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AirCSI is a prototype drone system that scans crime scenes from above, identify possible pieces of evidence, and then collect more detailed images and data of such items of interest. Leading the development of the system is Pompílio Araújo, a researcher at the Intelligent Vision Research Lab at Federal University of Bahia who often assists the Federal Police of Brazil in crime scene investigation. From IEEE Spectrum:"...AirCSI provides a sketch with the localization of the evidences, as well as a detailed crime scene imagery,” says Araújo. His team used simulation software to test this newer version of AirCSI, and found that using multiple angles to detect evidence is up to 18 percent more effective than using only one angle...While the researchers have yet to test the new, multi-angle approach beyond simulations, they expect to try it out in a real environment by the end of this year or early next year...He also plans on developing a way to completely reconstruct crime scenes using the drone footage, creating a virtual environment that investigators can explore indefinitely—or at least until the crime is solved."Multi-Perspective Object Detection for Remote Criminal Analysis Using Drones" (IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters) Read the rest

Follow your muse where it takes you, even if it leads to a day's worth of articles trashing Cap'n Crunch in outlandish and disturbing ways. (H/T Ben Collins.) Read the rest

From left: Akira Yoshino, Dr. M. Stanley Whittingham and Dr. John Goodenough (Charles Dharapak / Yoshiaki Sakamoto / Kyodo News / Binghamton University)The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists whose work developing lithium-ion batteries made mobile phones, iPads, laptops, and electric cars possible.The three recipients are U.S. engineer John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham of the U.K., and Akira Yoshino of Japan. They will share the 9 million Swedish kronor ($906,000) prize awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.“This is a highly-charged story of tremendous potential,” said Olof Ramstrom of the Nobel committee for chemistry today.The breakthroughs these scientists made opened up a new world of possibilities to counter global warming and the worldwide climate crisis.From the Associated Press:The prize announced Wednesday went to John B. Goodenough, 97, a German-born American engineering professor at the University of Texas; M. Stanley Whittingham, 77, a British-American chemistry professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton; and Akira Yoshino, 71, of chemicals company Asahi Kasei Corp. and Meijo University in Japan.The honor awarded to the three scientists is a capstone of a truly transformative technology that has permeated billions of lives across the planet, including anyone who uses mobile phones, computers, pacemakers, electric cars and beyond.“The heart of the phone is the rechargeable battery. The heart of the electric vehicle is the rechargeable battery. The success and failure of so many new technologies depends on the batteries,” said Alexej Jerschow, a chemist at New York University, whose research focuses on lithium ion battery diagnostics. Read the rest

Many people around the world use bidets so they can clean themselves properly after using the toilet. I discovered them in the 1980s in Japan and I installed them in the toilets in my house. (I have the cold-water version, which doesn't require electricity. They cost just and are truly life-changing.)In this video we learn why most Americans don't have bidets. It started because US servicemen first saw them in French brothels in WWII and associated them with prostitution. And when bidet manufacturers in the 1960s tried to get Americans warmed up to the idea of bidets, they learned that Americans didn't want to hear about machines that would clean their butts. They would rather use toilet paper and have dirty butts.Image: YouTube/Tech Insider Read the rest

In celebration of this year's 50th anniversary of the first humans on the moon, the Ohio State Marching Band staged this wonderful performance on Saturday. Read the rest

These heavy duty nitrile gloves keep my hands clean when an automotive emergency pops up.Frequently my 43-year-old motorcycle and 32-year-old VW bus hiccup. Usually, they do it when I am wearing something I do not want covered in grease, and am far away from home. Luckily both vehicles have nearly full sets of tools in them, and I can usually get to work wherever need finds me.Keeping my hands clean, however, not likely until I started keeping a handful of nitrile gloves in each.I tried keeping a pair of shop gloves in the car, but they got lost quick. With these nitrile gloves, I can refill either vehicle when I run out.These gloves are also easier to work with while wearing. Bulky gloves are no fun.They do tear but less frequently than the thin medical exam gloves I tried before.GLOVEWORKS HD Industrial Orange Nitrile Gloves - 8 mil, Latex Free, Powder Free, Diamond Texture, Disposable, Heavy Duty via Amazon Read the rest

While young and pregnant Elizabeth Warren lost her job as a school teacher. Right-wing critics are using this true story to create doubt and distrust about everything she says.Salon:Warren confirmed this timeline to CBS News in an interview Monday: "All I know is I was 22 years old, I was six months pregnant, and the job that I had been promised for the next year was going to someone else. The principal said they were going to hire someone else for my job."If anything, these new details make Warren's story more touching, since she lost a job that she had good reason to believe was hers for at least another year.It's easy to see why Warren's story about her first pregnancy sticks in the craws of those who resent her recent rise in the polls. Warren uses this story both to position herself as a relatable candidate who understands the challenges of everyday Americans, but also to showcase the talents that allowed her to rise above those humble beginnings — talents, she suggests, that will help her lead the country during difficult times. So it's not surprising that Republicans, and even some on the left who prefer another primary candidate — judging from social media, mostly supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders — would want to take this story away from her.Sadly, as Vox's David Roberts pointed out on Twitter, this debunking won't stop right-wing media from continuing to repeat these baseless accusations against Warren as if they were fact. Read the rest

