InsecthausTV is a channel dedicated to all sorts of wonderful insects, and this collection of mantises all frozen in attack mode is no exception. (more…)

Topi Tjukanov makes remarkable mapped data visualization, like this map of optimal routes by car from the geographic center of the contiguous United States to all counties. (more…)

Steven Burton embarked on an amazing project -- taking photos of ex-gang members in LA and then meticulously photoshopping away their extensive tattoos. It took about 400 hours of 'shopping.When Burton showed the results to the photograph subjects, they were mesmerized by the spectacle of themselves looking so different -- a sort of parallel universe of possibility, a digitally-revealed road-not-taken. Some laughed; some wept.There's a good story about Burton's project here at DIY Photography, with several examples of the pics, and Burton has released Skin Deep, a book of all the before-and-after images. As the publisher describes it ...

Nowadays, cybercriminals are so advanced that it takes other hackers to bring them down. Known as ethical, or "white hat" hackers, these professionals make a living using their hacking skills to keep networks safe from attack. With cybercrime being a hot-button issue now, demand for these experts is surging, and becoming one is easier than you think. The Computer Hacker Professional Certification Bundle can prepare you to take on cybercriminals after only five courses, and it's on sale for $49.Featuring 60 hours of training, this collection will get you up and running with the ethical hacking essentials and prepare you to ace several industry certification exams, like CISSP, CISA, and CISM. You'll explore wireless network security vulnerabilities and how hackers avoid protective measures like IDS, firewalls, and honeypots. Plus, you'll dive into hacking forensics and learn what actions to take once a hacking attack has been identified.The Computer Hacker Professional Certification Bundle is available now for $49.

It looks like everyday folks -- recruited on Mechanical Turk, no less -- are better at predicting recidivism than the elite, secretive private-sector algorithms used by courts.The software, COMPAS, has passed judgment on 1 million offenders since it was introduced in 1998. It uses 137 bits of data about offenders to predict their chance of recidivism, but its accuracy is dodgy: A Pro Publica investigation of its output suggests it isn't much better than coin toss, and also that it's racist, being nearly twice as likely to suggest blacks will reoffend than whites with comparable criminal records. It would be nice to examine the algorithm to see how it's weighing the variables, but no dice: Northpointe, the firm that runs COMPAS, says it's a proprietary secret. But now there's yet more evidence that COMPAS's algorithmic precision isn't great. Two Dartmouth college researchers did a shoot-out. They took 1,000 defendants and examined COMPAS' predictions for recidivism. Then they paid 400 people on Mechanical Turk to look at the defendants' files and make their own prediction. The researchers gave the turks only seven pieces of data about each defendant, none of which was race. The researchers also had the real-life data on whether the defendants really had, in fact, reoffended -- so they could see how well COMPAS stacked up against random folks on Amazon Turk.The result? The randos did better than the software. The turks' predictions were right 67% of the time; the software, 65%. As Wired reports:

Built in the 1920s as High Point, North Carolina's "Bureau of Information," this 36-foot-tall The Goddard-Townsend style dresser/building represents the area's furniture and hosiery industries (note the socks).It is considered the world's largest freestanding chest of drawers, though down the street an 80-foot-tall bureau was created a few years back as a building's facade.Now, for a mere $235K, this unusual High Point icon -- a commercial property -- could be yours. (Pee-wee Herman, Old House Dreams)first image via Google, second photo by Laurie Hlywa

Three salmon fishers had to leap out of their small craft to avoid being rammed by a speedboat that nearly killed them. The speedboat driver, Marlin Lee Larsen (75), said he couldn't see the little boat because he was sitting down and the front of his boat was blocking his view. One of the fisherman is suing the speedboat driver for over $350,000.From SF Gate:

Inspired by this artwork depicting Bruce Lee with lightsaber nunchucks, artist Patrick Nan of San Jose, California decided to add some light-weapons to the karate master's 1972 Fist of Fury. It's a cool effect!(The Awesomer)

