Boing Boing

Casey Neistat rode on the Etihad A380 The Residence, and made a video about it. The $27,000 ticket (which was comped) is basically a small apartment, which a private bathroom and shower (with a 10-minute meter, as if he was on Arrakis), a living room, and a private bedroom.I like to imagine a rich person flying this way and being miserable because they can't afford a private jet. Read the rest

I'm not usually one for gimmicky kitchen gadgets but OTOTO's Nessie Ladle is cryptozoological comedy genius. Also available as a Sweet Nessie Spoon! (Amazon) Read the rest

Earlier this month at the Festival of Lights event in Riverside, California, a gentleman requested that a caricature artist paint his portrait. Once the drawing was finished, the subject snatched the artist's bag of earnings containing around $500. He left his portrait behind. From KTLA:“Do you recognize this caricature? And no, we are not kidding,” police said in a Facebook post sharing the drawing. “This caricature is of the suspect, but of course, has exaggerated characteristics and features.” Read the rest

Writing for The Atlantic, Geoff Manaugh has a lengthy new article about a team of elite jewel thieves operating in Florida. The story is full of absurdly-cinematic details.The burglars were able to operate for years by moving from town to town, confident the local authorities would not notify each other of the crimes. And when the authorities did investigate, they sometimes did so sloppily, such as overlooking a drill hole in a safe, causing suspicion to fall on the only people who knew the safe's combination. A retired detective started to investigate the burglaries, but found himself largely shunned by active officers, and even fed false information.Eventually, suspicion fell on known thieves, including a man who may flown for the DEA, and a man working as a safe and lock technician.The ensuing investigation included the chase of a man driving a truck loaded with palm trees, and an FBI dive team that had to be disguised lest they be spotted by the conspirators.Read the whole thing here. Read the rest

I remember buying Westwood Studios (miss those guys) point-and-click Blade Runner game to play on my old ThinkPad, back in the late 1990s. It was the first game I can recall owning that spanned multiple disks. While I was surprised to find that the main character in the game neither looked or sounded like Harrison Ford—I didn't know much about how licensing and actor's contracts worked at the time—I was completely hooked from the first time that I turned it on. I finished the game multiple times over the years until, sadly, a friend that I lent the game to moved out of province without returning it to me. By then, I'd moved on to other games and had tired of changing discs just to travel from one area to another. However, every once in a while, I sigh, wistfully, wishing I could give it another go. Today, I found out that this is a very doable thing:From The Verge:Blade Runner is beloved to this day, but until very recently, the odds of a digital rerelease seemed almost nonexistent. Westwood lost the original source code in 2003 during a move. So players needed to find one of the game’s increasingly rare hard copies or an unofficially cracked version of it, then go through the considerable trouble of getting it to work on a modern PC.That started to change this summer when a team started publicly testing ScummVM emulator support. The game became playable through ScummVM in October, but the content still couldn’t be officially found online. Read the rest

A Southern California man and his dog were on their way home from a "disappointing" trip to Sequoia National Park when they encountered a bear. After the bear and dog eyed each other with interest through the windows, the bear jumped on the back of the car. Both the driver and an individual in the next car back managed to get plenty of footage: Read the rest

Jason Stieva (insta) makes elaborate, intense gothic sculptures: skulls with disturbing patterns of growth and embedded machinery, themselves assembled into clocks, ships, and miniature armies of the undead. Amazingly, this isn't his day job: he's a tattoo artist! Read the rest

When it comes to bathroom breaks, do you struggle to stay..."regular"? You're not alone. Most people don't use the toilet correctly, for the simple reason that toilets in the western hemisphere aren't actually designed to make eliminations as easy as they could be.For that, you need a stool. And unlike your toilet, the TURBOâ„¢ Bathroom Toilet Stool is ideally crafted for its job.Studies show that a squatting position on the toilet as vastly better and healthier than a simple sitting posture. But differing body types and leg lengths mean it's difficult to find a stool that suits everyone.The TURBOâ„¢ Bathroom Toilet Stool, however, is slanted ergonomically, with grooves that allow you to anchor your feet lower or higher depending on your needs.It's made of sturdy plastic that can accommodate pressure up to 350 pounds, and stores discreetly under the toilet after each use. It's even equipped with a rolling foot massager in the middle to help you de-stress and "let go," as it were.The TURBOâ„¢ Bathroom Toilet Stool is already on sale for a full 40% off the MSRP, but you can take an additional 15% off the final price by using the holiday discount code MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

