Boing Boing

Ian McDonald's Luna trilogy is filled with fantastically detailed grace-notes that give his lunar society an uncanny veneer of reality; one of the most fascinating and thoughtful of these details is the cocktails that McDonald's clannish lunarians consume, each great house with its own signature tipple.In a new essay for Tor.com, McDonald describes the worldbuilding behind his booze, which is always a cocktail made from hard spirits because of the carbon budget needed to grow grain or fruit for beer or wine.But: spirit alcohol. Yes! You can make it from anything. Vodka and gin! Liquor opened up an entire world for me. My moon is a cocktail culture. The underground cities run on three different time zones so it’s always Happy Hour somewhere. The Cortas have their own signature cocktail; the Blue Moon. (I tried it, oh my beloveds. When I write a book, I sink deep into the mindset of the characters—it’s like method acting. I have become a real gin connoisseur/bore. My favourite? The light and fragrant Monkey 47 from the Black Forest in Germany. I do it for you, dear readers.)And so, Dior. Because when you picture a Martini glass, you picture it in the gloved hand of Audrey Hepburn. And then I had it all. I didn’t want a Moon of people in coveralls and shorts and tank tops—these are people who have mastered 3D printing. If you can print clothes, why not in the style of one of the most elegant eras in fashion history? Read the rest

Lifehacker bravely read Starbucks' Terms of Service and reports that you can get free refills on certain drinks. This is news to me.According to the company’s website, to qualify, you have to have purchased your original drink using the Starbucks app with a Starbucks card connected to your account. You’ll have to present this to a barista to obtain a refill.One other thing: if you leave the store, the deal's off.(Just for fun, I'm using this photo of a Starbucks in Kyoto. I went there when I was in Japan last year, and it's by far the coolest Starbucks I've been to. See more photos here.)Image: Starbucks in old town Kyoto, by f11photo/Shutterstock Read the rest

"While most beds provide convenient ingress/egress from the sides, I wanted to design one where you need to crawl in and out through the foot of the bed. I also wanted it to be difficult to make the bed each morning."I'm so glad Core 77 started the Weekly Design Roast, in which they make sarcastic comments about poorly designed luxury garbage of the kind that appeals to criminal oligarchs and those who aspire to the lifestyle of criminal oligarchs.Previously: Enjoy this weekly dose of snark about bad product designs Read the rest

“Go back to where you came from.”

• Trump-linked businessman testified in Mueller probe• Search of 3 iPhones seized from George Nader in 2018 via search warrant turned up child pornography, say feds“Jailed Mueller witness George Nader showed up briefly in court this AM to hear he faces an indictment on child-porn and related charges,” writes Politico's excellent courts and law reporter Josh Gerstein, whom you should follow.“Defense suggests feds have never filed charges in a case like his.” One of Nader's defense lawyers was trying to convince the judge to reconsider earlier orders to detain Nader pending trial (just like Jeffrey Epstein!).“This is not a typical child pornography case,” the attorney said to the judge. A quote for the ages.Nader is a wealthy Lebanese-American businessman and Middle East expert was a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation, and has been indicted on charges of importing child pornography and traveling with a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity.From the Politico story:George Nader, 60, made a brief appearance Friday morning in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to be arraigned on the new indictment, which was returned July 3 and unsealed Friday.Nader was involved in various meetings and discussions related to the Trump presidential transition that drew the attention of Mueller investigators, including a meeting that Erik Prince, the founder of private military contractor Blackwater, held with a Russian ally of President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles in January 2017.When Nader flew into Dulles Airport outside Washington in January 2018, he was questioned by agents working for Mueller. Read the rest

Rent the Backyard is a startup that is building small standalone apartments in people's backyards and splitting the rent with the homeowner.From Techcrunch:That means Rent the Backyard works with a partner to build the apartment, finances the construction, lists the property, selects the tenant, collects the rent and serves as the landlord. In exchange for all that, it has an ownership stake in the unit and keeps 50% of the rent.The startup also handles the permitting, which co-founder Spencer Burleigh said has become much easier with recent changes in California law. In fact, he pointed to stories about how these changes have led to skyrocketing applications (16 in 2016, 350 in 2018) to build “in-law” units in San Jose, which is where the startup is focused for now.Image: Rent the Backyard Read the rest

