You also really wanted to double-clutch my 1955 Speedster. Read the rest

Uber says it can be profitable someday: all it needs to do is corner the "total addressable market" for all transportation and food delivery, which will give it $12t in annual revenue, which is 15% of all global transactions.In the meantime, Uber continues to lead the global rideshare business, which does not have a single profitable company -- but Uber loses more money than any of them!The company booked $5.2b in losses in Q2 of 2019 -- which suggests that they will shoot past their projected $8b in losses for the year (by comparison, Lyft only lost $644m in Q2/19). Uber says it's OK because these are one-time losses related to paying giant bonuses to the execs who helped build such a fantastically money-hemorrhaging business.In Q2, Uber booked $867m in revenue, which is a lot of money (72% more than the year before!) until you remember that it spent more than $6b to make that $867m.Long before either Uber or Lyft can replace all transportation, public and private, with rideshares, they will have to contend with cities who are tired of having their streets, bike lanes and curbs crammed with inefficient, single-rider vehicles; and with nations, states and cities that are piercing the fiction that Uber and Lyft drivers are independent contractors and insisting that the companies extend waged employee protections and benefits to them.Uber's share price rose on the news of the loss.Len Sherman, adjunct professor of business at Columbia University, seems to think so. Read the rest

25 years after its founding, eight years after its last print edition, and two years after a near-death experience that was averted at the last minute by a bailout from the VPN company Private Internet Access, Linux Journal has laid off all employees, has no operating funds, and only plans to have its website online for a few weeks, or "hopefully longer for archival purposes if we can make it happen."In a final farewell op-ed, editor-in-chief Kyle Rankin writes that despite the bailout, "we didn't get healthy enough fast enough, and when we found out we needed to walk on our own strength, we simply couldn't." Rankin finishes with this melancholy note: "So yes, thank you for sticking by us. We truly did everything we could to make this a success, and I'm so sorry it didn't work out. On a personal note, thank you to the rest of the Linux Journal team. Not being able to work with all of you and chat with you is going to be the hardest part of all of this by far."Goodbye, Linux Journal, you will be missed.(via /.)(Image: Gert Dewit/Linux Journal) Read the rest

During a recent stopover in Portland, Oregon, it was delightful to once again hang out with the "Duchess of Felt," artist LeBrie Rich. Not only do I adore her, but I adore her work. The needle-felted and stitched sculptures of products she makes are what really capture my attention. Case in point: that Whitman's Sampler that looks good enough to eat! She told me creating it was a "mad undertaking" of over two months, "especially the logo with the flower basket."LeBrie is currently exhibiting 15 new pieces -- all of candy packaging -- at a show called Sugar Spin. If you're in the Portland, Oregon area, you can check it out until October 30 at COLAB Architecture + Urban Design. On Tuesday, September 17, you can also catch her Artist's Talk at the show's space from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.Her artist statement for the show:Why Candy?When I tell people my latest work is about candy, the memories pour out unsolicited. “I got a Whitman’s sampler box for my first valentines gift and kept all my love notes in it - I still have it!” “As a kid I once got Jujubes at the movies and was so disappointed with their soapy, flavorlessness that I spent the entire film regretting my choice.” “My brother had an appendectomy when I was 5 and someone brought him a carton of Whoppers at the hospital. I spent the drive home eating the whole carton of Whoppers in the back seat, hearing them clank around in the carton, opening and closing the paper spout. Read the rest

I like to take my Nintendo Switch with me when I travel for work—being able to game in my hotel room is lovely. You know what would be even better? Being able to play some Mario Kart or This is The Police on my hotel's television. Sadly, the Switch's ginormous TV dock takes up too much space in my carry-on for it to be practical.Happily, it looks like Human Things, the folks that brought us this neat bluetooth dongle for the Switch a while back, may have a solution. They've designed and are currently Kickstarting a wicked tiny combination HDMI/USB C charger that fits into a wall wart around the size of a 10-Watt iPad charger. Did I mention it has an additional USB port for charging your smartphone or a Pro Controller? Welp, it does.The only catch, as I pointed out earlier, is that it's only being offered as part of a Kickstarter campaign. Normally, that'd make picking one of these up a non-starter for me. I've been burned too many times in the past by hardware that took years to drop or simply disappeared into the mists of time. However, as Human Things has come through in the past with I'm willing to some cash at them. If you feel the same, you can do so, here. Read the rest

The tabloids are routinely filled with news you can’t use, but it’s intriguing to find that their pages are also filled with ads for products nobody needs.

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In 1920, Czech writer Karel Čapek penned a play titled R.U.R., a cautionary tale about technology's potential to dehumanize. R.U.R. stands for "Rossum’s Universal Robots" and it was this play that introduced the word "robot" to the world (apparently coined by Karel's brother Josef). At the MIT Press Reader, John Jordan, author of the book Robots, digs into the continued influence of R.U.R.:Like many of his peers, (Čapek) was appalled by the carnage wrought by the mechanical and chemical weapons that marked World War I as a departure from previous combat. He was also deeply skeptical of the utopian notions of science and technology. “The product of the human brain has escaped the control of human hands,” Čapek told the London Saturday Review following the play’s premiere. “This is the comedy of science.”In that same interview, Čapek reflected on the origin of one of the play’s characters:The old inventor, Mr. Rossum (whose name translated into English signifies “Mr. Intellectual” or “Mr. Brain”), is a typical representative of the scientific materialism of the last [nineteenth] century. His desire to create an artificial man — in the chemical and biological, not mechanical sense — is inspired by a foolish and obstinate wish to prove God to be unnecessary and absurd. Young Rossum is the modern scientist, untroubled by metaphysical ideas; scientific experiment is to him the road to industrial production. He is not concerned to prove, but to manufacture.Thus, “R.U.R.,” which gave birth to the robot, was a critique of mechanization and the ways it can dehumanize people. Read the rest

