Boing Boing

Sidewalk Labs is Google's sister company that sells "smart city" technology; its showcase partner is Toronto, my hometown, where it has made a creepy shitshow out of its freshman outing, from the mass resignations of its privacy advisors to the underhanded way it snuck in the right to take over most of the lakeshore without further consultations (something the company straight up lied about after they were outed). Unsurprisingly, the city, the province, the country, and the company are all being sued over the plan.Toronto Life has run a great, large package of short essays by proponents and critics of the project, from Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff (no, really, that's his name) to former privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian (who evinces an unfortunate belief in data-deidentification) to city councillor and former Greenpeace campaigner Gord Perks to urban guru Richard Florida to me.I wrote about the prospect that a city could be organized around the principle that people are sensors, not things to be sensed -- that is, imagine an internet of things that doesn't relegate the humans it notionally serves to the status of "thing."Our cities are necessarily complex, and they benefit from sensing and control. From census tracts to John Snow’s 19th-century map of central London cholera infections, we have been gathering telemetry on the performance of our cities in order to tune and optimize them for hundreds of years. As cities advance, they demand ever-higher degrees of sensing and actuating. But smart cities have to be built by cities themselves, democratically controlled and publicly owned. Read the rest

Kim Kelly is Teen Vogue's labor columnist and has written a series of excellent pieces on labor politics for the #resistance glossy.Kelly has had a distinguished career as a journalist and a labor organizer (she led the union drive at Vice) and has incredibly smart things to say about labor politics in the current moment. KIM KELLY: That’s a big question, and I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I think the Green New Deal is a good start, but that’s assuming that we can even make it work. I think it’s very easy to understand why people in these industries are scared. If you’re going to work every day, trying to feed your family, trying to just get through life, and then it seems like everyone is screaming at you about how you’re killing the planet, your job is a problem, it needs to be legislated out of existence, of course you’re going to push back to that because it’s easy to make grand proclamations and talk about big solutions, but it’s really hard to make your rent. There’s a disconnect there, and I think that’s something that really – I think the labor movement needs to really be rallying around these workers and actually putting in the effort to create infrastructure that will lead to a just transition.You can’t just send a couple of people with laptops down to teach people in West Virginia how to code. That’s something that you can do, but that can’t be all of it. Read the rest

I've always been fascinated with dumpster diving: my first feature sale to Wired (21 years ago!) told the tale of Darren Atkinson, the most successful high-tech diver I know.In Germany (where 18 million tons of food are thrown away every year), a subculture of anticonsumerist activists have turned dumpster diving into a political act, defying a law that treats trash as private property and dumpster diving as theft.Senior dumpster divers are giving masterclasses to young, would-be divers, explicitly linking the activity to a wider anticapitalist project and supplying intensely practical advice (watch out for broken glass because dumpster-borne pathogens are gross; don't make noise lest the neighbors call the cops; if you think the food is spoiled, leave it because there's plenty more; don't hop fences or gates because that is a pretense for a trespassing bust).The legal prohibition on dumpster diving was challenged by Hamburg's city-state justice minister, Till Stephens (Green Party), but the national legislature voted down his reforms, citing hygiene, the slippery slope to theft, and other thin excuses.Where Stephens failed, a young radical lawyer named Max Malkus may succeed: he's representing "Caro" and "Franzi," two pseudonymous divers who were convicted to theft in January. Malkus is running an appeal, arguing that the law is unconstitutional (Malkus dives himself).Recently, though, prosecutors elected to discontinue one case of garbage theft, partly thanks to the efforts of lawyers like Max Malkus. The 29-year-old believes dumpster diving is legal -- for personal reasons, because he himself dumpster dives, but also for professional ones, since he represents other divers as well. Read the rest

My wife recently expressed an interest in learning how to use Final Cut Pro to do a bit of video editing to record her dives and time on trail when she’s out in the wilderness doing her thing. We already own the software, so no problem there. However, she’s rocking a 2012 11” MacBook Air: a hand-me-down laptop that I gifted her a few years back when I bought a new MacBook Pro. It just doesn’t have the guts to work with high resolution video in a meaningful way. Happily, instead of having to discuss the purchase of a new computer for her, I was able to suggest that she switch over to using my MacBook Pro, instead. Of late, I’ve been doing most of my photo editing, tinkering video and other processor heavy work with the late model laptop issued to me by my employer. The only time I ever use my personal Mac is when I’m working on my novel or to transfer music or movies to my phone.I spent the day setting my MacBook Pro—now my wife’s MacBook Pro—with all of her files and the software she’ll need to do what she wants to do. While that was getting sorted out, I turned my attention to the 11” MacBook Air. I’ve always loved the size of this thing and, despite the amount of space taken up by its sinfully large display bezels, I used to enjoy working on it. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever owned a computer that I’ve enjoyed using more. Read the rest

