When Rolling Stone contributing editor Seth Harp flew home from Mexico, Customs officials at the Austin airport detained him for secondary screening. He was told that he had to comply with a thorough search of his phone and laptop or he wouldn't be allowed to enter the US.In retrospect, I was naive about the kind of agency CBP has become in the Trump era. Though I’ve reported several magazine stories in Mexico, none have been about immigration. Of course, I knew these were the guys putting kids in cages, separating refugee children from their parents, and that Trump’s whole shtick is vilifying immigrants, leading to many sad and ugly scenes at the border, including the farcical deployment of U.S. troops. But I complacently assumed that wouldn’t affect me directly, least of all in Austin. Later, I did remember reading a report in February about CBP targeting journalists, activists, and lawyers for scrutiny at ports of entry south of California, but I had never had a problem before, not in a lifetime of crossing the Texas-Mexico border scores of times on foot, by car, by plane, in a canoe, even swimming. This was the first time CBP had ever pulled me aside....When the officers told me they only wanted to check my devices for child pornography, links to terrorism, and so forth, I believed them. I was completely unprepared for the digital ransacking that came next.After I gave him the password to my iPhone, Moncivias spent three hours reviewing hundreds of photos and videos and emails and calls and texts, including encrypted messages on WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. Read the rest

Welcome to the Bike Pump Music Channel. Previously: Jurassic Park Theme Song (Melodica Cover) Read the rest

Here's a hand-crank coin-sorting machine made from plywood. The guy who made it used conventional tools, but it looks perfect for a laser cutter.Image: YouTube Read the rest

In this video, Jim Browning (previously at BB) calls back a tech support scammer, knowing what not to do and what to say to lure them into making revealing mistakes. Browning also appears to be a gifted hacker, presumably knowing of security flaws in the remote desktop software that scammers tend to use, giving him free rein on their machines. He's quite willing to expose the details, call them in person and mess up their operations -- I laughed like a drain when he got into the scammer's PayPal and started issuing refunds to victims. I got an 'invoice' email telling me that I had paid for a $3800 laptop. No links... just a phone number. It's a real shame that these scammers emailed me because I was able to find out exactly who they were and where the were. Enjoy! I have had to blur certain portions of his video because of YouTube's privacy policy (yes, even scammers can lodge a privacy complaint), but if you're a $3+ Patron of mine, you can see the unblurred version on this platform. I have also created an unblurred version on D.Tube here: TBA... it's uploading :) Catch me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JimBrowning11 @JimBrowing11 A note to YouTube: The unblurred information is publicly available already e.g. https://www.zaubacorp.com/company/COM... If can possibly sponsor me, this is my Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/JimBrowning If you can sponsor a one-off, this is my PayPal link: https://paypal.me/JimBrowningYT Many thanks if you can support me! The video is amazing: when he calls the scammers directly, tells them their real names and home addresses, and puts it all to them, it's like one of those unsettlingly calm Liam Neeson revenge calls from the movies. Read the rest

I was honored to be invited to contribute to the New York Times's excellent "Op-Eds From the Future" series (previously), with an op-ed called "I Shouldn't Have to Publish This in The New York Times," set in the near-future, in which we have decided to solve the problems of Big Tech by making them liable for what their users say and do, thus ushering in an era in which all our speech is vetted by algorithms that delete anything that looks like misinformation, harassment, copyright infringement, incitement to terrorism, etc -- with the result that the only place where you can discuss anything of import is newspapers themselves.Alas, it's science fiction that's firmly in the mold of "If this goes on..." Between SESTA/FOSTA, the Copyright Directive and global anti-terror rules, the age of the filternet is upon us.We can either try to fix Big Tech (by making it use its monopoly profits to clean up its act) or we can fix the internet (by breaking them up and denying them access to monopoly profits) -- but we can't do both.And the worst part is, the new regulations haven’t ended harassment, extremism or disinformation. Hardly a day goes by without some post full of outright Naziism, flat-eartherism and climate trutherism going viral. There are whole armies of Nazis and conspiracy theorists who do nothing but test the filters, day and night, using custom software to find the adversarial examples that slip past the filters’ machine-learning classifiers. Read the rest

Bernie Sanders's latest campaign promise is a proposal to forgive all outstanding US student debt, and raising the $2.2 trillion needed over a decade to make lenders whole by taxing Wall Street speculators with a 0.5% tax on stock trades, a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives.The debt relief would apply to any of the 46 million people currently repaying the $1.6 trillion in undergraduate and graduate loans. Elizabeth Warren has already proposed to wipe out up to $50k per student debtor and to make state colleges tuition-free, while Sanders's Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education would comprehensively reform elementary and secondary education.Sanders campaigned on free tuition in 2016. Republicans who support tuition-free state colleges outnumber Republicans who oppose them.Student debt is a millstone around America's neck, producing distortions that beggar the imagination, from debt exiles who can't come back to the USA to a mundane form of "reverse affirmative action" that gives the wealthy preferential access to education and opportunity.Some self-described progressives within the Democratic party (including would-be 2020 presidential nominee Pete Buttigieg) have campaigned against universal access to education and debt-forgiveness, arguing that the benefit should be means-tested to exclude the wealthy lest education become "irrationally cheap"; JW Mason's rebuttal: "Suppose users of Central Park are higher-income on average; is progressive policy then to fence it off and charge admission?" (in other words, if public goods disproportionately benefit the affluent, we can either strive to make them more inclusive or to recoup the cost of providing them, but not both). Read the rest