This video shows a labrador puppy receiving his D&D alignment examination prior to being put up for adoption. King is adorable. King is a tabula rasa. He'll be two years old now —I wonder how he's doing?King is a 6 week old male AKC yellow lab from Sadie's 2017 litter who will be ready to go home as early as 10/28/17. Read more about our pups and approach to temperament testing at highdesertlabradors.com/new-owner-infomration.htmlIf this wasn't enough, here's a video of a stray kitten getting its first bath. Read the rest

Wally Backman, seen here as manager of the South Georgia Peanuts, just wants to know what he said that got him ejected from the game along with his player. The umpire, he says, is "an embarrassment to professional baseball."The screaming begins 1 minute in; the action begins 3 minutes 8 seconds in. Read the rest

I'm looking forward to Weird West, for a number of reasons. Its hand-painted aesthetic and top-down tactical game play bring to mind all of the love that I hold for Fallout and Fallout 2 and Wasteland 2—as does the fact that it's full of monsters and other horrific entities that crawl around the desert waiting to carve up any travelers that they come across. the description for this recently announced title reads like a shopping list for all of the shit I adore in a game:From Wolfeye Studios:Survive and unveil the mysteries of the Weird West through the intertwined destinies of its unusual heroes in an immersive sim from the co-creators of Dishonored and Prey.Discover a dark fantasy re-imagining of the Wild West where lawmen and gunslingers share the frontier with fantastical creatures. Journey through the origin stories of a group of atypical heroes, written into legend by the decisions you make in an unforgiving land. Each journey is unique and tailored to the actions taken - a series of high stakes stories where everything counts and the world reacts to the choices you make. Form a posse or venture forth alone into otherworldly confines of the Weird West and make each legend your own.Currently, it looks like Weird West is only destined to make its way to Steam, but tell me I'm wrong: this title has Nintendo Switch written all over it. Read the rest

Writing for Vice, Gabriel Soares takes a look at Civilization and why a standard playthrough tends to get more boring as the player reaches modern day technology:what is progress in an historical 4X game? To be blunt, it’s the elimination of difference. The closer you are to “us”, the more you have progressed....Effectively your only decisions are how to advance through a predetermined trajectory culminating with “us”, "the US”. This is easier to perceive in tech trees, but it’s also true of those two other Xs: expand, exterminate. Make the world homogenous, make the world boring. Those early turns players like put them into contact with difference. The rest of the game sees them destroy it.In the course of discussing what "progress" means, Soares describes an effort to study aboriginal culture. A sociologist had planned to derive the "Elementary Forms of Religious Life" by observing the supposedly simplest religion of Aboriginal Australians: Problem is, if you’re going to grade different peoples on their relative simplicity like some kind of Olympic judge, you first need to decide what the sport is. Nobody disputes that Indo-Europeans are great at making products, matter of fact “providers of merchandise” or “people of merchandise” is one of the most common names for the “white man” among Amazonian peoples. But what about everything else?Because those very same Australian aboriginal populations who have been so continuously discriminated against by generations of academics have also developed the most complex kinship systems on the planet. Read the rest

Mark Rober is bad at darts, but he still gets perfect scores, because he's good at engineering.I fulfilled a 3 year long dream to create a dartboard where you get a bullseye every time thanks to some engineering. Basically, you throw a dart and then a Vicon motion capture system tracks the dart in the air. We use those x,y,z positions in matlab to predict where the dart will land using some regression analysis. Once we know where it will land, we move the board to the right spot using 6 stepper motors that attach to the back of the board using fishing line. All of this happens in 400ms or so. Then we took it to a bar to see what people would think of it Read the rest

Buckingham Palace is seeking a Head of Digital Engagement to manage the social media accounts of Queen Elizabeth II and the Royal Family. It's a full-time job and the annual pay is £45,000 - £50,000, depending on experience of course. Perks include free lunch at the Palace! From The Royal Household job listing:It's about never standing still and finding new ways to maintain The Queen's presence in the public eye and on the world stage. This is what makes working for the Royal Household exceptional.The role of Royal Communications is to engage a worldwide audience with the public role and work of The Royal Family. Joining this fast paced and dynamic team, your challenge will be to lead on and develop our digital communications strategy, and ensure that we make effective use of a range of digital platforms to support these aims...Whether you're covering a State Visit, award ceremony or Royal engagement, you'll make sure our digital channels consistently spark interest and reach a range of audiences.(via Neatorama)image: "The British royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, June 2013" by Carfax2 (CC BY-SA 3.0) Read the rest