Kristen Stewart, in a wide-ranging interview with Harper's Bazaar, says she was told to hide her sexuality if she wanted to get a Marvel movie role. Stewart identifies as bisexual and has publicly dated both men and women.If she can make the conversation about sexuality easier for anyone, she’s happy. She also couldn’t care less about the impact any of this might have on her career. In the past, she says, "I have fully been told, 'If you just like do yourself a favour, and don’t go out holding your girlfriend’s hand in public, you might get a Marvel movie.'" She looks almost amused at the memory. "I don’t want to work with people like that." Now, by contrast, people approach her, drawn to that undefined sexuality, wanting to make movies about it. Stewart shakes her head in mock despair. "Literally, life is a huge popularity contest." Hollywood is, contrary to media myth, a deeply conservative place. In fact, the most distinctively liberal thing about is how its presents its homophobia as something it is forced to do by conservatives. Read the rest

With Labor Day in our rear view for another year, it's time to get back to work after a much-deserved long weekend. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is out there already, working for you.For the record, the AFSCME is a labor union that's been standing up for the rights and dignity of its members since 1932. Nothing but respect.Image via Flickr, courtesy of ufcw770 Read the rest

China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office hosted a press conference on the ongoing Hong Kong pro-democracy uprising, with spokesman Yang Guang directing every branch and agency of Hong Kong's government (including airports, universities, and the public transit system) to attack the protests, promising "Especially to those key violent criminals and their backstage masterminds, organisers and agitators, [we] must show no mercy and pursue till the end."Yang doubled down on Beijing's autocratic policy of disqualifying electoral candidates it does not deem sufficiently loyal to the central government, a spectacular misreading of the moment, in which ever-larger swathes of Hong Kong's educated, wealthy class are joining the rank-and-file to protest the heavy-handed actions of Carrie Lam, the figurehead installed by Beijing in the last (sham) elections (Lam was forced to finally withdraw her signature legislation -- a rule allowing political dissidents to be extradited for trial on the mainland -- this week).Through its party mouthpiece People’s Daily, Beijing has in recent weeks criticised the city’s railway operator, the MTR Corporation, for not forcefully dealing with protesters who had been obstructing its trains and using them as an easy means to flee from police.Yang also hinted that any revival of the city’s stalled electoral reform process must be based on a framework that would effectively allow Beijing to screen out candidates it did not deem trustworthy.“Only with that framework can it produce a chief executive who loves the nation and Hong Kong, is trustworthy to the central government and accepted by Hong Kong people through universal suffrage,” he said. Read the rest

I'm a pencil fanatic, who sits around reading pencil blogs and meditating on my favorite pencil sharpeners. (Mark once filmed me gushing about the Kum long-point pencil sharpener packaged by the folks at Blackwing.) I buy all the reissued Blackwing pencils, too. I've got it bad.When it comes to back-to-school pencils for my kids, where you want to buy in quantity, my faves are these ForestChoice ones -- acquirable in big 144-count boxes, enough for an entire school year. I just got this box delivered.They're lovely pencils -- a smooth and soft lead, with a satiny, almost buttery finish that makes them a joy to write with. When you buy them in a 144-count box, they're about 26 cents apiece: Much pricier than 10-cents-a-pop Ticondera pencils, but way more than double the quality in writing pleasure. Read the rest

I was familiar with the little, silver "you are beautiful" stickers (and have gifted many of them) but this swell yard sign was new to me. You Are Beautiful started as a passion project in 2002 with 100 stickers, with a goal to help people feel better every day. The project was run (and all orders were shipped) out of a two car garage until 2018. YAB HQ was then opened in Chicago, offering a retail store front (open to the public daily), as well as housing our studio where we build our installations. We are extremely grateful for the global community who has supported this message, and helped spread millions of stickers, art murals, & installations far and wide - all with the goal to add a little positivity to the world.$25 at the "You Are Beautiful" store.(swissmiss) Read the rest

The bad news: Summer - and the beach excuses that come with it - are coming to an end. The good news: Labor Day sales are here to soften the blow. Take advantage of the right deals, and you could be spending that extra day off breaking in a new household widget you've been pining for.In fact, you can start right now. Here are 10 tech innovations that almost anybody can use, and anyone can afford.EarDial: The Invisible Smart Earplugs for Live MusicWant to live in the now but keep a little insurance for the future? Wear these super-discreet plugs to concerts or clubs. They'll protect against ear-damaging sound while still keeping things clear, thanks to a high-def noise filter. They even come with an app that can let you know when ambient sound is getting loud enough to warrant their use, and how long you can safely stay around it.They were sale priced at $21.99, but you can now get EarDial: The Invisible Smart Earplugs for Live Music for $19.99, almost 40% off the original cost. iPM World 360-Degree 1080p Wireless IP Security CameraThis high-tech watchdog is infinitely quieter than the real thing, offering 360-degree views of any room that you can control remotely with your smartphone. Day or night, you're covered thanks to the camera's infrared mode. And the video is encrypted with multiple protocols for that extra dose of security.The iPM World 360-Degree 1080p Wireless IP Security Camera is now on sale for $44.99, down 65% from the MSRP. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Super-Fun-Pak Comix features Gibbon the Ocelot, Guy Walks into a Bar, and MUCH MORE!!

