Boing Boing

This is the least expensive Arduino-clone starter kit I've seen. It's just on Amazon, and comes with an Arduino Uno clone, a solderless breadboard, resistors, LEDs, jumper wires, pushbuttons, and a lot more.If you need to learn how to use an Arduino, may I recommend my Skillshare video class? If you sign up here you can get 3 months of Skillshare videos for 99 cents. Skillshare has thousands of great videos to teach you about programming, art, animation and more. I've been a happy paying subscriber for years. Read the rest

“The cameras are already transforming modern day policing in Uganda, with facial recognition and artificial intelligence as part of policing and security.” — Ugandan Police.

Spotify may not be literally damaging our brains, but he's not entirely wrong, either.

Manhattan in the early nineties, captured on what must have at the time been an unusually high-def camera.The uploader of this incredible archival B-roll footage said to be of New York in 1993 says they captured it off of “a D-Theater HD DVHS Demo Tape by techmoan.com.It's pretty incredible. I miss this NYC. Read the rest

This cosplay project of V, from 'Cyberpunk 2077' is absolutely incredible, and was shared in two parts online by its creator, @aelirenn. The work in progress is here, and the finished result is here.Cyberpunk 2077 jacket WIPMy V from Cyberpunk 2077 Read the rest

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music traces the history of electronic music from the early 1900s to the present through a timeline/map that has links to playlists to different subgenres. Read the rest

It sucks to be in a motorcycle accident, as Instagram influencer tifforelie was. She documented the accident by posting a series of professionally-shot photos of her lying in the road, one of which prominently displayed a bottle of Smartwater. The photos have since been deleted, but can be found here on Buzzfeed.Buzzfeed editor Tanya Chen tweeted that tifforelie "denied to me that the Smartwater featured in one of the professional photos is a brand endorsement" and that "Smartwater confirmed to me they 'do not have a paid relationship with Tiffany.'" That settles it!An Influencer Is Defending Her Decision To Post A Photoshoot Of Her Motorcycle Accident On Instagramshe also denied to me that the Smartwater featured in one of the professional photos is a brand endorsement https://t.co/pXe5HDcCF3 pic.twitter.com/r7tuXUNAS1— Tanya Chen (@Tanya_Chen) August 19, 2019 Read the rest

Yes, we're back to the 'disloyal Jews' thing. Because he's a Nazi.

My friend and former Make magazine colleague Sean Michael Ragan is making videos for my Cool Tools YouTube channel. (Subscribe to the channel here!) In his latest video, Sean reviews something called Solder Seals, which allow you to solder wires together without using a soldering iron. Read the rest

Furry fans sometimes use cooling vests to make hot fursuits comfortable to wear. Soldiers also have need for such garments. And now a Dutch fursuit maker has improved the state of the art. Tired of overheating in his own fursuit, Pepeyn Langedijk adapted a military cooling vest to his own ends to create the EZ Cooldown vest. Langedijk, a resident of the Netherlands, goes by “EZ Wolf” in lupine costume and named his invention after his character.Langedijk and his husband Tom live in Amsterdam and run the EZ Cooldown business together full-time. They met during Elfia, a medieval fantasy reenactment fair, and their hobbies led them to test their product on themselves. The team told The Daily Beast that they sold more than a thousand vests in 2018, which each retail for $215, packs included. Roughly 80 percent of the company’s sales are to U.S. customers.The pair don’t have official military contracts, but they told The Daily Beast that a small group of U.S. Navy troops in Japan reached out to EZ Cooldown three years ago to ask if the company could ship to military bases. The service members ended up buying 10 vests, then their friends bought 20, then 30, Langedijk said. He still doesn’t know how they heard of his product. Read the rest

Heirs' property is a relic of post-Reconstruction law, which allows white developers to exploit the diffuse ownership of Black family homes to steal them and kick out the people who live there.Following on an in-depth Propublica investigation into heirs' property title-thefts, Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has included heirs' property reform in her ambitious agriculture plan.In her plan, Warren pledged to end policies that have perpetuated this discrimination and to help these families of color preserve their ownership, build wealth and gain access to sustainable livelihoods. Specifically, she promised to fully fund a relending program laid out in the 2018 Farm Bill, which would provide loans to heirs’ property owners to clear their titles and consolidate ownership. She announced that she would prioritize funding lending organizations in states that have enacted the Uniform Partition of Heirs’ Property Act, legislation that expands heirs’ rights to their property.Warren said she plans to further address the wider needs of heirs’ property owners, who struggle to qualify for U.S. Department of Agriculture loans, disaster relief and housing assistance when they lack a clear title. Her plan would allow heirs’ property owners who want to access farm loans to present alternative documentation to the USDA. In addition, those in need of other forms of federal assistance could use such documentation to access loans through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.Elizabeth Warren Announces Plans to Help Heirs’ Property Owners [Lizzie Presser/Propublica] Read the rest