The 2020 Game Developers Conference will include alt.ctrl.GDC, a showcase of video game using unconventional, accessible or alternative physical controls. The 20 finalists include Far Away Cage, an Alien-inspired game where you interact with the ship by sliding on a skateboard:Ready? Set. Haiya! is a motion-based fighting rhythm game played by interacting with a live-sized kung fu wooden dummy:And The Sword lets players try to find the Grail in order to pull Excalibur from the stone:You can see trailers for the 20 finalists here, including a racing game controlled by manipulating a giraffe head, and a milking game that uses udders. Read the rest

The Internet is getting all aflutter about a gift-wrapping hack shared by DIY lifestyle site Blossom. It went viral after UK bookseller Waterstones posted it in their Twitter feed. What IS this "life-changing" hack? Well, watch:This is a public service announcement 🎄 📚 🤓pic.twitter.com/vCYELqyVQa— Waterstones (@Waterstones) December 16, 2019That's right, if you cut your gift wrap too short, use it diagonally — so obvious it hurts!If you liked that, watch the original video for other less obvious but still cool wrapping paper tips:Wrapping gifts got a whole lot easier with these clever ideas! pic.twitter.com/sP4MXhpBBu— Blossom (@BlossomHacks) December 14, 2019(RED) Read the rest

Almost 6,000 years ago on the island of Lolland, Denmark, a young girl disposed of her chewing gum. Now, University of Copenhagen researchers have used that gum, made from birch pitch, to sequence the girl's full genome. From Science:The child had black hair, blue eyes, and dark skin, and was more closely related to hunter-gatherers from Western Europe than to farmers who had more recently settled in the region. She left traces of her most recent meal in the gum—she had been chewing hazelnuts and duck. But her oral microbiome also revealed that life could be hard—she had the Epstein-Barr virus and probably had suffered from mononucleosis in her life.More in the scientific paper: "A 5700 year-old human genome and oral microbiome from chewed birch pitch" (Nature Communications) Read the rest

Here is a tweet from Donald Trump, the man serving America as the 45th president.The day after he typed this, Donald Trump will be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States of America.We write our own scripts, people.Good marks and reviews on the letter I sent to Pelosi today. She is the worst! No wonder with people like her and Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, D.C. has been such a mess for so long - and that includes the previous administration who (and now we know for sure) SPIED on my campaign.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2019 Read the rest

A woman who works as an associate producer on the long-running CBS television show “60 Minutes” today filed a lawsuit that claims she experienced gender discrimination at the TV network. Cassandra Vinograd, who is based in London, says she was retaliated against by CBS after complaining about inappropriate conduct by her boss.A complaint filed Tuesday in NY State Supreme Court against CBS Broadcasting says Vinograd told CBS Broadcasting executives that her supervisor, “60 Minutes” producer Michael Gavshon, texted Vinograd a photo that left her feeling feel “disgusted, uncomfortable and scared.”The complaint says Gavshon, 63, says it was all a mistake and he meant to text the photo to his sister. CBS News “plans to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”“CBS thoroughly and immediately investigated the matter in accordance with its policies,” the network said in a statement. “Subsequently, Ms. Vinograd asked to no longer work with Mr. Gavshon and CBS has made every reasonable effort to honor this request. CBS News vehemently denies there was any retaliation.”More from Reuters:In a statement sent from CBS, Gavshon said he had intended to send the photo to his sister and that he reported the incident and cooperated with a company investigation.According to the complaint, the CBS human resources department conducted an investigation after Vinograd raised the issue. Human resources advised her to stay home if she was uncomfortable working with Gavshon, and told her she should meet with Gavshon and try to “work through” things, according to the complaint. Read the rest

104º F/40.9º C average across country

A sign for our times. “This is Fat Fred.”“He is a boy.”“He is not pregnant.”Source: 'Walking by a vet clinic when I saw this sign' by KneeAppallingTanIceCream on IMGUR.Walking by a vet clinic when I saw this sign... Read the rest