Reddit user penguinska9 posted that their library "keeps track of how much you save by not buying books and borrowing instead" and shows the dollar amount on the receipt when you check out a book. Genius! I don't know how common this practice is but the following is from a Wichita Public Library posting from last year:“While libraries offer tremendous benefits to their communities, sometimes the benefits are more abstract or require long term studies to show the value of their programs,” said Jennifer Lane, communication manager, Wichita Public Library. “Including this information is a way to easily quantify one of the ways the Library is a value to its users...."So far this year, the highest dollar amount saved by a customer's account is $64,734.12. And the highest dollar amount saved by a customer's account since this feature was implemented is $196,076.21. Read the rest

Earlier this year in Painesville, Ohio, police arrested a gentleman after he took out his pet iguana, named Copper, swung her around by her tail, and hurled her at the manager of a Perkins restaurant. Arnold Teeter, 49, pleaded guilty to animal cruelty, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. A judge has just sentenced Teeter to 90 days in jail with 77 days suspended, five years of probation, and he must also pay restitution to the Lake Humane Society that cared for Copper who lost part of her tail. But that's not all:The judge also entered a handful of other stipulations. Tetters is not allowed to publicize about what he did or why he did it. He’s not allowed to seek media attention about the case and he can’t brag about what happened."Judge tells man who threw iguana at fellow Painesville Perkins manager to stop bragging about it" (Cleveland.com) Read the rest

"A Busy Day in the Yard," superimposed security footage showing an entire day in two minutes.(via Geekologie) Read the rest

A woman from Washington State who was participating in a salmon fishing derby spotted a small octopus and decided to stick it on her face and have her photo taken. Unfortunately, the octopus wouldn't let go and it gave her a venomous bite on the chin, too, which resulted in a nasty infection. She had to go to the hospital for treatment.From Huffpost:“[My friends] noticed my face had changed,” she said. “We couldn’t get the beak to dislodge ― it was like a prong.”Although Bisceglia eventually freed herself from the octopus, she bled profusely for 30 minutes afterwards.“There’s still a pus pocket and there’s a spot under my chin,” she said.Image: Kiro 7 Read the rest

NASA has just released this incredible image of Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on June 27, 2019. From NASA:This new Hubble Space Telescope view of Jupiter, taken on June 27, 2019, reveals the giant planet's trademark Great Red Spot, and a more intense color palette in the clouds swirling in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere than seen in previous years. The colors, and their changes, provide important clues to ongoing processes in Jupiter's atmosphere. The new image was taken in visible light as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy program, or OPAL. The program provides yearly Hubble global views of the outer planets to look for changes in their storms, winds and clouds. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed Jupiter when the planet was 400 million miles from Earth, when Jupiter was near "opposition" or almost directly opposite the Sun in the sky....This animation (below) of a rotating Jupiter was assembled from a Hubble Space Telescope photographic mosaic of almost the entire planet. The resulting flat map was computer-projected onto a sphere to create a rotating globe (excluding the polar regions above 80 degrees latitude). Jupiter completes one rotation every 9.8 hours. The giant planet's trademark Great Red Spot is the orange-colored oval that is as big as Earth. Distinct parallel bands of roiling clouds dominate our view above Jupiter's deep hydrogen/helium atmosphere. The colorful cloud bands are confined by jet streams blowing in opposite directions at different latitudes. A characteristic string of white oval-shaped anticyclones appears along one latitude band in the planet’s southern hemisphere. Read the rest

I just ordered one of these 10-inch Mercer Chef's Knives because it has great reviews on Amazon, and it's only . I don't know how long it will be offered at a sale price. Read the rest

The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook will offer corporate news outlets “millions of dollars for the rights to put their content in a news section that the company hopes to launch later this year,” citing unnamed sources familiar with the lawbreaking social media company and information warfare platform.Facebook reps are said to be offering news executives “as much as $3 million a year to license entire stories, headlines and previews of articles from news outlets,” reports WSJ.The executives pitched by Facebook include... people at Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal. Also targeted by Facebook's reps: ABC News (owned by Disney), The Washington Post and Bloomberg.Excerpt:Facebook’s plans come as the company is facing growing criticism for its role in the news industry’s struggles by sucking up much of the advertising revenue that used to go to newspapers. Combined, Facebook and Alphabet Inc. ’s Google earned 60% of all digital advertising revenue in the U.S. last year, according to eMarketer.The news-licensing deals between Facebook and news outlets would run for three years, some of the people said. Facebook is planning to launch the section sometime in the fall, the people said. It is unclear whether any news outlets have formally agreed yet to license their content to Facebook.Facebook has proposed giving news outlets discretion over how their content will appear in the news tab, according to people familiar with the matter. News outlets would be allowed to choose between hosting their stories directly on Facebook or including headlines and previews in the tab that would send readers to their own websites, the people said—in which case the news tab would be a generator of web traffic for news outlets in addition to a source of licensing revenue. Read the rest