One of the major contributors to greenhouse gases is the methane that cows belch up as they break down cellulose, but five years ago, research from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) found that adding small amounts of a pink seaweed called Asparagopsis to cows' diets eliminated the gut microbes responsible for methane production and "completely knocks out" cows' methane emissions.Asparagopsis grows on the coast of Australia, and cows actually seek it out and eat it without encouragement. Replacing 2% of cows' feed with Asparagopsis is sufficient to end their methane production.Researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast are trying to ramp up Asparagopsis production to scale to meet a potential global market for it.The USC team is working at the Bribie Island Research Centre in Moreton Bay to learn more about how to grow the seaweed species, with the goal of informing a scale-up of production that could supplement cow feed on a national—and even global scale.“This seaweed has caused a lot of global interest and people around the world are working to make sure the cows are healthy, the beef and the milk are good quality,” Dr. Paul said.“That’s all happening right now. But the one missing step, the big thing that is going to make sure this works at a global scale, is to make sure we can produce the seaweed sustainably.Burp-free cow feed drives seaweed science at USC [University of the Sunshine Coast](via Kottke) Read the rest

Tim Qian, a "full stack developer and open source activist," has published chart.xkcd, a free/open tool that lets you create interactive, "hand-drawn" charts in the style of XKCD comics. It's pretty fabulous! (via Four Short Links) const svg = document.querySelector('.line-chart') new chartXkcd.Line(svg, { title: 'Monthly income of an indie developer', xLabel: 'Month', yLabel: '$ Dollors', data: { labels:['1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6','7', '8', '9', '10'], datasets: [{ label: 'Plan', data: [30, 70, 200, 300, 500 ,800, 1500, 2900, 5000, 8000], }, { label: 'Reality', data: [0, 1, 30, 70, 80, 100, 50, 80, 40, 150], }] }, }); Read the rest

On Slate Star Codex (previously), Scott Alexander breaks down Invisible Designers: Brain Evolution Through the Lens of Parasite Manipulation, Marco Del Giudice's Quarterly Review of Biology paper that examines the measures that parasites take to influence their hosts' behaviors, and the countermeasures that hosts evolve to combat them.Diligent readers will know that parasites manage some incredible feats of behavior modification (one of Scott Westerfeld's best novels looks at vampirism as a form of parasitic behavior modification and it's just great). It's a truism that the predator carves the prey and the prey carve the predator. Del Giudice's investigations into parasite tactics and countermeasures lead him to hypothesize that perhaps human variation is driven by responses to parasites' attempts at behavior modification (for example, humans have a lot of variability in our major histocompatibility complex genes, which mean that our immune systems can readily distinguish between our cells and invasive ones). It's a super-interesting paper, and Alexander's breakdown is a great path into it.Sixth, you use antiparasitic drugs as neurotransmitters. This is the kind of murderous-yet-clever solution I expect of evolution, and it does not disappoint. Several neurotransmitters, including neuropeptide Y, neurokinin A, and substance P are pretty good antimicrobials. The assumption has always been that the body kills two birds with one stone, getting its signaling done and also having some antimicrobials around to take out stray bacteria. But Del Giudice proposes that this is to prevent parasites from hijacking the signal; any parasite that tried to produce or secrete an antiparasitic drug would die in the process. Read the rest

The cat-loving Guinness world record holder and internet personality CatManToo shared this video a couple years ago, but since it's making the viral rounds uncredited, I wanted to share the original. Robert, Didga and Boomer have an online store and a Patreon, if you want to support this cuteness. They're on Instagram and YouTube.Robert Dollwet has 35 years experience as a professional animal trainer/behaviorist, and runs the CATMANTOO channels. He claims his cat Didga is the most talented cat in the world, and I'm inclined to believe them. Here are some more sweet videos from Robert and Didga and the other cats. View this post on Instagram 🛹🐈🤷‍♂️🐈🛹 😊 You can also weigh in below 🤔😁 @catmantoo Cat training tutorials on YouTube and my Patreon page, link in Profile. 🐾 #nocgi . . . . #cats #weeklyfluff #instagram @instagram #video #meow @9gag #9gagA post shared by CATMANTOO (@catmantoo) on Jun 1, 2019 at 4:31am PDT View this post on Instagram Unlimited shelf life 😬@catmantoo #Bindi #adoptdontshop #weeklyfluff #melbourne #catloversshowA post shared by CATMANTOO (@catmantoo) on Aug 6, 2019 at 8:46pm PDT View this post on Instagram Bindi and Jeb pitch in to help. 🤣 @catmantoo #weeklyfluff @instagram #instagram #cats_of_instagram #meowed #videoA post shared by CATMANTOO (@catmantoo) on Jul 15, 2019 at 5:31pm PDT View this post on Instagram Cat on the hat. W/Boomer & Bindi. @catmanto Learn to teach your cat, tutorials on Youtube and many more on Patreon (Link in Profile) #weeklyfluff #video #cattricks #instagram #patreon #tutorials #melbourneA post shared by CATMANTOO (@catmantoo) on Jul 27, 2019 at 4:03am PDT Read the rest