Mitch Wagner writes, "My colleague Iain Morris takes a hammer to 5G hype in an article that's so, so good. The world went bonkers in 2019 and 5G hype is part of that. Yes, 5G is inevitable, Iain notes. And it will prove useful. But it's not the miracle technology it's being hyped as. "Above all, the telecom industry continued to polish the turd that is 5G. Rarely has a technology generated so much industry hype and met with such a blasé response from the broader market. Watch your neighbor's eyes glaze over when you describe its higher speeds and lower latency. Note how he fails to share your excitement when you tell him it will provide extra capacity and reduce costs for service providers. The industry, if not the consumer, seems to be living in 1999, another mad year for technology when IT nerds convinced company bosses that a millennium date change in computer systems would reset clocks, wipe out records and trigger the end of civilization. That year also marked the eve of 3G, which promised a mobile Internet revolution but couldn't work up the subsequent effort. Operators are now switching it off. While 4G quietly cleaned up 3G's mess, with a helping hand from Apple and other gadget makers, 5G is neither fixing a consumer problem nor delivering a new experience. 2019: The Year Telecom Went Doolally About 5G [Iain Morris/Light Reading] Read the rest

When Steve Beshear was governor of Kentucky, he told experts to go fuck themselves and instead allowed the Australian investment bank Macquarie Capital to manage Kentuckywired, a program to build out broadband to rural Kentuckians.Four years later, the project is massively overbudget, massively behind schedule, and state auditor Mike Harmon just released a report blaming the delays and overages on the decision of Beshear and his cronies to sideline experts and go with the bankers. The total bill is expected to be some $1.5b. During the time in which Beshear was ignoring expert advisors, Frank Lassiter, husband of Beshear's cabinet secretary, took a high-paid consulting gig for Macquarie. Harmon recommends that Kentucky procedures be amended to require law and policymakers to formally explain any time they ignore expert advice. Until last week, Kentuckywired was overseen by Bernard “Deck” Decker, but he was fired without explanation by the governor, after he published an open letter to the auditor in which he stated, "By ignoring those that actually knew what they were talking about, those involved in this contract have increased the cost to the Commonwealth by hundreds of millions of dollars that they did not have a right to risk."Baller and Maryland-based CTC Technology & Energy, consultants hired by the state to assist in the process, warned that such an agreement could end up costing the state more money.“Macquarie is expert at negotiating agreements that minimize or eliminate its own financial risk,” CTC officials told the state in a December 2014 memo. Read the rest

For a variety of reasons, most hotels don’t supply toothpaste in rooms. (Here’s an article from Slate that explains why.) And you can’t take a standard-sized tube in carry-on luggage because the toothpaste police at the airport will confiscate it. You can buy a 12 pack of 0.85-ounce tubes of Crest on Amazon for .(For more tips and recommendations, check out a book I co-wrote, called Recomendo) Read the rest

We're rapidly approaching the point where wireless audio is breaking free of its only real stigma: Lackluster sound. There are a few earbuds edging into the market that not only deliver a solid listening experience but do it at an affordable price.Schatzii's BULLET 2.0 Bluetooth Stereo Earbuds are definitely earning some high marks in this new school.The buds connect to a range of listening devices through Bluetooth 4.1 technology, allowing for an uninterrupted playlist on your workout or commute. The hi-fi sound is already surprisingly good, but the buds make it immersive with CVC active noise suppression and echo cancellation. There's also a built-in mic when you need to take calls on the fly.The charging case is a problem solver for more than just the earbuds: It packs 2,100 mAh (enough for 12 complete charges) and can even provide power for your smartphone or other devices in a pinch, thanks to the USB ports.You can get the case and earbuds now for $129, a significant price drop that's more than 55% off the original MSRP. Read the rest

