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I'm pretty sure that we can all agree that shit has been well out-of-hand in the United States of America for some time now. Children are being taken from their parents and held in deplorable conditions. Folks are murdered for the color of their skin. Gun violence... yeah. It's bullshit. So, it should come as no surprise that a number of nations including New Zealand, The Bahamas, Germany and Japan have all issued travel advisories to their citizens, warning them that traveling to the U.S.A. could result in very bad things. One could argue this away as politics. Amnesty International, however, hasn't got a nationalistic horse in this race. Today, they came out swinging with a statement as well, chatting up the fact that maybe visiting the 'States ain't such a great idea.From Amnesty International: Let's be honest: there's not a damn thing in there that isn't true.Images via Amnesty International Read the rest

Last summer, we published a comprehensive look at the ways that Facebook could and should open up its data so that users could control their experience on the service, and to make it easier for competing services to thrive.In the time since, Facebook has continued to be rocked by scandals: privacy breaches, livestreamed terrorist attacks, harassment, and more. At the same time, competition regulators, scholars and technologists have stepped up calls for Facebook to create and/or adopt interoperability standards to open up its messenger products (and others) to competitors.To make matters more complex, there is an increasing appetite in both the USA and Europe, to hold Facebook and other online services directly accountable for the actions of its users: both in terms of what those users make available (copyright infringement, political extremism, incitements to violence, etc) and in how they treat each other (harassment, stalking, etc).Fool me twice...Facebook execs have complained that these goals are in conflict: they say that for the company to detect and block undesirable user behaviors as well as interdicting future Cambridge Analytica-style data-hijacking, they need to be able to observe and analyze everything every user does, both to train automated filters and to allow them to block abusers. But by allowing third parties to both inject data into their network and pull data out of it--that is, allowing interoperability--the company's ability to monitor and control its users' bad behavior will be weakened.There is a good deal of truth to this, but buried in that truth is a critical (and highly debatable) assumption: "If you believe that Facebook has the will and ability to stop 2.3 billion people from abusing its systems and each other, then weakening Facebook's control over these 2.3 billion people might limit the company's ability to make that happen."But if there's one thing we've learned from more than a decade of Facebook scandals, it's that there's little reason to believe that Facebook possesses the requisite will and capabilities. Read the rest

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay "Interoperability and Privacy: Squaring the Circle, published today on EFF's Deeplinks; it's another in the series of "adversarial interoperability" explainers, this one focused on how privacy and adversarial interoperability relate to each other. Even if we do manage to impose interoperability on Facebook in ways that allow for meaningful competition, in the absence of robust anti-monopoly rules, the ecosystem that grows up around that new standard is likely to view everything that's not a standard interoperable component as a competitive advantage, something that no competitor should be allowed to make incursions upon, on pain of a lawsuit for violating terms of service or infringing a patent or reverse-engineering a copyright lock or even more nebulous claims like "tortious interference with contract."In other words, the risk of trusting competition to an interoperability mandate is that it will create a new ecosystem where everything that's not forbidden is mandatory, freezing in place the current situation, in which Facebook and the other giants dominate and new entrants are faced with onerous compliance burdens that make it more difficult to start a new service, and limit those new services to interoperating in ways that are carefully designed to prevent any kind of competitive challenge.Standards should be the floor on interoperability, but adversarial interoperability should be the ceiling. Adversarial interoperability takes place when a new company designs a product or service that works with another company's existing products or services, without seeking permission to do so. Read the rest

Your phone doesn't have to be the only smart piece of tech in your pocket. We regularly take pens, lighters, and wallets for granted, but here are 10 portable items that improve on those everyday bits of gear and others just like them.TEC Accessories The Orbiterâ„¢ Pinstripe Magnetic Fidget DeviceTired of that same old fidget spinner? This two-piece sensory device involves a magnetic ball that rotates a grade 5 titanium hub, providing continuous, hypnotic movement that you can control and enjoy. And with a nano-composite microlayer, you can be sure it's more durable than typical spinners. TEC Accessories' The Orbiterâ„¢ Pinstripe Magnetic Fidget Device is now $29.99, a full 55% off the list price.Geekey Multi-ToolOpen and closed wrench, a screwdriver, bit driver, wire bender and even a smokeable pipe are just a few of the uses of this multi-tool. It's TSA-compliant, and it's roughly the size and shape of a regular key, so it goes with you wherever your keychain does. The Geekey Multi-Tool is now $22.99, down 58% from the original cost.EverRatchet Ratcheting Keychain Multi-ToolThe emergency fire flint kit makes this pint-sized multi-tool especially useful for the outdoors, but the wire stripper and 7(!) wrenches make it a lifesaver around the house as well. Get the EverRatchet Ratcheting Keychain Multi-Tool for $24.99, a 10% break off the MSRP.Pry.Me Bottle OpenersIt may be billed as the world's tiniest bottle opener, but this grade 5 titanium tool can hold 164,000 times its own weight. Read the rest

Jacob the parrot enjoys dancing to the theme music for the video game Super Mario Bros. Hope you enjoy the video as much as he clearly enjoys performing for it.“Jacob the blue and gold macaw dancing, he just loved the song that was playing.” —@Valyndris. [Link, via IMGUR] Read the rest