Wayne LaPierre, the embattled leader of the National Russian Asso— whups, typo there, the National Rifle Association, is opposed to new so-called 'red flag' gun restrictions being proposed by lawmakers after back-to-back gun massacres in Dayton and El Paso this week.That the NRA would oppose new gun laws is not a surprise. Putin wouldn't want that either.Here's the tweet, and below it, a screengrab of the copy.Donald Trump didn’t have time to speak to a Congresswoman from El Paso, but he did have time to talk to @NRA CEO and gun lobbyist Wayne LaPierre. Got it. https://t.co/wt1e00QR6c— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) August 8, 2019Besides call with NRA chief Wayne LaPierre Tuesday, Trump had several more calls with LaPierre yesterday while traveling, per White House aides. https://t.co/YillUqpaYp— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) August 8, 2019Pres. Trump spoke with NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre after expressing support for increased background checks https://t.co/aYIcGo5zvO pic.twitter.com/hmGciXFiGQ— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 8, 2019[via, image: shutterstock] Read the rest

Facebook has lost a procedural appeal related to a 2015 Illinois class-action lawsuit over the company's use of facial recognition data, and now it could be on the hook for billions in damages.Under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, companies planning to use biometric data applications must publish detailed data-handling policies prior to any collection or use. Facebook rolled out its "Tag Suggestions" facial recognition tool without taking this step. The law provides for $1k-$5k per violation in statutory damages, and there are millions of affected users. Facebook had sought to have the case dismissed, arguing that the class was improperly certified and that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated any real harms from its misconduct. The appeals court ruled against Facebook in a 3-0 decision.Facebook has hinted that it will take the case to the Supreme Court next.The stakes are potentially high for Facebook. The Illinois law allows for payments of $1,000 or $5,000 per violation, depending on the severity of the violation. As Reuters reports, the class could potentially include millions of Facebook users, meaning the company could one day be forced to pay billions of dollars in damages, if it ultimately loses the case.“We plan to seek further review of the decision,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We have always disclosed our use of face recognition technology and that people can turn it on or off at any time.” The company will seek further review from the full court of appeals, according to the spokesperson, and could take the case to the Supreme Court. Read the rest

Bernie Sanders' appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast was a gamble; the show has dabbled with some pretty reactionary politics in the past, but it has a vast audience (the Sanders episode has had nearly 5m views), and Rogan gave Sanders the space to expound both on policy specifics and wider "vision" questions, and Sanders nailed it.Presidential elections are largely a game of mobilizing stay-at-home voters to come out and vote for you, and discouraging your opponents' voters into refusing to hold their nose to vote for the other guy, convincing them to stay at home.The vast dark matter of the electorate is at the core of any political campaign, and that's who Sanders is speaking to in this hour-long interview, and judging from the comments, he's reaching them. As Luke Savage writes in Jacobin, those comments are full of undecided and even GOP-leaning voters who found Sanders' message compelling.I would still like to see more wonkiness from Sanders, a little more of Elizabeth Warren's detailed policy proposals, but that said, I was seriously impressed by this interview. Disclosure: I am a donor to both Sanders' and Warren's campaigns. “This was pretty great. Learned more about Bernie from this than any other source in the past 5+ years . . .” “I consider myself a Republican, but I actually agree with a lot of what Bernie said here.” “I have changed my mind on this man. Really great interview. This man needs to be heard.” “I’ve watched media tell me this guy was a nut for years. Read the rest

This week at B-Sides LV, security researcher Pavel Tsakalidis presented his work on security defects in the Electron framework, a cross-platform development framework that combines Javascript with Node.js: apps built with Electron include Skype, Slack, Whatsapp, Visual Studio Code and others.Tsakalidis showed how the lack of basic encryption for Electron code leaves users vulnerable to hackers who inject back-door code into their sessions, which exposes their communications, filesystem, and cameras and mics to third parties.These changes are harder to make in Macos or GNU/Linux systems (where admin access is required), but Windows systems are wide open.To make things worse, Electron's team had previously rejected a user request for encryption to protect its files, and when Tsakalidis presented his work to them, they ignored him. Tsakalidis has released a proof-of-concept tool called BEEMKA, a small Python program that can open Electron ASAR archive files and insert exploit code into them, exploiting apps and Chrome plugins built in the framework.Code inserted into the ASAR can run either within the application's context or within the context of the Electron framework itself. Application code is "plain old JavaScript," Tsakalidis explained, capable of calling Electron's operating-specific modules—including microphone and camera controls, as well as operating system interfaces. Code injected into Electron's internal Chrome extensions can allow attackers to bypass certificate checks, so that, while code may still force communications over HTTPS, an attacker can use a self-signed certificate on a remote system for exfiltration. And Web communications can be altered or completely blocked—including applications' updating features, which would prevent new versions from being automatically installed, displacing the backdoored application. Read the rest

