Back in 2017, a law student named Lena Khan made waves in policy circles with the publication of her massive, brilliant, game-changing 24,000-word article in the Yale Law Journal, Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, which revisited the entirety of post-Ronald-Reagan antitrust orthodoxy to show how it had allowed Amazon to become a brutal, harmful monopoly without any consequences from the regulators charged with ensuring competition in our markets.Now, Khan (who is now a Columbia Law fellow) is back with The Separation of Platforms and Commerce -- clocking in at 61,000 words with footnotes! -- that describes the one-two punch of contemporary monopolism, in which Reagan-era deregulation enthusiasts took the brakes off of corporate conduct but said it would be OK because antitrust law would keep things from getting out of control, while Reagan-era antitrust "reformers" (led by Robert Bork and the Chicago School) dismantled antitrust).As Khan points out, it's hard to find a theory of antitrust that monopolist-friendly courts and theoreticians will accept. Bork and his pals said that the only time that antitrust should kick in was when there was "consumer harm" in the form of higher prices in the short term (which effectively makes it impossible to enforce antitrust against free-to-use internet services, where there are no prices); but in last year's Ohio v. American Express Co, the Supremes ruled that in "two-sided markets" (like a credit card company, but also like, say, Ebay, Itunes, Amazon, etc), you had to show harm to both the buyers and the sellers, "effectively creating an insurmountable hurdle." And despite innovation's centrality to "dynamic efficiency and long-term welfare," "innovation harms seem to go unaddressed under the consumer welfare framework."In the meantime, regulators have continued to allow megamergers between giant, market-dominating companies (NBC-Universal, Ticketmaster-Live Nation) on the condition that the new conglomerates accept "conduct remedies" -- rules barring them from doing nasty stuff with their new position, like using Ticketmaster's dominance to get acts to book Live Nation venues, or using Live Nation's dominance to force acts to sell their tickets through Ticketmaster, but the agencies that are supposed to monitor this activity are not structured to do so, and find it nearly impossible to keep up with abuses, or mete out punishments when they do manage to catch an abuse ("a highly enfeebled and impoverished set of tools for confronting dominant intermediaries in network industries"). Read the rest

22-year-old Brian Isaack Clyde reportedly opened fire in Dallas's federal courthouse today and was killed by cops shortly thereafter. From his Facebook feed, a few months ago: a photo of a man posing with a rifle in medieval armor, his anime waifu bodypillow nestled in one arm.An initial search of public records did not uncover a criminal history.Incredible photo by @TomFoxPhoto from DMN of the shooter this morning in downtown Dallas, 22 year-old Brian Isaack ClydeClyde was shot and killed by authorities shortly after this pic was taken pic.twitter.com/20jMuwcVY1— 🆃🆁🅾🆈 🅷🆄🅶🅷🅴🆂 ™️ (@TommySledge) June 17, 2019ACTIVE SHOOTER: A gunman who opened fire outside a courthouse in Dallas did not survive after police officers engaged in a shootout, with video shot from above showing gunshots exchanged before the suspect, 22-year-old Brian Clyde, fled into a parking lot. https://t.co/ezRA2BtTte pic.twitter.com/dzVzLhZu9H— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) June 17, 2019There is nothing in The Onion that will not be made literally true as the dark enlightement encroaches. Read the rest

The easiest way to secure shoddy internet-of-things gadgets like TV sets and cameras? Make it the consumer's problem.Samsung has advised owners of its latest TVs to run regular virus scans. A how-to video on the Samsung Support USA Twitter account demonstrates the more than a dozen remote-control button presses required to access the sub-menu needed to activate the check. It suggested users should carry out the process "every few weeks" to "prevent malicious software attacks".Think it's a ridiculous idea that you should have to run antimalware scans on your television? Want to feel the bottom fall out? Sure you do! Get this: the announcement is a covert advertisement for the custom McAfee bloatware antivirus app installed on the sets.McAfee extended its contract to have McAfee Security for TV technology pre-installed on all Samsung Smart TVs produced in 2019. Along with being the market leader in the Smart TV category worldwide, Samsung is also the first company to pre-install security on these devices, underscoring its commitment to building security in from the start. McAfee Security for TV scans the apps that run on Samsung smart TVs to identify and remove malware. Read the rest

Three herding dogs expertly guide a group of ducks through a hula hoop and a human arch.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Applying a cat filter to a politician is an egregious act. Everyone knows politicians require clown filters.So this happened today when PTI's SM team forgot to turn off the cat filter while live streaming a press conference on Facebook. @SAYousafzaiPTI looks kinda cute pic.twitter.com/IjjJrua7DL— Ahsan Hamid Durrani (@Ahsan_H_Durrani) June 14, 2019 Read the rest

Genius is a lyrics website, and it has long suspected that Google has been copying its song lytic transcriptions. Google has denied the accusation. But in 2016 Genius started using combinations of straight and curly apostrophes in its lyrics in such a way as to spell out "red handed" in Morse code. When Google was caught serving "red handed" lyrics it said it would terminate agreements with the licensing partner suspected of lifting the lyrics from Genius.From The Wall Street Journal:After this article was published online Sunday, Google issued a second statement to say it was investigating the issue raised by Genius and would terminate its agreements with partners who were “not upholding good practices.”In 2016, Google forged a partnership with LyricFind, a Canadian company that secures deals with music publishers allowing companies such as Google to publish lyrics online. LyricFind Chief Executive Darryl Ballantyne said in an email that his company creates lyrics using its own content team. “We do not source lyrics from Genius,” he said.I'll bet LyricFind soon blames a "rogue" employee or contractor for lifting the transcriptions from Genius.Image: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/children-painted-hands-404214976 Read the rest