Cronch cronch cronch.No sound, unfortunately. Would have made for some very comforting ASMR.I Luv Ice Wow Read the rest

Automattic (beloved parent company of WordPress) is buying Tumblr from Verizon (loathesome parent company of Oath, a division named because its users are generally angry enough to swear at it), at a price "well below" $20m (which is well below the $1.1b Yahoo paid in 2013). No word as to whether Automattic will get rid of Tumblr's world-beatingly-terrible pornography filter. (via Bruce Sterling's Tumblr) Read the rest

I've written about Tom Gauld's wry and wistful books and comics a lot on Boing Boing over the years. One of his latest books is this cleverly bound collection of heavy stock postcards called The Snooty Bookshop. Almost all the postcards have something to do with books, and anyone who loves books will identify with the jokes and stories here. (The "Have you seen my Kindle anywhere?" is something I've said more than once.) If you are actually planning to tear out the cards and mail them to your friends, I suggest that you buy two copies, or just buy one copy and text photos of the cards. Read the rest

Sarah Krouse reports that Automattic, the company behind WordPress, is buying Tumblr from Verizon. WordPress is the software reportedly powering a third of the world's websites, and was itself originally focused on blogging. Tumblr was the blogging service of choice for millions of young people, but floundered after being sold to AOL Yahoo and subsequently cleansed of smut and other advertiser-unfriendly material when Yahoo was itself sold to Verizon. Verizon Communications Inc. has agreed to sell its blogging website Tumblr to the owner of popular online-publishing tool WordPress, unloading for a nominal amount a site that once fetched a purchase price of more than $1 billion. Automattic Inc. will buy Tumblr for an undisclosed sum and take on about 200 staffers, the companies said. Tumblr is a free service that hosts millions of blogs where users can upload photos, music and art, but it has been dwarfed by Facebook, Reddit and other services.Surprise news, and surely good news for those still using Tumblr. It still has plenty of life in it despite the damp carpets and stagnant air. Looking forward to seeing what happens next.But for one thing, the porn will not be back. Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.” Bought on a whim, for a song. Read the rest

Michael Gardi posted instructions for making a replica of the GENIAC ("GENIus Almost-automatic Computer") that was sold in kit form in the 1950s and 1960s for $20.GENIAC consisted of a Masonite back panel with six areas of concentric perforations, six similarly perforated Masonite disks, and some additional hardware listed in the supplies section below.Slotted brass bolts were positioned on the main back panel in such a way that brass "jumpers" inserted into the underside of the Masonite disks would create electrical connections when the disks were rotated over them. The bolts were wired together along with a battery and some lights to create "programs," basically single purpose "machines."Technically GENIAC was a collection of configurable N-pole by N-throw rotary switches, which could be set up to be cascaded and thus perform logical functions. As a result GENIAC could use combinational logic only, its outputs depending entirely on inputs manually set. However, projects outlined in the manual, which started with basic logic circuits, ultimately progressed to such things as a NIM machine and TIC-TAC-TOE machine.Michael Gardi previously on Boing Boing:Complete instructions for making a replica of the Minivac 601 educational computer kit3D printed replica of the Digi-Comp II marble computerHow to 3D print the Think a Dot, a nifty "computer" toy from 1965Make this scale model of the Dr. Nim digital gameAbove, a video by Brian Moriarty. "A description and simulation of 'The Uranium Shipment and the Space Pirates,' the first computerized interactive story, published in 1955 as Project 23 of the GENIAC hobby kit." Read the rest

In 2015 my friend, the fabulous artist Mitch O'Connell, created this excellent illustration of Donald Trump as one of the evil aliens from John Carpenter's 1988 science fiction film, They Live. Once Trump became president, Mitch tried to install a billboard with the illustration, but no one in the US would let him. He ended up displaying it in Mexico City, though.Well, Mitch recently found out that a Times Square billboard company will allow him to display his illustration on a billboard and he's started a gofundme campaign to make this dream a reality. Go, Mitch!It seems since 2017 New York billboard companies might have loosened up a bit, and as long as I sign one of those fancy lawyer letters that says everything is my fault, they’ll take our money and slap the art up on vinyl for the world to see!We have three billboard options starting at $7,892, then $14,112, and the huge supersized one at $45,000 (I'll be posting pics of the locations)!If we don’t reach the minimum, all money gets returned. I’m only raising the exact amount that we’re being charged, no extra cash goes in my pocket.The more we take in, the bigger and better the billboard, but the only way this is going to happen is if everyone chips in a bit, shares, promotes, and pesters their friends and family. Especially rich friends and family. Sadly, I mostly know artists, and they’re always broke.This time, instead of the “Make America Great Again” tagline on the illustration, I wanted to get a little more proactive, and switched it up to “VOTE!”. Read the rest

"Oh, shit. What the hell does that rat-soup-eatin' motherfucker want with me?" Read the rest