There's a fascinating linguistic fight brewing in Kazakhstan, due to the president's decision to adopt a new alphabet for writing their language, Kazakh.The problem? It's got too many apostrophes!For decades, Kazakhs have used the Cyrillic alphabet, which was imposed on them by the USSR back in the 30s. Now that Kazakhstan has started moving away from Russia -- including making Kazakh more central in education and public life -- the president decided he wanted to adopt a new alphabet, too. He wanted it based on the Latin one.But! Kazakh has many unique sounds that can't be easily denoted using a Latin-style alphabet.Kazakhstan's neighbors solved that problem by following the example of Turkey, where they use umlauts and phonetic symbols. But Kazkhstan's president didn't want that -- and instead has pushed for the use of tons of apostrophes instead.Kazakhstan's linguists intellectuals think this is nuts, as the New York Times reports:

This cheerful battery powered wall clock is 9.5 inches in diameter. I got one for our kitchen. It's only $8 on Amazon.

Shakespeare wrote that "All the world's a stage." But for Oakland, California-based Ashel Eldridge, he's made his car his stage. Dubbed "The Lyft Rapper," he invites his passengers to choose a topic and style of song and he'll make up a song about it on the spot.KQED Arts writes:

One of the few permitted vices in Nineteen Eighty-Four is Victory Gin, which oils the outer party and offers suggestions of Englishness and party power: it's always served with clove bitters, implying that Oceania's boots are on the ground in Asia. Chemistry professor Shirley Lin wrote an interesting post about gin's place in Orwell's dystopia.

Bravo to the skilled rescuer who freed this dog who was stuck in a frozen river.(more…)

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Kenneth Collins was arrested by the FBI this week for allegedly supplying security for drug dealers.From KTLA 5:

The White House Press Office in Exile, otherwise known as the tabloids, is in full Trump-boosting, Clinton-bashing, Obama-blaming mode this week.The president, who has previously lamented the injustice of the National Enquirer being deprived of the Pulitzer Prize it so richly deserves, should be pleased with the rag’s immolation of Michael Wolff’s political bestseller Fire and Fury, with a cover headline branding it a “Book of Lies!”“Staffers think prez is dumb. FALSE!” screams the Enquirer's front page. “His ego is out of control. FALSE! He’s hated by his own family. FALSE!”Not satisfied with demolishing Wolff’s reporting, the Enquirer claims that the book is part of an attack on Trump “orchestrated by Puppet Master-in-Chief Barack Obama!” Wolff is “part of the Obama hit team” chosen by America's last president to undermine Trump, claims the magazine. And to prove its point, the Enquirer sent audio and video tapes of Wolff for stress analysis, and concluded “Michael Wolff is lying throughout.” Well, you can’t argue with science.Sister publication the Globe dances like it’s 2016 all over again, with its cover story about Bill and Hillary Clinton's alleged "$365 million bribery scandal” at the Clinton Foundation under the headline: "We’re Guilty!" Inside, the story reveals: “Crooked Clintons Confess!"But it’s not just Bill & Hill freely admitting their life of lies – “Trump nails Clinton confession,” the Globe crows. Did Trump grill the Clintons in interrogation rooms under bright lights? Hardly.As the FBI mounts a new probe into possible pay-to-play politics by the Clintons and their Foundation, the Globe claims that the Clintons sought a plea deal to make the whole ugly business go away – and that Trump ordered the Justice Department to make no sweetheart deals, “making good on his promise to lock up the crooked Clintons.”Two quick points: (1) discussing a plea deal is far from a confession, and (2) since the probe is only days old it’s unlikely that the Clintons would consider a plea deal before knowing whether the investigation has even dug up any incriminating evidence. The report sounds more like wishful thinking by the Globe team of psychic reporters.The fantasies continue in the Globe with “Camilla’s Deathbed Revenge!” claiming that Princes Charles’ wife is “secretly negotiating a mega-bucks deal to tell all in a blockbuster TV interview!” Her aim? “. . . to bring down the royals before she’s killed by liver cancer.” Another couple of quick thoughts: (1) You’re not on your “deathbed” if you’re seen walking around quite happily at the Royal Family’s Christmas Day church service, and announcing plans to visit a brewery in Wales later this month; and (2) as I’ve noted before, Camilla’s diagnosis of liver cancer appears to have been missed by the combined ranks of Britain’s Royal press corps, clearly lacking the psychic skills of the Globe paranormal reporting team.The tabloids are back to their usual prognosticatory feats with their latest death watch stories. TV’s Jeopardy host Alex Trebek, who recently underwent surgery to remove blood clots from his brain, has just “9 weeks to live!” claims the Globe. Start the countdown. Let’s not forget Nick Nolte, given just six months to live 18 months ago.Meanwhile the Enquirer claims that Val Kilmer – given just months to live more than two years ago – now has less than 12 months to live as “cancer spreads to his brain – docs fear.” Docs fear? That’s sloppy, even for the Enquirer. They usually claim that “friends fear” a celebrity is ill, which they can get away with because “friends" aren’t medical experts. But doctors? They know if cancer has spread to the brain or not.Michael Douglas “knows he could pass away at any time,” an unnamed source tells the Enquirer. Shocking. Couldn’t we all?Meghan Markle’s “Wedding Dilemmas” dominate the cover of Us magazine, which details “the bride’s 11 agonizing decisions.” These make first world problems seem trivial: “What tiara will she wear? Will her dad walk her down the aisle? Who will design her dress?” The one question they don’t address: Who cares?People magazine devotes its cover to TV’s former Today show host Ann Curry, who “breaks her silence” and “opens up about the pain of leading the Today show.” Okay, how much did it hurt? “It hurt like hell . . but I’m stronger now.” Good to know.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Alessandra Ambrosio wore it best, that actress Elsa Pataky’s “worst habit is eating doughnuts,” that Xscape singer Kandi Burruss carries lipstick, perfume and deodorant in her tote, and that the stars are just like us: they pump gas, buy toilet paper, and eat lunch. Enlightening, as always.The National Examiner once again brings us the week’s best headline: “E.T. Stole My Virginity!” in which David Huggins, aged 74, of New Jersey, “reveals a VERY close encounter he had as a teen.” Huggins claims in a new documentary that he not only lost his virginity to an alien, but that he fathered dozens of alien hybrid children. “She had a very nice body,” says Huggins of his extra-terrestrial lover. Sounds about as plausible as everything else in this week’s tabloids.Onwards and downwards . . .

The designers of the Starbucks logo decided that making the siren's face slightly asymmetrical gave her the right mix of mystery and allure.From Co. Design:

Wow, Sen. Jeff Flake had some powerful words to say against Donald Trump and his disregard for the truth today on the Senate floor. Some of the highlights:"An American president who cannot take criticism – who must constantly deflect and distort and distract – who must find someone else to blame – is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the President adds to the danger.""2017 was a year which saw the truth, objective empirical evidence-based truth more battered and abused than at any time in the history of our country at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year which saw the white house enshrine 'alternative facts' into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be called old fashioned falsehoods."Mr President, it is a testament to our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Joseph Stalin to describe his enemies," Flake said. "It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase 'enemy of the people,' that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of 'annihilating such individuals' who disagreed with the supreme leader.""For without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last."Flake will not be running for re-election in 2018, which gives him, a Republican, the freedom to speak out against Trump's bullshit. Too bad those seeking re-election can't do the same.Via CNN

I love gravy on chicken and potatoes, but in my cocktail? Not so sure, but I guess I'd try it. KFC's new marketing ploy is all about the gravy – and how it fits in behind the bar, offering us a few gravy cocktail recipes. This video shows us how to mix up a mean Gravy Mary. Yum?

