Plenty of folks have bemoaned the disappearance of the audio jack from phones. Among other problems, it'll create "DRM for audio", since any sound that reaches your need-to-charge-them-all-the-time earbuds will now be served up by software-defined bluetooth -- so phone- and app-makers will be able to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks on your music-listening, halting any signals they don't like or don't approve of.All well-discussed problems! But here, Charlie Hoey writes something deeper -- a lovely ode to the audio jack as a vestige of sheerly analog engineering.As he notes, the audio jack speaks in the language of voltage. This grounds it in the world of pure physics, and makes it hackable for all sorts of weird and unexpected purposes, like the way Stripe uses it to read the magstripes on bank-cards:

What’s old is new again in this week’s tabloids, which plunder the past for today’s headlines.Child pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in 1996, but the National Enquirer claims that its "investigation finally solves” the slaying. The magazine, which has in the past alternately blamed JonBenet’s mother, father, brother, and various strangers for the slaying, insists it has now “cracked the cold case after 21 years,” under the headline: “This Evil Monster Murdered JonBenet.”The killer? A now-dead neighbor who was thoroughly scrutinized by police during their investigation, and dismissed as a suspect. Why is Glenn Meyer now fingered as the murderer? Because his ex-wife, Charlotte Hey, claims: “When I asked him if he murdered her, he would just smile at me. He wouldn’t deny it.” Sounds like a confession to me.“Queen Survives Assassin’s Bullet!” screams the Globe cover, failing to mention that the incident – alleged by a former New Zealand police officer – occurred 36 years ago, in 1981. British police are reportedly stepping up security, which seems appropriate 36 years after the event.Equally ancient is the National Examiner cover story claiming to finally solve the Natalie Wood “murder.” The actress drowned in 1981, and the tabloids have spent decades trying – and failing – to pin the blame on her husband, actor Robert Wagner. The Examiner claims that “new testimony could put Wagner away!” But we’ve seen this supposedly new evidence before. Marilyn Wayne, who allegedly heard a woman’s voice shouting: “Help me, I’m drowning!” on the night of Wood’s death, is not a “secret witness” as the Examiner claims. Her claims were widely reported in 2011, and the Examiner adds nothing new. Trees died for this?Then there are the stories we’ve seen before: Prince Charles has filed for divorce from wife Camilla, reports the Globe (another story supposedly missed by the entire British Royal press pack); Will Smith has split from wife Jada Pinkett-Smith claims the Enquirer (a story they repeat almost every six months presumably in the belief that one day they’ll be right), while the Globe yet again reports on “Michael Douglas’ marriage crisis,” claiming that wife Catherine Zeta-Jones is planning to divorce because Douglas has been hit with sex harassment allegations dating back three decades, long before she ever met him. Right.Meghan Markle’s coming May wedding to Prince Harry captures the covers of both Us and People magazines, with equally unenlightening results. Us rehashes old interview clippings to intuit Markle’s fitness and diet regime, while People employs old quotes and unnamed insiders for its feature on the growing friendship between Markle and Kate Middleton. Says one source: “I can imagine Kate will find a great friend in her.” And isn’t imagining the future what good journalism is all about?Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us to tell us that Carmen Electra wore it best (doesn’t she always?), that snowboarder Shaun White sits “way too close to the TV,” that actress Anna Farris carries Kind bars, a crystal, and dry shampoo (because “I’m lazy, and I don’t always shower”) in her Fjallraven Kanken backpack, and that the stars are just like us: they walk their dogs, tote luggage, and drink coffee. Revelatory, as ever.What do Mick Jagger, Olivia Newton-John, Jackie Gleason, David Bowie, John F Kennedy, Russell Crowe and Shirley MacLaine have in common? They have all “claimed close encounters” with aliens or UFOs, according to the Examiner. Kennedy allegedly wrote to the CIA chief demanding to see confidential files about UFOs just days before his assassination. Coincidence...?Onwards and downwards . . .

Microfluidic systems that move and mix tiny amounts of liquids are used in laboratories for biotechnology, chemistry, and even the development of inkjet technology. Frequently, microfluidic devices are integrated into a single "lab on a chip" but fabricating such systems can be costly and time-consuming. Now, MIT researchers are using customized LEGO bricks to make a modular microfluidics platform. Their prototype system "could be used to manipulate biological fluids and perform tasks such as sorting cells, filtering fluids, and encapsulating molecules in individual droplets." From MIT:

A mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot in one location, but Seattle ad agency Cole & Weber believes that mass shootings happen every single day in America, just not all in one place.This week marks the 1000th gun death in this country since 2018 began. Tired of the status-quo and lack of action, the agency took a break from regular client work in an attempt to keep this issue top of mind -- not just once, but every single day.A team worked together to develop technology that uses constantly-updating gun data to automatically create a video every morning that shows the number of people who were killed by guns the day prior, and a first-person street view where the shooting took place. Each death is ticked off with the gut-wrenching sound of a gunshot, one after the next, creating a sobering message that this violence is happening all around us, all the time. The video creation is fully automated, and targeted at influencers, politicians, their aids, and the media via Twitter account: @DailyGunDeaths.