Every year at the Hugo Awards, a lucky writer is given the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, named for the noted sf editor and fascist John W Campbell, whose editorials in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction lamented the demise of slavery, cheered the murder of the Kent State 4, advocated violent reprisals over the Watts Uprising, and promoted Dianetics (Campbell wasn't just a racist kook: he was several kinds of kook).This year, Campbell Award winner Jeannette Ng correctly described Campbell as a fascist in her acceptance speech, and attracted no small amount of racially charged condemnations from sf fans who were nostalgic for the Campbell days.Luckily, the management of Dell Magazines -- which sponsors the Campbell Award -- were more intellectually honest, and last week, they announced that they'd be changing the name of the award to the Astounding Award, which is great, even if it means that in years to come, the Hugo program and ballot will celebrate "The Astounding Award for Best New Writer (formerly the Campbell Award) (not a Hugo Award)." Speaking as a winner of both Campbell Awards (I think I'm the only one!), I'm grateful to Ng for her bravery and intellectual rigor. Well done!Though Campbell’s impact on the field is undeniable, we hope that the conversation going forward is nuanced. George Santayana’s proverbial phrase remains as true today as when it was coined: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We neither want to paper over the flaws of those who have come before us, nor reduce them to caricatures. Read the rest

My latest Locus Magazine column is 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.For 40 years, University of Chicago-style market orthodoxy has promised widespread prosperity as a natural consequence of turning everything into unfettered, unregulated, monopolistic businesses. For 40 years, everyone except the paymasters who bankrolled the University of Chicago's priesthood have gotten poorer.Today, DRM stands as a perfect example of everything terrible about monopolies, surveillance, and shareholder capitalism.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. Read the rest

Hong Kong's democratic uprising has been a long masterclass in high-tech protest tactics (and the hits keep coming).But Beijing and the HK police force aren't sitting idly by: they've started bombing protestors with fluorescent powder that can be identified later with UV lights.Hong Kong police dropped fluorescent powder from a helicopter to people who rally for democracy. It’s visible under UV light, and useful to tag protesterspic.twitter.com/EFOYmoIDJ4— Alfons López Tena #FBPE (@alfonslopeztena) September 2, 2019These authoritarian measures are backfiring. new research from Samson Yuen at The Conversation reveals that protesters -- overwhelmingly well-educated professionals -- are becoming radicalized, specifically citing police violence as their reason for turning out.The protesters want city administrator/Beijing figurehead Carrie Lam to resign, but that's just for starters. They view Lam as the visible symbol of deep structural problems with Hong Kong's relationship with mainland China. The Umbrella Revolution -- HK's last uprising -- was deeply divided over tactics, specifically whether militant tactics including property damage and self-defense against police beatings were acceptable.That division has largely vanished: the protesters have seen the police respond to nonviolent protest with all-out violent attacks, and they've largely abandoned hope that nonviolence will get them the reforms they're seeking.Protesters overwhelmingly identify themselves as being in solidarity with one another, and they also overwhelmingly favor more militant, intense tactics for future demonstrations. They do not expect the government to make any meaningful concessions, either. In the meantime, artists like Oliver Chang are reviving the iconography of Tiananmen Square (Thanks, Matteo! Read the rest

You know what's great about putting wifi-enabled, Turing-complete computers into things like lightbulbs? Not. A. Single. Fucking. Thing.In the latest installment in the Internet of Shit edition of the unanticipated (but totally predictable) consequences, Americablog editor John Aravosis discovered that the Philips Hue lightbulbs he returned to Amazon were now on in someone else's house -- but still under his control.He discovered this because the new owner, "Amanda Jean," initialized the bulbs, and then his Hue app started to send him a stream of updates from Amanda Jean's house, along with the address for her IoT hub and her email address.He writes, "Because I’m a nice guy, I deleted my account, which I’m hoping didn’t just delete her account."So, it seems the Philips Hue light bulbs I returned to Amazon are still somewhat under my control, even though some woman named Amanda Jean has now bought them. At least I can see her Bridge, her name and email. All a bit odd. Am I going to forever get updates about her acct?— John Aravosis 🇺🇸 (@aravosis) August 30, 2019(Image: Cryteria, CC BY, modified) Read the rest

For decades, architectural critic and photographer John Margolies obsessively documented roadside attractions: vernacular architecture, weird sculpture, odd businesses and amusements. By his death in 2016, his collection consisted of more than 11,000 slides (he published books of his favorites, with annotations).The Library of Congress purchased the Margolies archive and has released it to the public domain, with hi-rez scans of 11,710 slides.Almost all of Margolies’ work was done in the interest of preserving images of what would otherwise be lost to time. Even his first book, published in 1981, was elegiacally called The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America. From the start, Margolies knew the quirky motels, miniature golf courses, diners, billboards, and gas stations were being endangered by franchising and changing fashions — not to mention changing patterns of automobile traffic. (For decades now, most drivers have, of course, opted for the high speed-limits of superhighways and the convenience of service areas, leaving the old local highways in the lurch.)John Margolies’ Photographs of Roadside America [Public Domain Review]John Margolies [Library of Congress] Roadside America [Library of Congress/Flickr Commons](Thanks, @ridetheory!) Read the rest