One of the enduring mysteries of the super-wealthy pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is where, exactly, he got his money: a former math teacher, he styled himself a personal financial manager catering exclusively to billionaires, but had few-to-no clients, and did not own or trade assets that anyone could locate.That said, there is one client of record for Epstein's "money-management" business: Leslie Wexner, the billionaire CEO of the company that owns Victoria's Secret and Bed, Bath and Beyond, whose finances Epstein managed for many years.Wexner broke ties with Epstein after he was indicted on prostitution charges, but has said little since. Now, in a 564-word letter to the trustees of his family foundation, Wexner revealed that Epstein had power of attorney over his finances, and that he used that power to "misappropriate vast sums of money" from Wexner, only some of which Wexner was able to recover.Wexner says he had no knowledge of Epstein's sex-trafficking enterprise -- which was generally considered to be an open secret, with Epstein's wealthy friends calling his private jet the "Lolita Express" -- prior to the charges.Wexner detailed how Epstein transferred $21.2m from various Wexner family charities and to a charity that Epstein controlled called COUQ. Wexner said that Epstein eventually transferred $46m worth of securities and a property in the Virgin Islands to a charity controlled by Wexner's wife, which Wexner said was a way to repay funds misappropriated by Epstein from Wexner family foundation accounts.Epstein reportedly exploited his connection with Wexner to procure young girls for sex, representing himself as a Victoria's Secret modelling agent. Read the rest

Here's Free Game Planet on PacM̬̦̩̹̌͢a̪͓̮̼͍̗͑̿ͫn̛̥͈ͅ, an interesting variation on the classic created (or perhaps unearthed) by Berick Cook: "The PacM̬̦̩̹̌͢a̪͓̮̼͍̗͑̿ͫn̛̥͈ͅ ROM is said to have been taken from a damaged game board, found locked in a safe in an old abandoned arcade. It’s been linked to several tragic incidents and completing the game is said to cause psychological and physiological trauma. The effects of the ROM are said to be less dangerous than the original game board though, so you’ll probably be okay…probably…" Read the rest

In New Zealand, a dog walking with its human along the beach peed on $3 million worth of cocaine which washed up on the Auckland shores on Wednesday.Around 4:30 p.m. local time, an unidentified woman and her pissing pupper are reported to have encountered 19 bags of cocaine at Bethells Beach. The New Zealand Police’s Facebook page says they estimate the haul to be worth roughly $3 million in US dollars at street value.“The drugs appeared to have been in the ocean for quite some time, as they were covered in dirt and seashells and wrapped in netting.”The anonymous woman said she was walking two dogs when she encountered a “strange shaped thing” in the sands along the shoreline.She called police, they tested the packages, and it came back positive for cocaine.“They peed on $3-million worth of drugs,” she said. “They tried to mark it as theirs.”“It was not what I was expecting to find on the beach, that’s for sure. I was looking for seaweed,” she told a tabloid. She hopes no one comes searching for more drugs, which would disturb native birds in the area. Read the rest

Once again, Apple has demonstrated its disdain for people who want to do simple repairs on their equipment. This time, Apple has changed the iPhone's firmware so people who replace an old battery with a new Apple-branded battery will see a "Service" message on their phone that won't go away. The Service message says "Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery. Health information not available for this battery." The phone also will also refuse to show any diagnostic information about the health of the battery. The only way to avoid the message and be able to see the health of the battery is to have the battery replaced by an Apple Authorized Service Provider who has access to Apple's proprietary internal diagnostic software.From iFixit:Technically, it is possible to remove the microcontroller chip from the original battery and carefully solder it into the new battery you’re swapping in, restoring the Battery Health feature—but the procedure isn’t for the faint of heart, and it’s an unreasonable requirement for any repair, much less something as simple as a battery swap.Swapping in another genuine Apple battery into an iPhone XSFortunately, your replacement battery will continue to work perfectly fine, and you’ll get all of the benefits that come with a new battery—we’ve confirmed that this doesn’t throttle the iPhone’s performance on a healthy battery, for example. But you won’t be able to easily see your battery’s health and know when it’s time to replace it.Then again, this is a huge problem for iPhone owners who may not know about this new, sneaky lockdown, and it will undoubtedly cause confusion: they’ll replace their own battery and notice the “Service” message, then begin troubleshooting a problem that isn’t there. Read the rest

Researchers at Keio University built an "an artificial biomimicry-inspired anthropomorphic tail" with haptic feedback to help people walk, bend over, and do other things as they go about their business. The design inspired by the seahorse's tail.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Seamus Blackley, "father of the Xbox," worked with Egyptologist Serena Love and microbiologist Richard Bowman to extract yeast from 4,500-year-old Egyptian bread-making and beer-making potter held in the collection of Harvard's Peabody Museum; though nearly all of the samples are being cultured for analysis and addition to a microorganism library, Blackley cultured one sample to use in a dough-starter for a baking project.Having awakened the dormant yeast strains, Blackley made a dough, "with identical ingredients to what the yeast ate 4,500 years ago," describing the aroma as "unlike anything I’ve experienced...much sweeter and more rich than the sourdough we are used to."On the bread itself: "The crumb is light and airy, especially for a 100% ancient grain loaf. The aroma and flavor are incredible. I’m emotional. It’s really different, and you can easily tell even if you’re not a bread nerd."(Thanks, Lovro!)Two weeks ago, with the help of Egyptologist @drserenalove and Microbiologist @rbowman1234, I went to Boston’s MFA and @Harvard’s @peabodymuseum to attempt collecting 4,500 year old yeast from Ancient Egyptian pottery. Today, I baked with some of it... pic.twitter.com/143aKe6M3b— Seamus Blackley (@SeamusBlackley) August 5, 2019 Read the rest