Trump gave Erdogan green light, Putin nods in approval from Moscow.Turkey has launched an attack against US-allied Kurds in Northern Syria, after Donald Trump expressed his support for the military assault in a now-infamous phone call to Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan. Updates on Wednesday morning:• Turkish warplanes and artillery are striking militia positions in several towns in the border region.• Erdogan said the Syria assault is code-named “Peace Spring.”• The United Nations Security Council will meet on Syria behind closed-doors on Thursday, diplomats said, after Turkey launched a military operation against Kurdish fighters in the northeast of the country.• Emergency Syria talks by 15-member Security Council was requested by 5 European members: Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and Poland• In announcing the start of Turkey's military action, Erdogan today said the goal is to eliminate a “terror corridor” on Turkey’s southern border.• NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg today: “I count on Turkey to act with restraint and ensure that any action it may take in northern Syria is proportionate and measured,” he said after meeting Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. “It is important to avoid actions that may further destabilize the region, escalate tensions and cause more human suffering.”• Chaotic scenes in northern Syria as people flee for their lives.More below. This is a developing story, and this post will be updated.NB: Lots of reporting this week that the US had "closed off" the airspace around the Syrian border I think reflected a misunderstanding of what the US actually did, which was cut Turkey out of ISR feeds they'd been getting as part of the "security mechanism." Not the same thing. Read the rest

The House Financial Services Committee has asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify on Facebook's planned Libra cryptocurrency, and he will do so on October 23.“Mark looks forward to testifying before the House Financial Services Committee and responding to lawmakers’ questions,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNBC:Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Oct. 23 at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, the committee announced Wednesday.Zuckerberg will be the only witness at a hearing entitled “An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors.” House members had been pushing for Zuckerberg to testify on Facebook’s cryptocurrency plans as the committee had been in talks with his second-in-command about testifying, CNBC reported last week. Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress on Facebook’s libra cryptocurrencySheryl Sandberg has been planning to testify but chairwoman Maxine Waters was insistent on Zuckerberg so he’ll be defending cryto currency that is getting a lot of scrutiny in Washington. Hill has told me they feel Libra announced launch has shown “hubris”— CeciliaKang (@ceciliakang) October 9, 2019 Read the rest

Vegetation is overtaking the Fukushima exclusion zone, eight years after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In the eerily isolated area, buildings are leaning, windows are broken, shrines are slowly toppling. In this video, the host of Abroad in Japan visits the exclusion zone and speaks to residents and officials about the future of the region. This is not disaster tourism, it's a well made video about the aftermath of the disaster and Japan's 40-year-plan to restore the area.Image: Abroad in Japan/YouTube Read the rest

Apparent a coping method for these troubled times is unprotected sex.UPI:A new government report finds that combined cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia reached an all-time high in 2018. Nearly 2.5 million cases of these sexually transmitted diseases were reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the year."We're documenting an increase in STDs for the fifth consecutive year," said Elizabeth Torrone, an epidemiologist with the CDC. Read the rest

Alabama 3 has long been a favorite and is never long out of rotation. Read the rest

Oh, the joys of #vanlife!I was checking up on my Vanagon yesterday and noticed the coolant was low. Missing coolant is very bad in a Vanagon for many, many reasons.I looked for a leak.I could not find a leak. It was possible the car had just burped an air bubble and swallowed a cup or two of coolant from the reserve. I was not in a panic. View this post on Instagram Via my sisterA post shared by Jason Weisberger (@jlw) on Jul 25, 2017 at 4:09pm PDT I also knew my power steering belt was looking really ragged. I decided to call the local shop I've been working with and see if they could swap the belt and pressure test the system today. They said bring the bus in at 7am.I drove the 10-15 miles to my mechanic with no problems at all. I had given myself an extra hour in the event something terrible went wrong with the cooling system, or the v-belt decided to trash my day on the way to being replaced.It is a Vanagon, these things happen.I got to the shop uneventfully. I love my bus. I take good care of it.See, things work out!I decided to park about 3 blocks away and get a cup of pretty terrible coffee from a Starbucks.Starbucks had terrible coffee.I, and Pretzel my faithful Cavalier King Charles companion, returned to the van. I turned the key in the ignition. Read the rest

