In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my new Locus column, DRM Broke Its Promise, which recalls the days when digital rights management was pitched to us as a way to enable exciting new markets where we'd all save big by only buying the rights we needed (like the low-cost right to read a book for an hour-long plane ride), but instead (unsurprisingly) everything got more expensive and less capable. The established religion of markets once told us that we must abandon the idea of owning things, that this was an old fashioned idea from the world of grubby atoms. In the futuristic digital realm, no one would own things, we would only license them, and thus be relieved of the terrible burden of ownership. They were telling the truth. We don’t own things anymore. This summer, Microsoft shut down its ebook store, and in so doing, deactivated its DRM servers, rendering every book the company had sold inert, unreadable. To make up for this, Microsoft sent refunds to the custom­ers it could find, but obviously this is a poor replacement for the books themselves. When I was a bookseller in Toronto, noth­ing that happened would ever result in me breaking into your house to take back the books I’d sold you, and if I did, the fact that I left you a refund wouldn’t have made up for the theft. Not all the books Microsoft is confiscating are even for sale any lon­ger, and some of the people whose books they’re stealing made extensive annotations that will go up in smoke. Read the rest

The Canadian activist group Open Privacy Research Society has discovered that Vancouver, BC hospitals routinely wirelessly broadcast patient telemetry and admissions data, without encryption to doctor paging systems. It is trivial to intercept these transmission.The organisation contacted Vancouver Coastal Health in 2018 to notify them of the breach, and after nearly a year of inaction, they decided to go public. VCH has since been spurred into action, though they continue to deny that there is any serious risk of data interception.Open Privacy's report paints a picture of a health system sorely lacking in technical expertise, with the hospital privacy officers "unaware of the radio broadcasting component of the pager system(s)." The paging system doesn't log third-party access, but despite this, the health system's spokespeople blithely asserted that no breach had taken place.We cannot say for certain how many patients have been impacted by this breach. We suspect that this breach has likely been on going for several years. We have asked that VCH answer the following questions related to this breach: * How many patients’ information has been broadcast to date in this breach?* When were the legacy pager systems installed?* Can a patient determine if their individual information was broadcast in the breach? If so, how?* As some of the pager messages appeared to contain unstructured text data, is there any mechanism for patients to inquire what non-standard information in particular of theirs was broadcast unencrypted? If so, how?* How many VCH patients continue to have their personal information broadcast unencrypted on a daily basis? Read the rest

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (a 1986 anti-hacking law passed after a moral panic over the movie Wargames) does not ban accessing public information from websites, even if you do so against the wishes of the website's operator.The case involves Linkedin and Hiq, a company that does "employer analytics" and scrapes public Linkedin profiles to do so. Linkedin launched a competing service and threatened to sue Hiq under the CFAA; and Hiq responded by seeking a declaratory judgment that the CFAA did not reach to accessing publicly accessible information.The CFAA defines hacking broadly: "exceeding authorization" on someone else's computer is banned under the plain language of the act. But, as the appeals court found, the CFAA was trying to capture "computer intrusions," not terms-of-service violations on services you were permitted to use. The appeals court also ordered Linkedin not to interfere with Hiq's scraping, as doing so would put Hiq out of business before the case could be litigated. It remains to be seen whether Linkedin will continue to sue Hiq under other legal theories, or seek other courses of action that might allow it to block Hiq's scrapers."None of the computers to which the CFAA initially applied were accessible to the general public," the court writes. "Affirmative authorization of some kind was presumptively required."When the law was extended to more computers in 1996, a Senate report said its goal was to "increase protection for the privacy and confidentiality of computer information." As a result, the 9th Circuit reasons "the prohibition on unauthorized access is properly understood to apply only to private information—information delineated as private through use of a permission requirement of some sort."In contrast, hiQ is only scraping information from public LinkedIn profiles. Read the rest

It looks like a keyboard. It's warm. It's the perfect way to keep your cat from sitting on your real keyboard. Meet the"Laptop or keyboard simulating pet bed." Patent 10398125, issued September 3, 2019.[via @GazEtc] Read the rest

Jerry Falwell, Sr founded the Moral Majority, brought evangelicals into the voting booth, elected Ronald Reagan, and changed the face of American politics forever; his son, Jerry Jr now commands the Falwell empire, including Liberty University, which now has $3b in assets.Politico's Brandon Ambrosino, a Liberty U alumna who has written extensively about the Falwells, the university and their associated scandals, has published an explosive, deeply reported story about corruption at Liberty University, and the central role that Jerry Jr plays in that corruption.Liberty University is organized as part of a nonprofit and is bound by strict IRS rules banning self-dealing, conflicts of interest, electioneering, and so on.But Ambrosino's report -- backed up by numerous whistleblowers at the highest levels of Falwell's organization, and denied strenuously by Falwell himself -- reveals numerous serious ethical problems with the management of the nonprofit, with massive financial wrongdoing and cronyism protected by a vicious personality cult ("It's a dictatoryship") centered on Jerry Jr and his wife, Becki. Ambrosino's sources were terrified of reprisals for speaking out; one bought a burner phone out of fear that the Falwells had planted surveillance malware on his device. The Falwell's inner circle is an unsavoury mix of grifters and yes-men and fixers, including John Gauger, who runs a black SEO company called Redfinch that made headlines when it took money from Michael Cohen to rig a poll to make Donald Trump seem more popular than he was (Cohen then burned Gauger and refused payment in full, which contributed to the episode coming to light). Read the rest