After the EU Copyright Directive passed with a slim majority that only carried because some MEPs got confused and pressed the wrong button, the government of Poland filed a legal challenge with the European Court of Justice, arguing that the Directive -- and its rule requiring that all online discourse be filtered by black-box algorithms that will block anything that might be infringing -- violated both Polish and European law.Now, the first official documents from that court challenge have been made public for the first time. As expected, the challenge asks the court to rule on whether filters are "proportional and necessary" to preventing copyright filters. Poland has asked the court, at a minimum, to strike parts b) and c) of Article 17 (originally Article 13). These are the rules that require online providers to make "best efforts to ensure the unavailability" of works that someone, somewhere has claimed as their copyrighted work; and to make "best efforts to prevent their future uploads."Poland's anticipated that the court may find that removing these parts will prove difficult, and so it's proposed that, as an alternative, the court could just strike down all of Article 17. The Republic of Poland claims specifically that the imposition on online content-sharing service providers of the obligation to make best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information (point (b) of Article 17(4) of [EU Copyright] Directive 2019/790) and the imposition on online content-sharing service providers of the obligation to make best efforts to prevent the future uploads of protected works or other subject-matter for which the rightsholders have lodged a sufficiently substantiated notice (point (c), in fine, of Article 17(4) of Directive 2019/790) make it necessary for the service providers -- in order to avoid liability -- to carry out prior automatic verification (filtering) of content uploaded online by users, and therefore make it necessary to introduce preventive control mechanisms. Read the rest

In Hackettstown, New Jersey, a McDonald's drive-through customer reportedly paid with a "smoldering" dollar bill that burned the employee's hand. From NJ.com:After taking the money, the employee realized the dollar was still smoldering and she was burned on the palm of her left hand, police said. The employee refused medical treatment.Police are investigating the incident and said no further information would be released at this time.Obviously the customer has money to burn. Read the rest

As tech began to concentrate, two dominant strategies emerged: Google's (instrument the whole internet for surveillance, which means that you don't have to lock people in in order to spy on them) and Apple's (lock everyone into a walled garden, and extract revenue by refusing to let them out again).But the along came Facebook, whose strategy is lock everyone in and spy on them.Now that Facebook has blazed that trail, everyone else is slowly turning into Facebook. Apple is using its walled garden to turn into a surveillance company and Google is likewise turning into a walled garden.Google's original pitch to the rest of the web was, "We deliver traffic: people search here for answers, and we send them back to you to get them." But over time, and for a variety of reasons (not all of them bad, see e.g., "Not sending people to sites that have malvertising"), the company has been trying to serve the answer to your question with no further clicking required.Now, that strategy has hit a tipping point. According to analytics from Jumpstream, the majority of Google searches no longer end with a click. On Sparktoro, Rand Fishkin calls this "a milestone in Google’s evolution from search engine to walled-garden."Much of Fishkin's post is about how Google's reps refused to give a clear answer to Congress when questioned on this subject (which is true), but the real lesson here is that firms do not practice forbearance: once a company dominates its market, whatever odious measures it took off the table to attain its dominance are reconsidered. Read the rest

In 1994, Jeff Schwartz and Dan Wong fired up the San Francisco FogCam. For 25 years, it kept a constant vigil on the San Francisco State University campus, making the FogCam the longest operating webcam in history. (The first webcam, the Trojan Room coffee pot cam, went online in 1991 and shut down in 2001.) At the end of the month, Schwartz and Wong will turn off the FogCam. From SF Gate:"Our webcam is a throwback to the early days of the Internet when anyone could do anything," Schwartz said.The webcam will be switched off on August 30, but Schwartz says the website itself will be kept up "for sake of posterity." Read the rest