You will find cleaning a motorcycle's carbs a lot easier if you have brushes and wires that'll fit through the jets. This set works for me!My motorcycle famously has a finicky pair of Dell'orto pumper carbs. They make the bike go really, really fast... when they work right. Today's formulations of California gas really seem to gum things up if left to sit and sit it did. I was barely able to run my bike from November til yesterday.My bike was doing something really obvious, after starting the left side float would stick in the up position and gasoline would start to pour out the overflow hole. Most BMW's have Bing carburetors which respond very well to a light tap on the side to free the float. The Dell's do not give a shit. I shut off the fuel and removed the bowl only to find the float stuck. I could pull it down but clearly, the plastic float was binding on its 'knurled' pivot pin.Those 'knurled' float pins have been my bane. In my set of carbs they just don't want to come out for me. If I take the carb off the bike I can get them out and replace the floats, but if I want to keep them on the bike, it is a real thing.I decided to try blasting the area out with carb cleaner and offering a prayer to whichever Greek God managed fuel systems delivery in their pantheon. The float now swings free. Read the rest

Monsanto ran a "fusion center" (a term borrowed from law-enforcement counter-terrorism operations) that spied on activists and journalists who were investigating the safety of its products, notably the link between its "Round Up" pesticides and cancers.The Guardian reports on internal records that it obtained from the center's operations from 2015-2017, which document the company's "multi-pronged" plan to discredit Reuters journalist Carey Gillam ahead of the publication of Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science, her book on the subject, in which the company drafted "third party talking points" to be fed to people who were not publicly associated with the company, who could then repeat the points in the press as though they had come from disinterested parties.The company also bought Google ads targeted against Gillam's name that redirected searchers to smear pages. The memos reveal that the company spied on Canadian folk legend Neil Young and contemplated how they could neutralize his environmental activism, including an aborted plan to sue him. They also targeted the US nonprofit US Right to Know, with weekly reports for execs on the organization's activities.The documents reveal that company's top execs fretted that any disclosure of the firm's financial relationship with supposedly neutral scientists could be a source of scandal.Monsanto was acquired by German chemical giant Bayer in 2018, after which the new owners retired the "Monsanto" name, believing it to be in worse public odor than "Bayer," a company notorious for having manufactured the poison gas used to murder millions of Jews and others in Nazi death camps. Read the rest

ICE agents raided food processing plants in Mississippi this week, arresting 680 employees suspected of not having proper documentation to work in the US. According to WJTV many of the arrested people's children were "left temporarily homeless" and had to rely on the kindness of strangers to feed and care for them.From WJTV:Community leaders in Forest, Mississippi brought the children to a community gym to provide care and comfort. 12 News reporter Alex Love was granted permission to talk to community leaders and the children.Children relied on neighbors and strangers to pick them up outside their homes after school. They drove the children to a community center where people tried to keep them calm. But many kids could not stop crying for mom and dad. An 11-year-old girl is left crying outside in Forest after her dad was arrested.Fighting back tears, Magdalena Gomez Gregorio, 11, expressed to us her devastation.“Government please show some heart,” Gregoria cried. “Let my parent be free.”The cruelty really is the point.Image: WJTV Read the rest

In 2017, Trump and then-Wisconsin Governor (and Koch darling) Scott Walker announced that they would give Chinese manufacturing giant $3B in taxpayer subsidies to open the only flat panel display factory in the western hemisphere (the figure quickly grew to $4.1B), despite the company's long, documented history of lying to governments, sucking up subsidies, and never delivering the promised facilities or jobs.And indeed, even as the state of Wisconsin was seizing family homes and bulldozing them to make way for the factory, the factory itself kept getting scaled back, and back, until the whole thing turned into a plan to buy some empty office buildings and do nothing with them, which was shady even by Foxconn standards.The Foxconn chaos contributed to the Wisconsin governorship flipping, and the new governor Tony Evers has directed his state Department of Administration to commission a research report on salvaging the deal: that report, undertaken by Timothy J Bartik for the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, is now live.The report is clear: there is no way to salvage this deal. Either Foxconn has to return most of the cash it's already received and then follow through with most of the new facilities it promised, or the jobs that Foxconn creates in Wisconsin will cost the state more than could possibly be justified.Indeed, this has been the case from the start, but Foxconn contracted with a leading firm of grift-enablers, EY (formerly Ernst & Young), to present a misleading business-case to justify the deal in the first place. Read the rest

In 2015, a deep investigative report from Inside Climate News revealed that as early as 1977, Exxonmobil knew that it was destroying the planet with CO2 emissions, and its response to that fact was to gin up a decades-long disinformation campaign aimed at sowing expensive doubt about the subject, even as it grew more certain of its facts.Holding Exxonmobil to account for deliberately risking our planet and our species is tough sledding, but the New York Attorney General's office has hit on a promising strategy: punishing Exxonmobile for misleading its shareholders, because anthropogenic climate change has massive implications for the share price of oil companies, and by withholding its growing certainty on the subject, the oil giant had tricked shareholders into buying overpriced shares in the company.Now, Exxonmobil has been caught intimidating the state's witnesses, sending letters that threaten to expose any witness's own internal files to subpoenas from Exxonmobil, a process that could prove ruinously expensive and potentially compromising.The latest tussle in court was prompted by a set of letters that Exxon sent to witnesses in early July, saying that if they decided to testify, Exxon would use a subpoena to seek documents.The letter included in the court filings notes that the witnesses cannot be compelled to testify, but "nonetheless may be willing to testify." It says "please let us know" if you choose not to testify, and adds that if the witness does testify, "ExxonMobil is entitled to discovery concerning her relevant knowledge."At least one witness, Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, an advocacy group dedicated to increasing corporate sustainability through shareholder engagement, received the specific document request. Read the rest