The Rebels sure got their asses kicked on Hoth. Can you do better? Give it a try with the LEGO Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Echo Base Defense kit.Luckily Luke gets out of the bacta-tank just in time. Now it is your turn to defend the base with useless canon and watch as your mini-fig compatriots are overrun by the glorious attack forces of the Empire, or just play as the guys on the side of Order.This 504 piece kit includes a Probe Droid mini-fig.LEGO Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Action Battle Echo Base Defense via Amazon Read the rest

Putting Android on things has become the new putting Linux on things.XDA Developers:The Nintendo Switch was never meant to run Android. It’s a portable game console with a 6.2-inch 720p display powered by the Tegra X1 chipset (which is also found in the NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV), 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and a 4,310 mAh battery. It runs games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Mario Kart 8: Deluxe. Those specifications make for a pretty beefy handheld games console, but imagine an Android tablet with those specifications? That’s effectively what we’ve got here thanks to ByLaws and fellow developers, and while it’s certainly not perfect yet, it’s already pretty powerful.One of the most appealing aspects of the Switch is the fact that it is a hybrid console. When you put it in the Switch dock and detach the controllers on the sides, it becomes a full-fledged console with 1080p output via HDMI and higher CPU and GPU clock rates. When you’re done, just re-attach the controllers, take the Switch out of the dock, and use it wherever. A similar idea was employed by the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet, an Android gaming tablet that could output to a TV at up to 8K resolution. Android on the Switch works in the same way as it once did on the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet. Dock your Switch and it will output the display via HDMI, where you can continue to use it as normal on a bigger screen. Read the rest

Writing in the New York Times, author John Irving describes the impulses that led him to write his novel "The Cider House Rules" in the early 1980s, a decade after Roe vs Wade; Irving reflects on the incredible cruelty inflicted upon children (a cruelty that only mounts) with the enthusiastic support of anti-abortion crusaders, and how impossible this is to reconcile with their purported concern for fetuses.Understanding this contradiction is actually pretty easy, when you hear how anti-abortion crusaders talk about women, muttering vengeful condemnations: the point of opposing abortion is to punish women, not rescue children.The Republican view of abortion is actually pretty easy to summarize. It's that personhood:1. Begins at conception;2. Ends at birth;3. Can be renewed by forming an LLC in Delaware or Nevada.The “pro-life” term was adopted by anti-abortion crusaders after the Roe v. Wade decision. The anti-abortion cause didn’t promote itself as “pro-life” until the more punitive-sounding “anti-abortion” label failed. In 1976, with the passing of the Hyde Amendment, prohibiting the use of federal funds for most abortions, opposition to abortion gained support among Republicans. The Christian right was on the rise; their socially conservative policies are inseparable from today’s Republican Party. In 1980, aided by the Baptist minister Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, the pro-life zealots took control of the Republican Party’s platform committee. Four anti-abortion presidents followed — Ronald Reagan, George H. W. and George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Isn’t it as clear now as it was in the Reagan years? Read the rest

Writing in Wired, Zeynep Tufekci (previously) discusses how the internet has become a "low-trust society," where fake reviews, fraud, conspiracies and disinformation campaigns have burdened us all with the need to investigate every claim and doubt every promise, at enormous costs to time and opportunity.Low-trust societies aren't fun places to live. As Tufekci writes, "You expect to be cheated, often without recourse. You expect things not to be what they seem and for promises to be broken, and you don’t expect a reasonable and transparent process for recourse. It’s harder for markets to function and economies to develop in low-trust societies. It’s harder to find or extend credit, and it’s risky to pay in advance."I think Tufekci is right here, and moreover, I think that the low-trust society of the internet is a reflection of a reduction in the amount of trust in our society at large. On the one hand, you have decades of treating poor people as presumptive criminals, now codified in a set of automated systems that produce a "digital poorhouse," that punishes truthfulness and requires everyone in the system to lie to fit the algorithm's expectations. On the other hand, you have the stacking of regulatory position with henhouse foxes, business leaders who are drafted in to regulate their former colleagues (something that Trump accelerated, but which reflects a bipartisan consensus). Meanwhile, inequality creates rampant corruption and even when the rich and powerful are caught red-handed, they walk away without any consequences. Read the rest

Boris Johnson -- a racist, sexist, homophobic lying buffoon who has been repeatedly caught out using lies to sway public opinion -- is now, incredibly, tipped to become the leader of the Conservative Party and thus the Prime Minister of the UK (this is because outgoing PM Theresa May totally bungled Brexit, and the UK's form of parliamentary democracy lets the ruling party fill the PM's seat with a vote of party members, and the British Tories have become the swivel-eyed racist loony party, and Boris is the perfect nominee for King of the Racist Swivel-Eyed Loons).One legacy of Theresa May's incompetence is the slender Conservative majority in Parliament, which only exists thanks to a tie-up with the authoritarian religious fanatics of the DUP, who had to be bought off with a one billion pound state giveaway. The situation is so fragile that a defection from even a few Conservative MPs could bring down the government with a no-confidence vote that could result in another general election being called -- with a strong possibility that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party will form the next government.Enter the Conservative Party itself, whose membership and Parliamentary caucus are both deeply divided between run-of-the-mill bigots, oligarchs, bootlickers, virulent racists, temporarily embarrassed millionaires, colonialism larpers, misogynists, dominionists, islamophobes, homophobes, posh boys, and garden variety Little Englanders. With just a tiny bit of dissent -- three MPs -- the party could pull off that no-confidence vote, which Labour has promised to call the day after the election. Read the rest