Google denies claim of illegal and retaliatory firing

The historical excuse for pharma monopolists who conspired to rig prices on insulin was that hardly anyone paid full price -- everyone got their life-saving, non-optional medicine through health plans that negotiated a knock-down price.That was the line between 2012 and 2016, as median per-patient insulin costs rose 99%, to $5,705/year.But now prices are even higher -- and more and more people are paying full cost, as the monopolized health insurance sector has reduced benefits to insured people. The average insured person with diabetes is paying 60% more than they were in 2012 (and the rest of the increase is being borne by Medicare and employers).People with diabetes are increasingly rationing their insulin, a practice that can be lethal.Today, there are three insulin manufacturers: Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. The manufacturers make the drug, set the price and negotiate with pharmacy benefit managers, the companies hired by health insurers to manage prescription-drug benefits for beneficiaries.“It comes down to pure greed,” Patterson said. “They are lining their pockets. They are making a profit.”When questioned about their costs, the insulin manufacturers told The Dispatch that the majority of patients don’t pay the list price for the drug. 'It comes down to pure greed': Insulin prices double, causing many people with diabetes to turn to extremes [Megan Henry/The Columbus Dispatch](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Melissa Johnson, CC BY, modified) Read the rest

When Gerry Cotten, founder of the QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency exchange, died mysteriously in India at the age of 30 he left behind an encrypted laptop with up to $250 million of customer deposits locked up on it. Without a password, those funds are irretrievable (at least until quantum supremacy becomes a real thing). Now, according to Ars Technica, those customers want proof Cotten is really dead -- and not sipping piscines on the deck of a yacht anchored in Gustavia Harbor -- by having his body exhumed and positively identified.From the article:Lawyers representing exchange clients on Friday asked Canadian law enforcement officials to exhume his body and conduct an autopsy "to confirm both its identity and the cause of death," the NYT said. The letter cited "the questionable circumstances surrounding Mr. Cotten's death and the significant losses" suffered in the incident. The letter went on to ask that the exhumation and autopsy be completed no later than "spring of 2020, given decomposition concerns."Quadriga didn't disclose Cotten's death until January 14, in a Facebook post, more than a month after it was said to have occurred. The QuadrigaCX platform went down on January 28, leaving users with no way to withdraw funds they had deposited with the exchange. Clients have taken to social media ever since to claim the death and loss of the password were staged in an attempt to abscond with their digital coin. Read the rest

Well, there it is at last, the silver lining to climate change. Turns out it's so hot in Australia, you can totally roast a delicious hunk of meat on top of your car.In Australia, a guy roasted some tasty pork on the roof of his Datsun on a scorching hot day. The not funny part about this is: climate change has led to catastrophic wildfires throughout Australia, and one could argue all sorts of things about factory farm meat production and anthropogenic -- oh ffs nevermind here's how he cooked the pork roast.Exerpt from Reuters:Stu Pengelly placed the slab of pork in a baking tin on the car seat of his red Datsun Sunny in Perth, Western Australia, for around 10 hours.“It worked a treat!” he said in a Facebook post with pictures of the cooked meat cut into slices to demonstrate its doneness.Pengelly also gave the temperature as it increased throughout the day, culminating in a “staggering 81 degrees Celsius inside temperature” (177.8 degrees Fahrenheit) at 1 p.m. What's next?Pengelly told a reporter he wants to try cooking roast beef in his Datsun.“A quiche would cook in 2 hours, I reckon,” he said. Read the full story at Reuters:Done in a Datsun: Man cooks roast pork in car during Australian heatwave[GIFs courtesy of Fox's “The Simpsons”] Read the rest

Dten is a "certified hardware provider" for Zoom, making smart screens and whiteboards for videoconferencing; a Forescout Research report reveals that Dten committed a string of idiotic security blunders in designing its products, exposing its customers to video and audio surveillance, as well as theft of presentations and whiteboard data.Among the mistakes Forescout identified:* Storing customer data in unsecured Amazon web buckets; all you needed to do to spy on a customer's stored data was to change the customer ID in the standard URL provided to each customer;* Not using SSL to encrypt data in transit, making it trivial to eavesdrop on conferencesForescout identified five bugs in July. As of today, Dten has fixed three of them.Dten told Wired: "We take customer privacy and security very seriously."The researchers also discovered two ways that an attacker on the same network as DTEN devices could manipulate the video conferencing units to monitor all video and audio feeds and, in one case, to take full control. DTEN hardware runs Android primarily, but uses Microsoft Windows for Zoom. The researchers found that they can access a development tool known as "Android Debug Bridge," either wirelessly or through USB ports or ethernet, to take over a unit. The other bug also relates to exposed Android factory settings. The researchers note that attempting to implement both operating systems creates more opportunities for misconfigurations and exposure. DTEN says that it will push patches for both bugs by the end of the year. Read the rest