United Airlines barred Dexter, an emotional support peacock, from boarding a flight at Newark International Airport on Saturday. From the Washington Post:

An Amtrak train carrying GOP lawmakers and their staff to a retreat has collided with a garbage truck, killing at least one person, and injuring others. This is a developing story.(more…)

So, geophysicists have been studying the earth's magnetic field, and they think it's getting ready to "flip" -- with the north and south poles changing places.(more…)

Earlier this month, a game called HAPPY WORLD by Jimi Masuraki was released on itch.io. When I first downloaded it, I honestly thought I might play it for 15 minutes during my free-block at school, at then uninstall it and be done. But after five or ten minutes of completing simple quests and making the digital people happy, I realized that this wasn’t another free lackluster game.Not only did the adorably simplistic art style and funny nonchalant conversations between the player and the entities in the game cause me (and a few of my classmates) to laugh out loud, but once I got home and got further into the story, I found that there was intentional – and dark – lore in the game that was left for the player to discover on their own. I immediately knew that I was going to have to finish the game to unravel all the secrets — and in just less than an hour I did — but it wasn’t the ending that I was looking for. I restarted the game and started my attempt to figure out how to trigger the game’s true ending, and I was not at all disappointed.I do not plan to spoil anything here, but if you are looking for a quick, free, and overall fantastic game to play, I recommend HAPPY WORLD. It’s an incredible mix of a happy-go-lucky simple world, and a darker, more depressing one hidden underneath. I truly doubt you’ll be disappointed. You can download it for free here.Also, you can go to Jimi Masuraki’s Patreon page here, because he makes pretty great, fun games that you really can’t find anywhere else.

Some of these near-misses would probably have been catastrophic and unavoidable without predictive autopilot. (more…)

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fancied herself an expert on etiquette this morning during an interview on CNN. While discussing Trump's State of the Union Speech, CNN's Chris Cuomo said that the room was "grossly divided," and that he'd never seen House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's face like that before, referring to Pelosi's look of frustration."I think Nancy Pelosi looks like that all the time," Sanders responded. “I think she should smile a lot more often. I think the country would be better for it. She seems to kind of embody the bitterness that belongs in the Democrat Party right now.”Interesting that she thinks Pelosi should smile when Pelosi doesn't feel like smiling, but doesn't point to Bernie Sanders (not known for his smiles) or any of the other unsmiling people in the room last night, shown in the video below: https://youtu.be/9zsBmgSWMBsVia Think Progress

Brenda Fitzgerald was Donald Trump's Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, charged with reducing smoking among Americans and doing work that directly affected the financial fortunes of tobacco companies when she bought a stake in Japan Tobacco.(more…)

Artist Jenny Odell created the Bureau of Suspended Objects to photographically archive and researched the manufacturing origins of 200 objects found at a San Francisco city dump; last August, she prepared a special report for Oakland's Museum of Capitalism about the bizarre world of shitty "free" watches sold through Instagram influences and heavily promoted through bottom-feeding remnant ad-buys, uncovering a twilight zone of copypasted imagery and promotional materials livened with fake stories about mysterious founders and branded tales. (more…)

Nerf has unveiled six new blasters that will ship in fall of 2018, with some pretty amazing features, as detailed in Josie Colt's Wired roundup: the N-Strike Elite Infinius has a funnel you pour ammo into and it automagically slots them into a 30-dart magazine; the Modulus Ghost Ops Evader has a how-it-works-style transparent housing that lights up; the Zombie Strike Survival System Scravenger has twin dart-clips and a breakaway secondary blaster with two holdout shots; while the Nitro Doubleclutch Inferno fires little foam rolling cars around a tracked obstacle course. (more…)

The FCC's order killing Net Neutrality in December 2016 also includes a prohibition on states making their own telcoms rules that restore it (this is a mixed bag -- if states' rights don't permit them to overrule the FCC, then a future FCC that reinstates a Net Neutrality order could stop states whose governments are captured by telcoms lobbyists from subverting it), and states have fought back though a loophole: the governors of Montana and New York have issued executive orders banning non-Neutral ISPs from doing business with the government; but in California, the State Senate just went further. (more…)