An elementary school student showed up to school wearing an orange T-shirt with a hand-drawn logo representing the University of Tennessee Volunteers and was bullied by the other students for it. When the university found out, they used his logo on an official T-shirt. ABC News reports that "demand for the product is so high that it crashed the school’s website."The University of Tennessee decided that they would take the boy’s design and make it an official school shirt with a portion of the proceeds being donated to STOMP Out Bullying, a national non-profit organization that is dedicated to eradicating bullying of all forms.“Thank you Vol Nation! Currently, our website has crashed due to the overwhelming support,” the online store tweeted. “We are working on the problem. Once the server restarts, we anticipate the issue to be resolved. #GoVols #EverywhereUT.”Share in a Florida elementary student's Volunteer pride by wearing his design on your shirt too! Pre-order today for a late September expected delivery. A portion of proceeds from every shirt sold will be donated to @STOMPOutBullyng .https://t.co/NdnTtYREFL pic.twitter.com/OeTZvgC09Y— VolShop (@UTVolShop) September 6, 2019Image: Laura Snyder/Facebook Read the rest

Many westerners are familiar with Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, but I'd never heard of Pinduoduo before today: it's gamified, group-purchasing bargain-hunting site founded by an ex-Googler four years ago, with 336m active monthly users and a $40b market-cap (analyst and author Rebecca Fannin calls it "Groupon on steroids"). Pinduoduo's core users are people in rural China, or recent arrivals to cities, who are looking for bargains, rather than status, from their purchases. The best bargains are to be had from "team buying" exercises that require customers to use services like Wechat to find other buyers to club together with them to attain very deep discounts.Tencent (owner of Wechat) is an investor in Pinduoduo, and it blocks links to rival Alibaba on its platforms. The company is not profitable despite massive sales, and diverts nearly all its income to aggressive sales and marketing pitches. Li Suzhi scrolls through the front page of Chinese ecommerce app Pinduoduo, browsing T-shirts, electronics, and fruit, all priced at a fraction of the cost of similar products on other platforms. “I have to be careful not to use this app too much. It has so many deals that I want to spend all my time and money on it,” says the 46-year-old housewife and ayi (the Chinese term for nanny) from rural Inner Mongolia.Shoppers like Li—price conscious and far from China’s big cities—have made Pinduoduo China’s hottest ecommerce player. Its 366 million monthly active users trail only Alibaba, outranking better-known rivals such as JD.com. Read the rest

Andy Greenberg (previously) is Wired's senior security reporter; he did amazing work covering Russian cyberwarfare in Ukraine, which he has expanded into a forthcoming book: Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers (I read it for a blurb and a review; it's excellent).Last month while I was offline, Wired ran a long excerpt from the book, and it's a great introduction to the tenor of the work (which, again, I can't recommend highly enough -- it's a superb introduction to the equities, technicalities, personalities and ethics of cyberwarfare, that most problematic of metaphors).For the past four and a half years, Ukraine has been locked in a grinding, undeclared war with Russia that has killed more than 10,000 Ukrainians and displaced millions more. The conflict has also seen Ukraine become a scorched-earth testing ground for Russian cyberwar tactics. In 2015 and 2016, while the Kremlin-linked hackers known as Fancy Bear were busy breaking into the US Democratic National Committee’s servers, another group of agents known as Sandworm was hacking into dozens of Ukrainian governmental organizations and companies. They penetrated the networks of victims ranging from media outlets to railway firms, detonating logic bombs that destroyed terabytes of data. The attacks followed a sadistic seasonal cadence. In the winters of both years, the saboteurs capped off their destructive sprees by causing widespread power outages—the first confirmed blackouts induced by hackers.But those attacks still weren’t Sandworm’s grand finale. In the spring of 2017, unbeknownst to anyone at Linkos Group, Russian military hackers hijacked the company’s update servers to allow them a hidden back door into the thousands of PCs around the country and the world that have M.E.Doc installed. Read the rest

This is the lowest price I've seen for a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ single board computer. It has a 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core processor, WiFi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet. These Pis are great for playing retro video games (emulators for almost every game platform from the 80s and 90s you can think of are available). This Amazon deal is 16% claimed so far. Once it's fully claimed the price will go back up. Read the rest

Someone in another car spotted this couple sleeping in a self-driving Tesla that was zipping along the Massachusetts Turnpike, according to NBC on YouTube. The person honked, trying to wake the driver up, but "it didn't work at all." Read the rest