Insider attacks, cell-site simulators, SIM-swap attacks, thriving markets in super-cheap, fine-grained location data, robocalls, fictitious coverage maps, and more: does the fact that all this terrible shit keeps happening, and only gets worse, mean that mobile companies and the FCC just don't give a fuck if your mobile phone is a crime wave you carry around with you on your pocket?Duh.As Brian Krebs (previously) writes: crooks own your wireless service because no one is willing to erode the profits of the monopolistic, heavily concentrated mobile carriers. Not the carriers themselves, and also not the Trump FCC, whose dingo babysitter Ajit Pai (a former Verizon exec) is why, whenever the carriers get off scot-free, the call is always coming from inside the house.So what the fresh hell is going on here? And is there any hope that lawmakers or regulators will do anything about these persistent problems? Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Policy, said the answer — at least in this administration — is probably a big “no.”“The takeaway here is the complete and total abdication of any oversight of the mobile wireless industry,” Sohn told KrebsOnSecurity. “Our enforcement agencies aren’t doing anything on these topics right now, and we have a complete and total breakdown of oversight of these incredibly powerful and important companies.”Aaron Mackey, a staff attorney at the EFF, said that on the location data-sharing issue, federal law already bars the wireless carriers from sharing this with third parties without the expressed consent of consumers. Read the rest

In 2008, Berlin's historic Tempelhof airport was converted into a public park. Now, Stephan von Dassel, mayor of the city's central Mitte district, is proposing the installation of drive-in sex booths where sex workers can service clients in their vehicles. Resembling rows of car ports, they are called verrichtungsboxen and can be found in Bonn (above), Utrecht, Amsterdam, and other European cities. From CNN:Stephan von Dassel, the mayor who represents the Green party, is attempting to combat prostitution on Kurfürstenstrasse, an upmarket street in Mitte with a history of sex workers."Residents and businesses have been calling for a ban on street prostitution for many years," he wrote in a statement. Yet he notes that the Berlin Senate has refused to implement regulatory restrictions "because it fears a deterioration of the overall situation."He is now proposing a restriction on street prostitution in the district, instead offering sex workers booths in controlled areas in a bid, he says, to improve the lives of "residents and sex workers" alike...Dassel argues that the current situation for the sex workers on Kurfürstenstrasse is "inhumane," and by refusing to act, the state of Berlin is tolerating "forced prostitution, violence against women and drug addiction."image: "Verrichtungsboxen" in Bonn, Germany (Leonce49, CC BY 3.0) Read the rest

Watch the world champion of gymnastics Simone Biles stick the landing on a triple-double at yesterday's U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Kansas City. Incredible slow motion of that below. Biles won her sixth all-around title. This is two days after she made history with a double-double dismount off the balance beam. Video of that is also below. (ESPN)Simone Biles, in extreme slow motion. pic.twitter.com/mjdYp0zwkv— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) August 12, 2019 Read the rest

Super Mario Maker 2 is designed to let you create your own Mario platformer levels, but the tools are flexible enough that a sufficiently ingenious creator can make all kinds of amazing things with them.Enter ねぎちん, whose Super Mario Maker 2 level, 3D Maze House (P59-698-55G), is a first-person adventure game in the mold of Wizardry, an astounding technical feat. The basic setup is this: Mario needs to escape a creepy house by collecting a few coins, thus granting him a special key for a locked door. The top left of the screen is what Mario “sees,” while the bottom gives details on where Mario is located—not just what floor, but precisely where in the house, too—and the right is how Mario makes navigation choices.A First-Person Adventure Is One of the Coolest Mario Maker Levels Yet [Patrick Klepek/Vice](via Four Short Links) Read the rest

lacroix.glitch.me is a Glitch app that generates delicious new flavors of calorie-free sparkling water—or perhaps just honest names for the ones there already are. Read the rest

I have been making some amazing meals on a compact bullet smoker.After my first try with the super cheap bullet smoker, I decided to go for a Santa Maria tri-tip. It worked out beautifully.I loaded up the fire ring of the Dynoglo smoker I was using with lots of wood chunks and charcoal, essentially using the same 'Minion' Method of leaving the center of the ring empty, and filling it with hot coals. The coals slowly burn their way out to the center, while also smoldering the wood. Smoke ensues, food cooks.I read a ton of online forum advice and went for a 90 minute smoke at around 225. I had gone to Trader Joe's and picked up a marinated chunk of meat. It went straight from the bag on to the top grill.At the end of the 90 minutes, I took the center portion of the smoker off and moved one of the cooking grills directly above the fire ring. I seared the tri-tip on the super high heat for a couple of minutes. Less time down there is more, and I would have gone with 60 seconds less per side than I thought I needed.The DynoGlo smoker, however, completely came apart during this smoke. Previously the paint would heat up, run a little, and stick to stuff. This time the paint totally bubbled and started to peel, crack and break. The metal looked a bit fatigued on the inside of the smoker as well. Read the rest