Both Hong Kong protesters and cops have taken up laser pointers in support of their goals; protesters have used them to blind CCTVs and pinpoint vigilante thugs who assaulted them; cops use them to identify targets for snatch-squads.The police have claimed that the lasers have caused eye damage to officers, and have classed them as offensive weapons. A student was arrested for carrying several laser-pointers, and that set off a mass laser-protest whose participants styled their action as a "stargazing" event as they flicked their lasers over a domed building. Hong Kong demonstrators use laser pointers in anti-government protest Read the rest

The Royal Mint made no new 1p and 2p coins last year, saying there are enough in circulation. The nearly worthless denominations aren't being phased out, though.Cash use has fallen across the UK, and some feared the end of copper coins when the government announced a consultation on the mix of cash in circulation earlier this year. But the Treasury concluded that the coins were still needed, and said they would continue to be used "for years to come". Over 2 million people are estimated to be almost entirely reliant on cash in their daily lives, with the elderly, vulnerable and those in rural communities likely to be hardest hit by any decline in cash availability.Canada ceased production of its 1c coin five years ago, but it remains legal tender. Australia and New Zealand ditched their 1c coins about two decades back. But the increasingly pointless American penny remains in business, held aloft by the tide of hysteria that washes in whenever the Treasury suggests getting rid of it. Read the rest

My In-Laws Are Careless About My Deadly Food Allergy is a letter sent in to The Cut's Ask Polly column. It's the second-most amazing agony aunt letter I've ever read.I have a very severe allergy to mushrooms ... Since then, most meals we have shared at my in-laws’ house have had very limited options for me. Somehow, they manage to find a way to add mushrooms to almost everything. One time, they made a point to make a special plate of mushrooms and pass it around. My mother-in-law said, very rudely, “I would’ve liked to add mushrooms directly to the salad, but SOMEBODY has problems with it!” They even added mushroom powder to the mashed potatoes at one holiday dinner. My mother-in-law claimed it was a new recipe she’d found.This is just the beginning; it'a rollercoaster ride into mycological madness.Following is my number 1, posted by Slate's Dear Prudence in 2012. First, the shot...My mother-in-law hates me ... the problem is that after each visit, I wind up with a bad case of diarrhea; my husband does not. I don’t know if the other in-laws are affected, because if I asked, it would get back to her. I suspect that my mother-in-law is putting something in my food or drink. Then the chaser. You had suggested swapping plates with my husband to see if my mother-in-law would react. However, as you noted, that would have required bringing my husband into my confidence. I did not feel it was wise to do that, because he already didn’t believe that his mother treated me badly. Read the rest

I enjoyed this video showing "modern Samurai" Isao Machii observing two mechanical pitches before bisecting the third in a single neat cut. The radar clocks the ball at 161 kph (100 mph). I intend to do likewise with the next basketball to sail over the fence into my backyard, and will await its arrival. Read the rest

Hanoi has a train track running down a thin alleyway, immediately adjacent to homes, pubs, cafes and, well, all the tourists there to see if Train Street is for real. Alexatron: "Whilst most people would argue that a train passing through their neighborhood is a crazy dangerous thing, the local Vietnamese people have turned it into a must see tourist hot spot. Trust the Vietnamese to turn a curse into a blessing and a profit. Previously in alarming trains in Vietnam. Read the rest

Used car for sale! Only 10,000 careful owners: "You need to call yourself an exterminator, dude." Read the rest

The white power hour on Fox will be in other hands for a short while: host Tucker Carlson is headed off on an improptu "vacation" the day after claiming America didn't have a white supremacy problem and that concerns it did were a "hoax".There is, of course, a long history of Fox hosts heading out on vacation as they become engulfed in controversy for inflammatory comments.-- Laura Ingraham announced she was going on vacation in March 2018 after mocking Parkland survivor and gun control activist David Hogg...-- Sean Hannity went on vacation in May 2017 after losing advertisers for promoting the Seth Rich conspiracy theory...-- Jesse Watters headed out on vacation in April 2017 after making a comment widely criticized as lewd about Ivanka Trump...-- Bill O'Reilly went -- and never returned from -- a vacation in April 2017 after NYT reported he had settled five sexual harassment allegations for millions of dollars...The backlash is intense even by these standards, what with memories of the latest white supremacist mass shooting as fresh as the corpses. But Carlson has been here before, is indispensible to the movement, and will not likely be going anywhere. Read the rest

When Christian Bale was cast as Patrick Bateman, the obsessive yet vacuous investment banker and serial killer prowling 1980s Manhattan, he searched for inspiration. He found a Tom Cruise interview, as related by director Mary Harron: "We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave. And then one day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy."Now you can watch Tom Cruise play the role, deepfaked over Bale and dubbed by Evan Ferrante. It's so convincing, not just in the technical aspects of the deepfake but the plain fact of Cruise's obvious appropropriateness to the role. There's a petulant, simmering anger that comes naturally to Cruise on screen, an intensity that Bale did not quite fully emulate in his otherwise excellent performance.It's NSFW throughout, but the second half is the actual "sex" scene; stop the video 45s in to avoid it. Read the rest