Having managed to be so vile as to be kicked off Twitter, a darling of the white supremacy market complains about how hard it is to be him.Vice:The provocateur made no mention of the harassment that landed him in social media jail. Nor did he touch on being forced out of Breitbart the following year, after he made comments that seemed to endorse pedophilia.While Telegram allows Yiannopoulos to share such important commentary with more than 19,000 followers directly, it does not offer the mass reach of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The same goes for Gab and other social networks set up in protest of Big Tech’s increasingly aggressive content-moderation efforts.“I can’t find anyone who’s managing to grow a really big channel here,” wrote Yiannopoulos, whose Telegram posts typically reach around 2,000 pairs of eyeballs. “Everyone is hitting a wall. There’s no future to Telegram for social media refugees if this is the best it gets.” Read the rest

You really need this cuteness.Follow @ddalgi_o on Instagram for more adorables. View this post on Instagram 마침 휴지를 다썼어요 그토록 기다리고 기다리던 돌아온 딸끼리 와씸다🐘🐘🐘 쫌 크셨다고 알아서 쳐 빼보림ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ #코끼리 #딸끼리A post shared by 🍓김딸기🍓 (@ddalgi_o) on Aug 5, 2019 at 8:20pm PDT Read the rest

Felix the dog got some yogurt today and he's very excited about licking the extra smooshes off his nose.This dog has a missing/deformed eye, and is obviously well loved and living life excellently.Scroll down in this IMGUR gallery for the wonderful video by thevaiobandit101. Felix got some Greek yogurt this morning. Read the rest

Robert and Tiffany Williams of Pennsylvania were surprised to find $120,000 in their bank account. They didn't put it there. Who gave them the mysterious gift? Perhaps thinking it wise not to ask the bank and get an answer that would be disappointing, they instead went on a 2.5 week spending spree. With an apparent fondness for vehicles, they bought an SUV, a camper, a race car, and a trailer to tow the race car behind the camper.Imagine their surprise when the bank contacted them and informed them that their bank balance was negative $107,416. But we had $120,000 in our account, the confused couple told the bank, and we haven't spent it all yet. The bank explained the $120,000 had been accidentally deposited into their account and didn't belong to them. Please return all the money immediately, said the bank.According to Pennsylvania State Trooper Aaron Brown, Tiffany told the bank that “she no longer had the funds because she had already paid off bills. She told the bank her husband had spent a great portion of the funds and purchased a four-wheeler. She said she would speak to her husband and attempt to construct a repayment agreement.”You already know how this ends up, but for the sake of completion, here's how the Sun Gazette reported it:State police were contacted in early July after further attempts by the bank to communicate with the couple were unsuccessful.In separate interviews with investigators in late July, both Robert Williams, 36, and his wife “admitted to knowing the mislaid money did not belong to them, but they spent it anyway.”The two were arraigned Tuesday before District Judge Gary Whiteman on felony charges of theft and receiving stolen property, and released on $25,000 bail each. Read the rest

Purism (previously) is a company that crowdfunds free/open laptops and phones whose design goal is to have no proprietary software, even at the lowest levels. The company is best known for its Purism laptops, and I'm very fond of mine (it didn't end up replacing my Thinkpad, only because I'm addicted to the trackpoint for mousing, and trackpads give me raging RSI) (that said, getting any GNU/Linux to run on a current-model Thinkpad is so hard and results in such a rotten experience that I'm reconsidering whether to switch back).For years, the holy grail of free/open hardware has been a competitive mobile phone, with software that respects your privacy and hardware that respects your autonomy (user-replaceable batteries ahoy!). The Librem 5 may be that phone: it runs a free/open OS called Pureos that's not based on Android or Ios, offers far greater user control without surveillance from the manufacturer, OS isolation from the notoriously insecure baseband module, hardware disconnections for networking/cam/mic, a replaceable battery, a mic jack, and a promise to release "lifetime" updates that improve performance and features of old hardware over time.Purism is now shipping the first batch of its Librem 5s, as part of a planned set of manufacturing batches that iterate between runs to improve hardware and address manufacturing issues. That's pretty exciting! The important thing will be how well this batch works, and what kinds of improvements come from Purism's experience with it.Due to the high volume, growing demand for the Librem 5, and in the interest of openness and transparency, Purism is publishing its full, detailed, iterative shipping schedule. Read the rest

Luna Lee does't just play the gayageum well, she's spectacular. This cover of Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child is absolute perfection.For more, watch her play David Bowie's Man Who Sold the World (from our 2017 post).Via Mashable Read the rest

In the wake of the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, a new debate opened up, about the mundane, everyday ways that wealthy people buy their way into elite institutions: from hiring, poorer, smarter kids to write their kids' essays, to surrendering custody of your kids in order to misappropriate low-income tuition grants, to simply "donating" shit-tons of money to the school.But nothing epitomizes life on the lowest difficulty-setting like the system of "legacy college admissions," wherein the fact that your parents were privileged enough to attend an elite institution entitles you to preferential treatment if you want to literally inherit that privilege.Now, the New York Times editorial board has come out for the abolition of legacy admissions, pointing out that virtually every other developed nation on Earth has already done so. The Times calls legacy admissions "anti-meritocratic" and yeah, it is, but meritocracy has always been anti-meritocratic, literally since the coining of the term. There are plenty of good reasons to abolish legacy admissions, and the Times enumerates many of them, but the idea that "meritocracy" should get a look in here is something of a sick joke.Colleges counter that the children of alumni — partly by virtue of the education their parents received — are well qualified for admission into their schools. That raises the question: If the value of a degree is indeed generational (research shows that it very likely is), why do the progeny and grandprogeny of graduates deserve yet another thumb on the scale? Read the rest