As you may have noticed, a number of bird species have proven capable of mimicking snippets of sound they overhear, be it a melody, the wail of an ambulance or a dirty phrase taught to them by some drunk fella at a party. But here's the thing: most mammals suck at it. Not so seals. They're able to reproduce the sounds they hear, even if they're outside of their regular vocal range. In this video, these seals, who were schooled by scientists from the University of St. Andrews, are captured barking out the Star Wars theme song and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It's adorable! It's also a part of some pretty important research that could eventually lead to a greater under standing of speech disorders in humans. This sort of stuff's beyond me, but Gizmodo's George Dvorsky does a damn fine job of breaking down why the work has the potential to be so important.From Gizmodo:“First, knowing how seals use sounds is important to assess how they are affected by noise created by human activities such as shipping or marine construction,” he explained. “This, in turn, will help us to manage wild populations more carefully. Second, studying how vocal learning works in seals and how it might be naturally impaired in some individuals can help to understand vocal development and its limitations in other mammalian learners that use similar structures, such as humans.”It's a lengthy story, but it's fascinating stuff--if you've got a few minutes to kill, taking a read of it is definitely worth your time. Read the rest

The fourth incarnation of the wonderful Raspberry Pi is upon us. A faster quard-core CPU, up to 4GB of RAM, gigabit ethernet and dual HDMI outputs are the upgrades; there's USB-C too, but just for power. The CPU boost is a big deal, say early users, but dual-4k displays and 4x the RAM bring it squarely into the realm of everyday desktop computing. Still $35; the 4GB model is $55. Seriously look at this. True Gigabit Ethernet speed on Raspberry Pi 4.Raspberry Pi 3B: 94MB/sRaspberry Pi 3B+: 285MB/sRaspberry Pi 4B: 930MB/s pic.twitter.com/WWWIFcDpoV— Ben Nuttall (@ben_nuttall) June 24, 2019Raspberry Pi 4 is here! A tiny, dual-display desktop computer, with three RAM variants to choose from, and all the hackability you know and love. On sale now from the familiar price of $35: https://t.co/d9iwVidexm #RaspberryPi4 pic.twitter.com/4fll4gx1Ax— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) June 24, 2019Raspberry Pi 4 is here! Set mine up and here it is, streaming iPlayer pic.twitter.com/FXm4yOFVSF— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) June 24, 2019 Read the rest

Looking for a new tablet? If you haven't upgraded in a while, it might be time to check out the latest iPad Pro for two very good reasons. First, the 2018 model is a real workhorse. The 12X Bionic chip processor means it can handle any task you set out for it, and still have plenty of speed left over for gaming or streaming video (which both look great on the liquid retina display). Not to mention great new features like Face ID and a magnetic Apple Pencil mount which also charges up that peripheral.The second reason? If you're feeling lucky, you could get one for free.Sign up below and you'll be eligible for a free iPad Pro, plus an Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard. That's everything you need to make this versatile piece of hardware your new workstation.No need to wait for your lucky number to come up, though. As new iPads hit the market, there are tons of refurbished models popping up. Here are a few of the greatest hits we found from Apple's tablet line, all priced to move:iPadThere's nothing like the classics. The flagship tablet in Apple's fleet is still the perfect size for a range of uses, including gaming and live chat. Even the older 2012 models pack plenty of storage for photos and video, and the iPad 5's screen was a definite step up that showed off the possibilities of its 8MP iSight camera.Apple iPad 5 9.7" 32GB WiFi Space Gray (Certified Refurbished)Apple iPad 3 9.7" 64GB WiFi Black (Refurbished)iPad MiniWhen the Mini was released in 2012, it was seen as the perfect traveling companion. Read the rest

In the vein of Biggie the Tank Engine, but significantly worse. Read the rest

One minute you're rowing, the next you stop and a humpback whale is breaching right in front of you! That's what happened off the coast of Rio de Janeiro last week. Anyone speak Portuguese? I think I heard a "Ai meu Deus!" (Oh my God!) which sounds about right.(Geekologie) Read the rest

On the whole, technology has been good to me. In the mid-1990s, I was able to connect with a music magazine in Ireland--my first paying writing gig--via Hotmail. Over two decades later, I'm still writing for them. in 2009, Twitter connected me with folks who became good friends, online and face-to-face. Through them, I was able to shift out of a career that was slowly killing me with stress to begin a decade-long stretch of freelancing. Working remotely during that time, I found that I had a lust for travel, and as a consequence of one of my adventures, met my wife. Recently, I was able to land a full-time gig, still remotely, mind you, that has provided me with a steady income and a fabulous group of co-workers I'm happy to see on Slack every day. That said, I'm also sure that a lot of the tech in my life is making me miserable. Facebook is hot garbage, that tracks my movements across the Internet without permission. Twitter is full of thieves waiting to steal your joy and fill your days with dread. Instagram, owned by Facebook, often leaves me feeling expectant and desirous of accolades for my photos from people I've never met. Of late, outside of my work life, I've been taking strides to limit my interactions with tech and social media. I've donated all of the hardware I don't use on a routine basis to local charities, stepped back from owning multiple computers to just one and perhaps, best of all, have started relying on Flickr as a way to share what's going on in my life with the people I care about. Read the rest