After Deadspin's Laura Wagner published an incredible, brave, detailed look at how her new private equity masters -- Jim Spanfeller/Great Hill Partners -- were running Gawker now that they'd acquired it from Univision, the company (now called "G/O Media") struck back.Wagner's piece painted a picture of a dysfunctional workplace where cronyism and buck-passing were the order of the day, where women who'd earned promotions were leapfrogged by bros who came in with the new boss and failed spectacularly to do their jobs, then blamed the hard working people they'd stepped over for their failures.In the wake of Wagner's piece, Deadspin's editor in chief, Megan Greenwell, resigned over the way that her bosses had handled the event, saying that she'd been "repeatedly undermined, lied to, and gaslit in my job."The same week that Greenwell resigned, the company circulated a draft staff handbook that included the right to search employees' "personal vehicles, parcels, purses, handbags, backpacks, briefcases, lunch boxes" and to review employee emails, tweets, and communications.The same rule prohibits the use of encrypted email systems that might frustrate employers' ability to snoop on journalists. As Mike Masnick points out, this is bonkers: telling top-notch journalists who deal with confidential sources who face retaliation and even physical violence for going public that they're not allowed to use cryptography isn't just stupid, it's malpractice. It could literally get someone killed.Indeed, in light of the monumental stupidity and pig-ignorance behind this policy, the company's ridiculous new dress code looks positively reasonable: " Employees must arrive between 9:30 a.m. Read the rest

A little over a year ago I reviewed Obenauf's. I just ordered another jar.Baking in leather as the sun pounds down on you is kinda the motorcyclist thing. My jacket is a treasured article of clothing that, like Gregory House once observed "It keeps me warm and cool. How does it know?" Abusing that jacket is of par for course.Good leather care stuff makes a jacket last and look wonderful!Obenauf's is also magic on my boots. The boots are expensive, like the jacket, and really take a beating. Shifting a 43-year-old BMW that was famously 'chunk-y' when new takes some force. Sliding my leather-clad feet underneath the horizontally opposed cylinders leaves a lot of marks. Obenauf's doesn't make them look new, it makes them look cared for and it deeps the damage to a minimum. I guess the boots slip more than gouge on all those fins when oiled and waxed up.My favorite thing about Obenaufs is the speed at which the leather accepts it. Boots are wearable 15-30 minutes later, tho I'd give them an hour or two. Jackets need only sit overnight and they cease to leave a sticky, greasy mark wherever I lean. My old leather treatment needed a week or I felt like Squiggy.Obenauf's Heavy Duty LP Leather Conditioner Natural Oil Beeswax Formula via Amazon Read the rest

"The sponsors said it was going to be three days of peace and music. It was that alright, and much more." Read the rest

NASA announced today that the agency is moving ahead with a planned mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. In this next phase, engineers will complete the final design, construction, and testing of the Europa Clipper spacecraft for a launch as soon as 2023. Why the icy moon Europa? From NASA:NASA's Europa Clipper mission will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter's moon Europa to see whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life. The mission will carry a highly capable, radiation-tolerant spacecraft that will perform repeated close flybys of the icy moon from a long, looping orbit around Jupiter.The payload of selected science instruments includes cameras and spectrometers to produce high-resolution images of Europa's surface and determine its composition. An ice penetrating radar will determine the thickness of the moon's icy shell and search for subsurface lakes similar to those beneath Antarctica. The mission also will carry a magnetometer to measure strength and direction of the moon's magnetic field, which will allow scientists to determine the depth and salinity of its ocean."This is a giant step in our search for oases that could support life in our own celestial backyard," says Europa program scientist Curt Niebur.That's all well and good, assuming we attempt no landing there.image: NASA/JPL-Caltech Read the rest

Serious squee.

I ate so much acid watching this movie over and over.Mila!Dinklage is the only hero in this movie. Read the rest

Some Californians are looking to limit when law enforcement can employ 'deadly force.' Others ensured their taking of lives stays a semantic game.NPR:The legislation emerged from a push for new rules in response to police killings of unarmed black men such as Stephon Clark, who was shot last year after a police chase that ended in his grandmother's backyard. The officers in that shooting said they believed Clark had a gun; he was found to have been holding a cellphone, and prosecutors said in March that the officers would not face criminal charges.The new law reflects a compromise between civil rights advocates who say it will save lives and law enforcement groups that want more clarity on the use of force — but do not want to undermine legal protections for officers."The whole debate boils down to two words: 'necessary' and 'reasonable,' " Ben Adler of Capital Public Radio reports. "Right now, deadly force is justified if a reasonable officer would have acted similarly in that situation. So in other words, what a typical officer would have done based on his or her training. When the law takes effect in January, that standard will change to when the officer reasonably believes deadly force is necessary."But Adler also notes that the law mostly avoids offering a specific definition of "necessary" — a move that is widely seen as leaving the interpretation up to the courts, where judges will weigh what is "necessary" in the context of officers' use of force. Read the rest

