed more than just the car crash – it also showed earlier footage of the 25-year-old gentleman grabbing a baseball bat from his trunk and using it to bash a window of a beauty store, and then whacking at the store's safe. Moran was arrested, but apparently he was then released.And then he was arrested again two days later, this time because he "allegedly threatened to shoot his brother with an assault rifle and pistol," according to the Palm Beach Post. "Moran and his brother live with their parents in Royal Palm Beach. During the incident, Moran allegedly pointed the gun at his father and threatened to harm his parents as well as his brother."While he was in police custody, he tried to escape with his handcuffs on, making it as far as hopping a fence and trying to hide behind some bushes.Even though he faces "two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count each of battery, resisting an officer without violence and escape," the lucky fellow was released from jail on Sunday "under court-ordered supervision." Yay for his family, neighbors and community.Image: Mug shot of Xavier Inocencio Moran / Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department

Russian investigative journalist Maxim Borodin died in a hospital after falling from his fifth floor apartment in Yekaterinburg on Friday. Recently Borodin had been writing about the Syria-based activities of a Russian mercenary organization called the "Wagner Group." Officials say there is no sign of foul play, but one of Borodin's friends, Vyacheslav Bashkov, said that security personnel had surrounded his apartment the day before he fell.From BBC:

It's expensive to be one of the most well-recognized billionaires on the planet. Facebook's regulatory filing for the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that CEO Mark Zuckerberg's security expenses for 2017 were $7.3 million. In 2016 they were $4.9 million.From Quartz:

Animation visionary Isao Takahata of Studio Ghibli fame died on April 5, and Smithsonian magazine published a great written overview that complements the video essay above. (more…)

Fifty years ago, Véra Molnar decided to experiment with computers for generating art printed on continuous plotter paper with the pin strips on the edge. To honor that anniversary, a number of galleries are showing her early work (protip: slow the video playback to 0.25 for longer looks at the work). (more…)

Today, SpaceX expects to launch a Falcon 9 rocket to deliver NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) into orbit. Scientists expect TESS to find thousands of exoplanets by detecting when they pass in front of their host stars, briefly blocking the light of those suns.“A few months after TESS launches, we will be able to point out the first ones of these familiar stars, which host planets that could be like ours,” says Cornell University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute.From Nadia Drake's excellent FAQ on TESS in National Geographic:

Nashville maker One Man One Garage created these fun flat-pack birdhouse kits that assemble into vintage campers. (more…)

In 1993, Cyan Inc.'s Robyn and Rand Miller created Myst, a magical interactive story/puzzle published on CD-ROM that forever changed the landscape of immersive gaming. Myst proved once and for all that videogames could be art. To celebrate Myst's 25th anniversary this year, Cyan launched a Kickstarter for a marvelous "historical anthology of the complete series, along with some special, Atrus-approved, authentic game artifacts." The games will be playable on Windows 10. (Mac editions may be in the future.) The Myst 25th Anniversary Collection will certainly spark the imagination of anyone who plays it, including those developing the next generation of immersive experiences.Myst: 25th Anniversary Collection (Kickstarter)

The Mary River Turtle (Elusor macrurus), seen in this marvelous photo by Chris Van Wyk, calls Queensland, Australia its home. It's a fantastic creature with a green mohwawk of algae strands. The Mary River Turtle can stay underwater for up to 72 hours as it breathes through glands in its reproductive organs. Unfortunately, it's also one of the latest animals that the Zoological Society of London's EDGE conservation group added to its list of endangered species. From National Geographic:

Outside the big cities, England and Wales is aging. From Plumplot:

On Saturday, the UK's Birmingham City University screened "long-lost" footage of Batman helping youngsters cross the road safely. The clip, starring Adam West as the caped crusader, was shot in May 1967.

As we make our way through the Lost In Space reboot on Netflix (or not), let's honor the late, great Jonathan Harris who stole the original series as the prissily menacing Dr. Zachary Smith."(Smith) was written as a deep-dyed, snarling villain, and he bored the shit out of me," Harris said.(Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

A team of University of Michigan electrical engineering/computer science researchers have published a paper (Sci-Hub mirror) detailing their work in creating a camera sensor (a device that converts light to electricity) that's also a solar power cell (also a device that converts light to electricity). (more…)

1200 residents, two shops, a restaurant, a school, and no cops: Santa Cruz del Islote is the world's most crowded island.

Josh King directed this delightful video for Texas-based Khruangbin's song Evan Finds The Third Room. The casting is perfect, and her smiling is infectious. (more…)

Josh Quiggin argues persuasively that the easiest way to seem "presidential" is to drop bombs on someone else, and reminds us that Americans only recognize bombing people as "cowardly and evil" when the people being bombed are Americans. (more…)

It's hard to know what to make of the raid on Trump family lawyer/bagman/fixer Michael Cohen's office -- there's been plenty of news tick-tock on the subject and legal experts agree that something momentous is going on, but what, exactly, does it all mean. (more…)

Wolf Richter's dental insurer sent his family a free "smart" toothbrush that records how often and how well you brush, using a set of proprietary consumables to clean your teeth. (more…)

Orthodox market economics holds that when unemployment falls and the labor supply gets tighter wages go up; it also predicts that better-educated workers and more-productive workers get paid more for their work -- none of this has happened. (more…)

Rolly Crump (previously) was one of the weirdest, most bohemian of the original group of Imagineers; when he was tasked with developing concepts for the oft-stalled and perennially beleaguered Disneyland Haunted Mansion, he came up with the Museum of the Weird, a guided walkthrough spook house filled with mystical illusions, and psychedelic, daemonic imagery. (more…)

The Chicago Tribune published a profile of C. Spike Trotman, one of indie comics' most insightful young publishers. Trotman's proving that the mainstream business is leaving everything on the table—and that underserved readers don't need to wait for it to catch up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiN3jNV9yNIPixatool (previously), an excellent app that turns any image into perfectly-tuned pixel art, is already on its second edition: a complete rewrite that adds a much better user interface, can batch-process images, and can load restrictive palettes for all your peculiar 8-bit nostalgia needs (I'll be making use of this to conform work to the Amstrad CPC pallette, one of the 1980s' more masochistic examples). Best of all, the new version's on sale at $9.95. The creator, Davit Masia, also created a simple online toy that turns pixel art into bead art or lego.