Boing Boing

Your cable company advertises one price, but charges another, much higher one: on average, your real bill will be 24% higher than the price you were promised.They get away with it by adding a series of "fees" onto the monthly bill, and by assigning misleading names to these fees that imply that they're government mandated taxes (this is also common in the aviation industry, where ticket prices are inflated with industry "fees" that are misleadingly listed in a way that makes travelers think they're paying taxes to governments or airports).All in all, the cable industry is bringing in an estimated $28b in misleading "fees" like "broadcast TV fees, regional sports fees, HD technology fees, Internet service-related fees, administrative fees and convenience fees, all of which are simply part of the company's cost of business, but which are not included in your quoted price.Some of these charges are particularly egregious, such as Frontier's practice of charging the customers is bought from Verizon a router rental fee, even if they've bought a router from Verizon to work with the service. But even the less-grifty fees are bullshit, and when Consumer Reports used a "secret shopper" program to contact sales reps from the big companies, they consistently lied about the total price of the service. Consumer Reports wants Congress to pass the TRUE Fees Act, which deshenaniganizes many of these practices, forcing telcos and cable operators to accurately quote prices and to offer free contract cancelation after price hikes. This report exposes how the cable industry is using the practice of hidden, sneaky fees to disguise the true cost of cable service and increase revenue, and how much those fees are costing consumers. Read the rest

Some people sober up and realize they've made a giant mistake.Smithsonian:Outside the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts towers a totem pole by Charles Joseph, a Canadian artist from the Kwakiutl First Nation. In the early hours of September 20, the left hand of this striking artwork was stolen, prompting both the museum and Joseph to issue a plea for its return. Fortunately, their appeals seem to have worked. According to Marian Scott of the Montreal Gazette, the thieves have returned the hand, also taking it upon themselves to leave a rather contrite apology note.In a statement, the MMFA revealed that the stolen appendage was deposited on the museum’s doorstop at some point on the night of October 1 and October 2. In the apology letter, the vandals explained that at the time of the crime, they were “not in a sober state of mind” and “had no idea what the totem pole was.”“After we realized what this stood for and represented for so many people, we immediately felt sick to our stomach,” the note continued. “We would like to let all know that in NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM was this done in spite.” Read the rest

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kylie Shea (@kyliesheaxo) on Oct 3, 2019 at 9:12am PDT Professional dancer and actress Kylie Shea performed in front of a thermographic camera that forms an image from infrared radiation. From Instagram:We filmed this late one night on a tennis court in the freezing cold to watch and study how my body heats up when I dance. My core was the first to fire up and the back of my legs (the place my body prefers to store fat) remained ice cold for the entire 45 minutes of improv. Though this was a few years ago, I recently rediscovered the footage and realized I had never shared it here on IG! This study fascinated me and I look forward to exploring it further with different styles of movement! Cheers to growing, learning, and dancing, always. 💫🌹🥂🎶 Motorcycle “As the Rush Comes” (Gabriel & Dresden Chillout Mix) Read the rest

The Goop purveyor was familiar with the line of vibrators but had apparently not seen 'The Tennis Coach' up close. As the interview continues it seems she may not be very familiar with these products.At least one prior attempt by Goop to sell things that go in and or near a woman's vagina have had bad results. Read the rest

https://img.youtube.com/vi/MaAVrj6MO5U/maxresdefault.jpgLate Night with Seth Meyers created this fake commercial that explains how the impeachment process works.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was wonderful. Far and away my favorite episode, however, was Hush.Overnight, skeletal ghouls with metal grins and MIB style steal the voices of Sunnydale's townspeople. How the Scooby gang handles some of the evilest characters the series has seen, during a communication breakdown, is wonderful.Nowadays public schools in California teach Powerpoint.This super creepy episode was just fantastic. I am going to re-watch more Buffy. Read the rest

The geniuses at Squirrel Monkey designed Dropbox for the 1980s. It's a perfect solution for the MS-DOS, floppy disk, and modem era.Image: YouTube Read the rest

When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated.— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 4, 2019 "strains credulity"Mitt did follow up with a "bolder" statement:By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 4, 2019 Read the rest

Cleveland's Stephanie "Crochetverse" Pokorny created a freehand, crocheted Alien Xenomorph costume for her (incredibly lucky!) son, Jake, adding glow-in-the-dark fabric paint accents to make it luminescent. It's completely amazing. If you think that's great, don't miss her Skeletor costume!The video! WAIT FOR IT! 😱😍 Jake has this DOWN!CROCHET XENOMORPH ALIEN MOVES AND GLOWS!.Fully freehand crochet costume by me for my son.I used LIT by @Culture Hustle mixed with glow daek fabric paint from Joanns and the glow is INSANE! It about glows in daylight! pic.twitter.com/MgNDOSlthq— Crochetverse (@crochetverse) October 3, 2019(Thanks, Allen!) Read the rest