There are few things finer in life than plopping down on a hot summer day in your backyard, wobbly pop in hand, with a few friends and loved ones. Roasting in the heat as a soft breeze licks the sweat away from your skin, your beverage slides ice-cold down your throat. Someone tells a joke as the burgers flip on the grill, sending up a tower of greasy pillar of fire into the heavens.And then, the existential dread kicks in.From NewJersey.com:Renee Jensen was enjoying the summer in her Harrington Park backyard on Saturday with her boyfriend, Alex, when she spotted something near the side gate.The object appeared to be airborne, headed straight for the yard.“Did a freaking bird die in midair or something?” she thought, going over to see what it was.Looking down at the object, she jumped back.It was Pennywise the clown. Albeit, a stout, cartoon version of the murderous clown from “It,” but Pennywise nonetheless. The plush character’s mouth was reddened with fake “blood.”“It came at an angle and I just watched this thing, it didn’t hit a single tree and went straight over, just cleared the gate and hit the pine branches and hit the ground," says Jensen, 42, still a bit shaken from the incident.She only has one neighbor in the vicinity, and they were not around at the time little Pennywise entered the yard.So, as one does, Jensen lost every last bit of her shit. Read the rest

An alligator scaled a fence "effortlessly" at Air Station Jacksonville in Florida, and it was all caught on video.Christina Stewart stopped to film the gator claw its way up a fence before belly-flopping onto the grass and continuing on its way. Officials with NAS Jacksonville said they don't plan on removing the alligator from the base unless he poses a danger to residents.We're not trapped in here with it, it's trapped in here with us. Read the rest

Ellie Pell is the first woman to win the 50k Ultra outright, blasting past runner-up Richard Ellsworth in the four-hour endurance race. Pell took home both the 1st place trophy and the "fastest lady" trophy; unfortunately for Richard, race organizers never anticipated a woman might win, so no corresponding prize exists for gents.“It was great, but also an awkward situation,” Hardy said. “Obviously there’s a lot of great women runners, but you don’t see them winning ultras outright a lot. When it happens, they get two awards.”“I ended up taking both awards—the overall winner and the first place female,” Pell said. “I felt bad that the first place man didn’t have one, so I tried to convince them to blot out the ‘fe’ on ‘female,’ but they said to just keep both trophies. It was pretty funny.”Race organizers subsequently made a "fastest man" trophy for Mr. Ellsworth. For future races, they instead plan to issue trophies to the top six runners irrespective of gender.Time are a changing. They didn’t have an award for the first place male. Guess they weren’t expecting a female overall winner #bravelikegabe @fast_women pic.twitter.com/EUGJwN8IVC— Ellie Pell (@gazzellie) August 10, 2019 Read the rest

Cats don't care if you want to share their adorable face on Instagram. They look this way and that way, but never directly at your phone.Enter the Cat Selfie, an attachment for the top of your phone made to get your cat's attention. How? It has a little bell you ring to get your kitty to look at your phone's camera, so you can snap that shot. Now the whole world will see how crazy-cute your kitty is! What did we do before this?Available from UK novelty company Bubblegum Stuff (£11.95/~$14.50).(Pee-wee Herman, Geekologie) Read the rest

Iskhur's guide to electronic music is a true classic of the web, now freshly updated for a new generation of fabulously obscure and ephemeral subgenres. [via Metafilter] See also Every Noise at Once. Read the rest

The BBC reports that Canada's election watchdog claims that advertisements saying climate change is real may break the law, because it is a political opinion and "issue" advertising is partisan political activity.Canada has strict regulations on partisan advertising during the election period, whether they be from candidates, parties or third-party organisations. ... Keith Brooks, programme director for advocacy group Environmental Defence, says Elections Canada told him that because one candidate denies that climate change is an issue, any ad urging action on climate change, or calling climate change an emergency, could be considered partisan. ... Mr Cornish says it is "absolutely ludicrous" that charities are barred from advocacy work on climate change during the election just because one of the party's platforms denies it is an issue."We're talking here about someone's opinion overruling scientific consensus around the need to adapt to climate change," he said. Read the rest