Philanthropy is theoretically an expression of generosity and fellow-feeling, but in an increasingly unequal world, charitable giving is a form of reputation laundering for super-rich oligarchs who build their massive fortunes on savage programs of exploitation and immiseration. The idea is that you can paper over the fact that deliberately starting the opioid crisis made you richer than the Rockefellers by having your name plastered all over the world's leading art galleries and museums.Nowhere is this more on display today than in Paris, where the farcically wealthy millionaires and billionaires who collectively pledged €600m to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedra failed to pay out a single sou as of mid-June. It's desperately needed: Notre Dame is crying out for cash to pay its workers' wages and remove the lead from its ceilings so that it can start work on rebuilding, but the super-rich are holding out for the chance to endow a wing or a room or a gift-shop, the kind of thing that could provide some reputation-laundering ROI.When the cathedral publicly complained about the broken promises in June, the Arnault (Vuitton) and Pinault (Gucci) families coughed up €10m each. They had pledged €100m and €200m, respectively. Meanwhile, the L’Oréal family foundation is MIA, as is oil giant Total.Many of these same billionaires are the generous Macron benefactors, among the 600 super-rich donors who donated €3m and €4.5m to Macron's campaign slush-fund (Macron has since slashed taxes on the super rich, representing a 60,000% ROI on their campaign contributions). Read the rest

Kevin Kelly and I interviewed Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza for the Cool Tools podcast. Rob is a fascinating person, as you probably already know from the thousands of posts he's written here. He is an excellent artist, designer, coder, and writer, and has a delightful sense of humor. Rob is also the founder of Txt.fyi, an effectively invisible publishing platform and low-key internet cult. It's always a huge treat to be able to chat with him.Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single pageShow notes:Vortexgear Tab 75 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard"Mechanical keyboards -- the appeal is in the old-fashioned key switches which have a more tactile, more clicky feel to them, and there's all sorts of different types that you can get depending on your preferences. It's just great for people who type a lot who just don't like modern keyboards or who are getting sick of butterfly keyboards from Apple. I think for anyone who listens to a tech podcast or is familiar with the cult of mechanical keyboards, a big part of the appeal is you can swap out the keys, so there's a cottage industry of key caps and sorts of different color schemes and styles. You can have a keyboard that looks like an old typewriter or one that looks like a very specific 8-bit computer that you had 30 years ago, or that looks like a nuclear missile launch silo console. Read the rest

Nostalgia time! Top Gun was not my favorite Val Kilmer film, but it did teach me that the Navy pilots are more pilot than Air Force pilots.Football? Not volleyball? Read the rest

The world is full of corrupt oligarchs looking to smuggle their money out of their countries and put it somewhere where the rule of law that they have helped to dismantle at home still reigns; a favourite safe asset class is luxury housing in major cities, which is viewed as easy to sell on short notice due to the large supply of other money-laundering oligarchs.Cities don't need more luxury housing, though (not least because a sizable fraction of it is never occupied and sits empty, a safe deposit box in the sky): they want affordable housing. But since neoliberal orthodoxy has made it nearly impossible to imagine that cities might publicly fund their housing, cities are left begging commercial developers to build "below-market rent" housing (that is, housing that is intended to be lived in) rather than hyper-profitable luxury housing.A favoured tool for accomplishing this is to offer developers exemptions to urban planning restrictions in exchange for designating a few of the units they build as "subsidised" or "low income" housing. For example, if a plot of land is designated for buildings that are no taller than 20 stories, a developer might be given permission to build to 25 or 30 stories, provided a couple of those additional floors are below-market-rent housing.But part of the appeal of luxury housing for oligarchs is segregation from poor people. The foundational belief of right-wing thought is that some people are intrinsically superior to others and that God tells you who the best people are (by giving them white skin, or penises, or a lot of money). Read the rest

A family-run restaurant in Bangkok has had a the same giant pot of soup simmering for 45 years. When it runs low, they top it off.From Great Big Story:It’s a beef noodle soup called neua tuna. It simmers in a giant pot. Fresh meat like raw sliced beef, tripe and other organs is added daily. But any broth leftover is preserved at the end of each day and used in the next day’s soup. It’s an ancient cooking method that gives the soup a unique flavor and aroma.Image: YouTube/Great Big Story Read the rest