He was only dreaming of a green Christmas, you guys.In Nashville, Tennessee, an unfortunate gentleman is in jail after authorities, and their K-9 drug sniffing dogs to be precise, smelled some odiferous weed in the dude's luggage. We're talking 80 pounds of dank, says the indictment.Court documents say Tennessee state police caught Somphone Temmeraj, 57, with a quantity of cannabis that measured over 80 pounds (36 kilograms), wrapped up to look like Christmas gifts. The pot bust happened when Temmeraj transited Nashville International Airport on Monday, as AP and others have reported.The officers said they saw Temmeraj pick up the bags and load them onto a cart. Temmeraj allowed officers to search the bags, which were filled with what appeared to be wrapped Christmas gifts. The items were actually filled with vacuum-sealed bags of marijuana weighing 84 pounds (38 kilograms), authorities said.Temmeraj had flown to Nashville from Seattle, the documents state. He was booked into jail and bonded out Tuesday morning, according to online records. It’s unclear whether he had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. Police: Marijuana Christmas gifts sniffed out at airport [apnews.com] Read the rest

Bernie Sanders' record-setting fundraising isn't just notable for how much he raised, it's also notable for how he raised it -- Sanders is the only leading candidate in the Democratic leadership race for 2020 who hasn't taken any money from billionaires.Billionaires have incredible class solidarity and they when they back a politician, it's generally a sign that they perceive a solid return on their investment.I am a donor to both Bernie Sanders's and Elizabeth Warren's campaigns. Sanders, a fierce critic of 2010 Supreme Court "Citizens United v. FEC" decision that allowed for individuals and corporations to give more freely to political campaigns, believes candidates who rely on big-dollar fundraisers are beholden to the interests of wealthy backers. "Why would many, many billionaires be contributing to candidates if they didn't think they were getting something out of it? They're not doing it through the goodness of their hearts," he said.A recent Forbes list found that Sanders was the only candidate among the fields' top tier, which also includes Biden, Buttigieg, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, to not have a single billionaire donor. According to Sanders and his campaign, this means that the senator is the true champion of the working class, relying almost exclusively on small donors while his opponents show open hands to the open wallets of the ultra-wealthy.Bernie Sanders knocks rivals for taking donations from billionaires [Cara Korte/CBS](Image: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA, modified) Read the rest

Scott Budnick (producer of the "Hangover" movies) is embroiled in a complicated feud with an LA homicide cop named Sgt. Richard Biddle; Biddle has pursued his investigation against Budnick by securing an incredibly broad search-warrant to seize his Google data.The warrant seeks:1. All of Budnick's account data (email addresses, connected applications and sites, etc)2. Android info (phone make/model and IMEI, IMSI and phone number)3. All stored "accounts, email accounts, passwords, PIN codes, account names, user names, screen names, remote data storage accounts, credit card/payment data, contact lists, calendar entries, text messages, voice mail messages, pictures, videos, telephone numbers, mobile devices, physical addresses, historical GPS locations, two-step verification information" 4. All calendars, including shared calendars (and whom they are shared with)5. All stored contacts6. "All user documents stored by Google"7. Any records of securities, funds, etc8. All Gmail messages, including metadata like read/unread9. All Google Photo images10. All stored location data11. All Play Store purchases and downloads12. All search history13. All call records, voicemail messages, SMSes14. All Google Wallet/Checkout dataIt is a spectacularly broad warrant -- and also a chilling reminder of how much data Google holds on us.Eye-opening to see what a search warrant for a Google Account actually covers: all your location data, photos, searches, contacts, emails... https://t.co/m7EWpqUS5Y pic.twitter.com/5vtUDV6AlT— Aaron Mendelson (@a_mendelson) December 16, 2019 (Image: Cryteria, CC-BY, modified) Read the rest