Casino dealers told Vice what kind of customers they don't like: ones who call them bad names, throw chips and cards at them, watch pornographic videos on their phones while playing at the table, go to the bathroom without washing their hands then handle chips and cards, micromanage them, get french fry grease on the cards, don't shower and smell bad, don't tip (dealers get $5 an hour), tell the dealer they hope they die, stab other players with a fork, sexually harass them.Who would have guessed?Image: YouTube Read the rest

What a fantastic idea, a sinking ship simulator!This seems like an incredible way to get much needed high-stress training before you really need it!Only the Senior Service could have an HMS Excellent that truly, truly lives up to its name. Read the rest

The Action Lab Man starts this video by pinning his hand between a large neodymium magnet and a bunch of 1943 steel pennies. He repeats the demonstration with a Stretch Armstrong toy in place of his hand and sharp screws and hardware in place of the pennies. Spoiler alert: Mr. Armstrong does not survive the ordeal. Read the rest

Yesterday for Father's Day we went to the GameHaus Cafe in Glendale, California. Your town likely has a place like this - you can rent a table and play games from a large library. (GameHaus has about 1,500 games.)Our favorite game of the day was Cryptid. It's a game of "honest misdirection" in which players try to figure out the exact location of a monster on a map. Each player is given a secret clue. A clue might say "The habitat is within three spaces of a green structure," or "The habitat is within two spaces of bear territory," or "The habitat is within one space of swamp." There is only one hexagon on the map that satisfies all the clues. It's a player's job to figure out what the other players' clues are by taking turns and asking them if a hexagon meets the conditions of their secret clue. The first player to correctly identify where the cryptid lives is the winner.The game is different every time you play it, because the map can be put together in many different ways and landmarks can be placed on different hexagons. The game has a link to a website map- and clue-generator that makes it easy to set up the 6 pieces of the map and place structures (standing rocks and abandoned shacks) on specified hexagons. For the three of us, a game took about 30 minutes to play. We played twice and I'm probably going to buy it so we can play at home. Read the rest

Among other wild artworks, Shanell Papp created this incredible crocheted human body titled "Lab (Skeleton)." The piece was displayed on a gurney and the organs can be "dissected." Read the rest

The National Sound Library of Mexico has found an audio recording of what is most likely painter Frida Kahlo reading her essay "Portrait of Diego" in the early 1950s. It was recorded for the pilot episode of radio show El Bachiller. From The Guardian:The episode featured a profile of Kahlo’s artist husband Diego Rivera. In it, she reads from her essay Portrait of Diego, which was taken from the catalogue of a 1949 exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts, celebrating 50 years of Rivera’s work...In the press release, Mexico’s secretary of culture, Alejandra Frausto, said if it is indeed Kahlo’s voice – a claim which authorities continue to investigate – it could be the only audio recording of the artist that exists...“Frida’s voice has always been a great enigma, a never-ending search,” (library national director Pável) Granados told a press conference. “Until now, there had never been a recording of Frida Kahlo.” Read the rest

Someday I will have a VW bug again. I learned a lot of trivia from this video.My first car was a 1970 in faded yellow with the slap-stick transmission and a 1600 engine.Käfer more appropriately translates as "Beetle," but I'll always think of it as "the Bug." Read the rest

Rick Wiles, host of the racist and anti-semitic "Christian" media outlet TruNews, reveals that meatless burgers are “plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy products, is part of a satanic plot to alter human DNA so that people can no longer worship God.” Listen up:When you go to your favorite fast food restaurant, you are going to be eating a fake hamburger. You’re going to go to the grocery store and buy a pound of fake hamburger or a fake steak, and you won’t know that it was grown in some big corporation’s laboratory. This is the nightmare world that they are taking us into. They’re changing God’s creation. Why? Because they want to be God....God is an environmentalist. He takes this very seriously. He created this planet, he created the universe and he’s watching these Luciferians destroy this planet, destroy the animal kingdom, destroy the plant kingdom, change human DNA. Why? They want to change human DNA so that you can’t be born again. That’s where they’re going with this, to change the DNA of humans so it will be impossible for a human to be born again. They want to create a race of soulless creatures on this planet.(Patheos via Daily Grail) Read the rest

In this delightful crowd-pleaser shown at a 1998 Microsoft conference, right around the kickoff of the federal antitrust case against the company, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer take on the characters of Doug and Steve Butabi. Too bad they couldn't get Steve Jobs to play Richard Grieco.(r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

A politician in Pakistan broadcast a press conference last week, complete with furry ears and wet nose. Someone left the cartoon cat face-tracking filter on."Yesterday, while covering a press briefing held by KP's Information Minister Shoukat Yousf Zai, a 'cat filter' was witnessed by the viewers which was removed within a few minutes," the party admitted in a "clarification" issued on Twitter.The statement added that the party's "social media team is deemed to be the pioneers of Social Media in Pakistan. We ... pride ourselves in bringing Pakistani politics to (the) internet." Read the rest