In Saint Louis, thieves broke into Martin Casas's storage locker and snatched his comic book collection. Then they took the comics to a local comic shop to sell them. Thing is, Casas owns the shop. From the Riverfront Times:...A Chesterfield woman called within days of the storage locker burglary and asked if Apotheosis might want to buy a box of her comics. Encouraged by a store employee, she dropped off the box on Friday for review and left her name and phone number. Casas arrived shortly after she left to see what she had brought. As soon as he saw the box, he knew. He had written "Cap" on the side, designating it as a box of Captain America comics. Inside, he searched for one particular comic, the third installment of the Captain America Truth series. He had gotten it years ago and knew his copy had a small red mark on the corner. "Sure enough, there's that book," Casas says. "It's my box." He called the cops first, and then the woman. She apparently had no idea she was trying to sell the comics back to their rightful owner, so Casas played dumb. "This is a great collection," he told her on the phone. "You've got at least a couple hundred dollars in comics there." He arranged a meeting for 10 a.m. the next morning, Friday. But before he hung up, he asked if she might have any more, as he was interested in buying whatever he could for the shop. Read the rest

Amazon is under fire over revelations that it did secret deals with local police departments to buzz-market its Internet of Things "Ring" brand surveillance doorbells, but Ring's shady history predates its acquisition by Amazon in 2017.Earlier that year, Ring created a "Digital Neighborhood Watch" program that offered "swag" and discounts to customers who report "suspicious activity" to local cops. The presentation detailing this promotion hints that this was the first step in a wider project to create a network of private surveillance informants who would build value for Ring. Among the activities that Ring encouraged its kappos to report to the police were "loitering," "strange vans and cars," "people posing as utility workers" and "people walking down the street looking into car windows." Also: "unusual activity."The presentation laying out the program is still available on Ring's website, but the company says the program was limited and short-lived, and discontinued by Amazon after the company's acquisition.Ring outlines a 4-month “milestone” progression that Digital Neighborhood Watches should follow: Month 1: Organize a Digital Neighborhood Watch event and post video from the event on social media. Ring claims that all attendees will receive promo codes for Ring device purchases. Month 2: “Convert 10 new users by downloading Ring app and receive free swag for all users.” The document doesn’t specify what this swag is. Month 3: “Solve a crime with the help of our local police officer and receive 50% off any product.” Month 4: “Blog about Ring app in a positive way on personal Facebook and/or promote Ring devices in Neighborhood Watch Facebook page.” People who did this received unspecified free swag upon providing a screenshot of the posts to Ring. Read the rest

This USB chargeable electric lighter is excellent. I use it to start barbecues and light the burners on our ancient gas range. I've used it multiple times a day since getting it in May and have not had to recharge it yet. It's on Amazon. Read the rest

Salmon cannons are used to quickly move salmon from one place to another. I don't know if they salmon enjoy it, but it looks like something a lot of people would like to try.Fixed the audio for you. pic.twitter.com/YvvTm9WEcb— Tuft e. Cake (@Tuftecake) August 11, 2019 Image: Twitter Read the rest

Atomik Grain Spirit is a (largely) (radiation-free) moonshine vodka distilled from grains grown in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as part of an experiment to determine the transfer of radiation from soil to crops; so far, the University of Portsmouth researchers behind the project have only made one bottle, but they hope to go into production and remit 75% of the proceeds to charities in the Exclusion Zone.There's slightly more than 20Bq/kg of strontium-90 in the grain, but this is removed during the distilling process. The ater comes from a deep, contamination-free local groundwater aquifer. The new enterprise is called "The Chernobyl Spirit Company" and has preliminary approval from Ukrainian authorities. Analytical tests of the water and distillate alcohol were conducted by the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, the University of Southampton GAU-Radioanalytical, the University of Portsmouth Geological and Environmental Laboratories and an independent wine and spirits testing laboratory.The artisanal vodka is one of the results of a project led by Professor Smith, a leading expert on Chernobyl, which was given funding to find out when and if it is safe to start using some of the abandoned land for growing crops.Radioactive-free vodka produced from crops in Chernobyl [Jim Smith/University of Portsmouth]Atomik Grain Spirit(Thanks, Anonymous!) Read the rest

One night in September 2018 the food delivery service Deliveroo went haywire. It sent some customers the same food order several times, and other customers got nothing. In this video, Tom Scott explains that this was a classic example of the "Two Generals" problem, and how Deliveroo's "Night of the Multiple Orders" could have been mitigated -- by using something called an "idempotency token," which allows a transaction to only happen once.Image: YouTube/Tom Scott Read the rest

Joe Navarro is a body language expert and a former FBI agent. In this Wired video, he explains the body language and facial expressions of mobsters like Bugsy Siegel, Mickey Cohen, and John Dillinger.See also: A former FBI spy catcher shows how to read body languageImage: YouTube/Wired Read the rest

New biohacking from the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective (previously): the Pegleg, a stripped-down Piratebox (previously) based on a Raspberry Pi 0 with needless components removed and an extra wifi card soldered on.The whole thing is coated in an implant-safe material and sewn under your skin, where it can be powered by an external battery that uses an induction coil to transmit power to it.Like a regular Piratebox, the Pegleg is a meshing file-server that you fill with any files you want to share or keep, and which can be fetched from nearby wifi-enabled devices.Unlike the Piratebox, the Pegleg can't be (easily) confiscated at a border crossing or other checkpoint, and the Constitutionality of compelling disclosure of keys or logins is more complex and muddled (possibly to the benefit of the bearer) than with other devices.The device measures 2.56" x 1.18" x 0.196" and has so little metal that it hasn't set off airport metal detectors in field tests. The first Pegleg was implanted in Lepht Anonym, and at least two other people have been implanted since. The creators liken it to Johnny Mnemonic's implant in the William Gibson story and film of the same name, and speculate that it could be used to transport data that the bearer couldn't decrypt. Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, says a device like the Pegleg raises concerns similar to those surrounding implanted Internet-connected devices, such as a “smart” pacemaker. Read the rest