The wonderful comedienne, Tig Notaro, doesn't watch a lot of TV or films and doesn't really keep up with popular culture. As a result, she doesn't recognize celebrities. She's turned this liability(?) into a fun show, called Under A Rock with Tig Notaro. Well-known celebs come on and she (aided by her announcer, Amazon's Alexa) questions them in an attempt to guess who they are and what they are famous for. I've gotten a big kick out of the first three episodes. Read the rest

The Trump #taxscam was supposed to create jobs by handing $1 trillion in cuts to multinational corporations and one percenters, who, we were promised, would put that money into R&D, business development, and other job-creating initiatives.Instead, more than $800b of the windfall went to stock-buybacks, in which companies literally devour themselves to enrich their major shareholders. Texas Instruments is a great case-study of how the #taxscam works: after the bill passed, TI's effective tax-rate fell from 39% to 17%, and the company celebrated by doubling its budget for buybacks, spending $5.1 billion on its own shares (more than any other Texas company). It added $51 million to its R&D budget, a budget that clocks in at one third the size of the buyback budget. Though Texas Instruments has enough cash to squander billions on buybacks, it is still pleading poverty with local governments, demanding (and receiving) hundreds of millions in subsidies from local governments in exchange for deigning to manufacture its products there.Many experts doubted that corporate tax cuts would result in big increases in R&D and capital expenses. That’s because many companies were already cash-rich. And with low interest rates, they could access cheap debt if they believed an investment was justified, said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.“What have we truly seen from the tax cuts? A lot of stock buybacks,” Rosenthal said. “The market is acting efficiently and rationally by taking these surplus profits and sending them to shareholders. It’s a demonstration that companies didn’t really have much use for the money.”There are costs from cutting the corporate tax rate so sharply. Read the rest

Volume One of Man-Eaters, Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk's scathing, hilarious, brilliant comic about girls who turn into man-eating werepanthers when they get their periods, is the best comic I read in 2019, and Volume Two, just published by Image comics, continues the brilliance with a set of design-fiction-y fake ads and other collateral that straddle the line between a serious piece of science fictional world-building and Switfian satire.as with Volume One, much of Volume Two is taken up with "collateral" -- ads, games, school reports, Youtube comments -- from the imagined world of Man-Eaters; some early reviews complain that these don't "advance the plot" and that's true as far as it goes (very little happens with the main characters in the tale), but as with the best science fiction, one of the main characters here is the premise, not the people invented to illuminate the premise, and all this "ancillary" material goes a long way to fleshing out that premise.This material is the kind of thing you might find in an immersive theater piece -- a Punchdrunk show, say, or Meowolf, or a particularly good escape room, or the best Disney Imagineering productions like The Adventurer's Club or Galaxy's Edge -- material that allows you to imagine yourself in the story, as opposed to tracking the trials and tribulations of the characters.As such, it is superb, and it gives me hope for a very long run with this story, because jokey thought-experiments will only take you so far, while fully fleshing out things that start as gags often surfaces a serious substrate for playing out real, human stories (Pratchett's Discworld is Exhibit A here). Read the rest

I was already a Terry Pratchett fan and a Neil Gaiman fan in 1990, when their comedic novel Good Omens showed up in the bookstore I worked at, and I dibsed it, took it home over the weekend, read it in huge gulps, and wrote an enthusiastic review on a 3x5 card that I tacked to the bookshelf next to it on the new release rack at the front of the store; I hand-sold hundreds of copies, and have read it dozens of times since.It's really a perfect gem of a novel, combining so much of what makes each of those authors so great: Gaiman's ability of tap into the deep roots of myth and to spin the most wonderful of phrases; Pratchett's incredible heart that can turn sweetness up to 11 without introducing so much as a drop of sentimentality, his Douglas Adams-style gift for surprise jokes that are so well-turned that they elicit surprised barks of laughter when they occur.I've been very excited and optimistic about the Amazon Prime adaptation of the novel; I knew Gaiman had put everything into it, and had taken instruction from Pratchett prior to his death, and the stupendous and creative marketing that Amazon has thrown at the project (a five-storey escape room in Soho; flocks of chattering Satanic nuns in the streets of Austin for SXSW) made it clear that they were giving the project the kind of gold-plated attention it deserved.But it still took me a couple weeks to get around to watching it -- video time is really scarce in my schedule, and I'm perennially guilty over the years-long backlog of books on my TBR shelf that I'm hoping to review and/or blurb -- but I managed to remedy that yesterday, watching all six hours of the program (though I could only get through about half of it on the big screen in my living room: Amazon's DRM blocks Google's Chromecast for Android, and Chrome for Ubuntu -- the only GNU/Linux browser that talks to a Chromecast -- crashed repeatedly while trying to play it back, leaving me watching on my phone). Read the rest