Purdue Pharma (and its richer-than-the-Rockefellers owners, the Sackler family are increasingly being dragged into state courts to account for their role in the opioid epidemic, which has claimed more American lives than the Vietnam War.The cornerstone of the Purdue/Sackler defense is to insist that the company -- manufacturer of Oxycontin -- was only a bit-player in the epidemic, and therefore it's unfair to hold them to account for the actions of their rivals who were the real villains of the crisis.To this end, Purdue has repeatedly cited its analysis of FDA data that showed that the company only accounted for 3.3% of all opioid sales during the period.However, a new analysis of the same data set, performed by Propublica and Stat (building on more limited work from the Washington Post), shows how Purdue massaged the data to produce a wildly misleading picture of its role in the epidemic. The trick works like this: Purdue's analysis treats all opioids as being equivalent to its deadly widowmaker, Oxycontin. Thus, a 5mg Percocet is treated as equivalent to an 80mg Oxy (Propublica: "It’s analogous to measuring alcohol sales by equating a 12-ounce glass of 100 proof whiskey with a similar-sized can of light beer").When the data are reanalyzed with the doses taken into account, Purdue's contribution quintuples to more than 16%, and Purdue becomes the nation's third-largest peddler of opioids during the crisis. What's more, these figures are even worse for Purdue in some states: for example, Purdue told a judge in Massachusetts that it sold 4.6% of the opioids in the state. Read the rest

The University of Tennessee has lovingly adopted an elementary student's design as their own, after hearing that some girls at the next lunch table gave him grief over it.CNN reports:A Florida student obsessed with the University of Tennessee wanted to represent the Volunteers during his elementary school's "College Colors Day," but didn't own any of their apparel -- so he took the matter into his own hands.Laura Snyder, his teacher at Altamonte Elementary School in Altamonte Springs, says he drew a "U.T.", the university's logo, on paper and pinned it to an orange t-shirt."When the day finally arrived, he was SO EXCITED to show me his shirt," Snyder wrote Wednesday on Facebook. "I was impressed that he took it one step further to make his own label."But by lunch time, the spirited Vols fan was in tears."Some girls at the lunch table next to his (who didn't even participate in college colors day) had made fun of his sign that he had attached to his shirt. He was DEVASTATED," said Snyder.In hopes of raising his spirits, Snyder said she planned on buying him an official University of Tennessee T-shirt, and asked friends if they had contacts with the school who could "make it a little extra special for him."Kids in orange shirts, man. Read the rest

Asian Boss went to the streets of Tokyo to interview people from Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, who moved to Japan to become convenience store staffers, fast food employees, farm workers, translators, and blue collar workers. Read the rest

The Senate filibuster is an "overused tool of obstruction," says John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, and it shouldn't exist. I agree, it should be abolished, along with electoral voting and lifetime Supreme Court appointments. Read the rest

I've been repairing my phones and computers for years—I don't like being at the mercy of hardware vendors, especially when there's a sea of original and gray market replacement parts out there to be had. Upgrades? Same thing. While companies like Microsoft and Apple are making it almost impossible to tinker with the toys they make, it feels good to know that I can still at least install a fresh battery or increase the size of an old laptop's on board storage for hundreds less than it would cost me were I to take it into one of their repair centers. As I plopped a replacement battery into my 2012 11" MacBook Air earlier this week. I found my self feeling a lot of gratitude for the folks who talk me the fundamentals of puttering about with electronics. However, I know that not everyone has access to folks that can help them learn the skills they need in order to diagnose or correct a problem with their laptop, game console or other devices. This can make getting started with repairing you gear feel pretty intimidating.You can get around this intimidation in a couple of ways. You can, if you're lucky enough to have one where you live visit a repair cafe or other similar business. They have the tools and instructions you'll need in order to learn how to do it yourself. And of course, there's the Interwebz. You'll find no end of videos that suggest how to tinker out a technical problem. Read the rest

New York continues to innovate in rat termination technology. Buckets of rats, indeed!Chicagoans just name the things and ride them to work.CNN:A new rat-dunking gadget will be rolled out in Brooklyn's most infested neighborhoods after a successful trial, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams revealed at a press conference on Thursday.The device, called Ekomille and created by private company Rat Trap Inc., attracts the rodents with food and then drops them through a trap door into an alcoholic substance."It knocks them out and they drown eventually," company president Anthony Giaquinto said at a press conference announcing its use in New York, the AFP news agency reported.Rats will climb a ladder to reach the bait on the device, at which point a sensor deploys a trip lever that plunges them into a tray that can hold 80 rat carcasses."The rodent feels safe and secure within the device. The transparent cover provides natural light," Rat Trap Inc. adds about the method on its website."The natural, non-toxic solution in the tank renders the rodent instantly unconscious," it adds.Sanitation workers opened the container at Thursday's unveiling to show reporters the gruesome -- but apparently effective -- results: a bucket filled with lifeless rodents. Read the rest