On Friday, the Palm Beach sheriff opened an internal affairs investigation into the absurdly lenient handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, after Epstein entered a guilty plea in his prostitution case.“The release refers to examining his deputies' actions in overseeing Epstein's work release,” says Miami Herald investigations editor Casey Frank. “Will it examine his own actions in approving the work release in the first place? A question we would ask him if the sheriff was talking to Julie K. Brown, which he thus far refuses to do.”We don't wonder why.From the Miami Herald's story Friday morning:The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office has opened an internal affairs investigation into whether it properly handled the case of multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, the part-time Palm Beach resident accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls.Specifically, it will look at the decision more than a decade ago to allow Epstein to be free 12 hours a day on work release while serving a short sentence in the county stockade on a prostitution-related charge.On Friday, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw — the same sheriff who oversaw the controversial work release arrangement — ordered the investigation be done.“Sheriff Bradshaw takes these matters very seriously and wants to determine if any actions taken by the deputies assigned to monitor Epstein during his work release program violated any agency rules and regulations, during the time he was on PBSO work release program,” a news release said.[via @jkbjournalist] Read the rest

The American singer-songwriter-sexual-predator R. Kelly has been ordered to be brought in the custody of U.S. Marshals to New York, where he will be arraigned on August 2 on racketeering conspiracy charges. R. Kelly is alleged to have manipulated and coerced girls under the legal age of consent whom he met at concerts, and then sexually abused them.AND ALSO in R. Kelly legal news, one of his employees was arraigned today in the federal case out of Chicago:A former employee of R. Kelly, who was among those charged in the new indictments against the famed R&B singer, is expected to be arraigned in Chicago court Friday. Milton Brown was scheduled to appear in court late Friday morning for arraignment in the federal case.JUST IN: #RKelly has been ordered to be brought in the custody of U.S. Marshals to New York, where he will be arraigned on Aug. 2 on racketeering conspiracy charges alleging he groomed young girls he met at concerts and later sexually abused them.— Jason Meisner (@jmetr22b) July 19, 2019IMAGE: “Symbol of law and justice. Concept law and justice. Scales of justice, gavel and book” by Aerial Mike for Shutterstock Read the rest

Joe Karganis writes, "This is the 'Co-Assignment Galaxy' created by David McClure. It maps the top 160K titles in the new Open Syllabus 2.0 dataset, based on the frequency with which those texts are assigned (reflected in the size of the dot) and assigned together (reflected in the location and clustering of the dots). It's US centric given the composition of the syllabus collection, but also a unique representation of human knowledge as a collective, connected project. Read the rest

An article of faith among neoliberals is that monopolies are efficient because they are so profitable that they can offer better prices to their customers as well as better services.Reality has a well-known left-wing bias, however. A new Pcmag analysis of 356,925 broadband speed tests found that the super-concentrated communications giants -- universally loathed companies like Frontier, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Charter, etc -- underdelivered and overcharged, while independent and municipally owned ISPs (often small town operations, though Sonic has service in a few large cities, too) offered the fastest, cheapest broadband in America. “You can rapidly see that nonprofit business models have an important role to play in improving Internet access,” Mitchell said.A study last year out of Harvard showed that community-run ISPs tend to offer faster, cheaper broadband and superior customer service to private ISPs. Community ISPs also tend to offer clearer pricing with fewer hidden surcharges, the study found.Threatened by the specter of actual competition, the telecom lobby has convinced more than two dozen states to pass laws restricting or simply banning communities from building their own broadband networks. These laws also frequently restrict a local town or city’s ability to strike public private partnerships, even if locals have voted for the option. The Fastest ISPs of 2019 [Eric Griffith/Pcmag]Locally Run ISPs Offer the Fastest Broadband in America [Karl Bode/Motherboard](via /.) Read the rest

If you only look at porn with your browser in incognito mode, your browser will not record your porn-viewing history; but the porn sites themselves overwhelmingly embed tracking scripts from Google and Facebook in every page: 93% of 22,484 porn sites analyzed in a New Media & Society paper had some kind of third-party tracker, with Google in the lead, but also including trackers from some of the worst privacy offenders in Silicon Valley, like Oracle.The data extracted by these trackers (browser config, IP address, unique advertising IDs assigned by your phone vendor) can be used to link your incognito activity to the rest of your browsing.There are many privacy tools that block some or all of these trackers, though depending on how the porn site is configured, this may break the site's functionality: you could use some or all of Brave Browser and Privacy Badger to keep the tracking scripts at bay. However, your IP address will still be transmitted to porn sites, which may log the address indefinitely and is no better at preventing leaks of this data than anyone else (cough Equifax cough).To disguise your IP address, you need to use a VPN of some sort. There are many commercial VPNs -- though they, too, might be logging your browsing activity -- and there's also Tor and Tor Browser Bundle (and Brave also integrates with Tor), though this may be too slow for video-streaming.Ultimately, tools only get you so far when it comes to privacy, and unless they're backstopped by regulation (for example, if we had a statutory damages regime for privacy breaches that would make storing user data into a high-risk, high-cost, uninsurable business activity), you are stuck in an arms race that you're likely to lose. Read the rest