Coraline Ada Ehmke's Hippocratic License is a software license that permits the broad swathe of activities enabled by traditional free/open licenses, with one exception it bars use by: "individuals, corporations, governments, or other groups for systems or activities that actively and knowingly endanger, harm, or otherwise threaten the physical, mental, economic, or general well-being of individuals or groups in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights."The Open Source Initiative maintains the canonical list of free/open licenses based on compliance with its Open Source Definition, which excludes licenses that ""discriminate against any person or group of persons" and that "restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor." On this basis, OSI cofounder Bruce Perens says the Hippcratic License is not compatible with the OSD.Ehmke calls the OSD "horribly dated" because it doesn't enable software developers to ensure that "our technology isn't used by fascists."The OSD was developed in response to a proliferation of "open" licenses, many of which were open in name only, attempting to co-opt the word "open" without providing true openness (for example, Microsoft fielded a "shared source" license that permitted limited scrutiny of its sourcecode, but restricted the creation of new works based on that code). Since the OSD's inception, the "field of endeavor" clause has given rise to controversy over attempts to expand the idea of "software freedom" into other human rights domains, including the right to be free from violence, harassment, exploitation, etc. The OSI has maintained that adjudicating whether a use qualifies for a field of endeavor prohibition was too legally intensive to make these licenses broadly useful, but Ehmke counters that the UN's Declaration has 70 years' worth of interpretive cases and scholarship that clears up this ambiguity. Read the rest

Elizabeth Holmes continues to struggle.ABC7:According to our media partner, the Mercury News, Holmes' lawyers have asked a judge to let them quit the case. They're claiming Holmes is not paying them. "Ms. Holmes has not paid Cooley for any of its work as her counsel of record in this action for more than a year," lawyers Stephen Neal, John Dwyer and Jeffrey Lombard said in the filing obtained by the newspaper. "Further, given Ms. Holmes's current financial situation, Cooley has no expectation that Ms. Holmes will ever pay it for its services as her counsel." Read the rest

Puddles' voice is that of an angel. An angel in clown make up, but sure.I love this guy. Read the rest

Relive the glorious moment when the First Order almost ended the Resistance! This lovely model of the rinky-dink Crait Ski Speeder will take you there.The kit comes with a Poe Dameron minfig as well as some Admiral named Ematt, a 'resistance trooper' and 2 First Order snowtroopers. Pretty sure the resistance guy dies easy.You may engage in futile attacks on the Mobile Big Laser used by the FI to smash the resistance's big barn door!LEGO Star Wars: The Last Jedi Defense of Crait 75202 Building Kit (746 Piece) via Amazon Read the rest

A Redditor created stats for the Goose from Untitled Goose Game. Naturally, its actions include an enraging honk:The creator got some pushback for giving the Goose a chaotic neutral designation. His analysis:I mean, even though the Goose is unnaturally intelligent, evasive and mean, it never really does anything of real threat to the village. My take on it is to be the subject of a wild goose chase, being maddeningly difficult to pin down, or to be an incredibly annoying support NPC for a damage dealing fiend who keeps it as a pet/associate.Speaking of Untitled Goose Game, Tiny, who has a Patreon focusing on custom made keycaps for mechanical keyboards, sculpted this goose keycap with polymer clay:sorry but i couldn't resist making a goose keycap as annoying and obnoxious as the goose in the game #untitledgoosegame pic.twitter.com/GbSkFoJd6i— tiny ~ keycap maker @ NYCC 2678 (@tinymakesthings) October 2, 2019 Read the rest

Vaping giants like Juul attracted billions in investment from tobacco companies by reversing decades of progress in weaning children off of nicotine, thanks to deliberately targeting children with advertisements and phony in-school "mental health" seminars that advised them to take up their carcinogenic, highly addictive products.Juul and other vaping products are marketed as a safe way to quit smoking, but as their products are increasingly discovered to be uniquely and fantastically unsafe, it raises a new question: how do you quit vaping?The answer is: no one knows. There's virtually no research on how to quit vaping, which is incredibly addictive, thanks to the extremely high levels of nicotine salts in many vape liquids, and to vaping's smooth delivery, which allows users to take in much higher levels of nicotine than they would get from traditional cigarettes.It's especially hard for teens, thanks to the prevalence of vaping in school, which means that kids who quit face massive social pressure to start again. Quitting is a physically uncomfortable experience, and includes withdrawal symptoms like cravings, headaches, irritability, and depression. Managing these symptoms is the key to successfully quitting, Levy says, “because that’s what makes it so hard to stop.” Her program uses nicotine patches to ward off withdrawal. Levy tries to treat with the lowest dosage possible, but if the patch isn’t working, there are also stronger medications like Buproprion. She also counsels parents to give kids nicotine lozenges if they start to get a craving. Because lozenges are ingested, not inhaled, the nicotine is absorbed more slowly into the body and they don’t deliver the same euphoric dopamine hit of ripping a Juul. Read the rest