The tree thought to have inspired Theodor Seuss Geisel's 1971 book The Lorax has fallen down. The Monterey Cypress tree stood for 80 to 100 years at Ellen Browning Scripps Park in La Jolla, California, Geisel's home for almost 50 years. From CNN:Tim Graham (of the San Diego Parks and Recreation Department) said there is "no definitive cause on why it fell..."The city plans to salvage the large trunk section in hopes of repurposing it, Graham said.image: Bryan Fernandez/Flickr (CC) Read the rest

From June 9-12, Fox News commissioned pollsters Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company (R) to survey 1,001 representative Americans; the poll concluded that if the election were called today, Sanders would beat Trump by 9 points, 49%-40%, as would Biden; Warren would beat him 43%-41%; Harris would beat him 42%-41%; and Buttigieg would beat him 41%-40% -- Sanders has acknowledged that "polls go up and polls go down." (via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Municipal broadband is pretty much the telco monopolists' worst nightmare: it's a cheaper, faster alternative and it's the only internet service that customers express high levels of satisfaction for, so it's no wonder that telcoms lobbyists have convinced 26 states to ban cities from providing internet access, sometimes literally drafting the legislation and handing it off to lawmakers.The rise and rise of oligarchic big money/big power networks have made life even harder for municipal networks: from the Kochs spending lavishly to prevent cities from putting down fiber for free while they're doing other digging, to massive dark-money expenditures from fake "citizens' groups" objecting to municipal fiber plans, to Trump officials lying their heads off and spreading FUD about how municipal ISPs will censor right-wing speech (in reality, government ISPs are much more restricted in whom they can deny access to and why, thanks to the First Amendment; while private networks like AT&T, Verizon, Charter and Comcast are restricted only by FCC regs and their own terms of service).But there is nothing harder to stop than an idea whose time has come to pass, and municipal broadband is so much better than the garbage we get from the monopolists that more than 750 American (mostly conservative!) cities and towns have built their own publicly funded ISPs, in the teeth of vicious lobbying campaigns, sometimes deploying incredibly inventive tactics to circumvent the lobbyist-won state laws banning the practice.The latest town to sign off on its own fiber network is Traverse City, MI, whose City Light and Power board have greenlit finance for phase one of a municipal fiber network, borrowing $3.5m to serve its first 2200 customers; the whole project will eventually cover the entire city and cost $16m. Read the rest

Pulled over for tailgating, Lancaster County President Judge Dennis Reinaker gets out of his vehicle, advances on the cop, belligerently demands he explain himself, then orders him to "check the registration on this plate soon, mister." Reinaker is sent on his way without a ticket.*Police officer pulls over tailgating driver. Reinaker gets out of car and avances toward officer's vehicle*Reinaker: What do you think you're doing pulling me over? For blowing my horn?Officer: Sir, go back into your car. I'll be with you in a second.Reinaker: You'd better check the registration on this plate soon, mister.*The officer and Reinaker return to their vehicles. A few moments pass as the officer looks up the plate*Officer: Have a good day, Judge!Reinaker: You bet!Lancaster Online:East Lampeter Township police Chief Stephen Zerbe said Reinaker was tailgating the officer.“The driver got out and was irritated,” Zerbe said in a phone interview. The chief said he had not seen the footage but was familiar with the incident.“(The driver) wanted to bring to the officer’s attention who he had stopped,” Zerbe said. ...The dashcam video shows that after the officer checked the registration, he released the judge without explaining why he was stopped.From the quoted legal experts, the short of it seems to be that Reinaker's instruction is an effective, studied way for an official to ensure they make themselves known without directly stating directly who they are, allowing them to get out of trouble without getting into trouble. Read the rest

A San Diego valedictorian took the opportunity to shred apart adults at her school in her commencement speech. San Ysidro High School's graduating senior Nataly Buhr called out her guidance counselor for leaving her to "fend for herself," the school's office staff for their "negligence," and one of her teachers for being "regularly intoxicated." Ouch. Of course, the crowd went wild.New York Post: Unsurprisingly, school officials were not pleased with the stunt.“We think that the student’s speech was inappropriate and out of line,” Manuel Rubio, a spokesman for the Sweetwater Union High School District, told the San Diego Tribune on Tuesday.He said he couldn’t comment on specific personnel issues.The speech Buhr delivered was not the one she submitted for approval before graduation, Rubio added.“While we definitely welcome the concerns of students and their families regarding any situation at one of our schools, doing so in such a manner without any prior knowledge of this situation by the school, is not the right way of handling this,” he said. “Ultimately this takes away from what should have been a day of celebration for the school and their community.” Read the rest