Finally a pencil sharpener I want on my desk.I rarely leave home without my Rolleiflex. This TLR shaped pencil sharpener is pretty damn cool.Here is a short tribute to my Rollei.Retro Camera Manual Pencil Sharpener Hand-Cranking via Amazon

A meteor lit up the southeastern Michigan sky at 8:08 pm last night, and here is one of the dashcams that caught it.According to the Washington Post:

People often stumble while trying to find metaphors that explain what, precisely, writing computer code is like. In "Code Like a Weaver", the software developer Kristina Taylor notes that she got all her conceptual framework from her mom, who exposed her to baking, laundry, and weaving. Baking taught her fractions and math; hanging the laundry taught a concept uncannily like the "software stack"; and weaving is about as algorithmic as things get.As Taylor notes, the 19th-century Jacquard Loom -- which was fed weaving patterns via punch-cards -- set the stage for the idea of feeding instructions into obedient machines, and watching abstracted patterns rendered onto the world. Lately, Taylor's been using her personal loom to weave Swedish lace, and she prototypes her patterns by taking the structure of Swedish lace and emulating it using cell formulas in Google Spreadsheets:

Political scientist and sf fan Henry Farrell (previously) argues persuasively that the dystopian elements of our everyday life are best viewed through the lens of Philip K Dick (whose books repeatedly depicted a world of constructed realities, whose true nature was obscured by totalitarians, conspiracies, and broken computers) and not Orwell or Huxley, whose computers and systems worked altogether too well to be good parallels for today's janky dystopia. (more…)

A new research report from Kaspersky Labs details their analysis of Skygofree, a newly discovered strain of malware that offers some of the most comprehensive and invasive surveillance tools ever seen for Android. (more…)

To celebrate what would have been David Bowie's 71st birthday, Chic's Nile Rodgers shared this newly-mixed demo of the 1983 hit single, "Let's Dance."Rolling Stone reports:

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.JOIN the team at Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE, and get exclusive early access to comics, extra comics, extra commentary, and much more.GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. (”Filled with wild twists and funny dialogue” -Publishers Weekly) Book One here. Book Two here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Last week we witnessed the Star Wars "Cantina Band" theme song being played with a pencil as a math formula. Now, YouTuber TheCubician has made of a video of him playing the song simply by manipulating a Rubik's Cube.It now seems like a challenge to come up with new, crazy ways to play the song. What's the logical progression of this? The spoons? Bong hits? What you got, internet?

The coder and artist Brannon Dorsey (previously) wondered about the potential of "browser based botnets" -- running Javascript on tons of machines, stitched together into one massively parallel computer.As he notes, this is already happening; among other things, there's cryptocurrency malware that hijacks your browser to do mining. But that Javascript generally only hits you if you visit the site hosting it. Dorsey wondered if there was a faster, more efficient way to inject malicious Javascript into tons of browsers.And he discovered that there was: Online ad networks! Anyone can make an account, create an ad with god-knows-what Javascript in it, then pay to have the network serve that ad up to thousands of browser. So that's what Dorsey did -- very successfully. Within about three hours, his code (experimental, not malicious, apart from surreptitiously chewing up processing resources) was running on 117,852 web browsers, on 30,234 unique IP addresses. Adtech, it turns out, is a superb vector for injecting malware around the planet.Some other fun details: Dorsey found that when people loaded his ad, they left the tab open an average of 15 minutes. That gave him huge amounts of compute time -- 327 full days, in fact, for about $15 in ad purchase. To see what such a botnet could do, he created one to run a denial-of-service attack (against his own site, just to see if it worked: It did pretty well). He got another to mine the cryptocurrency Monero, at rates that will be profitable if Monero goes much higher.The most interesting experiment was in writing an adtech-botnet to store and serve Bittorrent files, via Webtorrent. That worked pretty well too: He got 180,175 browsers to run his torrent file in 24 hours, with a 702 Mbps upload speed for the entire network.All told, this is yet another reason to run an adblocker:

In 1703, London had a strange visitor, a young man who ate raw meat and claimed that he came from an unknown country on the island of Taiwan. Though many doubted him, he was able to answer any question he was asked, and even wrote a best-selling book about his homeland. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll consider the curious question of the man from Formosa.We'll also scrutinize a stamp forger and puzzle over an elastic Utah.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

A legal battle against the recent repeal of Net Neutrality regulations by Trump's Federal Communications Commission has begun.(more…)

Just days after Hawaii issued a false alarm about an incoming ballistic missile from North Korea, a Japanese broadcaster made a similar mistake today.NHK television, or Japan Broadcasting Corporation, reported online and on Twitter that North Korea had fired a missile at Japan and that residents should take shelter. North Korea did not actually fire any missiles, and minutes later NHK deleted its tweets and "apologized several times on air," according the The Guardian. "A mistake in using the alert system caused the error."Jeez, weird coincidence with these mistaken missile alerts, to say the least. Another one of these and we could face a potential Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf disaster once an actual missile threat were to become a reality.Image: USN/Wikimedia

The Advocate reports that three suspects are being sought after a robbery in Baton Rouge, one of them dressed in a clown hood: "Ernie Ballard III, a spokesman for the university, said three men robbed a student of an iPhone outside of the dorm building before fleeing the area.He said no one was injured."

https://vimeo.com/233573799Joey Eschrich from ASU's Center for Science and Imagination writes, "To celebrate the official 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (previously) on January 1, 2018, we’ve launched Frankenstein200, a free, interactive, multiplatform experience for kids. Developed in partnership with the award-winning transmedia studio No Mimes Media (cofounded by the hyper-talented Maureen McHugh), with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Frankenstein200 is a digital narrative paired with hands-on activities happening in January and February at museums and science centers across the United States." (more…)

“One year of Trump. One year of unprecedented conflicts of interest.”In 2017, at least 4 foreign governments, 16 special interest groups and 35 Republican congressional campaign committees all spent money at Trump properties, data compiled by government watchdog group Public Citizen reveals.(more…)

This PowerJive USB Multimeter measures amps, volts and mAh on all my portable devices.I wanted to know if my 3 year old 10,000 mAh USB powerbank was still holding anything close to 10,000 mAh. This USB multimeter does exactly what I am looking for. The meter sits in-line between your charging source and whatever device you seek to charge. Simply plugging the dongle in turns it on. The device immediately displays volts and charging amps.To test capacity of a battery first you need to drain it completely. Reset the meter by plugging in the powered side, and then holding in the units only button for a few seconds. The mAh meter will zero out, and you can plug in whatever you want to charge up. When the device reaches 100% charge, the mAh meter will tell you approximately what your capacity is, at that charging rate. My 3 year old 10,000 mAh powerbank, that has seen several hundred cycles, still has about 82% of its charge.PowerJive USB Voltage/Amps Power Meter Tester Multimeter, Test speed of chargers, cables, capacity of power banks via Amazon

Sen. Lindsey Graham had some interesting things to say to reporters outside a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today. "How does it end?" he asks, referring to the current immigration fight in Congress and possible government shutdown this Friday. "Does it end with the government shutting down? We should all be kicked out if that happens."The Republican Senator from South Carolina went on to say, "We can not do this with people in charge of the White House who have an irrational view on how to fix immigration."Earlier in the video he describes trump as two different presidents, the one he saw early Thursday who was in the right mindset, and then by noon the president that must've been influenced by his staff. "Something happened between 10:00 and 12:00... I don't think the president was well-served by his staff."Here's the full video:https://youtu.be/KYyKi3kp8eE

Japan has the reputation of being highly efficient, and here is another example of why. When a supermarket in the city of Gamagori realized on Monday that one out of five sold packages of fugu (or pufferfish) was contaminated, city officials didn't mess around. They immediately shouted a recall over a loudspeaker system normally used for catastrophic emergencies such as earthquakes, blasting the product warning to residents in the city loud and clear.Two packages were quickly returned, while two others are still unaccounted for.In the US, if contaminated food requires a product recall, there's a long and winding path of protocol that must occur. First you have to contact the FDA and submit all kinds of product info, the product code id number, manufacturer info, and a string of other data connected to the product, and then you must craft a press release and finally send it out to the public via the media and social media. By then who knows how many people might puking into their toilet, or worse.After the scare, the store told officials it will no longer be carrying fugu, a fish known for its highly toxic organs that only a skilled, certified chef is allowed to handle to make sure it is safely served.Via NBCImage: Chris 71/Wikipedia

After Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rammed through an order killing Net Neutrality -- citing easily disproved lies, ignoring millions of public comments -- activists started pinning their hopes on something called the Congressional Review Act, which gives Congress and the Senate the power to overrule the decisions of regulators from the administrative agencies like the FCC. (more…)

GOP senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, who were in the room when Trump disparaged African countries, told everyone who would listen that Trump didn't say "shithole." Cotton also made a point to shame Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) for claiming that Trump said the word.Now we learn that Cotton and Perdue were using the slimiest of loopholes. They heard Trump say "shithouse," which allowed them to call everyone else in the room a liar for saying Trump said "shithouse."From The Washington Post:

In October 1973, David Bowie appeared for the last time as Ziggy Stardust at the "1980 Floor Show" (Get it? 19-Eighty-Floor? 1984?), a surreal cabaret he curated at London's famed The Marquee Club. Some of the extravaganza was later broadcast on NBC TV's "The Midnight Special." Above, Bowie and Marianne Faithful performing the delightful Sonny & Cher number "I Got You Babe." Bowie later said:

XML pioneer and early blogger Tim Bray went looking through Google for some posts he knew about from 2006 and 2008 and found that Google couldn't retrieve either of them, not even if he searched for lengthy strings that were exact matches for text from the articles; he concluded that "from a busi­ness point of view, it’s hard to make a case for Google in­dex­ing ev­ery­thing, no mat­ter how old and how obscure," and so we could not longer rely on "Google’s glob­al in­fras­truc­ture as my own per­son­al search in­dex for my own per­son­al pub­li­ca­tion­s."(more…)

On Sunday night, Orange County Fire Authority tweeted images from Santa Ana, California of a car that hit a center divider and flew into the air before embedding itself in the second floor of a building. Amazingly, both people in the car only suffered "minor injuries."

https://youtu.be/0DK8emqwntUJimmy Kimmel sent a man onto Hollywood Boulevard to ask people about the current Twitter war between Trump and the late MLK.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed off her impeccable skills as a logician today when she proved, in one sentence, that Trump couldn't be a racist: “Frankly I think if the critics of the president were who he said he was, why did NBC give him a show for a decade on TV?”From New York Magazine:

You've heard "I have a dream," but how about "Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children?" (more…)

In 1974, Upper Arlington, Ohio public library launched a program to link their card catalog and shelved books by odor. The project was called: "Stick Your Nose in the Card Catalog." From Weird Universe:

In /r/changemyview/, thousands of redditors gather to carry on an explicitly, rigorously civil discourse about the subjects that matter most to them: a submitter puts forward views on subjects ranging from the correct interpretation of old movies to the suitability of Donald Trump for president, and then invites the forum to present arguments to change their mind, awarding a Δ (delta) symbol to people whose arguments cause a shift in their beliefs. (more…)

There are cameras everywhere, kids.

Spend an hour relaxing as Peter Deligdisch aka Peter Draws experiments with cool glass inkwell pens and glowing ink. (more…)

In these troubled times, Alex Wellerstein's interactive Nukemap allows users to survey the damage of various kinds of nuclear bombs aimed at major cities worldwide. In this example, a typical Chinese nuke hitting downtown Los Angeles would kill 1.3 million and injure another 3 million. (more…)

Bail is intended to compel defendants show up for court, but for poor citizens who can't make bail, it can lead to pre-trial jail terms that can ruin their lives. The Bail Project profiles Ramel, who was bailed out by the nonprofit Bronx Freedom Fund. (more…)