Ronan Farrow reports, in his forthcoming book Catch and Kill [Amazon], that TV host Matt Lauer is accused of raping a colleague at NBC News. Lauer was fired in 2017 from his Today Show perch after reports of "inappropriate sexual behavior" were found credible by the network. Now that its severity is revealed, the lingering efforts to rehabilitate his career are surely over.In the book, obtained by Variety, Nevils alleges that at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Lauer anally raped her in his hotel room. ... According to Nevils, she “was in the midst of telling him she wasn’t interested again when he ‘just did it,’” Farrow writes. “Lauer, she said, didn’t use lubricant. The encounter was excruciatingly painful. ‘It hurt so bad. I remember thinking, Is this normal?’ She told me she stopped saying no, but wept silently into a pillow.” Lauer then asked her if she liked it. She tells him yes. She claims that “she bled for days,” Farrow writes.Nevils tells Farrow: “It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” she says. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.” Read the rest

Foolish mortals, Disney's latest Haunted Mansion merchandise is to die for. In 1969, the Haunted Mansion opened at Disneyland and now, fifty years later, they've pulled out all the stops to make us pull out our wallet. From special light-up Grim Grinning Ghosts Mouse ears to two insane artist-made guitars (and everything in between), there are plenty of opportunities to drop some cash at the Resort right now. On my recent trip there, I tried to capture every single Haunted Mansion-related product and store display I could find (I won't share them all here but, if you're curious, I've posted some in Flickr.)Today I want to share with you a couple of items that really caught my eye. The first being these long striped socks featuring the stretching room portraits. So good! My one complaint with them is that they are printed using dye sublimation which means they are polyester, and polyester makes for stinky socks. Because of that, I didn't buy them even though I really wanted to. Luckily, I soon found a way to itch my "stretching room portrait merch" scratch. In a Main Street, U.S.A. store, I found this small double-sided pouch ($19.99) which unzippers to not only show the entirety of the portraits but to make the bag bigger too. How clever! And, as you can see, it has the same art as the socks. I did buy one of those, and my sweetie had to have this door knocker.Hey, while you're here, watch this fun video about the history of the Haunted Mansion. Read the rest

Natalie Martinez offers some good advice, which will not be taken, to Fox News: "Maybe read the screen name aloud before you broadcast it to the world."i'd like to thank the Miami-Dade Public School system for endowing me with the skills necessary to discern this cryptic message— Natalie Martinez (@natijomartinez) October 9, 2019 Read the rest

One of you out there needs your vehicle ("car, truck, van, boat, RV, motorcycle, ATV, golf cart or any 12 volt supplied power source") to roar like Godzilla, I just know it. So, you're welcome. The Godzilla Roar Car Horn is available from Boom Blasters ($39.99-$59.99).Thanks, Maggie!Godzilla image via The Wrap Read the rest

Jaywick started life as a holiday camp for East London's working class families. It became permanently occupied after World War II and is now a cluster of rotting shotgun shacks behind a forlorn Essex beach. It looks from above like an abandoned game of Sim City, but up-close has an eerie League of Gentlemen energy: there's a sandwich bar named "Goodfillers" (with the wrong Mafia movie font) right next to a tattoo parlor named "Pain 'n' Pride," and it starred in a deranged pro-Trump American political ad to warn voters of the dangers of socialism. But it is the British government that just named Jaywick the most deprived place in the U.K.—a title it has already long-held.The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) looked at levels of income, employment, education, health and crime as well as housing services and living environment.Jaywick in Essex, near Clacton-on-Sea, was previously found to be the most deprived in the last two reports in 2010 and 2015.The village, partly made up of a former holiday park, has been visited by the UN special rapporteur for extreme poverty during a fact-finding mission to the UK.Blackpool appears to have finally dethroned Middlesborough as the most deprived big town, according to the BBC's review of the figures, but it's a close-run thing. Congrats, Blackpool!Here's some interviews with Jaywick locals, from 2010:Here's some Jaywick footage from the 1960s: Read the rest

Clearly there's a booming market for CBD out there, as more people discover the relief from pain and stress that it can bring. But not everyone uses it the same way, and that's why cannabidiol products from Common Ground are gaining ground with consumers - not just because they're one of the most trusted sources for CBD, but because of the variety of delivery methods they can provide.If you haven't tried CBD yet, you should know it's a derivative of the cannabis plant that is non-psychoactive. You'll still need to be 18 to purchase CBD products and check your state laws regarding its use. And as with any medicine, check with a doctor before taking it.FREEZE 350mg CBD Topical OilTargeted specifically as muscle pains, this oil contains not just a healthy dose of CBD but a balanced mix of peppermint and camphor. That means an instant jolt of cooling to aching areas, while the CBD works on deep healing. Get your 350 mg bottle for 20% off the retail price.FOCUS 750mg Broad Spectrum CBD Tincture + PeppermintNeed a quick wake up? Each drop of this tincture contains organic peppermint and steam-distilled terpenes from Colorado hemp for quick clarity. Each bottle is now 20% off the MSRP.BALANCE 900mg CBD CapsulesFor a dose of CBD that's easy to regulate, make these soft gels a part of your morning regimen. As with all Common Ground products, there's no THC - just 900 mg of organic CBD extracted from Colorado hemp. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Donald Trump gets a hot tip on corruption, tracks it down every path, no matter the consequences!