With the quick-fix appeal of video games and their own cell phones, it can be tough to keep kids focused on supposedly "educational" toys. And while it may seem counter-intuitive to fight tech with more tech, we're all in when it comes to the Toybox 3D Printer.We're not sure if anyone had envisioned a 3D printer for kids before the guys at Toybox brought it to Shark Tank on season 10, but the idea was fresh enough to woo a backer in outspoken judge Kevin O'Leary. When you see the printer in action, that endorsement seems like a no-brainer. The Toybox scales down the functionality of a full 3D printer without throttling the possibilities. With the push of a single button, kids can let the machine create a series of readymade toys out of non-toxic, biodegradable filament in a variety of colors - no knives or scissors needed. When they're ready to unleash their inner inventor, they can create their own models with the companion app, which essentially makes this aptly-named printer a bottomless toybox.With 8 filament colors included, the Toybox 3D Printer Deluxe Bundle is $314.99, more than 30% off the MSRP. Read the rest

Artist Damon Belanger's "Shadow Art" installations are making the rounds on the internet and for good reason, they're terrific! Using grey paint designed for concrete patios, he first created these street art pieces on commission back in 2016. They're a permanent installation, so you can still find all 22 of the fantastical shadows, ranging from anthropomorphic flowers to critters to abstract designs, on the downtown sidewalks of Redwood City, California. View this post on Instagram In use... #redwoodcity #visitredwoodcity #shadowartA post shared by Damon Belanger (@dmn.belanger) on May 29, 2016 at 9:32pm PDT View this post on Instagram #redwoodcity #cityofredwoodcity #publicart #streetart #visitredwoodcity #rwcparks #redwoodcityshadowart #shadowartA post shared by Damon Belanger (@dmn.belanger) on Jun 8, 2016 at 7:46pm PDT View this post on Instagram Dog the Cat. One of about twenty shadow art pieces I painted in downtown #redwoodcity. #rwcparks #visitrwc #redwoodcityshadowart #publicart #shadowartA post shared by Damon Belanger (@dmn.belanger) on May 21, 2016 at 11:23pm PDT View this post on Instagram Robo Band. One of about twenty shadow art pieces I painted in downtown #redwoodcity. #rwcparks #visitrwc #redwoodcityshadowart #publicart #shadowartA post shared by Damon Belanger (@dmn.belanger) on May 21, 2016 at 11:28pm PDT View this post on Instagram Hydrant @ El Camino. One of about twenty shadow art pieces I painted in downtown #redwoodcity. #rwcparks #visitrwc #redwoodcityshadowart #publicart #shadowartA post shared by Damon Belanger (@dmn.belanger) on May 21, 2016 at 11:33pm PDT View this post on Instagram Parking Monkey. One of about twenty shadow art pieces I painted in downtown #redwoodcity. Read the rest

More than a million coins were stacked to form the world's largest penny pyramid. It weighs 6,363 pounds and took 3 years to construct.This is the last video showing the construction of the New World Record Penny Pyramid according to the Guinness Book of World Records. This beats the previous record which used 100 people and was built in Lithuania. I constructed this by myself over the course of 3 years to the day. In real time I spent a total of 1.8 year building it and took approximately 425 days off during the construction. Please share this video as I think it would be amazing to see massive views on this. It measures 65 stacks across by 65 stacks back by 65 stacks high. Each stack contains 11 pennies. I'm free stacking these - no glue, welding or anything other than simply balancing on top of each other. My bacon is fresh, my airspace dangerous, and my undertakings favored. Read the rest

The last time I wrote about Ebola, there were 117 confirmed related deaths along with the 35 deaths likely related to the most recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Roll forward eight months and more than 2,100 people have been infected and 1,400 are now dead from the disease. In this past week, it was announced that the viral hemorrhagic fever had made its way into Congo's neighbor, Uganda. It's become the second-most devastating outbreak of Ebola in history. The only outbreak of the disease more severe took place between 2013 and 2016. Then, 11,000 people died. A panel made up of 10 infections disease experts told the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) announced that, as dire as the situation might be, calling the outbreak, what it is--sn international emergency--would be a bad idea. It makes sense: as the New York Times points out, saying that the hemorrhagic fever is an international emergency could lead to neighboring countries shuttering their borders to the Democratic Republic of Congo and forbidding flights to and from the region. That'd be a non-starter for keeping much-needed medical and scientific aid flowing into the hot zone. Despite the fact that folks are dying painfully and on a startling scale, the international community is doing jack shit to help stamp out the outbreak. This is especially troubling, given the fact that the hot zone for this outbreak also happens to be in a war zone. Medical operations have been chronically stalled or stopped do to the dangerous working environment that the individuals brave enough to face the disease have been subjected to. Read the rest

In 2013, the UK coalition government of David Cameron's Tories and the Libdems' Nick Clegg launched a "Help to Buy" scheme that gave incredibly cheap, taxpayer subsidised loans to first-time homebuyers, who got their money interest free for five years and thereafter had to repay it at 1.75% interest.Now, six years and billions of pounds later, the National Audit Office has published its report on the scheme, revealing that 63% of those who got free government money actually needed it to buy a house (4% of those who got the loans were on incomes of more than £100,000/year), and the net effect of flushing all these billions into the housing market was to massively drive up the cost of housing -- home prices in the UK have risen by an inflation-adjusted 35% since the programme went into effect.Some of the abuses of the programme by the wealthy are just jaw-dropping: for example, in 2016 the Conservative MP Peter Boone bought a new house with a subsidised £35,000 loan that he took out in his wife's name.This has all been great for developers, who have funneled much of the gains from the rise in new home buyers into their pockets, but it's a potential disaster for the exchequer.Now that the housing prices in the UK have been driven up, and now that the British taxpayer has issued billions in loans for these inflated properties, the national treasury is in line to lose billions of housing prices decline and borrowers start defaulting -- say, if the British economy is destroyed by a precipitous, ill-planned move to leave the EU. Read the rest