California's Assembly Bill 5 isn't radical: it merely affirms the obvious fact that Uber and Lyft drivers (and other "gig economy" workers) are employees, something that the California Supreme Court already made obvious in the Dynamex decision.However, it does mean that the bezzle that is Uber and Lyft is in deep, deep shit. Having to treat their employees like employees is antithetical to their business-model, which is basically a Ponzi scheme that redistributes cash from later investors and drivers (especially those who don't know how to calculate depreciation or read a predatory car-lease) to the early money into the companies.And here's the amazing thing: it looks like AB5 is going to pass. This situation has Uber and Lyft so scared that they've offered to pay drivers $21/h (but only when they've got passengers), offer paid sick-leave, and allow drivers to "have a collective voice" (a usefully ambiguous phrase that may refer to the unions drivers are trying to form, or maybe to the company's practice of forcing drivers to go to arbitration rather than suing). It's too little, too late. State legislature watchers in Sacramento say AB5 is going to pass, and that means that the Uber/Lyft Ponzi is a little closer to its inevitable implosion.Still, California’s passage of AB5 could have a domino effect that inspires other states to codify their own ABC misclassification tests, said Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney who represented thousands of drivers in a class action suit against Uber. But it will run into strong resistance from Uber and Lyft, which have deep pockets to spend on lobbying and public relations campaigns. Read the rest

One of the most obvious facts I've learned in covering the unfolding scandal of the secret deals between Amazon's Ring surveillance doorbell group and hundreds of US police departments is that Amazon loooooves to play word-games.For example, I've been repeatedly emailed by company spokespeople to tell me that cops only get access to Ring customers' videos if the customers offer to share it; but what they never said is that if a customer turns down a police request, Amazon instructs the cops to make an "official request" to the company and then they grant warrantless access to the footage.This kind of deceptive practice really is business-as-usual for the company: last week, the company tweeted at the ACLU to accuse them of posting something "misleading" when they said that Ring uses facial recognition with the footage it captures, and a Ring spokesperson (anonymous, as is inevitably the case with Ring, whose spokespeople have to be cajoled, pushed and wheedled to put their names to their statements to the press) told Buzzfeed that "Ring is not Rekognition and does not work with Rekognition" (Rekognition is Amazon's creepy, low-reliability facial recognition flagship product). Maybe that's true, but you know what's also true? There's a dude at Ring Ukraine named Oleksandr Obiednikov whose title is "head of face recognition researchm" and who has given conference talks on how facial recognition can integrate with products like Ring. The company's filed multiple facial recognition patents, and its terms of service allow it to use the video from your doorbell to train facial recognition systems. Read the rest

Apple was at the vanguard of the massive corporate spending that killed Right to Repair bills in 20 state legislatures last year, and while the company claims that it wants to protect its users from evil repair dudes who secretly hack their devices while claiming to fix them, Apple's CEO's frank warning to investors that profits are expected to slide if people keep fixing their Iphones instead of replacing them points at a much more likely answer.Now, Apple has announced that it is going to supply original parts to indie repair shop, and once again, the company has declared that it is simply looking out for its customers by helping ensure that they get original parts, not janky counterfeits.But as Karl Bode writes at Techdirt, this is just as transparent as Apple's campaign against last year's Right to Repair bills: the company is hoping to head off the bills that will be introduced this year. Access to parts is just one of the standard demands in Right to Repair legislation, along with access to diagnostic codes (including codes needed to bypass DRM without having to risk DMCA liability by breaking it) and repair manuals. Meanwhile, Apple has reserved for itself a veto over which independent repairers can access the official parts.Note also that Apple has a long history of equating refurbished parts and "donor parts" harvested from broken units or deadstock with "counterfeits," even though they were originally made and sold by Apple. The secondary market for these parts increases the value of devices to their owners, diverts electronics from the e-waste stream, and supports a market of small-and-medium refurbishers, importers, scrappers and other occupations that support broad prosperity for people who fix and make stuff, not just shareholders who own stuff. Read the rest

Illegitimate, popular vote losing President Donald Trump's spokeslackey and vice president Mike Pence visited Ireland on official United States business this week, and did so in a way that will personally enrich Donald Trump and his idiot spawn. For reasons no one can figure out, Pence stayed the night at the Trump Doonbeg resort, which was 150 miles away from the vice president's meetings in Dublin. Said Mike Pence to a reporter:"If you have a chance to get to Doonbeg you'll find it's a fairly small place, the opportunity to stay at Trump National in Doonbeg, to accommodate the unique footprint that comes with our security detail and other personnel made it logical."The decision to stay at a Trump-owned golf resort instead of a hotel near the VP's official meetings meant Pence spent 4 four in transit today, back and forth. It doesn't make any sense. It couldn't be that he did this for corrupt reasons, could it? What is he doing in this bonkers video clip, improvising an advertisement for Trump's privately owned luxury resort? Is this happening?.@VP Pence in Ireland: "If you have a chance to get to Doonbeg you'll find it's a fairly small place, the opportunity to stay at Trump National in Doonbeg, to accommodate the unique footprint that comes with our security detail and other personnel made it logical." pic.twitter.com/yqOSjKt9M3— CSPAN (@cspan) September 3, 2019Trump encouraged Pence to stay at his golf resort in Ireland, the Washington Post reports. Read the rest