After Brexit, Tory leaders are hoping to strike a bilateral trade agreement with the USA that will begin the dismantling of the NHS, starting with a ban on price-controls for pharma and open doors for America's wasteful, cruel, useless health-care insurance mega-corporations. In this video, national treasure Stephen Fry explains how the UK and US systems compare, and how American media lies about the state of the NHS to credulous, mouth-breathing Fox News zombies. If you want to keep the NHS out of any UK-US trade deal, sign the petition here. Learn more about Brexit here. Read the rest

Theoretically, there's never been an easier time for marketers. The ubiquity of social media means a good word - or a good brand - can spread like wildfire with very little effort. But as limitless as the internet is, there's a lot of competition and noise to contend with. And the vast graveyard of failed start-ups out there pays testimony to the fact that what works on what platform won't necessarily get traction on another.Enter the Silicon Valley Digital Marketers Bundle, a master class for online advertisers that truly covers all the bases.This comprehensive series of 11 courses cover the principles that apply to any savvy marketing effort, but also dives deep into the specific social media sites that will give you the biggest bang for your marketing dollar - and if you're marketing right, you might not even need to spend a dollar.Copywriting - Write Marketing Headlines That Sell: Good copy is good copy, no matter what the platform. Learn how to write it and tailor it to your audience.Facebook Ads & Facebook Marketing Mastery Guide 2019: How to work the algorithms on the world's biggest social media site.MailChimp 101 - Learn Email Marketing: This course teaches you how to use the mass mailing service to reach eyeballs without your message landing in the trash folder.How To Start a Profitable Social Media Marketing Agency: Ready to take your marketing game to the next level? There are plenty of businesses that need a digital mouthpiece. Read the rest

In the Federal Register, EPA said “critical questions remained regarding the significance of the data” that show chlorpyrifos causes neurological harm to young children.

DoNotPay (previously) is a collection of consumer-advocacy tools automated the process of fighting traffic tickets, help homeless people claim benefits, sue Equifax for leaking all your financial data, navigating the airlines' deliberately confusing process for getting refunds on plane tickets whose prices drop after you buy them, and filing small-claims suits against crooked corporations.The service was created by Joshua Browder, a British hacker who moved to the USA to pursue a Stanford computer science degree and who funds operations with a mix of venture capital and cash donations.His latest feature is the "Free Trial Card" -- a virtual credit card that you use to anonymously sign up for services' free trials, using any name and email. When the trial period ends, any attempts to charge the card fail, freeing you from going through the onerous process of cancelling (newspaper paywalls are among the worst for this: the Wall Street Journal lets you create a trial account in seconds with your browser at any time of night or day, but requires you to wait three business days and call a toll number during business hours to cancel the trial, and when you do, you're met with a high-pressure sales-pitch from the person who processes the cancellation).If you want to continue to use the service after the free trial, fear not: the app automatically emails you when your free trial is about to expire so you can put down a real card to pay for ongoing access. Read the rest

The JNU Data Depot is a joint project between rogue archivist Carl Malamud (previously), bioinformatician Andrew Lynn, and a research team from New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University: together, they have assembled 73 million journal articles from 1847 to the present day and put them into an airgapped respository that they're offering to noncommercial third parties who want to perform textual analysis on them to "pull out insights without actually reading the text."This text-mining process is already well-developed and has produced startling scientific insights, including "databases of genes and chemicals, map[s of] associations between proteins and diseases, and [automatically] generate[d] useful scientific hypotheses." But the hard limit of this kind of text mining is the paywalls that academic and scholarly publishers put around their archives, which both limit who can access the collections and what kinds of queries they can run against them.By putting 73 million articles in a repository without having to bargain with the highly concentrated and notoriously rent-seeking scholarly publishing industry, the JNU Data Depot team are able to dispense with the arbitrary restrictions put on data-mining. They believe that they are on the right side of Indian copyright law as well, as they are a scholarly institution that is making a single digital copy for local use, and not circulating the articles on the internet; they believe that these precautions might shield them from a lawsuit. They're relying on precedent set in a 2016 Delhi High Court Ruling that turned on the legality of a copy shop that sold photocopied selections from expensive textbooks, where the court held that section 52 of the 1957 Copyright Act allows reproduction of copyrighted works for education and research. Read the rest