A Punk Rock Future is a brand new fiction anthology featuring 25 speculative sci-fi and fantasy writers smashing the State in whatever fantastical futuristic form that it might take. Editor Steve Zisson (not to be confused with Steve Zissou) was smart enough to realize that a good short story is already like a punk song—fast, effective, and brutally DIY, with a fistful of meaning that explodes in your face with pure undistilled emotion. It only made sense to slam the two together.The anthology features a setlist of writers with all the scene cred you need, including Nebula Award-winner Sarah Pinkser, who just released her debut novel about an illegal underground music scene; Margaret Killjoy, whose book The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award; and Marie Vibbert, who has published some forty-plus short stories and also attended the Clarion Writer's Workshop with me (where BoingBoing's own Cory Doctorow was our instructor).We might be trapped in the dystopian cyberpunk hellhole of a future we were promised is children, but another world is possible. So check out A Punk Rock Future, or there's no future for you. Read the rest

Raph Koster (previously) is a games design legend, the designer behind such classics as Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, a consistently thoughtful and smart theorist of games, and the author of A Theory of Fun, the best book I've ever read about games and gaming.Koster sold his last games startup, Metaplace, to Disney many years ago, cashed out, and has been doing various side projects ever since. But today, he closed financing for "Playable Worlds," his next big game, which will offer something for everyone: "adventuring, PvP, socializing, combat, crafting, or enabling online communities to cross over with each other."Koster calls it the next stage in the evolution of "sandbox games," a category that has existed for so long that there are multiple generations of players who cut their teeth on various iterations from Runescape to Minecraft.Congrats, Raph! “When I look across games today, what I see is games about crafting, fashion play, timed reengagement, social play – basically a whole lot of things that are old tropes out of sandbox MMO play,” he said. “Multiple generations have grown up with sandbox play now – kids who played Runescape are in their 30s, kids who played Minecraft in their 20s, and Roblox is already a decade old. We are seeing demand for ‘sandbox-y’ play all over the place, so I think it is very much of the moment. Heck, when I look at something like GTA Online, what I see is players role-playing cops and bus drivers and whatnot in there. Read the rest

Back in 2015, the Marvin Gaye estate secured a bizarre copyright judgment against Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke over their hit song "Blurred Lines," in which the Gaye estate argued (successfully) that even though "Blurred Lines" didn't copy Gaye's songs, it copied the feeling of Gaye's music -- that is, that Thicke and Williams made a song that reminded people of Gaye.This was a catastrophically bad ruling, since it required that musicians pretend that they had no musical influences, lest they face a similar lawsuit. People who pointed this out were called "alarmists" by copyright maximalists, who were sure that this decision would not spawn a generation of musical copyright trolls who'd go around shaking down musicians for big payouts from hit songs (every one of which, after all, is related in some way to the songs that came before it).Here we go.Last summer, Lil Nas X ("Old Town Road") and Cardi B ("I Like It") collaborated on a track called "Rodeo." This song did pretty well, and it's a pretty good song, and it managed to catch the attention of Don Lee and Glen Keith DeMeritt III, whose beat "gwenXdonelee4-142" was incorporated into Puretoreefa and Sakrite Duexe's not-very-successful track Broad Day.Lee and DeMeritt have now filed a lawsuit against Lil Nas X and Cardi B, in which they assert that X and B's "Rodeo" has "a substantially similar overall sound and feel" to "Broad Day," because both songs are 142 bpm, and Rodeo has "guitar and wind instruments to evoke a certain aesthetic that is set against hip-hop elements derived from digital drum and bass elements" and "guitar and wind instruments to evoke a certain aesthetic that is set against hip-hop elements derived from digital drum and bass elements" and "the rhythmic guitar part outlining chords is replaced with a single note line playing an ascending then descending scale moving with the chord change" and "Rodeo’s rhythmic guitar part is replaced with a single note line playing ascending and descending scales following the chord progression."That is, the songs are recognizably from the same genre. Read the rest