You want wireless earbuds to make an impact on your mood and workout, not the environment. If that's the case, we've got a new contender for AirPod market share: Brio Phantom X7 True Wireless Earbuds.The features on these tiny, comfortable buds are impressive even without the environmental angle. Their Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity is good up to 20 feet, supported by neodymium drivers for a crisp sound at all levels. The battery life is especially impressive: You'll get up to 8 hours on a single charge, and the charging case boosts that listening time up to 100 hours if you carry it along. Did we mention that it's a wireless charger? And that you can charge external devices with it through an additional USB-C port?All that, and its waterproof case is made from 100% recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic, one of the most sustainable modern manufacturing methods out there.Pick up your Brio Phantom X7 True Wireless Earbuds + Charging Case for $74.99, a full 60% off the MSRP. Read the rest

In the New York Times, Kenneth Chang reports that NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars has detected high amounts of methane, a gas that is commonly a signature of life. From the NYT:“Given this surprising result, we’ve reorganized the weekend to run a follow-up experiment,” Ashwin R. Vasavada, the project scientist for the mission, wrote to the science team in an email that was obtained by The Times.The mission’s controllers on Earth sent new instructions to the rover on Friday to follow up on the readings, bumping previously planned science work. The results of these observations are expected back on the ground on Monday...On Earth, microbes known as methanogens thrive in places lacking oxygen, such as rocks deep underground and the digestive tracts of animals, and they release methane as a waste product. However, geothermal reactions devoid of biology can also generate methane."NASA Rover on Mars Detects Puff of Gas That Hints at Possibility of Life" (NYT) Read the rest

Last night, I went to see Public Domain: The Musical at the Actor's Company Theater in West Hollywood. I had no idea what to expect, but I was prepared for the worst (I've been to shows at fringe festivals where I would have walked out in the first five minutes, except I was the only person in the audience), and I was totally wrong. I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard.The premise of the show -- which runs a tight 30 minutes -- is that a pair of casting agents (played by a couple of puppets) are holding auditions for the next character from the public domain to turn into a giant animation star, in the mold of Mu-Lan, Snow White, Frozen, Cinderella, Pinnocchio, etc etc etc. Five hopefuls present themselves (starting with Rosie the Riverter) and perform musical numbers making the case for them to be the next big star.The songs are brilliantly funny, and the running gags build and build to a climax that literally had me howling with laughter -- along with my wife (who hates musicals) and my 11-year-old daughter (who started out the night furious that she wasn't going to be left at home to make Tiktok videos and was skeptical of the whole enterprise). It was the talk of the evening.We parked about 6 minutes away, behind the legendary Pink's hot dog stand, so we could walk back and try it something else for the first time (pretty good hot dogs) and then we tried Milk Bar's astoundingly good cereal milk soft-serve ice-cream. Read the rest

Oregon's legislature is about to vote on a piece of climate change cap-and-trade legislation that the Democratic majority are likely to win, so to avoid the vote, 12 Oregon state senators have gone into hiding, thus depriving the senate of the necessary quorum.Under state law, the governor -- also a Democrat -- is entitled to dispatch state troopers to drag lawmakers back to Salem for a vote, and to levy fines on lawmakers who don't show up for work. Governor Kate Brown has fined the absent senators $500 each and asked the troopers to locate and return them.Meanwhile, the AWOL Republicans are widely believed to be hiding out of state -- the Oregon state cops are coordinating with neighboring states' law enforcement to locate them -- and Republican State Senator Brian Boquist issued this communique from his undisclosed bunker: "Send bachelors and come heavily armed. I’m not going to be a political prisoner."The situation has attracted the attention of armed white nationalist paramilitary groups like the 3%ers and Oath Keepers; Paul Luhrs of the 3%ers announced that the group's leadership had voted to support the Republican Senators (Luhrs believes that they are in Idaho) and has "vowed to provide security, transportation and refuge...doing whatever it takes to keep these Senators safe."Oregon was home to a protracted armed standoff involving a group of white nationalist domestic terrorists who illegally occupied the Malheur wildlife refuge. The terrorists destroyed public lands, pointed guns at cops and threatened to shoot them, and were involved in high-speed chases, and were not convicted because they are white. Read the rest

We don't ask for much out of our charging cables: Juice up our phone, do it fast and don't break. It's supposed to be simple, but keeping your phone plugged in for the night - as most of us do - can actually degrade the life of your battery by overheating it.That's why one of the best investments you can make for your phone is a smart cable like those being put out by Charby Sense.Not only are these things durable, but they pack a lot of innovations that will save you money in the long run. The short term bells and whistles include a double-speed booster you can use when your phone is plugged into a laptop, plus a handy LED that displays the relative charging speed for whatever power source you're using. The high-speed copper wires are laced with Kevlar fiber too, ensuring the cables won't easily fray or break.But best of all is the auto shutoff feature that detects when your battery is at capacity and cuts power accordingly. It'll save you a little on energy, and a lot of new batteries or devices down the road.Take your pick of Charby Sense cables in a variety of inputs, all sale priced at $28 - a full 28% off. You can pick it up in either lightning, micro-USB, or USB-C. Read the rest

The Raspberry Pi Zero W is an itty-bitty wireless Linux computer. This kit ( on Amazon) contains almost everything you need to run it, including a case, power supply, and adapter cables. You need to supply your own microSD card, HDMI monitor, keyboard and mouse. I'm working on a project that uses a Pi Zero, which I hope to share with you soon. Read the rest

“I spent the last few months completely renovating and overhauling a 1971 #boler,” says IMGURian bteliot. This is an amazing image thread that breaks it all down, and really makes me want to fix up one of these babies and get on the road myself.Here's the 'Before.'Renovating a 1971 Boler. Read the rest