Breaking Away teaches us many things. One is that we can experience a good ol' existential crisis and not go all goth. Read the rest

Turns out fast food hits crows the same way as it does humans: In the cholesterol levels.Scientists measured the cholesterol levels of crows in different parts of the country -- and found that the more urbanized the area, the higher the cholesterol in the crows. Why? Probably because the crows are eating the scraps from our terrible, tasty processed food. To test whether fast food could actually be the culprit, the scientists ran an experiment, leaving McDonald's cheeseburgers near the nests of crows in the rural area of Clinton, NY. Sure enough, the cholesterol levels of those rural crows shot upwards.But wait, what about the ethics of intentionally raising the cholesterol levels of crows? It's not so big a deal for them, necessarily. Higher cholesterol correlates with better health in some animals, so it's okay for crows to supersize it, apparently?As the New Scientist reports:She and her team found that while urban crows had lower survival rates overall, the cholesterol didn’t seem to hurt the crows, and even boosted the body condition of the nestlings, leaving them a little plumper.Still, Townsend doesn’t recommend flinging burgers to birds at the park. “We know that excessive cholesterol causes disease in humans, but we don’t know what level would be ‘excessive’ in a wild bird,” says Townsend. “It is also possible that, if elevated cholesterol does have negative effects, they would show up later. In humans, it can take many years for excessive cholesterol to lead to disease.”Jukka Jokimäki at the University of Lapland in Finland was surprised the fast food didn’t have a bigger negative influence on the birds’ health. Read the rest

This is pretty brilliant: A rap battle between Alexander Hamilton and Satoshi Nakamoto over the merits of centralized, government-fiat currency, versus decentralized cryptocurrencies.It's a note-perfect homage to the terrific "cabinet rap battles" in the musical Hamilton (worth listening to, #1 and #2). Over at freeCodeCamp, Quincy Larson transcribed the lyrics:[Satoshi Nakamoto]Decentralized currency. Yes, I invented it.I’m sure many governments wish they had prevented itTheir national cash is how they keep control,But freedom to the people was my ultimate goal.Am I a pseudonym? A group of men? It doesn’t even matter.I invented Bitcoin cause fiat is a disaster.A man from Japan or a damn hologram?I’m the reason open season on crypto began.[Alexander Hamilton]Does anybody know what this crypto-thing means?To me, sounds like the new Get Broke Quick scheme,A bunch of fools from across the landInvesting in something they don’t even understand,Buying Litecoin, Dash, Bitcoin Cash,It’s all gonna crash, and be gone in a flash.All this unsupported money’s an irrational prank,And I’ll be laughing all the way to my National Bank. Read the rest

On the iconic PlayStation game controller, a design refined but fundamentally unchanged since 1994, the main buttons are an ◯, ⬜, △ and ✕. The last of these is called an "X", right? Pronounced "ecks" or some such. NO. It is, Sony insists, the cross button.Responding to an enquiry on Twitter, the official PlayStation UK account writes:TriangleCircleCrossSquareIf Cross is called X (it's not), then what are you calling Circle?🤔 Fans are shocked and appalled. But true believers know that the buttons are in fact 1,2,3 and 4. If you know why, well, why ruin it for everyone else? Read the rest

In the early days of busing kids to school, buses were painted all sorts of colors, and built to different specs. But in the late 1930s, education expert Frank Cyr started agitating for a national standard -- so manufacturers could mass-produce to one spec, making buses cheaper.In 1939, Cyr met for one week with school-transportation officials from across the country, and they hammered out a spec. One key decision? Setting the official color of school buses. They hung "hung strips of different paint colors from the wall, in '50 shades ranging from lemon yellow to deep orange-red'", as Smithsonian writes -- and the winner was an orangish-yellow.Why that color? Because it's easy to see, making buses readily identifiable on the road, very useful for safety. What's more, the particular shade of yellow they picked has some cool spectral qualities that make our perceptual apparatuses jump to attention, notes Ivan Schwab, clinical spokesperson at the American Academy of Ophthalmology:The wavelength of the popular school-bus color is “right smack in the middle” of the peak wavelengths that stimulate the photoreceptor cells our eyes use to perceive red and green. The red and green photoreceptor cells, or “cones” as they are commonly known, are the two most predominant cones in our eyes. Schwab says, “If you get a pure wavelength of one color…and you hit just one cone with it, you’re going to have x amount of transmission of signal to the brain. But if that [wavelength] were to stimulate two cones, you’ll get double the amount of transmission to the brain.” Remarkably, “That color that we are calling school bus yellow hits both peaks equally.” So although they may not have fully comprehended the science behind it, the color Cyr and his colleagues chose at the 1939 conference makes it hard for other drivers to miss a school bus, even in their peripheral vision. Read the rest