My favorite pre-roll cone for home filling of joints is the RAW '98 Special.'I've tried the 1 ¼, King Size and 98 Special sizes of cones. The 98 Special splits the difference between the very large joint of a King Size and the harder to fill, but great for .5 gram to .75 gram sized joints, 1 ¼. You can fill the 98 Special to the same volume as a 1 ¼, however, the length and opening of the 98 Special are much more cooperative.The 98 Special cones have a taper that gives them a larger opening hole and longer length, making it easier to get ground weed into versus the 1 ¼. The included cardboard shovel is helpful.The King Size cone is easy to fill but wants to be at least a .7 to 1.25 gram joint.I am eyeballing my measures based on prior experience and not actually weighing out each joint before filling.RAW Classic Natural Unrefined Pre Rolled Cones - 20 Cones Per Pack - 98 Special Size (1 Pack) via Amazon Read the rest

Yesterday I wrote about how having a Tile Bluetooth tracker helped me find my wallet when I lost it at the theater last week. I just found out that Tile has refreshed its product lineup and one of the new devices is called the Tile Sticker. It has an adhesive so you can stick it to items that you want to keep track of. A Tile Sticker 2-pack costs , but right now Amazon has a deal where you can get 4 Tile Stickers and an Echo Dot for . Read the rest

Twitter reports that email address and phone numbers added for security reasons such as two-factor authorization "may have inadvertently been used for advertising purposes."When an advertiser uploaded their marketing list, we may have matched people on Twitter to their list based on the email or phone number the Twitter account holder provided for safety and security purposes. This was an error and we apologize.We cannot say with certainty how many people were impacted by this, but in an effort to be transparent, we wanted to make everyone aware. No personal data was ever shared externally with our partners or any other third parties.User data that Twitter cannot sell ended up in an advertising product that lets Twitter monetize such data without revealing it directly to third parties. Inadvertantly. Read the rest

A reptile breeder in the SF Bay Area says he'd just finished giving a talk and was packing up in the parking lot when thieves stole one of his duffel bags containing four live snakes.The man says the thieves probably thought it was full of something valuable other than, say, four live snakes.Two of the four snakes have been retrieved so far, says Brian Gunday, who told KRON-4 News his beloved serpents were found inside a trash dumpster, probably after the bad guys figured out what was inside the stolen duffel bag:“I went and walked to my car, got in it, backed out. As I backed out I noticed there was some people at the other end of the parking lot where my gear was and I didn’t think anything of it,” he said. Gunday said as he got out of his car, he noticed his duffel bag was gone. Three ball pythons, a baby albino caramel Burmese python and a blue-tailed skink were inside the duffel bag. Gundy believes whoever stole his bag had quite the surprise once they opened it.“They picked it up. It was probably heavy, probably 30 pounds in someone’s mind probably camera equipment or computer gear,” he said.Since the snakes went missing on Saturday, two of them turned up in a dumpster. Gunday’s proudly wearing one of the recovered snakes.“This is shorty. Shorty is a caramel albino Burmese python,” Gunday said. “He’s about three-months-old or so and this snake will grow to 13 or 15 feet long.”The stolen snakes are worth thousands of dollars but gundy says it’s not about the money. Read the rest

Pennsylvania resident Chris Persic says his wife called to let him know their SUV smelled like it was burning. When she opened the hood, a surprise was waiting: walnuts and grass piled all over the Kia engine, stashed their by misbehaving squirrels.The couple estimate they found more than 200 walnuts crammed in there.That wasn’t all, the Franklin Park couple took the SUV to a shop and the shop reportedly found another half a trashcan worth of walnuts under the engine.Other than that they didn’t really do any extensive damage.Persic says he was actually at a dealership on McKnight Road because his new truck started to shake when accelerating and the check engine light was on.“Turns out my truck may have had a squirrel chew through or pull the fuel injector hose out,” Persic said.Oh Nuts! Squirrels Hide Hundreds Of Walnuts Under Hood Of Car [image: shutterstock] Read the rest

The getaway goat's name is 'Big Boy.' “He’s never done anything like that before,” his owner said when finally reunited with the goat. “I think he was drinking too much that night. I’m really sorry it happened but there wasn’t much I could do. I wasn’t there.”In an Ohio town, a teen got home from school last Friday to discover the family dog barking outside, and a sliding glass door shattered.The kid's mom called the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office after they figured out a goat had crashed into their family home. Keathley said she and the deputies called vets, animal control and the local Humane Society for advice. She said everyone laughed at them and they laughed too but they really needed help. Finally, the deputies decided to attempt corralling the goat out themselves. They tried tying a rope around its neck, enticing it with carrots, dog bones, grass.At one point, the goat turned around and ran back into the bathroom. Eventually, the two deputies each grabbed a horn and managed to lead the goat outside and into the German Shepard’s cage.On local Facebook pages, Keathley asked, “is anybody missing a ram? Please contact me ASAP.”She said she didn’t want to include what the male goat had done in the post or else the owner might not claim him.More:Goat breaks into Ashland County home, falls asleep in bathroom [times-gazette.com, video courtesy Jenn Keathley] Read the rest