Here are the 10 U.S. cities where ICE, CBP, DHS, and other agencies plan to execute mass raids.Immigration agents will target Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, and San Francisco this weekend, congressional and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sources have told the Miami Herald.Earlier this week, a Trump administration official confirmed that ICE will specifically target for deportation as many as 1 million people “who have been issued final deportation orders by federal judges yet remain at large in the country.”Among those to be targeted first, sources said: minors who came into the U.S. without their parents and have since turned 18; people who were ordered removed in absentia; and people who missed a court hearing and did not respond to letters mailed to their homes by the Department of Justice.Also targeted: families on the so-called rocket docket, a slate of cases fast-tracked for deportation by the Justice Department.Two ICE enforcement briefings were held this week, one on Wednesday, led by ICE Deputy Director Matthew T. Albence, the other on Thursday by Henry Lucero, field office director for the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Phoenix.On the call led by Albence, the target cities were mentioned, although the timing was not shared.The plan might also focus on a very targeted population: recent arrivals from the border with a final order of removal. In certain communities, including South Florida, these families have received “case management” services from an ICE contractor, or might still be in detention. Read the rest

'He lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips.' Then it gets worse.

Holy chemtrails! Monsignor Rubén Darío Jaramillo Montoya, Catholic bishop of Buenaventura, Colombia, plans to drop holy water across the city to exorcise its demons. Apparently there have been 51 murders in just five months and the bishop wants to help the best way he knows how. From a Google-translated RCN Radio article:"It will be a great public demonstration of the entire community, where we will pour holy water to see if so many bad things end and the devil comes out of here," the priest said...For the moment, Bishop Jaramillo is coordinating the work with the National Navy and the mayor in order to have an aircraft for July 13 or 14 , when the Fiesta de San Buenaventura, the city's patron saint, is celebrated. More at Mysterious Universe.image: Contrails (NOAA) Read the rest

In London, police were called to the home of Boris Johnson and partner Carrie Symonds in the early Friday morning hours.Neighbors reported “a loud altercation involving screaming, shouting and banging,” reports the Guardian.“Police attended and spoke to all occupants of the address, who were all safe and well,” reported the London police. “There were no offences or concerns apparent to the officers and there was no cause for police action.”On an audio recording obtained by the Guardian, Johnson “can be heard refusing to leave the flat and telling Symonds to 'get off my fucking laptop' before a loud crashing noise.”Symonds is reportedly heard saying: “You just don’t care for anything because you’re spoilt."From the Guardian:The argument could be heard outside the property where the potential future prime minister is living with Symonds, a former Conservative party head of press.A neighbour told the Guardian they heard a woman screaming followed by “slamming and banging”. At one point Symonds could be heard telling Johnson to “get off me” and “get out of my flat”.The neighbour said that after becoming concerned they knocked on the door but received no response. “I [was] hoping that someone would answer the door and say ‘We’re okay’. I knocked three times and no one came to the door.”The neighbour decided to call 999. Two police cars and a van arrived within minutes, shortly after midnight, but left after receiving reassurances from both the individuals in the flat that they were safe. Read the rest

“When the hardliners win, as they appear to have in the US, conditions tend to worsen significantly.”

Kathy Kleiman, founder of the ENIAC Programmers Project, writes about the buried history of the pivotal role played by women in the creation of modern computing, a history that is generally recounted as consisting of men making heroic technical and intellectual leaps while women did some mostly simple, mechanical work around the periphery.Kleiman summarizes her twenty years of research into the programmers of the ENIAC -- the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, the first modern computer -- whose first programmers were six women: Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Betty Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Frances Bilas Spence. The ENIAC programmers had to invent programming as we know it, working without programming codes (these were invented a few years later for UNIVAC by Betty Holberton): they "broke down the differential calculus ballistics trajectory program" into small steps the computer could handle, then literally wired together the program by affixing cables and flicking the machine's 3,000 switches in the correct sequences. To capture it all, they created meticulous flowcharts that described the program's workings.The women stayed on the ENIAC project after the war because "no solider returning home from the battlefield could program ENIAC," and went on to train the next generation of ENIAC programmers, also creating modern computer science education; they also went on to create the first computer instruction codes. Kleiman's scholarship is an important rebuttal to the sexist, revisionist history of early computer science, like Nathan Ensmenger's odious 2010 book "The Computer Boys Take Over," which characterized the ENIAC women as "glorified clerical workers" and insisted that the women were only given the job because it was perceived as "low priority" (in reality, the women were the cream of the US Army's Ballistics Research Labs, recruited from math programs at top universities). Read the rest

A federal judge has ruled that alleged misclassification of drivers as independent contractors by the ride-hailing service app Uber could harm competition and violate the spirit of America's antitrust laws.• Lawsuit says misclassifying workers creates competitive harm• 30 days to amend complaint with new informationThe ruling by Judge Edward Chen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is not a final decision in the case, but is a “significant warning to ride-hailing companies,” Bloomberg News reports. “It signals how a 2018 California Supreme Court case and future worker classification laws could open the floodgates to worker misclassification and antitrust claims.”More here. Read the rest

I've lived long enough in America to know that...A) "Shelter in place" means "you'll probably be OK", and that...B) There is no footage so awesome it can't be ruined by graphics, chyrons and the inane narration of news presenters. Read the rest