And by "dirty," I mean "NSFW."There's a marketing mastermind at Granny's Attic thrift store on Vashon Island in Washington state. Instead of tossing out** all the risqué donations the store receives, they instead save the (good/sellable) items for a once-a-year sale for adults 18 and over. I vacation in Vashon and got to experience it for myself. (**I'm assuming that's what thrift stores normally do.)The preview for this "After Dark" sale was held on the island's popular First Friday evening:"Find Out What Your Neighbors Have Been Up To":Outside the shop's actual storefront was this large tent which held all the salacious secondhand goods: Now, I've often thought that you can tell a lot about what a community is about by what ends up in their thrift stores, a sort of anthropological study. What would I learn about the denizens of Vashon? Only one way to find out...(By the way, my 14-year-old was MORTIFIED that I was going to check the sale out and literally crossed the street and hid while I went inside.)Walking past the "It's scandalous in here..." sign and into the tent, I immediately spotted racks of used (and presumably laundered) lingerie and books:Turning around, I saw this table (click image to embiggen):And this one (click image to embiggen):No comment on those pantyhose dolls.Many artists live in Vashon, so it makes sense to me that a bunch of tasteful nude sketches ended up in the sale:Oh, it's worth mentioning that everything was priced to move. Read the rest

Look, this is getting old. Just assume that everyone one is listening to you fart, copulate and sing in the shower, all the damn time. My former co-worker and professional tall person, David Murphy, took the time today to rap about Microsoft humping up on top of the digital surveillance dog-pile. He points out that, according to Vice, an unnamed Microsoft contractor has spilled the beans on the fact that Microsoft has been holding on to five to ten-second snippets of folks using Skype's translation functionality to yammer on with on another. Did I mention that he provided samples of the audio clips? There's totally samples of the audio clips. Apparently, Microsoft's having their contractors listen in on the clips to improve on Skype's translation chops.When confronted about their snooping, Microsoft assured Vice's investigator that the snippets were fired over to the company's contractors via a secure web portal, with all identifying data removed from the recordings.As David points out, there's no way to keep Microsoft from doing this. Worse than this, the company, oh-so greasily, completely neglects to mention that underpaid humans are listening on what you say during your Skype calls.From Lifehacker:...Microsoft doesn’t indicate in its FAQ that your speech is being analyzed by real people. In fact, this description almost implies that it’s a fully mechanical process, which it is not—nor could it be, since a machine wouldn’t be able to pick the correct translation. The entire point is that a human being has to train the system to get better. Read the rest

Or live on, depending on who you talk to. Ponyhenge started when a toy rocking horse was discarded in a field. It had been part of a headless horseman decoration from a nearby, shuttered haunted house. Soon, other toy horses joined it, lined up in a circle. The herd mysteriously multiplies, moves around, and gets decorated seasonally. Roadtrippers reports:The herd has not only grown in the last nine years, but the horses have been known to change positions unexpectedly. Like a less-labor-intensive crop circle, no one is quite sure who moves the residents of Ponyhenge, but every so often they are rearranged into a new formation... For the Kentucky Derby, that the horses were moved into lines, waiting for a starting gunshot that presumably never came. After Labor Day… the horses were arranged in rows as if they were in school. They’re draped in lights at Christmas, and sometimes they’re buried completely by snow during the harsh New England winters. The Rocking Horse Graveyard, as it's also called, has been a roadside attraction since 2010.Want to see it for yourself? Head to 47 Old Sudbury Road in Lincoln, Massachusetts and look by the side of the road. It's on private property, so be respectful.(RED, Nag on the Lake)screenshot via Erin Essex Read the rest

In the market for a workhorse laptop for the upcoming school year? Refurbished gear is the way to go. Here are some of our favorite deals on like-new laptop rigs and PCs.Lenovo N22 11.6" Chromebook 16GB Black (Certified Refurbished)This rig is great for working at home or away, with a 14-hour battery life and 1.6GHz Intel Celeron N3050 processor that can handle any task. The rotating 720p HD camera and water-resistant keyboard are especially nice touches for any user. Get this Lenovo N22 11.6" Chromebook 16GB in black for $99.99, 60% off the retail price.HP Chromebook 11" 16GB Silver (Certified Refurbished)The Chrome OS makes it easy to navigate on this 2014 model, and the 16 GB eMMC storage is enough for a household worth of data. Pick up the HP Chromebook 11" 16GB Silver for $139.99, down 30% from the original cost.HP Chromebook 14 14.4” 16GB Black (Certified Refurbished)The built-in virus protection on this one makes it great for casual users, and the multi-format digital media card makes it easy to share and view videos from anywhere. Pick up your HP Chromebook 14 14.4” 16GB Black for $99.99, a full 66% discount from the MSRP.Lenovo Thinkpad 11e Chromebook 11.6” 16GB Silver (Certified Refurbished)This Thinkpad is durable outside and all about speed under the hood. The 6th Gen Intel® Core™ processors work hard whether you're crunching data or streaming video on the HD display. Get the Lenovo Thinkpad 11e Chromebook 11.6” 16GB Silver for 73% off at $104.99. Read the rest

Ben is host of the BTC Sessions YouTube channel. He appears to be knowledgeable about Bitcoin, so he was the wrong guy to try to cheat, as this scammer learned. The scammer, going by the name of Susan Williams, told Ben via instant message that he could double his money in 24 hours if he sent her bitcoins to invest in a bitcoin mining operation. Ben pretended to be interested but told her that he would send her a bitcoin only if she first sent him $50 worth of bitcoin as a show of good faith. Susan" eventually agreed and as soon as she sent him the money, Ben told her he was not going to send her anything and was sending the $50 to a charity. Susan was so upset that she sent Ben a crying face emoji.Image: BTC Sessions Read the rest