A spokesperson for the Facebook-owned WhatsApp says the company has fixed a security vulnerability that let hackers take control of the messaging app by way of a malicious GIF."We have no reason to believe this affected any users, though of course we are always working to provide the latest security features to our users," a WhatsApp spokesperson told CNN Business.Jordan Valinsky at CNN Business reports:The hack could be triggered when a user opened a malicious GIF in their gallery. After the GIF was opened, the app's contents could have been exploited, revealing previous chat history.Devices running Android 8.1 and 9 could have been susceptible to the hack. A researcher called Awakened discovered the vulnerability and wrote about it in a blog post last week.WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook (FB), released a patch last month, though it said it's unlikely anyone was actually hacked using the technique Awakened revealed.WhatsApp had a bug that let hackers take over phones with a GIF Read the rest

Not ashamed to admit I'm obsessed with this crime story.For those following along, rapper and former gang member turned informant Tekashi69 will be sentenced on December 18.[via @PPVSRB, PHOTOS: shutterstock] Read the rest

In the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers presented evidence that Russia conducted information warfare against the U.S. in 2016 and demanded urgent action from Congress, the trump White House, and Silicon Valley to prevent the same thing from happening in 2020.The group of Democratic and Republican senators delivered a sobering assessment of weaknesses that Russian operatives exploited in the 2016 campaign -- all of which remain active vulnerabilities today, one year before our next presidential election. “The Committee found that Russia’s targeting of the 2016 U.S. presidential election was part of a broader, sophisticated and ongoing information warfare campaign,” the new Senate Intelligence Committee report reads. Russia's campaign was “a vastly more complex and strategic assault on the United States than was initially understood... an increasingly brazen interference by the Kremlin on the citizens and democratic institutions of the United States."Huh. Wonder why Russia's favored candidate isn't helping.From the Washington Post's Craig Timberg and Tony Romm: The Senate Intelligence Committee, a Republican-led panel that has been investigating foreign electoral interference for more than two and a half years, said in blunt language that Russians worked to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton while bolstering Republican Donald Trump — and made clear that fresh rounds of interference are likely ahead of the 2020 vote.“Russia is waging an information warfare campaign against the U.S. that didn’t start and didn’t end with the 2016 election," said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the committee’s chairman. “Their goal is broader: to sow societal discord and erode public confidence in the machinery of government. Read the rest

The reborn VCS looked like a thoroughbred among a field of retro nags, wedding Atari's classic pedigree to powerful modern hardware. But its designer has quit the project, according to The Register, claiming he hasn't been paid and that the project is a mess.It is unclear whether Atari will be able to complete its beleaguered project without Wyatt. It only received a prototype motherboard last month, and Wyatt and his team were in the middle of debugging it before deciding to draw stumps and quit. The task of finalizing the hardware will likely fall to SurfaceInk, another company that Atari has contracted to complete the console. SurfaceInk has not responded to multiple requests for comment.Apparently Atari was also working with a crowdfunding entrepreneur named Feargal Mac Conuladh, but ghosted him when its VCS campaign soared to a $3m haul, and ended up paying a substantial settlement. "Atari" is the remains of Infogrames, a French software house that bought what was already a zombie brand in 2009 and at this point appears to comprise of three lawyers and a licensing agreement taped to a photocopier. Read the rest

The job listing for a vacancy in Burning Man's HR department is pretty anodyne, until you get to this: "Some of the work will be in outside weather conditions and will be exposed to fumes or airborne particles as well as possible extremes in temperature." "Possible" is really underselling it, to be honest. Read the rest

For many years, we've brought you the delightful arts and crafts of Anthony "Tonky" Clune: beautiful felt housewares, giant wall-stickers, a short film about thrifting, cool reflective cycling safety badges and more.Now, Tonky is kickstarting a pair of books collecting decades' worth of his street photography, which feature some beautiful work. He needs a mere $3370 for prepress work, and $5 gets you a set of PDFs, $20 gets you one volume, and $35 gets you both.He hopes to deliver for Christmas but warns it might be January. Given that he's delivered other print projects before, this feels like a low-risk crowdfunder, though as with all such, be advised that you might got get anything for your money.Anthony Clune Photo Books: 1999-2019 [Anthony Clune/Kickstarter] Read the rest

Sara from MIT Sloan Management Review writes, "The entire site is free today through Thursday. To help you make progress on the problems you’re facing right now, they’ve unlocked their site for 72 hours. Every article, research report, and webinar is free to access." Read the rest

Last year, I posted about the spooky painted lightbulb Halloween ornaments of David "gnarledbranch" Irvine; since then, Irvine has created a new, more ambitious batch. He writes: "Some bulbs I salvage are oversized/too heavy to hang, so I had custom designed wooden stands made and they turn into an 'art object'...some even with a wraparound scene!"The Gnarled Branch [David Irvine/Etsy] Read the rest