Add another prominent lawmaker to the list of names calling for the start of impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump: House Chairman of Armed Services Adam Smith, a Democrat from the state of Washington.House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith, talking to us about Trump's tweets this morning, told us it shows "a level of indecision that I don't think is helpful to us." He added: "That's not the kind of thing that I think the president should say publicly." pic.twitter.com/G5mTj45cay— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 21, 201972 US House Representatives now support an impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. Rep. Adam Smith is the 71st Democrat to support an impeachment inquiry.He is the second impeachment backer in the House from Washington state.From armedservices.house.gov:Now in his 12th term, Smith serves as the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, where he is a strong advocate for our military personnel and their families. Smith is also committed to providing our military personnel with the best equipment available to carry out their current and future missions while ensuring that the Pentagon spends taxpayer dollars in the most efficient and effective manner. This includes carefully examining our current policies and working to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse.Above: Here's the latest 'Impeachment Tracker' chart from NPR.From NPR:This week, both California Democratic Rep. Katie Porter and Illinois Democratic Rep. Sean Casten publicly backed an impeachment investigation. Porter and Casten are two of just three House Democrats who represent competitive districts and are publicly backing impeachment of President Trump. Read the rest

A man with a selfie-stick recorded a video of himself and his wife as they strolled through a park in Mallorca, Spain. He also inadvertently recorded another man and a woman (dressed in white) attempting to pick their bags and pockets. At the end of the video, undercover cops arrest the pickpockets. Side note: I think the video recording software digitally erases the selfie stick. You can see the shadow of the stick but not the stick itself.[via Reddit] Read the rest

The city council of Riviera Beach, Florida has voted unanimously to pay $600,000 to criminals who seized control of the city's computers through a ransomware attack, after three weeks of being locked out of the city systems (the city has also voted to spend $1m replacing its computers).Despite the fact that paying the ransom will enrich gangsters at public expense, the city is arguably getting a bargain. On May 8, the city of Baltimore was taken hostage by ransomware, and the city opted not to pay the ransom. City services have been paralyzed ever since, and they remain down, more than a month later, with millions in losses to the city.Though ransomware has been around for years, it gained a new lease on life when an NSA superweapon leaked online. The NSA stockpiles vulnerabilites in widely used system as a means of attacking its adversaries, and subscribes to an official doctrine called NOBUS ("No One But Us") whose premise is that no one in the world is smart enough to rediscover these defects or steal them from the NSA. The NSA is obviously very wrong about this.I mean, obviously.In the meantime, the NSA's recklessness has put us all to risk. If your data is locked up and you don't have a backup, your only option is probably to pay the ransom (you most certainly should not hire a "consultant" to recover your data or negotiate on your behalf, as these businesses are nearly as crooked as the ransomware criminals themselves). Read the rest

Josh Ellingson, an artist from San Francisco, connected a Roku to his old black-and-white TV and enjoyed The Twilight Zone as it should be watched. Here are some other fun things he did with the setup.[via digg] Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren has added another plank to her prodigious and admirable campaign platform of well-thought-through, progressive, sensible, popular proposals for a Warren administration: banning federal agencies (including ICE and the Department of Corrections) from contracting with private prisons. Warren also wants to stop contractors from charging inmates fees for essential services (including price-gouging on phone-calls, videoconferncing, mail, and email), and forcing contractors to comply with FOIA requests for information on their activities on behalf of government agencies. However bad you imagine private prisons are, you're probably underestimating their awfulness. It's not just the slave labor, it's also the torture, the inhumane medical situation, the incredible violence, and worse. Private prisons are incredibly profitable, and some of those profits are used to draft laws that send more people to (private) prisons; the industry also pays out massive sums (we see you, Chuck Schumer) and their lobbyists are everywhere (looking at you, Beto O'Rourke); when all else fails, they're not above bribing judges to fill their cells with young, brown bodies.When Obama tried to sunset federal reliance on private prisons, the industry responded by diversifying into immigration detention, halfway houses, and mental health and even though Trump reverse the Obama policy, immigration detention has ushered in a golden age of grifting for the industry, and the GOP #taxscam was especially kind to firms who earn their profits by imprisoning people.The massive profits from private prisons have also been used to fund legislative initiatives to expand the industry at the state level, rather than improving the conditions in inhumane immigration detention centers, where things have been deteriorating for years. Read the rest

The industrial design website, Core77, has recently introduced a sarcastic column about poorly-thought-out products called The Weekly Design Roast. Here are the links to the ones published so far: 1, 2, 3, 4."A conventional bookmark, which is just a slip of stiff paper, is too easy to ship and recycle; they also don't use up enough materials or take up any additional desk space. To solve this, I designed mine out of lacquered ash." [True story: This "bookmark" is "ideal for…books under 9 inches in height." For differently-sized books, you can order their larger version in STEEL.]"Only thing I don't like is, since we have this against a wall, my wife has to climb through my blue water to get into her pink water. But other than that I am satisfied with my purchase." Read the rest