Everything is better in LEGO.Where are the other 1/2 of Earth's heroes? The ones not eliminated by Thanos 'snap' should have been there already right? Read the rest

Fast rising Democratic Presidential candidate and US Senator from the state of Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren wrote Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez entry in Time Magazine's list of 2019's most influential leaders.Time:The year 2008 was a reckoning. While millions of Americans lost their livelihoods to Wall Street’s greed, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lost her dad to lung cancer, and her family fell off a financial cliff. She watched as our government bailed out Wall Street while it ignored families like hers. She learned the hard way that in America today, Washington protects the powerful while leaving hardworking people behind.Her commitment to putting power in the hands of the people is forged in fire. Coming from a family in crisis and graduating from school with a mountain of debt, she fought back against a rigged system and emerged as a fearless leader in a movement committed to demonstrating what an economy, a planet and a government that works for everyone should look like.A year ago, she was taking orders across a bar. Today, millions are taking cues from her. She reminds all of us that even while greed and corruption slow our progress, even while armies of lobbyists swarm Washington, in our democracy, true power still rests with the people. And she’s just getting started.Warren, a Senator from Massachusetts, is a Democratic presidential candidate Read the rest

Whether you're an artist, designer or just organizing a photo album, photo editing software is a must. And software designers know it: Platforms like Photoshop and Lightroom have a ton of helpful features, but you'll pay for them in spades.Luckily, there's some competition in the photo editing arena. Right now, Skylum's Luminar software is emerging as an incredibly useful alternative to those bigger tools, and the Award-Winning Luminar 3 Software Bundle is a great way to jump in.First and foremost, you'll get the latest version of Luminar, which boasts all the most popular functionality of leading photo editors in a streamlined package. You can use layers and masks to build and modify a range of image files, while the Library feature lets you easily find and arrange them. For new users, the package includes Richard Harrington's Deep Dive to Luminar 3 - and effective walkthrough on all its features.The Award-Winning Luminar 3 Software Bundle is now on sale for $49, almost 50% off the list price of $93. Read the rest

It's the end of a geeky era: After 19 glorious years of flogging movie, comic book and gaming-related swag, ThinkGeek is shuttering its website next month. From The Verge:ThinkGeek will officially close down its website and will migrate its operations over to its parent company GameStop’s website instead. In the meantime, the store is holding a 50 percent off “moving sale.”By way of explanation, a GameStop spokesperson would only provide the following business-speak: The company is “engaging in a strategic business transformation initiative to build the GameStop of the future,” and that as part of that effort “we have made the decision to reorganize our ThinkGeek business by streamlining the operations of our ThinkGeek.com ecommerce platform and transitioning it within our GameStop.com omnichannel platform.” Apparently, renewing that domain name every year was way outside of GameStop's budget. I suppose that being able to buy the same kit online will do, but it just won't be the same. Back in the day, I bought a number of handheld console emulators from ThinkGeek. It always felt like I was getting away with something special. I can't imagine having that same customer experience by shopping through a corporate behemoth like GameStop.On the bright side of things, for the time being, over 40 of ThinkGeek's brick-and-mortar shops will remain open across the United States. I mean, you can't shop there at 3am in your underwear like you could with their website, but it's something, I suppose.Image via Wikipedia Commons & Amazon Read the rest

Who needs a holiday sale? Sometimes there's no better time than the thick of summer to find deals. We should know - we've found ten deep discounts on some must-have items. Whether you're searching for CBD edibles, exercise gear, chargers or other tech, take a look. But don't look long - these prices aren't likely to last.LG B8 Series 55" OLED 4K HDR TVOnce you've watched on 4K, it's hard to watch anything else. This smart TV is compatible with all the major HDR formats, and with Dolby Atmos® capability, it sounds as good as it looks. It's also pre-loaded with Google Assistant technology that you can use to not just control your TV but other smart home devices. Originally priced at $2299.99, the LG B8 Series 55" OLED 4K HDR TV is now 45% off at $1249.99.AirDock 3-in-1 Wireless Charging StationSay goodbye to that mass of charging cables on your counter. This sleek station can charge your iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods wirelessly and simultaneously and looks great doing it. Pick up the AirDock 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station for $34.99, a full 65% off the list price.Sous Vide Power Precision CookerGet your food just right every time with this simple gadget. It controls and circulates the temperature in any kitchen pot to evenly cook a variety of proteins, the same way high-end restaurants have been doing it for years. Grab the Sous Vide Power Precision Cooker for $39.99, an 80% discount off the original price. Read the rest