Google has long allowed you to delete all the data it's stored on you, or to turn off collection, but turning off collection altogether made its services a lot less useful (for example, it made the auto-suggested locations in the Maps app of your phone worse, forcing you to do more typing on a tiny keyboard while on the go), and otherwise you had to remember to periodically open Google's privacy dashboard and delete your stored history.The latest iteration of Google's privacy dashboard solves this problem by allowing you to set a window for the retention of your data, so that Google will automatically purge records after a set time (the shortest is 3 months, the longest, 18 months). Google is rolling this out across all its services, the latest being Youtube.The move comes as Google is also improving the privacy defaults in Android: I got a software update last week that has a surprisingly easy-to-use feature that warns you when apps that you aren't using try to get your location, and then allows you to configure those apps to only get your location when you're actually using them, or never, or always.All of this depends on your trusting Google to honor the implicit promises in these privacy settings, of course. It's a difficult risk to assess: Google has broken its promises in the past, and even done sneaky things to subvert its users privacy settings.But the company is also operating in a new world where multibillion dollar fines are becoming par for the course when this sort of misbehavior is detected, and there is burgeoning political will to revive antitrust law and break up Big Tech companies. Read the rest

Kaja Robinson is 53 and has a daughter about to go off to college, but she is still embroiled in bizarre, kafkaesque disputes over the $17,000 student loan she took out in the 1980s: for decades, she has had to set aside whole days to call debt collectors and try to get them to acknowledge the payments she's made -- for which she has paperwork, but which the lenders lost track of, causing her loans to balloon to $49,000.At one point, Robinson was advised to file a lawsuit to clarify the matter, but she lives in Minnesota and the nearest court able to hear such a case in two states away, in Chicago. Instead, she worked out a kind of pro-forma program whereby she made a monthly $5 "good faith" payment, which satisfied the computers that she was not in default, allowing her to repair her credit and get a mortgage.But Robinson's debts keep getting sold from one debt-buyer to another, as the fly-by-night debt vultures go bankrupt or sell off their "assets" (that is, badly documented, allegedly delinquent loans), and it starts all over again. Robinson has no end in sight. Her $5/month program has been unilaterally erased by her debt's latest owner, and she's back to spending whole days on hold, waving her stack of yellowing paper receipts at the phone.Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have promised to erase outstanding student debts if either is elected to the presidency in 2020.Kaja Robinson can’t forget the hold music at her former debt collection agency’s phone line. Read the rest

The creators of the Exploding Kittens game wanted to make an event to "fix the things that were wrong with traditional conventions," that was "actually fun," and had a "giant cat that explodes." Enter Burning Cat. A two-day event at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland that will feature guest speakers, a giant "ring," an enormous cat statue that will eventually burn, and, of course, lots of games. About it, in their words:We’ve attended a lot of gaming conventions. A lot of them. There are things we like. We like the fans. We like the games. We like the creativity. But there are many things that we don’t like. We don’t like that most conventions are basically glorified shopping malls. We don’t like that despite being a gaming convention, very few people play actual games or have actual fun.So, we decided to reboot the idea of a convention. We decided to build something new from the ground up. We decided to focus on a core philosophy: this is a con you attend if you want to have actual fun. This is a place to observe and/or participate in games, comedy, and creativity. This is a place for tabletop gamers, card game players, casual party game players, families who love games, game makers, or anyone who ever hosted a game night.Burning Cat is an event for people who are tired of screens and want to have fun face-to-face.If this sounds fun to you (and why wouldn't it?!), better get your tickets now — this thing is definitely going to sell out. Read the rest

"Evil Midweek Cutie" costume available at Walmart.(Via Kiersten Essenpreis.) Read the rest

It's Inkotober, when "artists all over the world take on the Inktober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month." In a fun experiment, Janelle Shane trained a neural net with prior Inktober prompts and picked out some promising concepts like "ornery beach sheep" and "BUG IN HUMAN SHAPE."If you'd like to participate in the fun, pick one of the prompts and post your illustration for a chance to win an advance copy of Shane's new book:My US and UK publishers are letting me give away some copies of my book to people who draw the AInktober prompts - tag your drawings with AInktober and every week I’ll choose a few people based on *handwaves* criteria to get an advance copy of my book. (US, UK, and Canada only, sorry)Here are a few entries to date:Doing the @JanelleCShane #inktober prompts. Here’s ‘Tiny Cod Flames Rise’ pic.twitter.com/WAqh7IzrGF— SamsonLeisureCentre (@SamsonLeisure) October 1, 2019Tiny cod Flames rising. A.I.nktober prompts by @JanelleCShane#madewithtiltbrush @tiltbrush #VR#Inktober #Inktober2019 pic.twitter.com/NkmjG2MfqS— Cordula Hansen (@CordulaHansen) October 1, 2019Day one of #AInktober (#Inktober prompts generated by #ArtificialInteligence, via @JanelleCShane)Loose pencils, inked with a Prismacolor brush pen, lettered with Sakura Microns.#Inktober2019 #inktoberday1 pic.twitter.com/1jiEePPnaz— Cartoonist Aaron (@TheLABSRobot) October 1, 2019#INKTOBER DAY 1: "tiny cod Flames rise"Having a crack at following these 'unofficial neural net-generated prompts' from https://t.co/AZ3qyBxfkk (@JanelleCShane) because they're just so freaking beautiful & weird 😂❤#inktober2019 #ainktober #art #traditionalart #drawing pic.twitter.com/D6ZimlfBSQ— Mim (@MimLofBees) October 1, 2019 Read the rest