Pentagon said to be reappropriating $3.6B from military construction projects to pay for section of Trump's stupid wall

Supermajority's Gender Equality, the Status of Women and the 2020 Elections surveys likely 2020 voters (N=1912), finds a strong correlation between opposition and broad misogynistic beliefs, such as opposition to the idea that women and men should hold an equal number of positions of power; opposition to the #MeToo movement; a disbelief in the idea that access to birth control affects women's power in society (likewise, skepticism that the lack of woman role models in powerful positions is significant). Pro-lifers are also substantially more likely to say that women are "easily offended" and prone to interpreting innocent acts or words as sexist; only 34% of pro-lifers believe that increasing the number of women in public office would improve the nation's politics. Next, do the overlap between "pro lifers" and people who blame migrant parents for their children being imprisoned, tortured, raped and murdered in ICE detention.Remember, for many Republicans:1. Life begins at conception; and2. Ends at birth; and3. Can be renewed by forming an anonymous LLC.Do men make better political leaders than women? More than half of anti-abortion voters agreed. Do you want there to be equal numbers of men and women in positions of power in America? Fewer than half of abortion opponents said yes – compared with 80% of pro-choicers, who said they want women to share in power equally.Anti-abortion voters don’t like the #MeToo movement. They don’t think the lack of women in positions of power impacts women’s equality. They don’t think access to birth control impacts women’s equality. Read the rest

Boris Johnson defied on Brexit by Parliament, UK PM loses key no-deal vote

In my latest Recomendo newsletter (subscribe here!) I wrote about my travel packing list. It’s a PDF that can be edited in Adobe Illustrator (because I don’t expect anyone to pack the same things I do). As you can see, my list is broken down into sublists of different bags: charger bag, meds bag, tool bag, etc. I keep the stuff in these excellent Japanese mesh zipper bags. Now I don’t forget important things any more like I used to. I recommend that you make a similar packing list for yourself. Read the rest

The United States military first started using code talkers during The First World War. They were aboriginal soldiers fluent in the languages of the Cherokee and Choctaw peoples who were tasked with speaking in their native tongues to secure voice and communications from an all-too-likely eavesdropping enemy. It wasn’t until they were deployed with the Marine Corps during World War II, however, that code talkers became the legends they’re remembered as, today.From Wikipedia:There were two code types used during World War II. Type one codes were formally developed based on the languages of the Comanches, Hopies, Meskwakis, and Navajos. They used words from their languages for each letter of the English alphabet. Messages could be encoded and decoded by using a simple substitution cipher where the ciphertext was the native language word. Type two code was informal and directly translated from English into the native language. If there was no word in the native language to describe a military word, code talkers used descriptive words. For example, the Navajo did not have a word for submarine so they translated it to iron fish.Today, there are only five code Navajo code talker veterans of the Marine Corps left in the world: Joe Vandever Sr., Peter MacDonald, Samuel F. Sandoval, John Kinsel Sr., and Thomas H. Begay. Arizona Central’s* Shondiin Silversmith has done the Navajo Nation and all future generations a great service by collecting the stories of these five brave men in text and video.Taking a browse of Silversmith’s feature is well worth your time: take a few moments to remember a handful of brave men who sacrificed their youth and, in far too many cases, their lives, to fend off fascism. Read the rest

The protestors in Hong Kong, leery of state eavesdropping on digital communications, have been adept at using communications tools not normally associated with activism, like Tinder, Twitch, and Apple's Airdrop (previously). The latter one, being peer-to-peer over local wifi, has particular advantages in avoiding scrutiny, since you have to be physically nearby to intercept a message.Now, in the same vein, it appears the protestors are using mesh-networking tech -- courtesy the messaging app Bridgefy. It uses bluetooth to let people pass messages from one phone to another within a few hundred feet; and since the app installations mesh with each other, you can daisy-chain messages to recipients even further away, so long as they're inside the mesh.These days, Bridgefy mostly licenses its backend tech to other app-makers, offering it as way to keep apps working if the Internet isn't available. But their original messaging app is still available (Iphone and Android), and in the last few weeks Hong Kong protestors have begun massively using it -- with over 75,000 downloads last week alone, according to this interview in Latam List:LL: How is Bridgefy helping protestors communicate in Hong Kong? JR: Although we are focusing more on the software now, our original app is still live and available for download. Actually, we use the app to test out our new technology! We have noticed an organic boost in app downloads during massive events like protests or natural disasters because Bridgefy works best when there are more people on the network – the opposite of Wifi or cellular networks. Read the rest

This Candy Chemistry set is a great way to learn about candy with your kid, in the kitchen. Do not, however, leave your kid alone with this Candy Chemistry set.Learn all about candy, and temperature control, in your own kitchen. This kit comes with almost everything you'll need to make quite a few delicious treats, all posed as science experiments. This is what makes cooking fun, for me and I hope it'll inspire other kids to learn to cook!Leaving a 12-year-old alone with this can create a huge mess in the kitchen, and should the child be so daring, burnt sugar all over the place.Candy Chemistry by Thames & Kosmos via Amazon Read the rest