Activists from Fight for the Future prowled the halls of Congress in "jumpsuits with phone strapped to their heads conducting live facial recognition surveillance" to "show why this tech should be banned."They worked their way through the Rayburn building (which houses offices for the House of Reps), livestreaming thousands of face scans to Scancongress.com. You can send Scancongress an image of your face and it will tell you if you're among those whose faces were captured.Eventually they were ordered to leave on pain of arrest -- for blocking the hallways, not for scanning faces, which remains legal.We did this to prove a point and to pressure Congress to pass laws to ban facial recognition surveillance, so we’re going to delete all the footage and all the biometric data when we’re done. We also chose our location carefully: inside the capitol where everyone is already under video surveillance. But anyone else could easily do what we did, and right now it’s perfectly legal. A government agency can do this to monitor a marginalized population. A corporation can do it to harvest our biometric data and sell it for profit. A creepy stalker could do it to find their target in a crowd of people.We scanned thousands of faces in DC today to show why facial recognition surveillance should be banned [Fight for the Future](via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

AI Dungeon, a vastly open text adventure that used artificial intelligence to generate responses to your commands, is now available as an easy-to-use smartphone app (the web version was clunky). The Verge has more:We tested the iOS version briefly, and although there were a few game-breaking errors, it’s generally as easy to use as you’d want. Responses to each input still take a few seconds to process, which rather slows the experience, but it’s definitely quicker than the web version was, and each interaction with the AI is as surprising (and frequently delightful) as before.There are also helpful tips for newcomers, reminding you to start each of your text commands with a verb, or use quotation marks to indicate when someone is speaking. Read the rest

When Donald Trump and then-Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced a plan to give billions of dollars to the notorious Taiwanese sweatshop operator Foxconn to build a super-factory in Wisconsin, knowledgeable people were alarmed. That's because Foxconn has a long history of defrauding governments by promising to build big ambitious factories in their territories, absorbing massive subsidies, then abandoning the project, leaving behind a modest facility, or nothing at all.Despite these misgivings, Walker and his GOP state legislators set about bulldozing Wisconsinites' family homes to make way for the Foxconn factory, guaranteeing ever-larger subsidies even as Foxconn quietly began to scale back its plans and the number of jobs it would create. The total bill rose to $4.1b, even as Foxconn canceled the factory altogether and proposed replacing it with a modest R&D facility primarily staffed by out-of-state researchers, rather than the locals who were footing the bill for Foxconn's massive subsidies.The company went back and forth on its plans for months, putting on a bizarre show to keep alive a plausible claim that Wisconsin would get something in exchange for its generosity. But as the deal attracted more and more scrutiny, it became increasingly obvious that Wisconsin had been foxconned.Now, Foxconn and Tony Evers (the new, Democratic governor of Wisconsin) are renegotiating the deal. Foxconn asked the state to release it from its obligations, without removing the (now $4.5b -- that's $172k/job, assuming Foxconn builds the factory it originally proposed!) guarantee of subsidies, including cash payouts if the company never does enough business in Wisconsin to use the tax-credits it's been promised. Read the rest

A man who chose the no-payment option for a store item was pursued out the door by a relentless employee who apparently holds the quaint notion that transactions involving the exchange of goods should be beneficial to both parties. The ideologically rigid employee got his way this time, but I'm sure the gentleman with the big pickup will be back again before Christmas.A terrible attempt at stealing from r/funny Read the rest

Over at Cool Tools (a site I co-operate) Rusty Blazenhoff talks to Donald Bell about her favorite ice cream scoop: the Thrifty “square” ice cream scoop. Read the rest

This episode of TED-Ed is about Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel, Dune, and why you should read it.A mother and son trek across an endless desert. Wearing special suits to dissipate heat and recycle moisture, the travelers aren’t worried about dying of thirst. Their fears are much greater. Soon, the sound of the desert is drowned out by a hissing: a mound of sand 400 meters long bursts from the desert floor and races towards them. This is the world of “Dune.” Dan Kwartler dives into the epic story.Image: YouTube Read the rest

I'm like, eighty percent certain that this kitty's going to kill whoever it is holding the camera, just as soon as it figures out that it can survive crossing a hallway filled with aluminum foil. Read the rest

“I really hope this shows people that there’s power in community and all it takes is a group of friends to come together and change someone else’s life.”