There's hardly a business out there that doesn't use cloud storage, and a growing number of private individuals are taking advantage of it as well. Suffice to say that word gets out pretty quickly about shoddy cloud services. And conversely, you can be sure that when sites like Techradar give the New Zealand-based MEGA high marks as one of their top cloud storage options, they are not alone.Not only is MEGA an airtight place to store and send your data, it functions as a communications hub with text, voice, and video communication straight through dedicated apps on your Android, iOS or Windows devices. When you're sharing files, there's no guesswork about how secure the servers are. Data is encrypted on your end before you even send it, which means not even MEGA itself will have the means to unlock it. While they are happy to keep your info blacked out, the company itself is dedicated to transparency, with an open-source structure for their sync clients.There are three plans for MEGA PRO cloud storage, and they're all at least 25% off the MSRP. The base-level gives 1 TB of storage and 2 TB of data transfer, PRO II has 4 TB storage and 8 TB data transfer, and you can ramp up to 8 TB of storage and 16 TB of data transfer with the PRO III plan. Read the rest

After seeing so much skin with all those "sexy" Halloween costumes, it's nice to see someone has made a costume that covers you up. Like, really covers you up. This $100 "Cousin It" Halloween costume is faux fur from head to toe and includes a synthetic hair-lined bowler hat and a pair of sunglasses. It's coming out just in time for the new animated Addams Family movie on October 10. (Geekologie) Read the rest

Tightrope Girl took 18 hours and the widow Constance Hatchaway took 13 hoursIf you've ever tried to draw anything on an ordinary Etch A Sketch toy, you know it takes some mad skills to be able to do what "etch artist" Kevin E. Davis has accomplished with these four Haunted Mansion stretching room portraits. The series is part of his Disneyland Project which also includes absolutely incredible Etch A Sketch drawings of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, the treasure room of the Pirates of the Caribbean, the exterior of It's a Small World, and more!Each of these took 13 hours to completeBecause he has a family and life outside of work, Kevin can only create his art during his lunch hour. So one drawing can take months to complete. And, in case you think they are faked in some way, head to his Instagram feed for "making of" photos and videos. These are the real deal, folks. In fact, he's so good that he evens adds hidden Easter eggs, like his initials, in the finished pieces.Take a look at these timelapse videos he created: Read the rest

Luke Perry's 22-year old son Jack wrestles as "Jungle Boy" for TNT's WWE competitor, All Elite Wrestling:#12Days till #AEWDynamite!#JungleBoy (@boy_myth_legend) is ready! Are you?➡️ Wednesday, Oct 2nd, 8pm EST / 7pm CST@AEWonTNT @TNTDrama pic.twitter.com/hKFoASipqo— All Elite Wrestling (@AEWrestling) September 20, 2019From the right angle, he's a dead ringer for his dad, but with even bolder sideburns: View this post on Instagram The only kind of belt I wear. Brand new @allprowrestling Jr. Heavyweight Dragonfly Championship. 📷 @oscar_kings_studioA post shared by Jungle Boy • Jack Perry (@boy_myth_legend) on Apr 30, 2019 at 12:17pm PDTAt a reported 5'10" and 150 pounds, he's fairly small, but makes up for it with big air: View this post on Instagram I’ve changed a lot since high school. 📸 @scottlesh724 - 2019 📷 @danielglickerr -2014 #aew #allout #backflip #highschoolA post shared by Jungle Boy • Jack Perry (@boy_myth_legend) on Sep 7, 2019 at 8:01am PDTIt took him a while to warm to the name:“I’m a big fan of Conor McGregor, and I always noticed how he’d stand before his fights in this monkey-like posture,” said Perry. “I always thought that was really cool. I did that in my first fight, when I went by Nate Coy because he is another of my favorite fighters, and the announcer told me that he had a nickname for me and said, ‘Jungle Boy’ Nate Coy.“At first, I hated it. I thought, ‘What did he just stick me with?’ Then I started to develop the character around the name, and I love it now. Read the rest

Some people hate on-demand electric scooters -- and some people really hate them.This guy in Florida falls into some third group positioned even further along that axis of disgruntlement. From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:A 59-year-old man who police say was caught in the act of vandalizing electric scooters — slicing the brake lines on as many as 140 — offered no motive during his arrest, a Fort Lauderdale police report said.He also requested a lawyer and said he “did not want to dig himself into a grave," police said.During the dark predawn hours, Randall Thomas Williams would set out with a single glove, wirecutters and pliers and, while sticking to the shadows and alleyways of his Las Olas neighborhood, search for the controversial, yet popular, rental scooters that have swarmed the city for nearly a year, police said.He’s been doing it since at least May, police said, and has vandalized at least 140 e-scooters in the same fashion, most within a two-block radius of Williams’ apartment at the corner of Southeast First Street and Southeast 12th Avenue between Broward and Las Olas boulevards.Apparently he was also placing stickers on the scooters' QR codes, to make them unrentable using the scooter-rental app. In the video above you can see him first ensticker the scooters, then come back to snip the brake cords. Read the rest