If you're marketing on the web, your Google-fu needs to be strong - and up to date. Without a firm grasp on what drives traffic, you'll never be able to take the wheel. That's why even if you know where to put your keywords, a little extra effort goes a long way on any marketer's resume. If you want a certification that proves your marketing savvy, a couple of online courses are key.For data analytics, there's Google Analytics Certification: Get Certified In 2 Days. This 2-hour boot camp targets all the insights covered in the exam: How to monitor ads, build reports and model the wealth of data that Analytics can give about any site. In all, the package includes 20 lectures and hundreds of practice questions. It's available for $13.99.For those looking to turn that customer data into clicks, the Ultimate Guide To Google AdWords is an essential course. Suitable for beginners, it teaches users how to build an AdWords account from scratch, then use it to optimize any marketing campaign by integrating keywords into company language across the board. Packed with 18 hours of content, the course is $12.99. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay "A Cycle of Renewal, Broken: How Big Tech and Big Media Abuse Copyright Law to Slay Competition", published today on EFF's Deeplinks; it's the latest in my ongoing series of case-studies of "adversarial interoperability," where new services unseated the dominant companies by finding ways to plug into existing products against those products' manufacturers. This week's installment recounts the history of cable TV, and explains how the legal system in place when cable was born was subsequently extinguished (with the help of the cable companies who benefitted from it!) meaning that no one can do to cable what cable once did to broadcasters.In 1950, a television salesman named Robert Tarlton put together a consortium of TV merchants in the town of Lansford, Pennsylvania to erect an antenna tall enough to pull down signals from Philadelphia, about 90 miles to the southeast. The antenna connected to a web of cables that the consortium strung up and down the streets of Lansford, bringing big-city TV to their customers — and making TV ownership for Lansfordites far more attractive. Though hobbyists had been jury-rigging their own "community antenna television" networks since 1948, no one had ever tried to go into business with such an operation. The first commercial cable TV company was born.The rise of cable over the following years kicked off decades of political controversy over whether the cable operators should be allowed to stay in business, seeing as they were retransmitting broadcast signals without payment or permission and collecting money for the service. Read the rest

New Hampshire's Supreme Court has ruled that calling someone a "patent troll" is not defamatory because "patent troll" is a statement of opinion and can neither be factually proved nor disproved.The case was brought by Automated Transactions Limited, who claims a broad patent on machines that dispense cash (ATL founder David Barcelou invented some unsuccessful gaming machines in the 1990s and received several patents they say cover the normal operations of ATMs and other common machines). ATL has made millions demanding patent license fees.Bob Stier, a lawyer who represented some of ATL's targets, was quoted in a 2013 interview in which he called ATL a "patent troll" and repeated the characterization on his firm's website. The Credit Union National Association also called ATL a "patent troll" in presentations they gave about demand letters served to their members.This prompted ATL to file suit against Stier, CUNA, the ABA and others in 2016, claiming that the terms "troll," "shakedown" and "extortion" were all defamatory. The case made it to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, who dismissed ATL's case and said that ""The challenged statement, that ATL is a well-known patent troll, is one of opinion rather than fact. The statement is an assertion that, among other things, ATL is a patent troll because its patent-enforcement activity is 'aggressive.' This statement cannot be objectively verified."Officially, the ruling by the New Hampshire Supreme Court only applies in New Hampshire. But state courts do pay attention to rulings in other states. Read the rest

Samuel R "Chip" Delany is a science fiction pioneer: a brilliant literary stylist with dazzling ideas who was one of the field's first openly queer writers, and one of the first Black writers accepted into the field. He is one of the fathers of afrofuturism.Delany's work is hugely influential on generations of writers, and I've been writing about his work here for nearly two decades (!). In 2013, he received a well-deserved honor when the Science Fiction Writers of America named him one of the field's Grand Masters. More recently, journals were published after a crowdfunder. I got to have drinks with Chip last fall after a speech at Swarthmore, and was charmed and delighted by his company.So it's very exciting to see him profiled at length in the New York Times by the queer novelist Jordy Rosenberg, who describes the influence that Delany's work exerted over their career and provides a brief guide to reading Delany.The emotional dynamism of Delany’s sentences has been perhaps less acknowledged than his world-building, or the sweep of his vision. But when asked to speak about writing as a practice, Delany himself often turns to the art of sentences, and of how to imbue words with such “ekphrastic force” that they summon the material presence of an imagined world. When Korga and Marq return to themselves they are awe-struck, struggling to narrate the intensity of their own transformative experience. It is impossible not to hear in that a metatextual echo of the obsession of Delany’s practice: that of creating the most immersive possible aesthetic experience for us, his readers and devoted enthusiasts. Read the rest