Here's a beautiful NASA music video and photo montage with awe-inspiring shots from ISS Expedition 56. This gorgeous Earth-view “eye candy” music video features images captured by astronaut Ricky Arnold while on the International Space Station during his increment, ISS Expedition 55/56. As “Astro Ricky” tweeted:There are times when it is helpful to take a step back and take in the big picture. Thank you @Space_Station, @irvinmayfieldjr, @HaleyReinhart and @KermitRuffins for reminding us that we are all in this together. #Expedition56 pic.twitter.com/85NQ24yvum— Ricky Arnold (@astro_ricky) August 30, 2019Music:Song: Beautiful World [for Imani]Artist: Kermit Ruffins, Irvin Mayfield[via NASA Johnson Space Center] Read the rest

Via Youtube and The Ontario Provincial Police:A public safety film narrated by Peter Fonda with special guest Evel Knievel who provide safety tips and guidance for motorcycle riders. Features performance riding by the Los Angeles Police Department. (OPP Museum accession number 2012.51.5)Credits and Copyright: Filmfair Communications Incorporated (1973) Read the rest

Persia Beheshti made this short film about a community of mermaids in Virginia. It's narrated by one of the mermaids, Mermaid Undine.Image: Vimeo/Persia Beheshti[via Nag on the Lake] Read the rest

Any list of great video game soundtrack list that does not include THPS is bunk. Tony Hawk is measurably one of the coolest people to ever walk the Earth and this soundtrack wins.Halo and the Gregorian chant thing. Chills. Halo 3 might be better, tho.Space Harrier. Meant to be played at a motion-enhanced sit-down machine.If Tony Hawk is he coolest guy ever in a video game, Parappa is a close second. Read the rest

Tyler Cowen of Reason used the occasion of the release of Neal Stephenson's new novel, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell to interview him about what he thinks on a wide variety of topics, including surveillance, clothing of the future, and the rise of algorithmic decision making.In your books, you saw some of the downsides of social media earlier than most people did. What's the worst-case scenario, and why do many people think they're screwing things up?I think we're actually living through the worst-case scenario right now. I think our civil institutions were founded upon an assumption that people would be able to agree on what reality is, agree on facts, and that they would then make rational, good-faith decisions based on that. They might disagree as to how to interpret those facts or what their political philosophy was, but it was all founded on a shared understanding of reality. And that's now been dissolved out from underneath us, and we don't have a mechanism to address that problem.But what's the fundamental problem there? Is it that decentralized communications media intrinsically fail because there are too many voices? Is there something about the particular structure of social media now?The problem seems to be the fact that it's algorithmically driven, and that there are no humans in the loop making editorial, curatorial decisions about what is going to be disseminated on those networks. So it's very easy for people who are acting in bad faith to game that system and produce whatever kind of depiction of reality best suits them. Read the rest

Hassan Akhtar attempted to send a shipment from the UK to Pakistan of 5,000 tablets of MDMA hidden inside, ahem, Celebrations tubs of assorted chocolate. Now that's a party! From BBC News:Police said the drugs were discovered by the postal company in tubs of Celebrations chocolates and Akhtar was later identified by CCTV footage.Det Sgt Rob Hood said the defendant was "clearly looking to profit" from selling drugs and "thought by concealing them in chocolate tubs that they would not be detected". Read the rest

Here's a perfect frame from the UK parliament's video feed. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Secretary of State Andrea Leadsom and Home Secretary Sajid Javid are realizing one of their MPs is crossing the aisle to defect to the Liberal Democrats, costing the Conservatives their parliamentary majority.The BBC:Conservative MP Phillip Lee has defected to the Liberal Democrats ahead of a showdown between Boris Johnson and Tory rebels over Brexit.Dr Lee, the MP for Bracknell, took his seat on the opposition benches as the PM addressed the Commons.His defection means Boris Johnson no longer has a working majority in the House of Commons.He said the government was "pursuing a damaging Brexit in unprincipled ways... putting lives and livelihoods at risk". Read the rest

Dark patterns are sneaky tricks websites use to fool users into doing things they don't want to do. This video and glossary describes a number of the manipulative ruses and gives some examples.ConfirmshamingThe act of guilting the user into opting into something. The option to decline is worded in such a way as to shame the user into compliance.Forced ContinuityWhen your free trial with a service comes to an end and your credit card silently starts getting charged without any warning. In some cases this is made even worse by making it difficult to cancel the membership.Sneak into BasketYou attempt to purchase something, but somewhere in the purchasing journey the site sneaks an additional item into your basket, often through the use of an opt-out radio button or checkbox on a prior page.Roach MotelYou get into a situation very easily, but then you find it is hard to get out of it (e.g. a premium subscription).Image: YouTube Read the rest

Satellite monitoring company ICEYE composed this image, based upon satellite shots of the storm-drenched Bahamas, which shows how much of Grand Bahama went underwater as Hurricane Dorian arrived. The yellow lines show the normal coastline and the white lines show the streets of Freeport, the main town there.Here's the Bahamas on Google Maps, for reference:#HurricaneDorian has affected Bahamas heavily on Monday, with vast areas hit with #flooding, including the Grand Bahama International Airport, Freeport. ICEYE #SAR satellite image from 11:44AM local time. Please, stay safe! (Y: coastline. W: roads. Source: OpenStreetMap.) pic.twitter.com/ruXau8QhKn— ICEYE (@iceyefi) September 2, 2019 Read the rest

This weekend, police were called to an Ikea store in Glasgow, Scotland when employees learned that thousands of people had signed up on Facebook to play an unauthorized game of hide-and-seek in the maze-like building. According to The Scotsman, "groups of youths who looked like they were only there for the game were turned away from the shop.
" From The Scotsman:The trend for using Ikea’s giant warehouses for games began in Europe a few years ago - and has seen people hiding in fridges, under beds and in the firm’s big blue shopping bags.