Erin Weaver spotted an American alligator swimming in a body of water near her home in Houston, Texas, and realized that the creature was the one in danger.“"I saw him swimming and then I saw him turn, like swimming towards me, and I saw something sticking out of his head," she told CNN affiliate KTRK. "It looked like a steak knife that was sticking out of his head, I don't know if it was in his eye, but it looked, if it wasn't in his eye it was very close to his eye.""Almost every morning I see them," said Weaver, who has lived in the area for six years. Wild animals are a normal part of life there. "Never have I seen them aggressive or even defensive, if you walk by and startle, them they just go under water."How sad.From Texas ABC 13 Eyewitness News:Her photos of the injured gator have made the rounds on neighborhood social media groups, drawing concern for how this happened."I feel that somebody did this on purpose," she said. "I can't imagine this animal going after somebody that they would have to defend themselves, because we've never had that happen before."Weaver and her neighbors are hoping to find aid for the animal soon, saying, "I want to get help for this alligator, I don't want to see an alligator swimming around with a knife in his head and suffering."ABC13 Eyewitness News reached out to Fort Bend Co. Read the rest

One thousand more single migrant adults are being detained by U.S. border protection each week in 2019, with the detention system at "serious risk of exceeding safety standards on a regular basis," documents reported today by Newsweek show.Newsweek's story reports on a previously undisclosed letter that details how U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies have taken "extraordinary measures" to thwart the sudden overcrowding in the detention system, and are at "serious risk of exceeding safety standards on a regular basis." The cause for the crisis, the officials say: growing numbers of arriving migrants."As of today, CBP has over 8,000 single adults in custody," a DHS official wrote on May 9 to officials at the Pentagon. "That number has been increasing by 1,000 per week."Newsweek's James LaPorta James LaPorta tweets, “The documents also provide a breakdown of where bed space is needed at detention facilities at the southwest border: Texas and Arizona: 6,000 in Texas; 1,500 in Arizona.”"ICE is currently holding more than 50,000 aliens in custody and no longer has the capacity to intake any more single adults," DHS wrote. "CBP facilities nationwide are outdated, overcrowded and suffering from a lack of sufficient investment."— James LaPorta (@JimLaPorta) June 14, 2019Excerpt:In response, Department of Homeland security (DHS) officials have taken the unprecedented step of having industrial-style tents constructed to facilitate the transfer of migrants out of overcrowded facilities along the southern border.In a previously undisclosed letter to the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials detail how their agencies have taken "extraordinary measures" to alleviate overcrowding in the detention system and are at "serious risk of exceeding safety standards on a regular basis," caused by growing numbers of arriving migrants, particularly families, and poor allocation of resources at the border. Read the rest

"When a Starbucks cup is the smallest mistake, you know you've fucked up." Read the rest

A year-long investigation of private Facebook hate groups by REVEAL finds close to 400 current and retired law enforcement officers are members, including officers from small towns as well as big cities -- including NYPD.Snip:One guard at the Angola prison in Louisiana, Geoffery Crosby, was a member of 56 extremist groups, including 45 Confederate groups and one called “BAN THE NAACP.”A detective at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in Houston, James “J.T.” Thomas, was a member of the closed Facebook group “The White Privilege Club.” “One cop was fired before we even published,” writes Reveal's Aura Bogado.Inside these Facebook hate groups, which require the approval of a doorkeeper “administrator” before one can become a member, active duty and retired police officers are swapping memes and jokes in Confederate, anti-Islam, anti-queer, anti-women, and anti-government militia communities.From the Reveal feature article:These cops have worked at every level of American law enforcement, from tiny, rural sheriff’s departments to the largest agencies in the country, such as the Los Angeles and New York police departments. They work in jails and schools and airports, on boats and trains and in patrol cars. And, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting discovered, they also read and contribute to groups such as “White Lives Matter” and “DEATH TO ISLAM UNDERCOVER.”The groups cover a range of extremist ideologies. Some present themselves publicly as being dedicated to benign historical discussion of the Confederacy, but are replete with racism inside. Some trade in anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant memes. Read the rest

The real menace in "Jurassic Park" wasn't a T-Rex or any other dinosaur. Turns out it was Pee-wee Herman! Enjoy Pixel Riot's meticulously rotoscoped mashup of "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and "Jurassic Park," aka "Pee-wee's Jurassic Adventure." Absolute genius!They write:I wanted to see what would happen if I spliced Pee Wee into Jurassic Park. I think it works pretty well! I replaced almost 100% of the audio. I'll never rotoscope someone on a bike ever again...(Pee-wee Herman) Read the rest

For years, Paul Hansmeier terrorized internet users through his copyright trolling racket Prenda Law, evading the law through shell companies and fraud, until, finally, he was brought to justice and pleaded guilty last August.Now, Hansmeier has been sentenced to 14 years in prison and must pay $1.5m in restitution to his victims -- people he accused of being copyright infringers and then bullied into paying "settlement" fees to avoid being dragged through expensive litigation. Any Prenda Law victim can contact the Minnesota DA to apply for compensation. Prenda's tactics included identity theft, entrapment (uploading their own files to The Pirate Bay in order to generate downloads that they could threaten people over), and several kinds of fraud.Hansmeier and his co-defendant, John Steele, were indicted for money laundering, perjury, mail and wire fraud. Both men entered into plea agreements.James Renken attended and livetweeted the sentencing, noting that the judge handed down a sentence in excess of that requested by the prosecutor through the plea deal, saying that Hansmeier's "abuse of trust harmed the administration of justice...Like a wrecking ball to the trust and confidence people have in the administration of justice."Steele will be sentenced next month; the prosecutor is seeking 8-10 years in prison.Whether the people that were sued were indeed guilty wasn’t much of an issue. This means that many innocent people were likely targeted as well.“Hansmeier was generally content to take this step without investigating whether the subscriber was, in fact, the infringer. Read the rest

Americans who are poor increasingly use mobile phones as their primary way to go online.