Police arrested Joshua Allen Renfroe, 29, for shoplifting hundreds of dollars of merchandise from a Walmart in Lufkin, Texas. From KTRE:After Renfroe was arrested, he kept telling LPD officers that the “voodoo” made him try to steal the items from Walmart, the media report stated. He also told them that the “voodoo” told him not to brush his teeth that morning.I'm not sure which is the greater crime.image: Mekabre Loa Voodoo Doll - Complete Kit (Amazon) Read the rest

Gil Gerard, star of the fantastic 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century' has joined '2491' as an actor and producer. '2491' was inspired by the fantastic Buck Rogers series.Hollywood Reporter:Former Buck Rogers in the 25th Century star Gil Gerard has come aboard a sci-fi project that wants to recapture the spirit of the late 1970s-early 1980s NBC series.The actor will be an executive producer and series regular on 2491, a drama from creator Salvatore Verini (FYI's Country Daze). Verini grew up as a fan of the Gerard-led show and says the new project was influenced by it — down to the title, which refers to the year 20th-century astronaut Buck Rogers returned to a future Earth on the series.Like Buck Rogers, 2491 "will follow an astronaut as he is catapulted into the future and returns to an Earth far different than the one he left behind," Verini said Monday in a statement. “But the protagonist will follow a direction more the way [Gerard] was originally pushing for Buck to go back in the '80s." The Buck Rogers title is tied up in a copyright battle involving a question of whether the original source material, a series of stories by Philip Francis Nowlan that began in 1928, is in the public domain. I love the Philip Francis Nowlan stories, but the TV series was very different. Read the rest

Amazon and its contractors are notorious for their wage-theft from warehouse workers, who are required to endure lengthy, unpaid delays while they wait to have their bags and bodies searched for stolen goods; a group of workers sued Amazon and one of its contractors, Integrity Staffing, under a Nevada state law.Amazon and Integrity Staffing -- who call the workers' claims "grossly inaccurate" -- tried to have the case thrown out, going all the way to the Supreme Court. But this week, the Supremes denied cert to Amazon and Integrity, refusing to hear their objections, meaning the workers' claims can proceed.In its 2014 ruling in the case, the Supreme Court decided that under a 1947 law that amended the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, companies do not have to pay employees for the time they spend undergoing security checks.The workers subsequently pressed their allegations under state law and added Amazon as a defendant. The case was consolidated with similar ones in federal court in Kentucky. U.S. Supreme Court rejects Amazon warehouse worker wage appeal [Andrew Chung/Reuters](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Scott Lewis, CC BY) Read the rest

On Reddit, u/xplodingboy07 said he got a nasty knee infection and had to spend a month in the hospital. He posted a photo of the bill, which was for $618,967.78.That's $20,000 a day. And here I was thinking that the $106,911.93 bill my elderly relative got for spending 8 days in the hospital after his partial denture got stuck in his throat was excessive. Turns out it was a bargain at just $13,000 a day. Over 500,000 U.S. families go bankrupt from medical bills every year.Image: Reddit Read the rest

Bernie Sanders remains one of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential elections, but you'd hardly know it from the media narrative, which consistently downplays, ignores or misstates Sanders' campaign platform and his achievements in favor of establishment candidates and even other trustbusters like Elizabeth Warren.The Bernie Blindness subreddit collects compelling examples of this bias in action, from brigading trolls who are plastering Reddit with nearly identical messages insisting that Bernie is too frail to lead to CNN's misleading coverage of poll results that have Sanders poised to trounce Trump.I am a donor to both Bernie Sanders' and Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaigns.Bernie Blindness [Reddit](via Slate Star Codex) Read the rest

A determined driver in France fit their car in a spot with just a few inches of clearance. This is one of 10 videos about heroic parkers featured in Car and Driver. Read the rest

Last month, a developer called Axi0mx released an Iphone crack called Checkm8, which attacks a defect in the Ios bootrom, a low-level piece of code that has not been successfully attacked since 2010. The bootrom is read-only, making its defects effectively unpatchable, short of removing the chip and swapping it for one with more robust code (the attack also works on version 1, 2 and 3 Apple Watches). The crack targets 11 generations of Iphones (though not the most recent ones), and it has important limitations: it has to be run every time the device reboots, and requires physical access at boot-time in order to execute. Despite this, as Dan Goodin notes at Ars Technica, "Checkm8 is going to benefit researchers, hobbyists, and hackers by providing a way not seen in almost a decade to access the lowest levels of iDevices."Axiomx and Goodin discussed the crack, and Axiomx points out that some affected devices can be seriously compromised by Checkm8: Iphones without the "secure enclave" trusted module can be attacked with Checkm8 to bypass the unlock PIN. The secure enclave is present in Iphones from the model 6 and above, but Iphone 5s and earlier models are seriously compromised by this attack.In the meantime, Axiomx holds out hope for security researchers who want to explore other Ios vulnerabilities without subjecting themselves to the strictures of Apple's security program, and for people who want to install apps from alternative app stores.axi0mX: If you have a few minutes, I have more things that you may find interesting:Apple has been making jailbreaks very difficult. Read the rest