..However in 2015, IKEA was forced to impose a ban because the events were getting out of control.

Citing health and safety a spokesman explained: ‘We need to make sure people are safe, and that’s hard if we don’t know where they are.’

Rob Cooper, IKEA Glasgow Store Manager said: “The safety of our customers and co-workers is always our highest priority. We were aware of an unofficial Hide and Seek Facebook event being organised to take place at our store today and have been working with the local police for support.



“While we appreciate playing games in one of our stores may be appealing to some, we do not allow this kind of activity to take place to ensure we are offering a safe environment and relaxed shopping experience for our customers.”"Police called to Scottish IKEA after thousands sign up for hide and seek" (The Scotsman)image: Google Maps Read the rest

From the headline, you're probably expecting some AI-powered, creepily realistic image of a person who either doesn't exist or isn't really in the photo. #Faces, though, is all about old-timey hand-drawn cartoon faces, with a technical eye on having them drawn on plotters. Refresh for a random one, or fiddle with the sliders; I got this Tove Jansson-esque character on the first go. Read the rest

Journalism is a tough job, especially when they won't pick up the phone! Read the rest

PETA installed an old-fashioned protest billboard adjacent to the Ohio Renaissance Festival that opened this weekend in Waynesville. The animal rights activists consider the classic Renaissance faire fare of an oversized turkey leg to be distasteful, to say the least. From WLWT5:The billboard -- placed near the fairgrounds and showing a turkey's face -- reads "Ye Can Live Without Yon Turkey Leg. I Cannot. Go Vegan Forthwith!"Officials with PETA said they're urging festival-goers to switch from a turkey leg to a falafel, hummus or corn on the cob..."PETA erects billboard protesting turkey legs at Ohio Renaissance Fest" (WLWT5, thanks Charles Pescovitz!) Read the rest

Last week Trump infamously suggested nuking hurricanes. Loopy, of course -- but it also put me in mind of a similarly bananas idea from 1965: Using nukes to dig ditches and excavate earth.As Matt Novak notes in the Paleofuture vertical at Gizmodo, Athelstan Spilhaus -- a scientist and educator -- wrote the comic "Atomic Ditch Digging", and got it published in US newspapers on July 4, 1965.A screenshot:Spilhaus was pretty stoked about it, as Novak notes:“For an explosion equivalent to 2 million tons of TNT, chemical explosives would cost $2 million, nuclear just $600,000!” the strip exclaimed.The strip went on to explain that by placing a small nuclear device, just 4 feet in diameter, inside Earth, the explosion would be entirely safe. Or, that was what they claimed anyway.“Most of the radioactivity could be kept underground so that workers could go into the craters within a week or two and people live nearby within a year,” the comic strip said.The last panel of the strip explained that a “second Panama Canal” could be dug for “a tenth of the cost of doing it mechanically.” If only President Teddy Roosevelt had been able to use nuclear bombs in the first decade of the 20th century, right? Go check the rest of Novak's post at Paleofuture to see the other scans from that comic. They're quite something! Now I want a t-shirt with just that image of a shovel bedecked with an atomic symbol. Read the rest

One of my favorite genres of book is the popular engineering book, a rare breed that combines physics and engineering to establish the full range of ways to address a problem (for example, if you want to talk about whether solar can ever replace fossil fuels, it's useful to know how many photons penetrate the Earth's atmosphere every day); no one does this genre better (or funnier) than Randall Munroe, the creator of the wonderful XKCD webcomic, whose 2014 book, What If? combines Dear Abby with extreme physics ("How fast would a human have to run in order to be cut in half at the bellybutton by a cheese-cutting wire?"); now there's a companion volume, How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, which picks up where What If? left off.How To's premise is about as Munrovian as it gets: take a simple task, imagine the most ridiculous, scientifically plausible way of doing it, research the underlying scientific, legal, social and technical questions in eye-watering detail, then deliver all this in an absolute deadpan, livened by his trademark stick-figure drawings.It's a kind of competence porn for people who love Rube Goldberg machines: for example, Munroe contemplates what it would take to build a "lava moat" of molten rock around your house, which sends him down not just one, but several rabbit-holes, from considering the heat output from a square meter of lava under both still and windy conditions; the human "rapid pain threshold" as applied to a notional moat; the relative costs of maintaining lava in a molten state; various cooling and insulation techniques that would maintain a human-habitable environment in the house surrounded by the moat; and, finally, what do to about the jellyfish that will inevitably clog the intakes on any seawater-based cooling system. Read the rest