You may have already heard about Jeffrey Epstein's Caribbean island, Little St. James, and its mysterious temple. Now, the Miami Herald has a report on the apparently nefarious means Epstein used to buy a second island called Great St. James Cay. Per the report, the owner was determined not to sell to Epstein in light of Epstein's 2008 conviction. Epstein was undeterred:According to records examined by the Miami Herald and McClatchy, and interviews, Epstein set up an opaque limited liability company, or LLC, making it appear in the negotiations that the true owner was one Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a wealthy Dubai businessman with connections to the royal family. A $22.5 million deal was worked out.Only after the deal was consummated and work permits were pulled did it emerge that Epstein might be the actual owner. It wasn’t until his July arrest, however, that he officially declared in an affidavit that he owned the second island.Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem asserted that Epstein made the purchase without his permission or involvement:Sultan is his name, not his title — confirmed through an aide that Epstein had asked to use his name in an unspecified business bid but was told no.It appears Epstein used it anyway.And that's not the only island in the news. The New York Times reports that Lebanon's (married) billionaire prime minister gave more than $15 million to a South African bikini model. South African authorities investigated the money and deemed it taxable income. Read the rest

UNC's Paul Jones writes, "Ohio and North Carolina have for years been fighting about which state own the right to say they were the Home of Aviation or the First in Flight. But now NC has something no other state can claim -- First in Fly-Eat! The license plate features not only the famously hungry plant, but also it's fabled food, the fruit fly -- in the process of being trapped. Proceeds go to preserve Venus Fly Trap habitat. Joint projects of the NC Botanical Gardens and the Friends of Plant Preservation." Read the rest

Banksy's massive "Devolved Parliament," a 2009 painting of chimpanzees in Britain’s House of Commons, just sold for $12.1 million at a Sotheby's auction. It was put on the block by a private, unnamed seller. The painting was previously titled "Question Time" but that was before Banksy made subtle changes to it after it was included in an exhibition at the Bristol Museum. From the New York Times:After a dramatic 13 minutes of competition, in which as many as 10 bidders were involved, at least five of them in the room, it was finally knocked down to a telephone buyer. At one point the hammer was poised to fall at £6.4 million, but a bidder at the back of the room flung up his hand at the last second, before finally giving way to the winning telephone bid...The artist’s previous auction high was set in 2008 for the painting, “Keep It Spotless,” a collaborative work by Banksy and Damien Hirst, which sold for $1.9 million at a Sotheby’s charity auction.(Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!) Read the rest

Our friends at Feral House have a new book out called Compliments of Chicagohoodz: Chicago Street Gang Art and Culture, "which collects over five decades of visual art and design from Chicago's street gangs: from business (compliment) cards and fraternity-style sweaters and patches, to elaborate gang graffiti (emblems), drawings and assorted memorabilia." Here are a few images from the book: Read the rest

If you do soldering work, I recommend getting a pair of these micro cutters. They'll cut copper wires flush with the blob of solder, making your work look tidy. And they cost just on Amazon Read the rest

40 years of Reaganomic sociopathy has managed to convince hundreds of millions of otherwise sensible people that big, social problems are caused by their personal choices, and not (say) by rapacious corporations that corrupt the regulatory process in order to get away with literal and figurative murder. The Intercept's Sharon Lerner made a short doc on the subject, showing how the inevitable pollution from single-use plastics was rebranded as a matter of individual carelessness, starting with the "Crying Indian" ads, and how that continues to this day, with the plastics industry successfully lobbying states to ban cities from limiting plastic bags, even as those cities have to pay to landfill and clear them away.Plastic production really began in earnest in the 1950s. It’s hard to remember, but we once got along without it. Of course, plastic offered great convenience, and its production skyrocketed. In 1967, when Dustin Hoffman was advised to go into plastics in “The Graduate,” there were 25 million tons of plastic produced. These days, we’re making 300 million tons. At this point, the plastics industry is worth $4 trillion and almost half of what we’re producing is single-use plastics — things that will be used once and almost instantly become trash.Public outrage at this problem erupted in 1970, with the first Earth Day, and the industry has been successfully dodging the issue ever since. Through advertising, public outreach campaigns, lobbying, and partnerships with nonprofits designed to seem “green,” plastics industry organizations have been blaming “litterbugs” for the growing menace and promoting the idea of recycling as the solution, while at the same time fighting every serious attempt to limit plastic production. Read the rest