Nacho Analytics sells browsing data from more than 4m users (they advertise "See Anyone’s Analytics Account"), a service it calls "God mode for the internet." The data is harvested by embedding Nacho's spyware (dubbed "Dataspii") in a variety of browser extensions, mostly for Chrome, but also some for Firefox.Nacho -- and the browser extensions it relies on to harvest data -- claim that everyone involved opts in, provides full consent, and can be assured that the data that Nacho gathers provides to its customers is anonymized first.But as an in-depth Ars Technica report demonstrates, all of these claims are highly dubious. The "consent" is often obtained through click-throughs that accede to lengthy sets of terms, which include cryptic notices about having your data harvested in this way.The supposed anonymization is even more problematic: though the company excises obvious personal identifiers from the URLs it harvests, many services unwisely embed personal information in their URLs, and still more rely on secret URLs as the only way of keeping personal data private -- researcher Sam Jadali found that it could use Dataspii/Nacho's "anonymized" URLs to log in to people's electronic health records, internal company documents, tax returns and other extremely sensitive data, including corporate trade secrets and sensitive information from Tesla, Blue Origin, Amgen, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, AthenaHealth, Epic Systems, FireEye, Symantec, Palo Alto Networks, Trend Micro, Amazon, FireEye, BuzzFeed, NBCdigital, AlienVault, CardinalHealth, TMobile, Reddit, and UnderArmour.Some of the blame for this is on web developers who put sensitive info in URLs and rely on URL secrecy to protect user data. Read the rest

I have a Kano computer and they are a lot of fun, and actually can be used as an everyday computer, if you aren't looking for blazing speed. It comes with a wireless keyboard/trackpad, a Raspberry Pi 3 (with Wifi and Bluetooth built-in), speaker and amp, a microSD card with Kano's custom Linux OS, a case, and all the cables you need. The only thing it needs is an HDMI monitor. It comes with a lot of excellent custom software, including apps that teach you how to program in Python. Amazon is selling it for , which is less than you'll pay if you buy the components individually. Read the rest

Fraudster Martin Shkreli, who enjoyed a brief period of notoriety as an Internet troll and pharmaceutical price-gouger, must remain in prison after a federal appeals court upheld his conviction for multiple instances of securities fraud.From CNBC:The three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circut also upheld the more than $6.4 million in forfeiture that a judge imposed on Shkreli last year when she sentenced him for his conviction on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.Shkreli, 36, is serving a seven-year sentence in a federal prison in Pennsylvania.In its ruling, the appeals panel disagreed with Shkreli’s claim that his trial judge’s instructions to the jury at his trial were incorrect and confusing to jurors.“The instruction given here correctly stated the law,” the appeals panel said in its decision. ” As such, we disagree with Shkreli that exclusion of additional language describing an element not required for the charged crime constituted a prejudicial error.”Image: JStone/Shutterstock Read the rest

FaceApp is a wildly popular smartphone app that alters people's faces with various filters. Its most popular filter is one that ages the person in the photo. It turns out when you upload your photos to FaceApp, the Russian company that made the app gets a perpetual license to your photos. In other words, your photo could end up on a billboard or online advertisement for any imaginable product or service and you can't do anything about it.From Fox 29:Small business lawyer Elizabeth Potts Weinstein tweeted out the “User Content” section of FaceApp’s terms, saying “if you use #FaceApp you are giving them a license to use your photos, your name, your username and your likeness for any purpose including commercial purposes (like on a billboard or internet ad).” “You grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate... distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content,” the FaceApp terms read.If you use #FaceApp you are giving them a license to use your photos, your name, your username, and your likeness for any purpose including commercial purposes (like on a billboard or internet ad) -- see their Terms: https://t.co/e0sTgzowoN pic.twitter.com/XzYxRdXZ9q— Elizabeth Potts Weinstein (@ElizabethPW) July 17, 2019(Image: Adam J. Manley, CC-BY,modified (cropping)) Read the rest