This video hit YouTube in 2009. The song was originally released in 2006 as a bonus track on Jarvis Cocker's first post-Pulp album. More than a decade later, not much has changed. In light of this month's disastrous election results in the UK, a push is on to bring this 13-year old song back to number one, just in time for Christmas.Ho. Ho. Ho. Read the rest

This video depicts a fish controlling a robot, which is to say the fish is in a tank on wheels and a computer moves it in whichever direction the fish is currently swimming. Here's another one:The start of a revolution from r/AquaticAsFuck Read the rest

Becoming important enough to merit a "hedcut" stippled portrait from the Wall Street Journal used to a be a significant honor. But on Monday, the WSJ announced that all members can now receive a hedcut courtesy of an AI that's been trained over the last year. Along the way, developers ran into some speedbumps. Baldness was one obstacle:“We had to go through and hand-tag over 2,000 photos, including a lot of bald men, so that the machine would learn what baldness is”And so was overconfidence:The most harrowing issue of all was overfitting, which happens when a model fits a limited set of data too closely. In this case, that meant the machine became too satisfied with its artistic ability and began producing terrifying monstrosities like [the portraits seen above].You can learn more about the process and sign up for your own hedcut here. With any luck, someone will post a program a generate monstrous glitchy versions.(Via Gene Park.) Read the rest

Traditional wallets are slowly going the way of the VCR. Modern life has gotten a lot more portable, and the habit of carrying endless reams of business cards and receipts has gotten to be just that: A habit. And an unnecessary one.Even so, people still need a way to tote their cards and cash. For its minimalism and efficiency, the Grid Wallet might be the template for a new lifestyle, free of bulging pockets.The Grid Wallet does a lot with a little. It's made of just two sturdy aluminum plates, and the whole thing is less than a quarter-inch thick. Within that slim frame, it can hold up to 12 credit cards or business cards while a money clip on the back keeps your cash secure.That's not all it keeps secure. The material has a coating that interferes with RFID signals, protecting your cards from wireless theft.The Grid Wallet is already more than 60% off the list price, but you can take an extra 15% off by using the online coupon code MERRYSAVE15. Read the rest

Today I learned (on Conan O'Brien's podcast) that comedian John Mulaney has made a children's musical comedy special for Netflix. What?! Terrific! The show's official description states he and his "kid pals" "tackle existential topics for all ages with catchy songs, comedy sketches and special guests in a nostalgic variety special."On Conan's podcast, he further describes it, "We have a lot of songs about anxieties and fear. There's huge, kind of, Broadway-scale numbers. There's small cameos from beloved people. There's show-stopping cameos from people. And there's lots of little interviews along the way... I cannot explain it well, and I never could pitch it well. And I sometimes couldn't discuss with my collaborators exactly what I was picturing but it is now done... I am more happy with it then I have been with anything I've ever done."*That* is saying a lot coming from Mr. Mulaney. Count me in!John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch will premiere Christmas Eve.Here's its trailer: Read the rest

Writing for PCGamer, Alex Kane takes a long look at the creation of the video game Tie Fighter, where the player becomes an ace in the Imperial Navy between the Battle of Hoth and Battle of Endor. Supposedly, this was Lucas's reaction when he saw the copy on the package:As the story goes, George Lucas was shown the packaging for TIE Fighter in a board meeting shortly after the game had come out and had started performing well financially and earning acclaim. Lucas picked up the box, examined the cover, and then turned it over to read the copy on the back. "'Imperial Navy'?" he said. "There's no navy in Star Wars." A moment later: "Well, I guess it doesn't matter."A key moment in the marketing of the game came when a deal was reached to co-promote the game along the Dodge Neon:"I think what really helped the game is that we were approached by Dodge, the car company," Gleason says. "I wasn't in much of a bargaining position; I didn't have a whole lot to give in return, other than they get to use Star Wars in their advertising. For the Dodge Neon, which was nothing like a sci-fi or futuristic car. It was from Michigan. There was nothing sexy about it; it looked like a family car. But it was a big win, because we couldn't afford to distribute 400,000 demos on our own, or do a TV commercial."With an unlikely marketing companion in Dodge, Gleason got a TIE Fighter demo onto the PCs of thousands of gamers. Read the rest

A symphony in polyester sweaters and feathered mullets, now in splendid 4K. [via Input] Read the rest

In Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, a gentleman's car exploded after he reportedly sprayed "excessive" amount of air freshener and then lit a cigarette. From the BBC News:Gas from the spray ignited, blew out the windscreen and windows and buckled the doors but the man escaped with only minor injuries.Police said the incident in Halifax on Saturday "could've been worse" and warned people to follow safety advice. Read the rest