Resource Generation is an organization of young people who inherited enough to be in the top decile of America's wealth distribution, who are determined to give away those inheritances in ways that redistribute wealth and make the country more fair and equal. Their mission: "As part of a coordinated strategy to systematically redistribute wealth and repair the harm created by wealth extraction, RG asks our members to take bold action with the resources currently under our and our families’ control, moving toward greater alignment with humanity and the planet.”"The organization has 15 chapters of 18-35 year olds, and the chapters coordinate the dispersal of all or almost all inherited wealth and/or excess wealth to social justice movements."To avoid the trap of philanthropic laundering of their families' reputations (as described in Anand Giridharadas 2018 book "Winners Take All") the group focuses on donations to organizations that empower marginalized communities to decide how the money will be spent, rather than those that allow donors to direct the use of the funds.The group attracts a lot of skepticism, but Norman Vanamee's profiles of some of its New York members makes them sound like people who had the weird luck to be born into wealth, and the honest self-assessment to recognize that they just got lucky, and that their luck came at others' expense, and that something must be done about it.T&C: Do you worry about passing on what you’ve inherited to, if you have kids, that generation? When I look at my two daughters, I’m like, “I want to be able to do all this stuff for them.”SJ: That’s a really good question. Read the rest

Mike Lake's mashup of Lizzo's "Truth Hurts" with "Scales and Arpeggios" from Disney's 1970 animated feature "The Aristocats" is plain fabulous. Lizzo plays the scene far better than Eva Gabor ever did. (via Kottke) Read the rest

The CN Tower is a giant radio antenna and tourist attraction on Toronto's lakeshore; it's an iconic part of the city's skyline, and has been since it was built at taxpayer expense; today, it's owned by a Crown Corporation that insists that any reproduction of the Tower is a trademark violation.James Bow is a Canadian fantasy writer whose small-press fantasy novel The Night Girl features a cover-art collage that includes a Creative Commons-licensed image of the CN Tower. Bow was getting ready for his book launch when the CN Tower's management company wrote to him to insist that he not publish the book with the cover, on the grounds that people who encountered his novel might mistakenly believe that it was commercially affiliated with the CN Tower. The Canadian Parliament has actually taken up the question of whether the owners of buildings can control the reproduction of their likenesses: Section 32.2(1) of the Copyright Act states that "It is not an infringement of copyright... for any person to reproduce, in a painting, drawing, engraving, photograph or cinematographic work...an architectural work, provided the copy is not in the nature of an architectural drawing or plan."In other words, you can't stop people from reproducing the likeness of your building. The CN Tower's management clearly knew about this, so their threat to Bow invoked trademark law, advancing the bizarre theory that any commercial reproduction of the Tower's likeness is intrinsically deceptive, since anyone who sees such a reproduction would automatically assume that the CN Tower endorsed the product that bore the reproduction (that is, people who encountered Bow's book would immediately leap to the conclusion that the CN Tower had launched a line of fantasy novels). Read the rest

In 2008, Congress authorized a $700b bailout of the finance sector, with almost no strings attached (notably, the bailout did not require banks that were receiving public subsidies to abstain from foreclosures or penalties for the members of the public who had just bailed the banks out).Eleven years later, Propublica -- which started publication shortly before the bailouts happened -- is still tracking every dime of that money. Much of it was repaid -- with interest, even -- but large swathes of it disappeared forever, having enriched reckless bankers without saving their depositors.Propublica's interactive bailout tracker lets you enter the name of a company or bank to find out how much it got and what's happened since.But for a snapshot, Propublica's annual report on the state of the bailout is a great look at what's become of that $0.8t public spending program.Six banks, in particular, stand out as bad credit risks who have lagged the pack in making good on their public debts, led by Oneunited Bank, which was specifically bailed out at the insistence of Barney Frank, whose $12m bailout has ballooned to $20.7m in debts thanks to missed dividend payments.The most active part of the TARP these days is its foreclosure prevention programs. We spent a lot of time reporting on the Obama administration’s all-carrot-and-no-stick approach to getting banks to help homeowners. Foreclosures peaked in 2009 and 2010, but the government spent almost all its money long after that. Like a firefighter who’s late to the fire but wants to try out the hose anyway, the Treasury has been spraying billions for years on the smoldering ruins of the crisis. Read the rest

Today's Bernie Sanders health update is good. He's recovering well after heart surgery, and his campaign says he plans to participate in the next Democratic presidential debate.Statement from Jane Sanders, wife of Sen. Sanders: "Bernie is up and about ... We expect Bernie will be discharged and on a plane back to Burlington before the end of the weekend.”Sen. Sanders' presidential campaign events had been canceled after an operation to insert stents due to artery blockage."Thanks for all the well wishes. I'm feeling good," Sanders tweeted yesterday in his first public comments after hospitalization. [via, image: Shutterstock] Read the rest

Because washing your hands after you scarf a bag of Cheetos is such a hassle:"For Chips, Popcorn, Pizza, Party food, Finger food, Appetizers and anything else that makes your fingers Cheesy, Greasy or Sticky. Designed to go on and off with ease, our unique shape fits comfortably on any size fingertip. Food-Grade Silicone is easy to clean, Dishwasher safe, and can be placed in boiling water to Disinfect. Use as a Finger Food Utensil or for Kitchen Prep.?They're available in a variety of colors for $9 from Amazon: Finger Covers for Cheesy, Greasy, Sticky Fingers Read the rest

"See you in space," indeed. Far fucking out!Long-since closed, the Buffalo, New York building that held Starseed Enterprises was recently home to a musical instrument store but is apparently now a church. Read the rest