Billionaires Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov used to own Privatbank -- the largest bank in Ukraine -- and now they are being sued for using it for a decade to launder more than $470b (through its Cyprus subsidiary) ($470b is more than double the GDP of Cyprus over the same period).The bank's new owners are suing Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov for violating Ohio and Delaware racketeering laws. They claim that Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov used the laundered proceeds to buy up whole neighborhoods in Cleveland, becoming the city's largest landowner. Additionally, they are accused of buying "several ferroalloy companies across multiple states" with laundered proceeds.It's the largest money-laundry scandal in history and it was only possible because US states allow anonymous parties to create thousands of cheap shell companies.The money trail is surprisingly simple. To begin with, the ultimate beneficiary owners collect retail deposits in Ukraine by offering good conditions and service. The money then flows to their subsidiary, PrivatBank Cyprus. In Cyprus, they benefit from the services of two local law firms.Untypically, the ultimate beneficiary owners did not take the precaution to establish multiple layers of shell companies in Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, and Cayman Islands, as is common among Russians with seriously dirty money. Instead, they operated with three US individuals in Miami, who helped them to set up a large number of anonymous LLCs in the United States, mainly in Delaware, but also in Florida, New Jersey, and Oregon.The typical objects of post-Soviet money launderers are real estate in New York and southern Florida, but the investment profile of this group is different. Read the rest

If you're in the market for a long sleeve one-piece bathing suit with human organs on in, here you go. It's just on Amazon. Read the rest

Writer and data journalist Kevin Litman-Navarro subjected 150 privacy policies from leading online services to programmatic analysis for complexity (the Lexile test), and found them to be an incomprehensible mess second only to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in their lack of clarity.Ninth graders are expected to be able to read and understand texts with Lexile scores up to 1050; college students are expected to be able to read texts with Lexile scores up to 1300; trained doctors and lawyers are expected to cope with Lexile 1440 texts.Facebook's privacy policy is nestled comfortably between "A Brief History of Time" and "The Critique of Pure Reason."Litman-Navarro cites Center for Internet and Society director of consumer privacy Jen King, who describes these as "by lawyers, for lawyers" and challenges the sector to produce "human-centric" privacy policies that are "consumer tools."King suggests that privacy policies should contain "a list of companies that might purchase and use your personal information."One hopeful note: the European General Data Protection Regulation has produced meaningful improvements to many policies. A good privacy policy would help users understand how exposed they are: Something as simple as a list of companies that might purchase and use your personal information could go a long way towards setting a new bar for privacy-conscious behavior. For example, if you know that your weather app is constantly tracking your whereabouts and selling your location data as marketing research, you might want to turn off your location services entirely, or find a new app. Read the rest

I've praised Max Helmberger's excellent claymation videos about insects in the past. He has produced another, this time for the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program. From the YouTube description:The Hajek Lab group at Cornell University has been researching methods for biological control of Asian longhorned beetles using entomopathogenic fungi. This video describes the life cycle of Asian longhorned beetles and how an adult beetle gets infected, dies and transmits the infection to other Asian longhorned beetles.[via The Kid Should See This] Read the rest

Deviant Ollam is runs a physical security penetration testing company called The Core Group; in a flat-out amazing, riveting presentation from the 2017 Wild West Hackin' Fest, Ollam -- a master lockpicker -- describes how lockpicking is a last resort for the desperate, while the wily and knowledgeable gain access by attacking doors and locks with tools that quickly and undetectably open them.Ollam's techniques are just laugh-out-loud fantastic to watch: from removing the pins in hinges and lifting doors away from their high-security locks to sliding cheap tools between doors or under them to turn thumb-levers, bypass latches, and turn handles. My favorite were the easy-exit sensors that can be tricked into opening a pair of doors by blowing vape smoke (or squirting water, or releasing a balloon) through the crack down their middle.But more than anything, Ollam's lecture reminds me of the ground truth that anyone who learns lockpicking comes to: physical security is a predatory scam in which shoddy products are passed off onto naive consumers who have no idea how unfit for purpose they are. When locksport began, locksmiths were outraged that their long-held "secret" ways of bypassing, tricking and confounding locks had entered the public domain -- they accused the information security community of putting the public at risk by publishing the weaknesses in their products (infosec geeks also get accused of this every time they point out the weaknesses in digital products, of course).But the reality is that "bad guys" know about (and exploit) these vulnerabilities already. Read the rest

Mauro Morandi has been the sole inhabitant of Budelli Island in Italy since 1989. Great Big Story went to pay him a visit.In 1989, Mauro Morandi’s boat docked on Budelli Island off the northern coast of Sardinia, Italy. Discovering that the island’s caretaker was retiring within the next two days, Mauro decided to extend his stay indefinitely and step into the role himself. Little did he know that, nearly 30 years later, he would still be there. Mauro has built a small, simple life for himself on the island, collecting rain for drinking water, and building solar panels for electricity. Living alone, his love for his island paradise runs deep, and he hopes to stay as long as his health allows it.[via Like Cool] Read the rest