Stephen Wolfram's podcast features a 90-minute lecture that he delivered at the 2019 Wolfram Summer School (MP3), recapitulating the history of mathematics from prehistory to the present day.This is a fascinating lecture, and it also epitomizes Wolfram in that it is a magnificent feat that would have benefited immensely from editorial reflection. Wolfram announces that's he's giving the lecture off the top of his head, and as far as that goes, it's incredibly impressive. And yet...it makes you wonder, if he had actually prepared a detailed crib or even written the speech out, how much more fluid would it have been? Would the transitions be smoother? Would he spend less time fumbling for names or dates, or backtracking?It's basically a spoken-word illustration of the problems with his incredible (and incredibly difficult) book A New Kind of Science which was literally too large to read without a special stand, and which was both brilliant and rambling and unstructured, and would have benefited immensely from a hard edit.(Thanks, Swede!) Read the rest

Behold the AmazonBasics Alexa-Equipped Microwave, a $40 item whose low price is belied by the fact everything you say to it is held in contingent perpetuity in an Amazon datacenter. [via]AmazonBasics Microwave simplifies cooking by letting you microwave using your voice and an Echo device. Just say, “Alexa, reheat one cup of coffee,” and Alexa will start reheating with the appropriate power and time settings. Quick-cook presets mean there’s no need to guess cook times or heat levels when you’re defrosting vegetables or microwaving a potato. Plus, Alexa is always getting smarter and adding new presets.If you want a cheap 700w mini-microwave from Amazon, this retro Daewoo model is adorable. Read the rest

Some folks can sleep anywhere. Others, while traveling, need the comfort of a pillow brought with them from home in order get a bit of shut eye. For the privileged handful that have journeyed into space, taking a snooze is, well, like nothing else on earth.In this video, former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino provides some insider insight on what it takes to catch a few Z's in zero-gravity. Read the rest

"Killing in the Name" has never been played quite like this! Thanks to Rockin'1000, a thousand musicians from around the globe gathered at the Commerzbank-Arena in Frankfurt, Germany to play Rage Against the Machine's 1991 hit song together. In some ways, it's a hot, loud mess. In others, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Judge for yourself (or not, you don't have to do what I tell you).Rockin'1000 previously on Boing Boing Read the rest

The 1980s were a pretty sweet time to be a lower-middle class kid in Ontario. Marineland (which I now know was a terrible place for the whales, dolphin and deer they held captive there) and African Lion Safari were only a few hours away, for most of us. Canada's Wonderland, our first major theme park, opened its gates in 1981 and there were miniature golf courses, freaking everywhere. Not a one of them held my Star Wars-focused attention like Tour of the Universe did.Housed in the basement of the CN Tower, Tour of the Universe was a space flight simulation ride set in the far-flung year of 2019. Upon entering Spaceport Toronto, passengers would be issued a round-trip ticket to Jupiter before passing through security, intergalactic customs and being subjected to a medical—inoculation against the Ganymede Rash and Alien Dropsy were a must. Upon entering your shuttle to Jupiter and strapping in, you'd be subjected to a quick, immersive space adventure: the 'trip' took place on a large screen inside of the cabin built out of the bones of a 747 flight simulator that was moved around on hydraulics in time to the action on the forward display. It was the first ride of its kind, anywhere in the world. American kids would have to wait a number of years for a similar experience when Disneyland picked it up and retooled it as Star Tour.Image via YouTube Read the rest

I wrote earlier this year about Lorem Picsum, a site that provides random placeholder images for use in design projects in the spirit of Lorem Ipsum, the classic jumbled-up latin passage used likewise for text. It's taken off. Creator David Marby explains what it's like to serve a billion images a month of a budget.Processing images is very CPU intensive. As Lorem Picsum runs on a very small budget, to cope with all the requests as the service became more popular, we wanted to avoid doing so as much as possible. This meant adding caching to multiple layers of the architecture. We added two separate layers of caching: A CDN in front, as well as a second cache layer using Varnish Cache. To make the image processing as efficient as possible, we decided to use libvips, as it's very fast and resource-efficient.As part of making Lorem Picsum as easy to use as possible, we've never required any registration, API keys, or enforced any usage limits. This has generally worked out well, but once in a while a high traffic site deploys production code calling our API, usually accidentally, which leads to [problems] Read the rest

Prompted by a Stranger Things reference, YouTube guitarist 331Erock created this instrumental metal version of The Neverending Story theme song. One astute commenter calls it "The Evershredding Story."P.S. Head to Germany if you want to ride Falkor IRL.(Likecool) Read the rest