The Cyber Independent Testing Lab is a security measurement company founded by Mudge Zadko (previously), late of the Cult of the Dead Cow and l0pht Heavy Industries and the NSA's Tailored Access Operations Group; it has a unique method for assessing the security of devices derived from methods developed by Mudge at the NSA.Rather than parsing through sourcecode (static analysis) or attempting to disrupt the operations of running code (dynamic analysis), CIT uses "binary analysis," combing through the compiled firmware of target devices and looking for signs that the programmers who created that firmware made use of libraries and techniques that are hard to implement correctly, and whose incorrect implementation results in serious security vulnerabilities. In other words, they're not looking at whether the code is secure: they're looking at how hard it would be to make the code secure, and assuming that programmers who chose the hardest-to-secure methods probably made exploitable errors.In August, CIT released an important report on IoT devices, extracting the firmware for these devices from the updates on the manufacturers' websites and conducting longitudinal analyses of these firmwares to see how secure they were and whether they trended towards better or worse security. They analyzed 22 manufacturers' products -- 1,294 in all -- spanning 4,956 firmware versions spread across 3,333,411 binaries.You can probably guess where this is heading: over a 15-year dataset, every vendor's security practices worsened over time; updates were more likely to introduce insecure techniques, rather than hardening devices. Read the rest

Todd Starnes is no longer a host on Fox News radio after stating Democrats do not worship the Christian God, but may worship Moloch, depicted in the bible as a Canaanite god whose followers practiced child sacrifice.From Washington Examiner:Starnes has previously stoked controversy, perhaps most notably when he told Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar to take a "one-way plane ticket back to whatever third world hellhole you came from."Image: By Charles Foster - Illustrators of the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us http://associate.com/photos/Bible-Pictures--1897-W-A-Foster/page-0074-1.jpg, Public Domain, Link Read the rest

The F4U is a thing of beauty.In WWII the Japanese called the Chance Vought F4U 'whistling death.' At around 1:24 you can hear why! Read the rest

Pippi Longstocking, the young lady who taught me to responsibly live alone, will be featured in a new film.Hollywood Reporter:StudioCanal and David Heyman's Heyday Films, which together produced the hugely successful features Paddington and Paddington 2, are reuniting for another iconic children's figure.The two have teamed with the Astrid Lindgren Company on a feature based on Pippi Longstocking, the famously super-strong, energetic and kind girl with the red pigtails.First seen in print in 1945 and based on bedside stories Swedish author Astrid Lindgren would tell her daughter, Pippi Longstocking books have since been translated into 77 languages with more than 65 million copies sold worldwide. There have already been several TV and film adaptations. Recently, Michelle Obama cited Pippi Longstocking as the first book love of her life, telling Today that she was "really fascinated with this strong little girl that was the center of everything."Mr. Nilsson should be played by Sean Spicer. Read the rest

A new study shows the garbage patches floating in our oceans are mostly trash dumped off ships.AFP:The island is located roughly midway between Argentina and South Africa in the South Atlantic gyre, a vast whirlpool of currents that has created what has come to be known as an oceanic garbage patch.While initial inspections of the trash washing up on the island showed labels indicating it had come from South America, some 2,000 miles (3,000 kilometers) to the west, by 2018 three-quarters of the garbage appeared to originate from Asia, mostly China.Many of the plastic bottles had been crushed with their tops screwed on tight, as is customary on board ships to save space, said report author Peter Ryan, director of the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.Around 90 percent of the bottles found had been produced in the previous two years, ruling out the possibility that they had been carried by ocean currents over the vast distance from Asia, which would normally take three to five years.Since the number of Asian fishing vessels has remained stable since the 1990s, while the number of Asian -- and in particular, Chinese -- cargo vessels has vastly increased in the Atlantic, the researchers concluded that the bottles must come from merchant vessels, which toss them overboard rather than dumping them as trash at ports."It's inescapable that it's from ships, and it's not coming from land," Ryan told AFP. Read the rest

At last month's Defcon, the United States Air Force invited pre-selected hackers to attempt to sabotage an F-15 fighter-jet data system:And after two long days, the seven hackers found a mother lode of vulnerabilities that — if exploited in real life — could have completely shut down the Trusted Aircraft Information Download Station, which collects reams of data from video cameras and sensors while the jet is in flight.Pleased with the results, the USAF has announced that next year's Defcon will feature an assault on a satellite. There will again be a pre-screening and qualifying process:Sometime soon, the Air Force will put out a call for submissions. Think you know how to hack a satellite or its ground station? Let them know. A select number of researchers whose pitches seem viable will be invited to try out their ideas during a “flat-sat” phase—essentially a test build comprising all the eventual components—six months before Defcon. That group will once again be culled; the Air Force will fly the winners out to Defcon for a live hacking competition.The tentative plan is to allow the hackers to try to take control of an orbiting satellite:“What we’re planning on doing is taking a satellite with a camera, have it pointing at the Earth, and then have the teams try to take over control of the camera gimbals and turn toward the moon”You can find information about Defcon 28 here. Read the rest