Comics writer G. Willow Wilson, who previously lived in Egypt and wrote for the opposition weekly Cairo Magazine, writes movingly and hauntingly on Twitter about the experience of a living in a state that is transitioning into dictatorship, which does not feel "intrinsically different on a day-to-day basis than a democracy does," but rather is marked by "the steady disappearance of dissent from the public sphere. Anti-regime bloggers disappear. Dissident political parties are declared 'illegal.' Certain books vanish from the libraries." (more…)

Make No Law is a just-launched podcast hosted by Ken "Popehat" White (previously), a former Federal prosecutor who writes some of the best, most incisive legal commentary on the web; the first episode deals with the oft-cited, badly misunderstood "fighting words" doctrine and its weird history in the religious prosecution of Jehovah's Witnesses (my sole complaint is that he didn't work in E. Gary Gygax). (more…)

Before being hired to serve as CEO of Wag, a dogwalking startup that just received a $300,000,000 investment from Softbank, Hilary Schneider presided over Lifelock, a company whose fraudulent anti-fraud products cost it over $100,000,000 in fines, before Schneider convinced Symantec to buy it for an absurd $2.6 billion. (more…)

France is in turmoil. Heavy discounts of Nutella have resulted in "scenes of violence" at supermarkets as shoppers vie to obtain as much of the chocolate and hazelnut spread as possible.

This might very well be my new favorite thing. While the "Super Big Wrapped in Warmth Happy Furry Jeans Sleeping Bag" looks like an oversized pair of dungarees, it's really just a giant novelty sleeping bag built for two!It even comes with two bandana-patterned pillows, which fit adorably in the back pockets...It's available at Japan Trend Shop for $696. Grab one for me too and we'll have a sleepover.(GeekAlerts)

It's hard to imagine that contemporary discussions in the White House are even dumber than those between Richard Nixon, John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman.

There's SO much Star Wars merch out there and few galactic items catch my eye anymore.Well, that is until I came across this robotic vacuum POWERbot duo by Samsung. One looks like the head of a stormtrooper and the other of Darth Vader. Both play some of your "favorite Star Wars sound effects," including the theme song. (Sure! Why not?)Get that second mortgage because prices for these snazzy limited-edition vacuums start at $599.Also, related: I wasn't sure if "stormtrooper" was capitalized or not (it's not) and came across this Star Wars style guide while looking for the answer.

Glenn Payette is a TV news reporter for CBC in Newfoundland and Labrador. Over the years, his pronunciation of the name of the province's capital has undergone an amazing transformation.Previously: Gustavo Almadovar

Multiplying large numbers before calculators led to a number of ingenious inventions to make things easier, like these Genaille-Lucas rulers demonstrated by the fine folks at DONG.Via manufacturer Creative Crafthouse:

Whether you aim to work in marketing, fashion, or even game design, one of the tools you'll need to get comfortable with is Adobe Photoshop. This image editing tool has become a staple for producing gripping visual content, and understanding its ins and outs is a whole lot easier with the Ultimate Adobe Photo Editing Bundle, now on sale for $19.From the absolute essentials to high-end retouching techniques, this eight-course collection is designed to take you from beginner to expert with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. You'll dabble in a host of these programs' applications, including graphic design and photo editing, and leverage essential tools like the Magic Wand, Lasso Tool, Quick Selection Tool and more to create professional-quality content that can bolster your portfolio.The Ultimate Adobe Photo Editing Bundle was on sale for $29.99 in the Boing Boing Store, but you can get it today at a new sale price of $19.

Vinyl jukeboxes are making a comeback, and Sound Leisure built this incredible Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band vinyl jukebox to celebrate the album's 50th anniversary. (more…)

Except for some interior stairs and some retrofitted safety and stabilizing additions, the inside of the Leaning Tower of Pisa is smooth marble. This lovely tour goes all the way up to the bells at the top, offering a great view. (more…)

Glenn Thrush, who apologized for his behavior around women colleagues at The New York Times, is returning to work there after his time off.

Almost directly behind the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California is a garage that has been converted into a tiny museum dedicated to fragrance. Its curator, author and perfumer Mandy Aftel, opened the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents just last year.Bianca Taylor of KQED Arts recently visited the archive and writes:

Libyan desert glass is a material of unknown origin scattered across a large swath of the Sahara. Among it, scientists found Hypatia stones, a strange phosphorous-nickel alloy recently determined to be extra-terrestrial. (more…)

Leonardo Chiariglione is founder and chairman of the International Standards Organization's Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG), whose standards have dominated video playback since the earliest days; MPEG's primary rival is the Alliance for Open Media, an ascendant open standards body that requires that members promise not to enforce patents that overlap with its standards, meaning that anyone can play back AOM video without paying rent to MPEG members. (more…)

I've been cutting my own hair since I was 18, so I learned not to do this a long time ago.