Writer Andy Weir's popular short story from 2009 (it's been translated to 30 different languages) about reincarnation, The Egg, has been beautifully animated by German studio Kurzgesagt. It was more than two years in the making. The story begins:You were on your way home when you died.It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.And that’s when you met me.Posters are available. Read the rest

Andy Riley compiled and tabulated a full breakdown of jobs & occupations by the frequency of their mentions in the lyrics of David Bowie, of which the top 5 are excluded in this screenshot of his work. Can you guess them before clicking through? Read the rest

Sid Meier's Civilization, significantly refined in sequels by Brian Reynolds and others, is a true classic of computer gaming. And now you can play the elaborate historical strategy game as an Excel spreadsheet. Behold CELLivilization, by s0lly.This is my first game in Excel, with the first iteration (v1.0) created in just around a week for the OLC CODEJAM 2019The gamejam's theme is destruction, which is apt for this game's v1.0 iteration, given that the only way to win is to destroy the opposing team.The game is very light on features (basically just build units and attack the opposition), but I will add on additional features - DLC you could call it - if people are keen to see more!One is torn between two thoughts: (a) Excel has become a sprawling, shambling monster and will expand until everything is in it, and (b) Excel is a surprisingly accessible programming environment in a world where most game development platforms are horribly intimidating to beginners. Read the rest

Goatse straddles the internet like a colossus, a majesty of horrors half-forgotten amid the shifting sands of the web. Yet it retains its capacity to amuse and surprise. Good work, Swarovski, good work!Opt for subtle glamour, and touches of cool romance, with this dainty rose gold-plated bracelet. Featuring a swan motif with a full-cut crystal body in cool millennial pink and crisp clear pavé lines, it's a Swarovski design through and through. It also features our innovative magnetic closure, which will allow you to blend in strands from our Swarovski Remix Collection to create a bespoke look - be it double-wrap bracelet, necklace, or choker. Perfect for versatile styling, it will take pride of place in your collection. Matching items are available. It is $120 from Amazon or a Swarovsky store near you.Opt for subtle glamour.Tarot Magic Bracelet [Amazon] Read the rest

Wow, here's a situation that would be nearly impossible to replicate. Professional Fistballer Samuel Kempf was riding the Shambhala roller coaster at PortAventura Park in Spain and managed to catch a stranger’s falling iPhone X! And the amazing feat was captured on video.1 News Now:"Long story short I caught it. This roller coaster is moving at over 130kms and was once Europe’s tallest and fastest coaster"...Mr Kempf says he returned the phone to its owner once the ride was over."He was super surprised and happy at the same time. He gave me a big hug and said he was going to buy the on-ride video for me."Mr Kempf was in Spain after representing New Zealand at the Fistballing World Championships in Switzerland. Read the rest

Jeffsum generates placeholder text in the distinctive idiom of famed actor Jeff Goldblum. [via @littlenono]God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man. Man destroys God. Man creates Dinosaurs. Remind me to thank John for a lovely weekend. Yes, Yes, without the oops! Remind me to thank John for a lovely weekend. Hey, you know how I'm, like, always trying to save the planet? Here's my chance.You know what? It is beets. I've crashed into a beet truck. Yes, Yes, without the oops! Yes, Yes, without the oops! Forget the fat lady! You're obsessed with the fat lady! Drive us out of here! Must go faster... go, go, go, go, go! Jaguar shark! So tell me - does it really exist?You're a very talented young man, with your own clever thoughts and ideas. Do you need a manager? Life finds a way. This thing comes fully loaded. AM/FM radio, reclining bucket seats, and... power windows. I was part of something special. Eventually, you do plan to have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right? Read the rest

Sure, tooling around in classic car is cool, but have you ever tried tooling around in a classic car with an engine that’s way less ecologically unsound than the one it originally rolled off the assembly line with? If you’re a Volkswagen Beetle owner, You’ll soon have the chance to give it a spin: Volkswagen’s come up with a standardized electric engine designed to power their classic Beetles down the highway.From Volkswagen:Volkswagen Group Components presents a holistic concept with its partner eClassics for the subsequent electrification of the historic Volkswagen Beetle. The conversion exclusively uses new parts they have mutually agreed on from the series production of Volkswagen Group Components. The electric drive, the 1-speed gearbox and the battery system are based on the new VW e-up!1. The conversion of the historic Beetle is being carried out by the specialist company eClassics.…The components from Kassel and Brunswick work together in the e-Beetle as an electric drive that reaches performance peaks of 60°kW /82°PS. The battery system is built into the underbody and consists of up to 14 modules, each with a capacity of 2.6 kWh. The lithium-ion battery modules cumulatively deliver energy of up to 36.8 kWh. The higher performance and the increased weight due to the extent of electrification require the adaptation and reinforcement of the chassis and the brakes.So, your Bug will be a little heavier, but the benefits of the conversion sound pretty sweet: Volkswagen claims the that a converted Beetle can accelerate from zero to 50 km/h in just under four seconds and up to 80 km/h in around eight seconds, with a top speed of 150 km/h. Read the rest