Flights in and out of Hong Kong's airport have halted as protesters filled the airport; many of the protesters at the airport are new to the protests, who have stepped off the sidelines after being exposed to video of police brutalizing other protesters, which inspired them to choose a side and take action. As I type this, local social media is filled with reports of increased riot police presence on the scene and protesters with young children are evacuating. (Image: Erin Hale)Extremely impressive turnout at Hong Kong airport demo against police violence - location is only spot police haven’t fired tear gas pic.twitter.com/fyvUFwAULn— Erin Hale (@erinhale) August 12, 2019 Read the rest

I typed up the following partial transcription of the subtitles:SEAL: geaaaaghSEAL: ggegSEAL: gigphphSEAL: d'egffSEAL: mibphSEAL: guhSEAL: miuhffSEAL: murph!SEAL: d'eggSEAL: egg!SEAL: egg!SEAL: mmnghphpSEAL: fibshSEAL: lliggkSEAL: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Read the rest

Even by the indifferent standards of licensed video games, the athletes' voice acting in NBA 2K15—unaccustomed as they are to public speaking—was something else. The train will be humming in no time.A convincing explanation from a Reddit commenter: "the players are contractually obligated to be there and have zero interest in the project. You’re probably going to get one or two takes per line, and that’s it" Read the rest

Damn near every region in the world has a well of traditional music that they're able to draw cultural water from. Some musical traditions are better known than others. Most folks have likely heard Tuvan throat singing, but aren't able to put a name to it. I can't count the number of subway stations, markets and streets that I've walked through where buskers were filling the air with Sanjuanito. Where such tunes are played and songs are sung, a snippet of cultural history is passed along. Sadly, in a world that all too often favors the new over what has brought joy in the past, the music that once defined a people, even when played often and well, can easily pass into irrelevance. While it's important to maintain the sound of traditional music as a part of our shared cultural history, it's just as vital to find new ways to interpret the melodies of the past in a way that lends it an immediacy to modern listeners. Martin Hayes, one of the finest fiddlers to have come out of Ireland in the past 100 years, seems to understand this.I've talked about Hayes' work here in the past: his moody style of playing is just as much the result of his upbringing in County Clare at the feet of his father, famed fiddler P.J. Hayes, as it is his own genius. In 2015, Hayes's band, The Gloaming, won the Meteor Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year, beating the tar out acts like U2, Hozier and Damien Rice in the process. Read the rest

In 2017, science fiction author Christopher Brown burst on the scene with Tropic of Kansas, an apocalyptic pageturner about martial law in climate-wracked America; now, with his second novel, Rule of Capture, Brown turns everything up to 11 in a militarized, oil-saturated, uninhabitable Texas where private mercs, good ole boys, and climate looters have plans to deliver a stolen election to a hyper-authoritarian president.Donny Kimoe is a lawyer who switched sides: once, he was the kind of federal prosecutor who rated a high-level security clearance, now he's a court-appointed defense attorney for the kinds of secret military tribunals where everyone in the room needs clearance (and where the prosecution still redacts most of the state's evidence from both the defense attorney and the judge Read the rest

Security research Matt Wixey from PWC UK tried putting different kinds of consumer speakers -- noise canceling headphones, smart speakers, parametric speakers -- in an anechoic chamber after infecting them with malware that caused them to emit tones beyond those intended by the manufacturer.In addition to being able to generate tones loud/high enough to damage your hearing, with one smart-speaker, Wixey was able to generate tones so loud that its internal components started to melt.Additionally, attacking the smart speaker in particular generated enough heat to start melting its internal components after four or five minutes, permanently damaging the device. Wixey disclosed this finding to the manufacturer and says that the device maker issued a patch. Wixey says that he is not releasing any of the acoustic malware he wrote for the project or naming any of the specific devices he tested. He also did not test the device attacks on humans. Hackers Can Turn Everyday Speakers Into Acoustic Cyberweapons [Lily Hay Newman/Wired] Read the rest

Imagineering In a Box is a free lecture series on Khan Academy that covers a broad swathe of elements involved in storytelling in built environments, from theming a land to landscaping, architecture, sound design, robotics, smell design (!), color, material science, food-based theming, ride design from pitch to execution, animatronic programming, queue management (MY FAVORITE!), costuming, etc.There's even an educators' guide. This is an incredibly cool thing. Immersive built environments are one of my favorite art-forms and they're growing in complexity and reach (with things like Santa Fe's Meow Wolf) even as they are becoming more homespun and idiosyncratic (with local escape-rooms). Lesson 1: Build your own worldThis lesson addresses the question: where do you want to go? It introduces the idea of experiential storytelling and the difference between an amusement park and a theme park. We’ll explore how storytelling and theme impact every decision made in the design of a land and how they engage all senses.You'll walk out of this lesson with a theme and high concept for a land of your own design along with a mood board and map that conveys the land.Exercise requirements: All activities can be done with physical materials.Time requirement: 2 hours minimumLesson 2: Build your own attractionsThis lesson addresses the question: what do you want to do in your themed land? It introduces students to the range of possible attractions within a themed land with a focus on dark rides. It exposes the importance of theme and storytelling in attractions in general. Read the rest