Just because domesticated primates have taken over the planet doesn't mean they can be rude to wild members of their order without suffering consequences, as this aggrieved monkey demonstrates.https://i.imgur.com/OSxZrzl.gifv

When Sean Hannity's Twitter account went offline for a few hours over the weekend (Hannity fans say the deep state did it), a woman named Dell Gilliam set up a parody account called @SeanHannity__ (note the underscores). Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, thought the account belonged to Hannity and sent a direct message to the account offering some "new about Warner" (meaning Democratic senator Mark Warner, who is part of the Trump-Russia investigation.(more…)

Rep Dan Lipinski (@RepLipinski) is Congressman for Illinois's 3rd congressional district; he voted against marriage equality and opposes abortion and and the $15 minimum wage. He is up for re-election next November. (more…)

Garbage collectors in Ankara, Turkey, have opened a library with all the books that people throw out.

An Italian postman has had a hard time parting with other people's mail. The 56-year-old gentleman, from Vicenza Italy, has been hoarding mail in his garage – mail that included letters, bills, statements, and pamphlets – that go as far back as 2010.He had stashed over 1,000 pounds of mail in yellow plastic containers that belonged to the post office – 43 of them in all. But he now must part with his collection, as a recycling company discovered it when they came to clean out his garage.The Vicenza post office promised to deliver all of the mail - even if some of it is eight years too late.Via ReutersImage: Judith E. Bell

Cottereau: This video shows the borders and populations of each country in Europe, for every year since 400 BC. Vassal states and colonies are not included in the count of a country's population." What a mess! One thing I learned is how sparsely-populated Britain was in the Roman age.

What happens when a 32,000-lumen flashlight gets concentrated through a magnifying glass or a fresnel lens? Some cool optics, but not a lot of burning. (more…)

Apple is way ahead of the pack, but even the losers at Oracle are making $279 a second. The original graphic, by Pablo Gomez, is interactive and a must-see.

Bill the Engineer Guy made this interesting video about the design of the drinking bird toy. I didn't know Albert Einstein spent 3.5 months studying it.

A passenger train crashed into a FedEx truck, smashing it right in half during a snow storm last Saturday in North Salt Lake, Utah. With such dramatic dashcam footage, it's a wonder nobody was hurt.According to CNN:

Silvio Berlusconi, a misogynist, racist creep-authoritarian who was caught paying a teenager for sex and then lied to cops to get them to stop investigating the case, is banned from holding public office in Italy thanks to a criminal conviction for fraud; but that hasn't kept Italy's media (a large slice of which he controls) from elevating him to the role of political kingmaker in the country's upcoming elections. (more…)

The Santa Cruz Shredder actually does leave me with fluffier and more evenly burning weed.Over time the very act of grinding weed wears out my herb grinders. Add to that the fact that I use them in the process of smoking dope and you'll understand why I tend to go through one or two a year. As I was recently replacing my Sativa grinder, which gets the most use, the weed wizard at my local shop introduced me to the Santa Cruz Shredder.The squared off teeth and bottom affixed central post in the Santa Cruz Shredder leave your processed marijuana product fluffier and less 'ground down' -- this may be the shape of the teeth, or the slightly larger pass-thru holes for shredded stuff. Regardless, I find that bowls draw with more ease and the weed seems to burn more evenly in my Twisty Glass Blunt.This isn't a run out and get one right now kind of improvement, but I'll be buying this style grinder going forward. If you need a new one, give it a try!Santa Cruz Shredder 4 Piece Medium New (Black) via Amazon

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Berlin is one of many European cities that have faced new housing crises -- or worsening existing ones -- attributed to Airbnb, where homes were converted to unlicensed, super-profitable hotel rooms, driving up housing prices, shrinking rental inventory, and making the city unaffordable for the people who lived and worked there. (more…)

Jeremy Corbyn's incredible, odds-defying showing in the 2017 UK general election has been attributed to a "youthquake" of first-time young voters who were drawn to the polls by his progressive policies. (more…)

Just over a year ago, the top court in Europe ruled that the Snoopers Charter, a mass surveillance regime created by the ruling Tory party, was unconstitutional. (more…)

The General Data Protection Regulation will be enforced as of May, and once it does, internet companies will no longer be able to collect or share your data unless they give you a clear, simple explanation of how it will be used, and get your consent, along with contact details for named individuals who report directly to the business's senior management. (more…)

Izac Moores: "This reference riddled project has been in the works for almost a year. If you can't quite figure out where something is from, a labelled version of the video is available here: https://youtu.be/SGdnN8W30ho." The track is Pop Culture by Madeon [Amazon].Previously: Justice - DVNOhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiDsLRQg_g4