Which face is real? is one of those sites where it makes you choose between real and fake things to test your powers of acuity and perception. Though the face-generating AI offers occasional duds (such as the one embedded above), I quickly realized that the reason I beat it is because I've become familiar with the telltale indicators of a neural-net creator: the odd warping patterns in the backgrounds, the peculiar inconsistencies, the particular pixelated patterns that crop up again and again. It would often have fooled me a decade ago, just as the first phonograph, hidden behind a curtain, fooled an entire audience in the 1880s.Go home, generative adversarial network, you're drunk. pic.twitter.com/7IRAQ4H3N2— Rob Beschizza (@Beschizza) September 9, 2019 Read the rest

I know nothing about the quality of Allegheny Shredders' machines (though I do take some interest in field), but I'm certain that they have the greatest slogan in shredding company history: "The Future Is Here And Everything Needs To Be Destroyed." Read the rest

Dj BC (previously) writes, "I'm the producer behind Ghost Cave. You might know me from the mashup albums The Beastles, Ziggy Stardust Remixed, Wu Orleans, the Santastic Christmas Collections, and others. Up next is a glorious 7" vinyl record package, in a limited edition of 500 (100 purple, 400 black). And it's LEGAL!""The A side will be THE HAUNTED MANSION (aka Grim Grinning Ghosts) Ghost Cave’s electro-dance mix of The Haunted Mansion theme song. The B side will be the hip-house Ghostbusters rap song, 'We Are Ready To Believe You (ATOM Stay Puft Mix)' featuring nerdcore rapper Tribe One, ATOM's microhouse beats, and hype man Supercrunk. These are both 5-6 minute dance mixes. We’ll also have cool pins, art prints, shirts, stickers and tees available for some levels."I backed this! Holy cats!Haunted Mansion Vinyl 7" (limited to 500) by Ghost Cave [dj BC/Kickstarter] Read the rest

Steve Boyett writes, "HeadKnowles Hurricane Relief Foundation gofundme is raising funds to go to 'grassroots first responders, 1000's of volunteers providing meals, shelter and equipment to displaced persons.' They are on the Approved Dorian Donations list of organizations (more Hurricane Dorian relief organizations).That said, the road ahead to restoring and rebuilding our communities after Dorian, both short-term relief and sustainable relief in these islands is a great undertaking and we need your support to accomplish this. Victims need food, water and other essential supplies to survive during this time. We need building materials and gas for the planes and boats that are transporting supplies to the islands, in order to help put their lives back together. We cannot do any of this without monetary funds to support our efforts. The money we receive will go directly to purchasing these essential supplies and we will provide our donors with financial statements to account for every dollar donated. Donors will be able to see with all transparency that their money is being used to get our Northern Island communities what they need. Money will be withdrawn to Lia Head-Rigby's personal bank account and forwarded promptly to the HeadKnowles bank account for use.We have teams on the ground in these islands who will begin immediate assessments once the all clear is sounded. We do fully support the efforts of The Bahamas Red Cross and Nema, however, we are in the position to mobilize immediately and not await the lengthy time frame that government has in place. Read the rest

Driving near Pittsburgh, PA, my wife Heather noticed this excellent billboard featuring a woman saying "Scared of the dentist? No, I called and got SEDATED!". Read the rest

Essay-writing services have been around for a long time, but the maturation of the interwebs has allowed for increasingly customized operations. Schools and teachers are now well-equipped with plagiarism-busting tech that can spot a multiply-reused paper, so kids go the personalized route -- paying extra to have someone (usually abroad, in a lower-income country) write an essay just for them. This New York Times piece dives into the lives of Kenyans who write essays for students in the US, the UK and Australia. Me, I found the work ethic and intellectual curiosity of these essay-writers pretty impressive, and considerably superior to the lazy doofuses here in the US who are hiring them. If I ran a university, I'd instantly boot any kid caught buying a paper, then offer a full scholarship to the industrious writer who actually composed it.Consider the case of Mary Mbugua, a Kenyan university student who starts writing papers after her other jobs collapsed. “This is cheating, but do you have a choice? We have to make money," she says. "We have to make a living.”After a month of training, Ms. Mbugua began producing essays about everything from whether humans should colonize space (“it is not worth the struggle,” she wrote) to euthanasia (it amounts to taking “the place of God,” she wrote). During her best month, she earned $320, more money than she had ever made in her life. The New York Times is identifying Ms. Mbugua by only part of her name because she feared that the attention would prevent her from getting future work. Read the rest

After Suzanne Forbes graduated from art school, she worked as a penciller for DC and a courtroom artist for CBS and CNN; today, she lives in Berlin, where she is a prolific "documentary artist," rendering scenes from the U-bahn, sex parties, and other scenes around town. They're Creative Commons (NC-ND) licensed, and supported by donors on her Patreon. (Thanks, Pat Ketchum!) Read the rest