After a massive trove of leaks revealed deep corruption in the Brazilian "anti-corruption" heroes who put the popular left-wing presidential candidate Lula in jail and paved the way for the election of the fascist strongman Jair Bolsonaro (a crisis that engulfed Sergio Moro, the judge who jailed Lula and went on to serve as Bolsonaro's public security minister), the Bolsonaro regime retaliated with a federal criminal investigation of Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept Brazil.Now, minister Gilmar Mendes has handed down a preliminary judgment on behalf of the nation's highest court, ending the retaliation. The ruling is broad and unequivocal, characterizing any Brazilian state investigation into similarly situated journalists as "an unambiguous act of censorship" and continuing: "The immediate right of free speech is the right to obtain, produce, and disseminate facts and news by any means. The constitutional secrecy of the journalistic source makes it impossible for the state to use coercive measures to constrain professional performance and to impede the form of reception and transmission of what is brought to public knowledge.""A free press is a pillar of any democracy because it is one of the few tools for shining a light on the corrupt acts carried out by society's most powerful actors in the dark," said Greenwald. "That's precisely why those same powerful actors so frequently want to punish journalists for doing our jobs, as Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro and his Minister of Justice and Public Security Sergio Moro have been explicitly threatening to do in response to our exposés."'Huge Victory for Press Freedom': Brazil Supreme Court Bars Bolsonaro From Investigating Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept [Jake Johnson/Common Dreams]Brazil Top Court Prevents Investigation Into US Journalist [AP/NYT](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Bernie Sanders has raised more money than anyone else standing for the Democratic nomination; more importantly, he's raised that money from more people than anyone else in the race, and even more importantly, he's raised that money from more people in swing states that the Democrats will have to flip or hold in order to take the presidency in 2020.Sanders' lead is, in the words of the New York Times, "huge." Sanders' lead is to massive that the only way to visualize the other candidates' fundraising is to produce sub-maps that exclude Sanders' fundraising. Otherwise, his lead renders their efforts to date effectively invisible.The Times spins Sanders' small-money support as a deficit, noting that the average Sanders donor puts in $46, unlike the average of $80 for Biden and Harris. Sanders has raised $36m from 746,000 donors -- a commanding lead over the second-place Elizabeth Warren campaign, which has raised $25m from 421,000 donors.The data comes from the Democratic party fundraising system Actblue, and is current as of June 2019.I am a donor to both the Sanders and Warren campaign. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a huge lead over other Democratic presidential candidates in the number of individual donors they have each accumulated so far.This is the first time since the primary race began in earnest that we can estimate how many individual donors each candidate has attracted — a key indicator of how much they are catching on with voters. Read the rest

Between 2010 and 2016, the FDA approved 210 new medicines and every single one was produced at public expense, part of a $1T US government investment project in medical research. Despite this massive public subsidy, the pharma industry has only grown more concentrated and rapacious, raising prices and diverting the profits to their execs and investors, who now pocket 99% of industry profits: the industry made $500B in profits between 2006 and 2015, and during that time, the US government pumped $33b/year into pharma research.The history of Big Pharma's big business is beautifully told in a long piece by Alexander Zaitchik in the New Republic. Zaitchik describes how the NIH changed its policies in 1968, ending the rule that forced publicly subsidized researchers to assign their patents to the federal government and allowing them instead to flog them on the open market. This created a new kind of academic research program, focused on using public money to develop patented products that would be exclusively assigned to pharma companies who'd be guaranteed monopolies over life-saving medicines.That's when the Chicago School -- the origin node of neoliberalism and the worship of markets as self-correcting, self-optimizing systems that cannot and should not be regulated -- got involved, seeding a network of think-tanks and journal articles that decried competition as "wasteful duplication" and celebrated monopolies for their efficiency.These articles created the fiction of mass private-sector investment in pharma, downplaying the taxpayer's role in subsidizing the industry and lionizing the few pennies that escaped the grasp of execs and shareholders. Read the rest

Good news, everyone!If you live in New York City and your personal information wasn't already compromised by the recent, massive hack of Capital One's customer database, there's still an excellent chance that at least some of the sensitive information in your life has its ass hanging out for the world to see, courtesy of the Fire Department of New York.From Gizmodo:An estimated 10,253 people who used the FDNY’s Emergency Medical Services between 2011 to 2018 had their data exfiltrated well over a year ago, when an “employee, who was authorized to access the records, had uploaded the information onto the personal external device,” which went missing sometime thereafter, according to a statement by FDNY.A personal hard drive! That's been missing! For a year! I'm sure it's fine! The FDNY would love it if you believed this to be true. To make sure that those possibly compromised in the breach, they sent out a letter, via snail mail (I mean, you obviously can't trust computers), talking the those who received medical care from the Fire Department during the aforementioned, seven-year period:What happened:On March 4, 2019, the New York City Fire Department (“FDNY”) was notified that an FDNY employee’s personal portable hard drive was reported missing from an FDNY facility. This hard drive is a portable electronic data storage device that can be attached to a computer. It belonged to an employee authorized to access FDNY patient information and contained confidential personal information about patients who had been treated and/or transported by an FDNY ambulance. Read the rest