The American ransomware epidemic shows no signs of slowing, as the confluence of underinvestment in IT and information security and the NSA's reckless stockpiling of computer vulnerabilities means that petty criminals can extort vast sums from distant municipalities by seizing their entire networked infrastructure.Currently, more than 20 towns and cities in Texas are being held ransom by criminals. The state believes all of the hijackings -- which all landed Saturday morning -- are the work of a single "threat actor."Update on August 2019 Texas Cyber Incident [Texas Department of Information Resources] Read the rest

The Daily Beast reports that a water polo team from a California high school sang Nazi songs during an awards ceremony.The video was uploaded to Instagram by one of the athletes, who also posted lyrics to the song in his Instagram bio. After the video expired, the athlete removed the reference. He did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Garden Grove Unified School district where Pacifica High School resides said the school administrators first became aware of the incident and video four months later in March, but did not say if they disciplined anyone. Amazing how just a few years ago, people thought that the internet -- the loss of privacy, context collapse, a permanent record of misbehavior -- would make indiscretions that once destroyed careers and lives become trivial. Now everyone is seeing that the receipts are in fact loaded with potential, a drumbeat of recrimination so powerful that new civil rights are imagined in its wake. I often feel like younger conservatives, especially, are alarmed at the prospect of their teenage USENET accounts and forum identities being uncovered. But I'm also told that facts don't care about my feelings. QED. Read the rest

It's easy to think of climate denial as a right-wing phenomenon, but a growing and ultra-violent strain of white-nationalism also embraces climate science, in the worst way possible.Several of the recent white nationalist mass killers have described themselves as "ecofascists" and/or have deployed ecofascist rhetoric in their manifestos. The short version of ecofascism is that it's the belief that our planet has a "carrying capacity" that has been exceeded by the humans alive today and that we must embrace "de-growth" in the form of mass extermination of billions of humans, in order to reduce our population to a "sustainable" level.In some ways, ecofascism is just a manifestation of "peak indifference": the idea that denial eventually self-corrects, as the debt built up by a refusal to pay attention to a real problem mounts and mounts, until it can no longer be denied. Eventually, the wildfires, floods, diseases (and ensuing refugee crises) overcome all but the most dedicated forms of bad-faith motivated reasoning and self-deception, and people start to switch sides from denying science to embracing it.But there's an ugly side to peak indifference: that denialism can give way to nihilism. As activists seek to engage people with the urgent crisis, they describe it (correctly) as an existential threat whose time is drawing nigh. Once people acknowledge the threat, it's easy for them to conclude that it's too late to do anything about it ("Well, you were right, those cigarettes did give me lung-cancer, but now that I've got it, I might as well enjoy my last few years on earth with a cigarette between my lips"). Read the rest

The LEGO Tantive IV is a must have for my family LEGO display.Even far, far than the Escape pod.This set comes with a 1769 piece Tantive IV and 5 minifigs including Bail Organa.LEGO Star Wars: A New Hope 75244 Tantive IV Building Kit, New 2019 (1768 Pieces) via Amazon Read the rest

President Barack Obama opened his summer reading list post with encouragement to read or re-read Toni Morrison and then suggested ten other titles including the following:• Sometimes difficult to swallow, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is a necessary read, detailing the way Jim Crow and mass incarceration tore apart lives and wrought consequences that ripple into today.• Exhalation by Ted Chiang is a collection of short stories that will make you think, grapple with big questions, and feel more human. The best kind of science fiction.• Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women examines what happens to characters without important women in their lives; it'll move you and confuse you and sometimes leave you with more questions than answers.See the rest of President Obama's picks here.image: President Barack Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia shop for books at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., on Small Business Saturday, Nov. 29, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Read the rest

Daniel Pantaleo used fatal chokehold during the 2014 arrest of Eric Garner

Agent King is an adult animated series about Elvis Presley as a government spy. Priscilla Presley and rock singer John Eddie created the show for Sony and Netflix with Archer's Mike Arnold as writer and showrunner. John Varvatos is designing Elvis's animated outfits. From Spin:Agent King... imagines Elvis Presley trading his white jumpsuit for a jet pack as he’s inducted into a secret government spy program to help battle dark forces that threaten the country he loves — all while holding down his day job as the most famous rock ‘n’ roll star on the planet...“From the time Elvis was a young boy he always dreamed of being the superhero fighting crime and saving the world!” said Priscilla Presley, who was married to Elvis from 1967-73. Read the rest