Stephen M. Ross scheduled to host fundraiser for President Trump in his Hamptons home

The largest single-state worksite immigration raid in American history took place today. Under orders from openly racist U.S. president Donald Trump, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 680 Latinx people who worked at numerous food processing plants throughout the state of Mississippi.US Atty Mike Hurst announces today’s immigration raids led to detention of approx. 680 people at 7 sites in 6 cities in MS, setting a new record in a single state. @MSTODAYnews pic.twitter.com/C4A3pDQ5oI— Michelle Liu (@mchelleliu) August 7, 2019The arrestees are identified as being Latinx. The raids are racially targeted, but ICE denies it.Think of the detainees' children, spouses, grandparents, and other dependents tonight.ICE clustered the raids in various small towns near Jackson, where the labor workforce is almost entirely immigrants from central America and Mexico. Communities that were raided today include the towns of Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastapol.“About 600 agents fanned out across the plants involving several companies, surrounding the perimeters to prevent workers from fleeing,” AP reports. The raids, planned months ago, happened just hours before President Donald Trump was scheduled to visit El Paso, Texas, the majority-Latino city where a man linked to an online screed about a "Hispanic invasion" was charged in a shooting that left 22 people dead in the border city.Workers filled three buses — two for men and one for women — at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in tiny Morton, 40 miles east of Jackson. They were taken to a military hangar to be processed for immigration violations. Read the rest

Are all the cool kids going to leave AOL now that its official "digital prophet," Shingy, won't be around to tell the company what to do? According to Gizmodo, Mr. Shingy wrote a good-bye letter on LinkedIn that read, "I have decided it’s time to explore a new path.”From Gizmodo:It’s possible no one really knows what Shingy did as a digital prophet. In 2014 he told the New Yorker that his six-figure salary paid for him to watch “the future take shape across the vast online landscape,” adding that, “I fly all around the world and go to conferences” and “I listen to where media is headed and figure out how our brands can win in that environment.”But one anecdote from that story painted a clearer picture of Shingy’s role.Next, Shingy stopped by the office of Erika Nardini, the chief marketing officer of AOL Advertising, and handed her an iPad Mini. “Wanted to show you a little brain fart I had on the plane,” he said. It was a cartoon he had drawn of a bear wearing zebra-print pants and a shirt covered in ones and zeros.“Love it, love it, love it,” Nardini said. “I’m thinking of the bears more as a metaphor.”“A thousand per cent,” Shingy said.Image: YouTube/Cloud Edits Read the rest

A gentleman (dressed in a half-hearted attempt at old-timey choo choo train engineer cosplay) attacked a cement truck with a hammer, knocking out indicator lights and such. He then traipsed through freshly poured concrete, falling into it and struggling to get out. When a man asked him "Everything alright?" He replied, "Everything alright? Does everything look alright you dumb fucker? I want that truck off my lawn."Old man freaks out over a truck parked outside his house, hits concrete company truck with a hammer then falls into wet concrete from r/PublicFreakoutImage r/PublicFreakout Read the rest

Atul Gawande (previously) made an enormous shift in the practice of medicine with his research on checklists, summarized in his book The Checklist Manifesto; Gawande identified a core paradox with checklists, which is that surgeons hate to use them, finding them reductive and tedious, but overwhelmingly, surgeons would prefer to be operated on by other surgeons who were using a checklist to guide the procedure. Now, a decade later, the empirical data on checklists is looking pretty dismal. Not because checklists don't work, but because surgical teams ignore them, skipping over checklist items and assuming that they've taken care of them without bothering to check.A survey of UK surgical staff identified three key reasons that checklists were skipped over: first, peer-pressure, wherein people following the checklist were mocked and exhorted to "shut up and get on with it"; second, "inappropriate or illogical" checklists that had criteria that weren't applicable to the situation; and third, because they were considered time-wasters in a time-constrained environment. The bad news is that these factors have led to much of checklists' promise being squandered. The good news is that they're pretty easy to fix.In a 2013 study13, Dixon-Woods found that an African hospital using the WHO surgical checklist had regular shortages of the basic tools — such as surgical markers, antibiotics and pulse oximeters — that are required to complete the list. But the staff often ticked those boxes anyway; as one anaesthetist pointed out, it was often better for a patient to undergo surgery without these supplies than not to have surgery at all. Read the rest

Researchers at the University of Exeter say pesky seagulls at holiday vacation spots tend to be deterred somewhat from stealing your food when you just stare at them. Yep, maintaining hostile eye contact with a gull may deter them from snarfing your french fries.“The research showed that with a human staring at them, herring gulls took 21 seconds longer to approach a bag of chips then when left apparently unobserved,” Reports Reuters:“Gulls are often seen as aggressive and willing to take food from humans, so it was interesting to find that most wouldn’t even come near during our tests,” said lead author Madeleine Goumas, of the Center for Ecology and Conservation at Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall.The researchers tried to test 74 gulls but most flew away or would not approach. Just 27 approached the food and 19 completed the “looking at” and “looking away” tests.“Of those that did approach, most took longer when they were being watched,” Goumas said. “Some wouldn’t even touch the food at all, although others didn’t seem to notice that a human was staring at them.”Staring at seagulls can stop them stealing food, research shows [Guy Faulconbridge/Reuters][images: shutterstock] Read the rest