Got a favorite podcast? You're not alone. In fact, you're in the majority: According to a 2019 CBS poll, most Americans have listened to one, and nearly a quarter of them tune in on a regular basis.That's a lot of ears, and believe it or not, there's a lot of niches left to fill. But starting a podcast takes more than equipment and a voice. It takes experience, and there's currently an online boot camp that distills a ton of it from some preeminent talent behind the scenes. How To Start A Podcast Bundle Feat. Award-Winning Podcast Producers lives up to its name, with tips from none other than "This American Life" producer Alex Blumberg - and that's just for starters.The course gives a nuts-and-bolts primer on equipment and technique from "EntrepreneurOnFIre" host John Lee Dumas, and brand-building tips from "The School of Greatness" podcaster Lewis Howes. There are two invaluable courses on storytelling taught by none other than Blumberg along with NPR colleagues Anna Sussman and Julia DeWitt (of "Snap Judgement" fame). That's a lot of insight for a broadcasting course of any kind, much less an online bundle that clocks in at just over 20 hours.Individually, these courses sell for $266, but you can get lifetime access to the complete podcasting bundle for $19 - more than 90% off. Read the rest

[[Imagineer Chris Merritt (previously) was the protege of the Disney legend Marc Davis, the character designer whose work defined the look of such classic attractions as Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. Merritt has written seminal books on southern California's themed attractions, including Knott's Berry Farm and Pacific Ocean Park. [[His latest book, Marc Davis in His Own Words: Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks, is his magnum opus: a gorgeous, two-volume, slipcased set on the life, philosophy, reminisces, career, and designs of Marc Davis, incorporating many never-seen rarities from Davis's own collection, as well as the Disney archives. Chris was kind enough to supply us with this excerpt from Chapter Nine, which tells the backstory of my beloved Haunted Mansion, largely through transcribed, verbatim quotes from Davis himself. -Cory]]With the success of the opening of Pirates of the Caribbean, the last attraction to truly be approved by Walt Disney, the team at WED turned their efforts back to a long-delayed and never fully developed show—the Haunted Mansion. After Walt’s untimely passing in late 1966 and the struggle to get Pirates open the following year, the team found difficulty in establishing the final designs needed to go into production.Disney’s “Spook House” had been long planned by WED, going back at least to 1956, when Marvin Davis and Sam McKim developed concept art of an abandoned haunted house for the then nascent development of New Orleans Square. It was conceived as a walk-through attraction—not unlike the Pirate Wax Museum—and in early 1957 Walt turned to Ken Anderson to develop the show. Read the rest

This is pretty incredible video. Make sure to unmute, and have your speakers or headphones on.These whale watchers definitely got their trip's worth.Near miss for whale watchers [Sound on][via IMGUR] Read the rest

The Arizona Republican Party's chairman said in a fundraising email today the GOP will stop astronaut and Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly “dead in his tracks.”Among the many things that are wrong with the GOP chair's email: Mark Kelly is married to Gabrielle Giffords, a former congresswoman who lives with traumatic brain injuries after surviving an assassination attempt in which the gunman killed six people.“Support the Republican Party of Arizona today and, together, we’ll stop gun-grabber Mark Kelly dead in his tracks,” Kelli Ward wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post. Bloomberg News first reported the email:The stark wording from Arizona GOP chairman Kelli Ward was directed at former astronaut Kelly, whose wife, former Representative Gabby Giffords, was shot in the head and severely wounded in a mass shooting in 2011 while meeting with constituents. Six people were killed in the attack and more than a dozen others were wounded.The email cites Kelly’s statement in a 2015 CNN interview that “where there are more guns, people are less safe.”“Support the Republican Party of Arizona today and, together, we’ll stop gun-grabber Mark Kelly dead in his tracks,” Ward said.Arizona GOP says it will stop Democrat Mark Kelly, husband of shooting survivor Gabrielle Giffords, ‘dead in his tracks’ [washingtonpost.com, image: Shutterstock] Read the rest

This big cat enjoys a belly rub, but gives the camera a big eyeball.Aww, that little heart-nose!Don't touch the belly... It's too weird[via IMGUR] Read the rest

Apple and Google have been ordered by the U.S. government to hand over names, phone numbers and other identifying data of at least 10,000 users of a single gun scope app, Forbes reports Friday in an investigative feature. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly gathering information as part of a wider investigation into suspected breaches of weapons export regulations involving the scope this company makes, though the company itself isn’t under investigation, according to the federal order.“This pattern of unlawful, attempted exports of this rifle scope in combination with the manner in which the ATN Obsidian 4 application is paired with this scope manufactured by Company A supports the conclusion that the information requested herein will assist the government in identifying networks engaged in the unlawful export of this rifle scope through identifying end users located in countries to which export of this item is restricted,” the government order reads.“It’s an unprecedented move: Never before has a case been disclosed in which American investigators demanded personal data of users of a single app from Apple and Google,” writes Thomas Brewster, “And never has an order been made public where the feds have asked the Silicon Valley giants for info on so many thousands of people in one go.”From Forbes:According to a court order filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on September 5, investigators want information on users of Obsidian 4, a tool used to control rifle scopes made by night-vision specialist American Technologies Network Corp. Read the rest

Google announced Friday it will no longer accept ads for “unproven or experimental medical techniques,” including most stem cell therapy, cellular therapy and gene therapy.