The millions of Hong Kong people participating in the #612strike uprising are justifiably worried about state retaliation, given the violent crackdowns on earlier uprisings like the Umbrella Revolution and Occupy Central; they're also justifiably worried that they will be punished after the fact.After all, the #612strike was triggered by a proposed legal change that would allow people in Hong Kong to be extradited to the Chinese mainland for political crimes -- and Hong Kong people already witnessed the horrific spectacle of dissident booksellers being kidnapped to China and then tortured into giving coerced, televised "confessions."The movement is taking countermeasures to avoid identification, using masks to beat facial recognition systems, organizing in encrypted Telegram chats (Telegram blamed the Chinese state for a wave of DDOS attacks that could disrupt these chatrooms), and using cash money to pay for subway fares to and from the protests, avoiding leaving identifiable e-payment trails.But all of that will be of limited use if the protesters are identified by other means. The most significant risk is from cell-site simulators -- briefcase-sized fake cellular towers that trick your phone into contacting them and coughing up its unique identifier, which can be used to conduct mass re-identifications of every person with a switched-on mobile phone at the protests. These devices are small, cheap, powerful, and can even mounted beneath aircraft, including drones.Unless the protesters are using burner phones -- not just burner SIMs, but burner handsets, too -- they face a significant de-anonymization risk.After all, they're using mobile phones to coordinate the protests themselves, and that means that they're effectively carrying always-on wireless nametags that the state can silently enumerate and store indefinitely. Read the rest

According to Fodor's Travel the best US airport is Burbank (BUR). I couldn't agree more. It's 7 miles from my house and takes 2o minutes to get there. "Burbank is an airport free of most of the hassles that take the fun out of travel plans," writes Fodor's. "It’s an agreeable airport in a perfect location, which is why it’s at the top of our list of airports to love."I'll pay a premium to fly from and to BUR, because my alternative is LAX, which Fodor's rates as the worst airport in the entire world. It's 26 miles from my house and it often takes 2 hours to get there in heavy 405 traffic. And once you get there, you'll get stuck in the "horseshoe." for another 30 minutes. From Fodor's: "Thanks to the improbably stupid design of its catastrophic horseshoe motor-loop, it regularly requires 30 minutes to travel the short mile from the outskirts of the airport to most of its terminals. And because Los Angeles was built as a city beholden to the automobile, there is no other way to arrive or depart from this maddening complex of suffering but through the interminable traffic."Image: Photo of LAX by Mark Frauenfelder Read the rest

Reverse mortgages -- complex home loans -- are aggressively marketed to elderly people, especially in African-American neighborhoods, using deceptive tactics that offer false promised to "eliminate monthly payments permanently" with "a risk-free way of being able to access home equity."Reverse mortgage sales went into overdrive just before the 2007/8 housing crisis and ramped up after that, and now, a decade later, seniors are discovering that they signed up for a financialized scam that is costing them their family homes, sometimes as a consequence of being widowed.USA Today has just published the result of its "first-of-its-kind analysis of more than 1.3 million loan records," finding more than 100,000 defaults, with African-Americans being hit the worst: "reverse mortgages end in foreclosure six times more often in predominantly black neighborhoods than in neighborhoods that are 80% white."Housing wealth is one of keys to understanding racial inequality in America: starting with the official redlining policies that let white families lift themselves out of poverty while condemning Black families to a cycle of rent and debt accumulation whose effects were felt down through subsequent generations -- and on to today, with home-ownership at historic lows and rents jacked up to historic highs, a parent's housing wealth may be the only way to escape the cycle.Black homeowners were the hardest-hit by the housing crisis: targeted for the most predatory, complex and deceptive financial "products," first evicted when those loans blew up. But the reverse-mortgage crisis had a longer fuse, one that's just burned all the way down, creating a "stealth aftershock" to the crisis. Read the rest

Joy Division's post-punk masterpiece "Unknown Pleasures" turns 40 this year. NME just republished an interview with two of the three surviving members of Joy Division -- bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris -- about creating what is arguably one of the most influential albums of all time. Meanwhile, the surviving band members have invited ten video directors to create new music videos for each song on the album. Below is the first video for "I Remember Nothing," directed by Helgi & Hörður. From the NME:Was there anything that (producer) Martin Hannett did or asked you to do that was a bit too much?Morris: “I was alright with what he was asking us to do mostly, although he did make me use the aerosol can on the 12-inch version of ‘She’s Lost Control’ like you see in Control. He shut me in a room with a can of tape-cleaning fluid and made me press it in time with the song. By the end, the booth was just filled with noxious fumes. I think he was just trying to kill me. If I’d have lit up a fag, the whole of Strawberry Studios would have gone up in smoke.”Is it strange seeing that (album cover) design getting reproduced on just about anything and everything?Hook: “We never actually did an official ‘Unknown Pleasures’ T-shirt until 1994 but they got bootlegged all over the world. When we got investigated by the taxman because of the Haçienda being all fucked up, he said that he couldn’t find any receipts for ‘Unknown Pleasures’ T-shirts. Read the rest

"Tra la la" my ass. Read the rest