Everybody wants to rule the world, but only one video game lets you do it in style - and even peacefully if you're savvy enough with your cultural dominance. Sid Meier's Civilization is on its fifth sequel and counting for good reason. No two games are alike thanks to the random mapping and numerous special scenarios, but they're all a test of your resource management and ruthless diplomacy.Want to see what Meier's cult following has been raving about, or catch up on an old favorite? You're in luck. Full games and expansion packs for the latest versions of Civilization are on deep discount for PC (and for Mac users, via Steam).Sid Meier's Civilization V: CompleteThe graphics boost and hexagonal tiles of Civilization V were a big shot in the arm to the series when it launched in 2010, and this version is still a favorite with many players. This strategist's dream edition not only includes that game but complete versions of Civilization III and IV plus the hit spinoffs Beyond Earth and Beyond Earth - Rising Tide. The entire set of Sid Meier's Civilization V: Complete is now available for $12.50, almost 80% off the original price.Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gold EditionAfter a long wait, the latest edition of Civilization arrived in 2016, tweaking and improving the formula on previous iterations with a new technology system and an increased focus on the terrain. A series of DLC releases capitalized on the changes, and this Gold edition contains enough of them to keep would-be world-beaters challenged for months. Read the rest

These aren't the chalky little marshmallows you'll find in Lucky Charms cereal. Thanks to a collab with Jet-Puffed, large, soft versions of the cereal's hearts, moons, stars, and clovers will be available nationwide indefinitely in September. Fun fact: According to an old General Mills press release (via Wikipedia), each of the marshmallow's shapes have magical "powers."Hearts – power to bring things to lifeShooting Stars – power to flyHorseshoes – power to speed/slow down timeGreen Clovers – luck, but you will never know what kind of luck you will getBlue Moons – power of invisibilityRainbows – instantaneous travel from place to placeRed Balloons – power to make things floatUnicorn – according to the inaugural cereal box, unicorns can "cleanse water with a touch of their horn," "heal whatever troubles you," and "always know when you are telling the truth"Moon – power to change alternate gravityIt appears you'll only be able to harness the powers of the pink hearts, blue moons, yellow stars, and green clovers with this new product.(People) Read the rest

Adversarial Fashions have a line of clothes (jackets, tees, hoodies, dresses, skirts, etc) designed to confound automated license-plate readers; one line is tiled with fake license plates that spell out the Fourth Amendment (!); the designers presented at Defcon this year. (via JWZ) Read the rest

The Washington Post's Drew Harwell takes a deep look at the the use of facial recognition products like Bunk1 at summer camps, in a deliciously terrible piece that alternates between Bunk1's president Rob Burns and Waldo Photos's founder Rodney Rice explaining that everyone loves this and it makes everyone happy, and counsellors, parents, campers and photographers (as well as child development experts and civil libertarians) explaining how it is just fucking terrible, which Rice dismisses as "privacy hysteria."The facial recog summer camp drill goes like this: photographers follow you children around all the time, taking their photos. The facial recognition tool figures out which camper corresponds to which parent and sends the parents pocket-buzzes every time it senses a new photo of your kid, and then you can look at your kid. You can also call your kid if you think they look unhappy or if you are unsatisfied with them in any way and nag them.So kids mob photographers with big, fake smiles and beg to be photographed so their parents won't harass them. The companies have "privacy policies" that grossly overreach, giving them perpetual licenses to distribute all the photos they take forever, for any purpose. They claim to have super-secure data-centers, but won't describe what makes them so sure their data centers are more secure than, say, the NSA's, Equifax, or any of the other "super secure" data centers that have been breached and dumped in recent memory.And while parents enjoy all this looking at their kids while they're away in theory, they also report a kind of free-floating anxiety because they know just enough about their kids' lives at camp to worry, but not enough to assuage their worries. Read the rest

Jeffrey Epstein is dead. The convicted sexual predator committed suicide overnight at MCC Manhattan, the federal lockup where he had been held pending trial on federal sex trafficking charges, law enforcement officials told ABC News. He was on “suicide watch,” but the MCC jail failed, twice, to prevent attempts of suicide. The second time, his attempt to escape justice through death worked. The Miami Herald has confirmed that accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has committed suicide in jail in Manhattan. Story to come. @MiamiHerald— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) August 10, 2019From ABC News:Billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein has died by suicide in his Manhattan jail early Saturday morning, three law enforcement officials told ABC News.He was being held without bail at the Metropolitan Correctional Center awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy and sex trafficking. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, and a judge said he wouldn't face trial before June 2020.He's accused of arranging to have sex with girls as young as age 14 in the early 2000s at Epstein's residences in Manhattan and Florida.The 66-year-old was also hospitalized in July after he was found unresponsive in what appeared to be a possible suicide attempt.Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe urged a June trial date, saying there is "a public interest in bringing this case to trial as swiftly as possible." But Epstein's lawyer, Martin Weinberg, said the case is far from "ordinary," adding the defense team won't be ready before Labor Day 2020. Read the rest