Blizzard Entertainment, best known for publishing World of Warcraft, suspended a pro Hearthstone player and pulled his prize money because he said, “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age!” during a livestream.Blizzard, which has a huge and lucrative market in China, determined that Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai's utterance was in violation of a competition rule:2019 HEARTHSTONE GRANDMASTERS OFFICIAL COMPETITION RULES v1.4 p.12, Section 6.1 (o)Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.According to Kotaku: "Blitzchung’s punishment is an immediate removal from Grandmasters, a withholding of prize money for his participation and a ban from taking part in Hearthstone esports 'for 12 months beginning from Oct. 5th, 2019 and extending to Oct. 5th, 2020.'"[BREAKING] Hong Kong Hearthstone player @blitzchungHS calls for liberation of his country in post-game interview:https://t.co/3AgQAaPioj @Matthieist #Hearthstone pic.twitter.com/DnaMSEaM4g— 🎃 Inven Global 🎃 (@InvenGlobal) October 6, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

Yesterday, volunteers and staff at New York's beloved Pacifica Radio affiliate, WBAI, got an abrupt notice informing them that Pacifica had shut down the station, in order to prevent its "financial losses" from "jeopardiz[ing] the survival of the entire network." Today, 2600 Magazine tweeted "We're happy to announce that @WBAI has gotten an injunction to stay the takeover of the station by @RadioPacifica. All programming will resume and the next court date is October 18th." (2600 is behind "Off the Hook," one of the longest-running WBAI programs).We're happy to announce that @WBAI has gotten an injunction to stay the takeover of the station by @RadioPacifica. All programming will resume and the next court date is October 18th.Should be a good show this Wednesday!@HackerRadioShow pic.twitter.com/6LLot3temR— 2600 Magazine (@2600) October 8, 2019(Image: Rob Vincent, CC BY-SA)(Thanks, Stephen Pankowicz!) Read the rest

Through a collaboration with NASA and the SETI Institute, Girl Scouts can now earn badges in space science, from astronomy to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. “Part of science literacy is understanding our place in the big world, in the solar system, in the universe," Pamela Harman, the director of education at the SETI Institute, told Air & Space Magazine. "Once we realize that, I think it’s easier to think about protecting our planet.”From Air & Space:Girl Scout cadettes (grades 6-8) can earn the space science researcher badge by investigating properties of light and observing the night sky; seniors (grades 9-10) can obtain the space science expert badge by classifying stars and studying their life cycles; and ambassadors (grades 11-12) seeking the space science master badge will explore exoplanets through activities such as designing a habitat for an alien world. Read the rest

Propublica's latest longread is ostensibly a profile of two kids who attended Orange County's Sage Hill School, where tuition runs $40,000/year and where an estimated 25% of students get into elite colleges thanks to their parents shelling out for "independent counsellors" who run the gamut from people who help with admissions essays and strategic donations to the schools of their choice all the way up to William "Rick" Singer, who pleaded guilty to collecting millions to grease the path for mediocre rich kids to attend elite colleges by bribing coaches.One of the kids profiled is Grant Janavs, a middling tennis player who is also the scion of the ultra rich Merage/Janavs family, inheritors of a fortune from Hot Pockets and other products from Chef America, Inc. The other is Adam Langevin, a superb and dedicated tennis player who "suicided" tennis (in the words of his high school coach), devoting his life to it while simultaneously succeeding academically. Langevin played on the school team despite the fact that it took away from his ability to play in the tournaments that would have helped him get into a college athletics program, because he felt a sense of duty to the school -- even playing through serious injuries.But it wasn't Adam who got into a top athletics program, it was Grant, who was admitted to Georgetown. Grant's mother hired Rick Singer to "consult" on that admissions, and once the admission was secured, a foundation controlled by Grant's grandfather "donated" $400,000 to a "charity" run by Singer. Read the rest

This job candidate has watched too many (or perhaps too few) English-dubbed martial arts films from the 1970s."You need to be more formal and at least practice before you take the interview." Read the rest

In 2003, Philosophical Quarterly published a paper by philosopher Nick Bostrom titled "Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?" In the introduction, Bostrom argues that one (or more) of the following propositions must be true:(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof)(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor‐simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.The TED-Ed video above looks at how we might be able to run experiments to learn whether or not we are currently living in a simulation. Read the rest