"And there we go, we've created Minecraft." Read the rest

There's a great deal of opportunity out there in the tech world and an increasing amount of competition. So you know your way around Python? Great. So do a lot of other coders, and they've probably got Java, C++, and SQL on their resumes to boot. A career in programming requires up to date knowledge on a wide slate of languages.Luckily, there's no need to jump between dozens of books and tutorials to get full stack know-how. The Complete Computer Programmer Super Bundle is just what it says: A complete boot camp on all the major programming languages and their real-world applications.Of course, there's plenty of attention paid to Python in this package of 12 online courses. Along with a complete primer for beginners, you'll get a class that gives you a bird's eye visual of the algorithms and massive data sets you can build and maintain - not just with Python but with any language. There's also a complete cybersecurity tutorial that drills down on Python's uses as a security scanner.Front-end programmers will know their way around Java and Javascript by the end of the bundle. A basic course will have you constructing and debugging your own site or mobile app by the end of ten hours, while a tester's Java guide will let you pair it up with Selenium WebDriver or another automation framework to make any system airtight.Object-oriented programming starts with languages like C and C++, and you can learn both here from the ground up. Read the rest

My mom always sewed my Halloween costumes when I was a kid, so I never got to wear one of the many licensed ones featured in the recently released documentary, "Halloween in a Box." I'm not really complaining but the plastic-masked ones you'd find at Woolworth did have a real charm to them. In any event, this film follows the history of these costumes and how its manufacturers had to work together to keep trick-or-treating alive after the Tylenol poisonings of the early eighties.Before the days of elaborate Halloween costumes, there were costumes in a box. Remember them? We seemingly all wore these costumes as kids. Now hear the story behind these costumes and the history of the big three companies that made them, Ben Cooper Inc, Halco, and Collegeville. For years, these costumes were a beloved Halloween institution dating back in the 1930s. In 1982 at the height of their popularity, the first case of domestic terrorism, the Tylenol Scare shook the United States and threatened to cancel Halloween forever. In an effort to save the holiday, the costume giants, although rivals in business, were forced to come together and unify or trick or treating would become extinct. Produced by HNN Productions and directed by Rob Caprilozzi, "Halloween in a Box" is now streaming on Amazon Prime and Google Play.Here's its trailer:(Soap Plant WACKO) Read the rest

[Worried about automation and high-tech unemployment, or gig economy labor apocalypses? Techdirt's Mike Masnick and the Copia Institute have pulled together an outstanding anthology of speculative fiction about better futures for work and workers, called Working Futures, which is just out. This kind of speculation-for-good is such a cool idea, and I'm delighted to give Mike a little space to discuss it. -Cory] Over the past decade -- as technology has advanced in two specific areas: the gig economy and artificial intelligence -- there’s been a lot of discussion about the nature of work and the future of work. I’ve been somewhat frustrated by many of these discussions, as they always tend to fall broadly into two competing camps: people insisting that all the jobs will go away and we’re all doomed, or those who insist that “everything will work itself out, it always does.” The problem with both of these views is it gives us nothing to go on in the meantime. It tells us nothing that we can do to make the world a better place. Both involve a form of throwing up our hands and letting the currents of innovation drag us along, whether for good or for bad. That’s incredibly unsatisfying. In either case, I’d like to be working to make the end result a better world -- and, as John Perry Barlow famously used to say (quoting Alan Kay), “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” So, the Copia Institute (which is the think tank arm of Techdirt) set out to see if we might help invent some futures. Read the rest

Issey Miyake's presentation at Paris Fashion Week featured dancers, skateboarders, and models wearing skin tone undergarments. Once the models walked into position, they were dressed by a mechanism descending from the air. Contrary to a viral tweet, the delivery mechanism was ropes and pulleys, not drones:Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake's enchanting display of fashion and innovation at #PFW. See every look here: https://t.co/oqf2vh1JfZ pic.twitter.com/573Qf4D5RV— British Vogue (@BritishVogue) September 27, 2019My heart skips a beat! 😍💓ISSEY MIYAKE Spring Summer 2020#IsseyMiyake #pfw #ss20 pic.twitter.com/d5mKWeHCup— :)))) (@AyuRichie) September 28, 2019W Magazine discussed designing for virality earlier this month:Simon Porte Jacquemus has a simple and savvy approach as a fashion designer: Will his clothes look good on social media? So far, it has served him well. It was, for instance, the reason he created La Bomba, a straw hat so massive it could shade a small village, for his spring 2018 show. “My team said, ‘Simon, no one is going to wear these huge hats, we’ll just make a few.’ We sold hundreds,” he notes. It is also why, for the same show, he shrunk down his Le Chiquito ­handbag to absurd (and adorable) doll-size ­proportions—a move that launched a thousand memes, and resulted in yet another success. “If it’s cute on ­Instagram, it will sell,” he explains. “That’s just the world we live in.” View this post on Instagram WHAT WILL YOU PUT INSIDE ? THE MINI CHIQUITO NOW AVAILABLE. JACQUEMUS.COMA post shared by JACQUEMUS (@jacquemus) on Jul 12, 2019 at 5:30am PDT Read the rest