This is a lot of fun. Katrin and Janine, a couple of Swiss gals, recreated the sequences where Homer Simpson eats his way through New Orleans. It even impressed the animators of The Simpsons.Eric Koenig:"Hey! Just wanted you to know, we here at The Simpsons Animation Studio saw your video and were blow away! And also hope you don't have heartburn from all that eatin'!"(tmn, Nag on the Lake) Read the rest

When the Hendrickson brothers started selling bibles out of their parents' home in Massachusetts almost 40 years ago, they likely had no idea their business would go on to become the world's largest retailer of Christian products with its own 300,000 square foot warehouse. And they definitely had no idea the declassification of hemp as a controlled substance would force their company to rebrand.Christian Book Distributors, long referred to as CBD, was renamed Christianbook earlier this summer in order to distinguish itself from the tsunami of CBD (cannabidiol) products that have flooded the country. CBD is everywhere (including our store!) and in dozens of forms, including gummies, ice cream, lotions, and vapes. But it doesn't come in bibles (yet) and that has caused a lot of confusion for the Hendrickson brothers' company.After decades of being known by the name CBD, Mr. Hendrickson’s company, which is based in Peabody, Mass., rebranded itself last month as Christianbook. Mr. Hendrickson, the company’s president and chief executive, said it was getting too confusing.“A person may call up and say, ‘Hey, I’m looking for my order,’” Mr. Hendrickson said. “It’s like, ‘What did you order? Oh, I ordered gummies. You don’t have the right company.’”The CBD popularity surge has even affected the retailer's search engine results, knocking it off of Google's main page and burying it deep within the search returns. While the retailer is working hard to scrub all references to CBD from its website, there's one CBD item it's not getting rid of anytime soon. Read the rest

This totally excellent computer animated television commercial for Hawaiian Punch was created in 1987 by Omnibus/Abel, the ill-fated company born from the merger of Omnibus Computer Graphics with computer animation pioneer Robert Abel's Abel and Associates. From Vintage CG:Rarely seen is this full 90 second version.... Music is by Mark Mothersbaugh (of DEVO), who later admitted to embedding a subliminal message: "Sugar is bad for you."Excerpts from the commercial later turned up in the classic computer animation VHS compilation "Beyond the Mind’s Eye," the content of which you can enjoy below: Read the rest

The potholes are the size of craters on the roads of the Indian city of Bengaluru. So, artist Baadal Nanjundaswamy put actor Poornachandra Mysore into a spacesuit to "moonwalk" on them. Bengaluru, we have a problem. Read the rest

The Singapore Police Force arrested a man at Changi airport for buying a plane ticket just to walk his wife to the gate and say goodbye. He apparently had no intention of flying anywhere. It does sound like a lovely airport to visit but I hope he purchased a fully-refundable ticket. From CNN:Anyone accessing the gate-side areas at Changi without intending to fly can be prosecuted under Singapore's Infrastructure Protection Act and fined up to S$20,000 (US$14,300) or imprisoned for up to two years. Thirty three people have been arrested under the legislation in the first eight months of 2019...When Changi's new Jewel terminal opened in April, it made headlines around the globe for its 40-meter waterfall (the world's largest indoor one), a 14,000-square-meter Canopy Park, complete with a suspension bridge, topiary and mazes, and one of Asia's largest indoor gardens with 3,000 trees and 60,000 shrubs. Read the rest

I got told by a friend as I described what I was having for lunch "enjoy your sandwich". With the way that my brain works, I instantly heard, insdie of my skull Bruce Springsteen singing Warren Zevon's My Ride's Here from the Enjoy Every Sandwich tribute album that popped after Zevon's death in 2003. This, in turn led me to a wicked heartache over the fact that there will never be another Warren Zevon tune brought into this world.Listening to him play Play it All Night, acted as a bit of a balm against that pain. I'm pretty sure that this video would have been snagged by some lucky audience members attending the concert tour where Zevon's Learning to Flinch live album was recorded. His writing's pretty dark, but damned if it never fails to bring a smile to my face.Image via Wikipedia Commons Read the rest

Last month was a rough one. I began August grieving the death of a friend, Paul Krassner, which Mark remembered here on Boing Boing, following Paul's death on July 21. I also wrote a piece on PK, which ran on The Comics Journal.I didn't share the Comics Journal item with many people, but one of those I emailed was the Silver Jews' David Berman. I figured he'd appreciate the politics, strength, and humor of Paul's life. I didn't hear back, which wasn't surprising, yet I'd regret it being the last message I'd send him. Two weeks later news everywhere would announce Berman's suicide.For a brief moment I was horrified at my last message. I barely knew David, yet it's weird how grief can operate, overwhelming you with regret over help not offered. But what can anyone ever say. Communicating with David had been a highlight of 2019. I'd spent years living with his music and art. I'd contacted David earlier this year to invite him to a project of mine, Spoken Word with Electronics. I'm now so thankful for the brief moment I felt a friendship developing, no matter how fleeting. One wall of Harry's Loft, my recording space in Austin TX I've been quietly working on this spoken word project for a few years. It's meant to be a modern take on Folkways Recordings. I either record a vocal performance from an author in the studio, do a live recording on the phone, or arrange for an emailed audio file. Read the rest