In Ohio, a racist 20-year-old man was arrested over the weekend for threatening to attack a Jewish community center, in a post on Instagram.The image in this blog post is a screengrab of that Instagram post, which bizarrely remains publicly visible and hasn't been removed from view.The FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force raided Reardon’s house on Friday, and seized multiple semi-automatic weapons, dozens of rounds of ammunition, gas mask, and bulletproof armor, local news WYTV reported.Tasneem Nashrulla reports for Buzzfeed News:James Patrick Reardon, 20, was held at the Mahoning County Jail on charges of telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing, according to jail records. His bond was set at $250,000 and he is set to appear in court on Monday.New Middletown Police began investigating Reardon after he posted a video on Instagram on July 11 that showed a man shooting a semi-automatic rifle, accompanied by sirens and screams, WYTV reported.(...) As of Sunday, the post on the Instagram account that appeared to belong to Reardon remained public. The account’s bio section describes him as, “Just a local IRA man trying to live his life,” and contains posts filled with anti-Semitic slurs, derogatory comments against minorities, and guns.The FBI Violent Crimes Task Force raided Reardon’s house on Friday and seized several semi-automatic weapons, dozens of rounds of ammunition, a gas mask, and bulletproof armor.Authorities also recovered anti-Semitic and white nationalist propaganda from his house.Reardon participated in the 2017 Charlottesville Nazi rally, of which President Trump said “there are very fine people” on the Nazi side of America. Read the rest

The City of Santa Monica is looking to displace a year old homeless feeding program because it is too successful.ABC7:Steve Petramale has been feeding at least 100 homeless people every week at Reed Park for more than a year.Santa Monica officials told Petramale the park is not a good location for his food program. They had threatened to issue a citation if he served meals this Sunday.Petramale says he's willing to work with the city to find a new location, but he wants to make sure the meals continue."I'm more than willing to make this work so everyone is happy and especially that these people eat," he said. "That's my main concern."Some neighborhood residents have complained."Neighbors are concerned about the amount of people, the lack of play space," said Alisa Orduna, an advisor on homelessness with the city of Santa Monica. "The lack of space to be able to stretch out and have their activities."Petramale says he's sympathetic."I understand your concern and why you're upset but I really do feel, regardless, everyone needs to eat," he said.You may donate to Petramale's organization FamilyFood.us via Venmo. Read the rest

"I saw light,” said Horry County, South Carolina resident Romulus McNeill said a few days ago after a lightning bolt just missed him. “I tried to get up out of there like the Roadrunner."(WSOC-TV) Read the rest

Illegitimate, popular vote losing, and manifestly unfit United States President Donald Trump said on Monday that at a recent dinner with Tim Cook -- what, you didn't think they hung out and shared meals? -- the Apple CEO made a “very compelling argument” that Apple may lose its competitive edge to Samsung because of Trump's tariffs on goods from China. As Bloomberg News reported, Samsung won't be hit by those same tariffs when exporting goods to the U.S., because Samsung makes them in Korea.Trump, who is an idiot, spoke today as if finally realizing that China tariffs will end up harming American technology companies more than they harm China.“It’s tough for Apple to pay tariffs if it’s competing with a very good company that’s not,” Trump said.Tim Cook had chat with Trump about Apple rival Samsung. Majority of Apple’s products, made in China, due to be hit with 10% tariffs in next weeks/months. Samsung products won’t be subject to tariffs when imported by U.S. because made in South Korea.https://t.co/DNcHEqimxb— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) August 18, 2019Trump again admits the tariffs China was supposedly paying are actually borne by U.S. companies -- this time while talking about Applehttps://t.co/0DSIqZJKm6— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) August 19, 2019🤯Here, President Trump says Apple is paying the tariffs, which makes it harder to compete w Samsung. Previously he said China is paying the tariffs. & Navarro said yesterday China is paying the entire cost of the tariffs & they’re having no effect on US companies and consumers. Read the rest

The Mooch is gonna organize a team of disgruntled former cabinet officials to take down our unhinged and unqualified President. That'd be Donald Trump.The Hill:Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said on Monday that he’s assembling a team of former Cabinet members to speak out against President Trump in an effort to find a Republican challenger to the president in 2020.“I'm in the process of putting together a team of people that feel the exact same way that I do. This is not a ‘Never Trump’ situation, this is not just screeching rhetoric. This is, 'OK, the guy's unstable, everyone inside knows it, everyone outside knows it, let’s see if we can find a viable alternative,'” Scaramucci said Monday on CNN’s “New Day.”“Moreover, I’ve got to get some of these former Cabinet officials in unity to speak up about it.” Scaramucci would not reveal names of former officials that he said feel that Trump is unstable. But he said he expects more to come out publicly in upcoming months. Read the rest

Kan was clear: snatch the pebble and GTFO. Read the rest