Joseph Meili, a Missouri man who admitted sexually molesting an 11 year old girl, received five years' probation and has a shot at getting the charge expunged. KFOR reports that his semen was found in the girl's underwear, she tested positive for chlamydia after their encounter, and that he claims she "catfished" him. Prosecutors recommended Meili serve 120 days in a sex offender treatment program and up to seven years in prison. But Judge Calvin R. Holden sentenced him to just five years of supervised probationHis attorney, Scott Pierson, not only blames the child but suggests Meili himself is a victim of injustice.Pierson told HuffPost that the girl had reached out to his client online and “catfished” him by claiming to be older than she was. “He felt horrible about the entire incident,” Pierson said. “He’s going to be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life ... It’s a tough case. Neither side is really going to get justice here.”There's evidently a problem with the judge, Calvin R. Holden, who has a longstanding reputation for letting men convicted of violent sex crimes walk free. Read the rest

This (real) video from GE on how to reset their "C" light bulbs is the most incredible how-to video you'll ever see.They want to see how far they can push their customers before they snap. https://t.co/gbXOc543fy— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) June 20, 2019 Holy cow! This How-To video sounds like a parody but is just GE being GE, I guess.Who the fuck needs to reset a lightbulb?How many GE engineers does it take to reset a lightbulb?Reset a lightbulb.(Thank you, BCC) Read the rest

Which boss level do you have to clear to get this kind of dropped gear? via Gfycat Read the rest

We bought a house in 2018 and have been renovating it pretty much constantly ever since: I've had to call out movers, emergency plumbers and electricians, find HVAC repairpeople, hire locksmiths, contract with a roofer, etc etc. Despite the longstanding and serious problems with fraud on Google Maps, I often start my search there, because I am an idiot, because 100% of the time, Google Maps sends me to a scammer. One hundred percent.Sometimes, the scam is petty, where a company that claims to be a local business but is actually a referral service that sends out a contractor, often someone who has to come a long way, which is no fun when you're talking about waiting for a locksmith (thankfully, I live near a master lockpicker -- which is fantastic (thanks, John!) but doesn't exactly scale). Sometimes, it's just a scam. The number of people who've offered to move my house or fix my roof who were obviously con artists is astounding. We're talking naked advance-fee frauds and other dopey, corny cons here.The Wall Street Journal goes deep on something that many of us had long suspected: not only is Google incapable of removing scams from Gmaps, it also profits handsomely from these scammers, who pay big to crowd out the real businesses (cons don't have the same overheads that actual businesses do, so they have more surplus capital to bring to the project of dominating Gmaps).Thankfully, our renos are nearly at an end (a little landscaping and the solar on the roof and then we're all set!), but I'm still at a loss for the next time I need to hire a skilled tradesperson. Read the rest

You might think that when someone finds a wallet on the street, they're less likely to return it if there's cash inside. But you'd be wrong. According to a new three-year study across multiple countries, people are more inclined to return wallets stuffed with money. The more cash, the more likely they'll turn it over to the rightful owner. From the New York Times:“The evidence suggests that people tend to care about the welfare of others and they have an aversion to seeing themselves as a thief,” said Alain Cohn, a study author and assistant professor of information at the University of Michigan. People given wallets with more money have more to gain from dishonesty, but that also increases “the psychological cost of the dishonest act...."Christian Zünd, a doctoral student and co-author, said a survey they conducted found that “without money, not reporting a wallet doesn’t feel like stealing. With money, however, it suddenly feels like stealing and it feels even more like stealing when the money in the wallet increases...."The researchers surveyed people to see if they expected bigger rewards for returning more money; they didn’t. Read the rest

There is a pretty good deal running on my favorite gaming controller.I use this with my Xbox, Nintendo Switch and MacBook Pro. It is more durable than the more expensive 'pro controllers' and works just as well.If you've been waiting for a replacement this is a pretty good price.Microsoft 4N6-00001 Xbox Controller + Cable for Windows via AmazonPreviously:The best controller for a Nintendo Switch is the latest model Xbox controller Read the rest

In this episode of computerphile, Dr. Isaac Triguero, a lecturer in data science at the University of Nottingham, gives a high-level overview of the kind of fingerprint feature-matching algorithm used in mobile phones. Image: YouTube Read the rest

Gil Barndollar -- a Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, the Republic of Georgia, Guantanamo Bay and Bahrain, who also holds a PhD in History from Cambridge -- writes in USA Today about what a US regime change effort in Iran would mean, logistically speaking.Barndollar observes that in "Hitler’s Germany, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam or Saddam’s Iraq," US air power was not sufficient to "topple a government," and also that America's regional Sunni allies, having "stalemated in Yemen" would not rush to serve as boots on the ground for an invasion and occupation of Iran, which will require enormous numbers of occupiers because "even if the Islamic Republic were to somehow collapse on its own, concerns about radiological material, the security of the Strait of Hormuz or another massive wave of refugees" would demand that the vacuum be filled.America boasts of its "all volunteer" military (conveniently ignoring how much of that "all-volunteer" force is composed of people who face economic privation, or who hope for an increasingly unlikely path to citizenship through military service), but the volunteer force is dwindling: just getting the bodies to send to Iraq and Afghanistan required that the forces double their felony waivers for new recruits from 2003-2006.The reality is that the "all volunteer" US forces are entirely dependent on mercenaries to get the job done (the ratio of soldiers to "military contractors" in Iraq was 50 times the ratio from the Vietnam War); and "getting the job done" is a charitable description: "The All-Volunteer Force was barely able to sustain two large, but low-casualty, campaigns [in Iraq and Afghanistan] — neither of which has resulted in anything resembling a U.S. Read the rest