A Pentagon cybersecurity contractor threatened to murder Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) if she advanced a bill to vaccinate children in public schools, The Daily Beast reports today. Yes, we are in a dystopian hellscape.The feds charged Darryl Varnum in late June after he told the Congresswoman he was ‘gonna kill your ass if you do that bill,’ report The Beast's Jackie Kucinich and Lachlan Markay. Varnum's LinkedIn says he's “a senior cyber systems engineer.” In his threats, the man told the lawmaker, who is black, to “get the fuck out” of America, which echoes the same sort of explicitly racist inflammatory speech that is increasingly used by Donald Trump at his hate rallies and on Twitter.According to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Maryland, Varnum left a voicemail for Rep. Wilson that said, in part: “I will fucking come down and kill your fucking ass. And you’re a Congressperson, that’s fine. I hope the fucking FBI, CIA and everybody else hears this shit. This is the United States of America, bitch. Get the fuck out.”Wilson was at the time working on the introduction of a bill that would require public schools to vaccinate registered students.Darryl Albert Varnum of Westminster, Maryland called the congressperson—identified only as “congressperson #1”—on June 28, 2019, according to the complaint, and left a voicemail threatening to kill the member if the bill was introduced. “I’m gonna kill your ass if you do that bill. I swear,” Varnum’s voicemail began. Read the rest

Amazon dun goofed on Prime Day by listing high-end camera gear that usually sells for thousands of dollars at the fire-sale price of $95. Petapixel has an article with screenshots of gleeful shutterbugs' bargain purchases.“Literally everything is $94.48,” one member writes. “I have bought like 10k worth of stuff that was like 900 dollars total.”“I got a $13,000 lens for $94,” another member writes regarding their Canon EF 800mm f/5.6L IS order. “LOL waiting for the cancellation but that's like 99.3% off.”Other members spoke to Amazon customer service about their order and were told that the order would indeed ship. Read the rest

The Sheffield-based experimental music act 65daysofstatic has a new album coming out in September, called "Replicr, 2019." Today, the band began its launch publicity by releasing a video from the album, only to have the video blocked on multiple services by copyright bots working on behalf of Sony, which distributed the band's label, Superball.It's an important example of the kinds of problems created by automated filtering systems, like the one that the EU turned into a continent-wide obligation with the passage of the new Copyright Directive in March (the EU is about to gut its online privacy protections to ensure that any future legal challenges to the Copyright Directive fail).This kind of absurd situation is intrinsic to the way that these filters work: large rightsholder organizations like Sony add "upload everything to the filter databases" to their workflows, so any time something is being entered into their catalog, they're also automatically blocked from being published by anyone else. But often, these copyright claims include works that don't belong to the rightsholder, who faces no penalties for making false copyright claims.Sony is a particularly egregious offender: it has claimed copyright over stock art that it licensed from independent artists and then blocked those artists from posting their own work; it claims all piano performances of Beethoven and other classical composers, etc. But this isn't limited to Sony: Back in 2012, multiple news broadcasters claimed copyright over NASA's Mars Lander footage, having aired NASA's livestream in their nightly newscasts, which were automatically uploaded to Youtube's copyrighted work blacklist. Read the rest

The Q makes whimsical mechanisms mainly from wood and cardboard, using basic hand tools. In this video, he shows how he made a "fully working gearbox made out of cardboard, Rock 'em Sock 'em board game, a skateboard from newspapers, incredible miniature railway with train track changes, and, last but not least, a semi-auto coin sorting machine from plywood!"Image: YouTube/The Q Read the rest

“For the first time ever, there's a comprehensive map on where local police departments have partnered with Amazon's Ring,” CNet's Alfred Ng writes.“Amazon and police have been working closely together with Ring partnerships, sometimes using taxpayer money to buy video doorbells and offer them to residents at a discount.”The technology rights nonprofit Fight For the Future just released its ' Read the rest

50 years ago this month, our species placed its first footprint on the moon... and we've been leaving space junk there ever since. I mostly kid: the limits of our technology at the time forced us to leave bits and pieces of what NASA's astronauts brought to the moon with them—I like to think of what's up there more as monuments to audacity than litter.If you're so inclined, CBS is streaming their coverage of Apollo 11's 1969 mission to the moon right now, from soup to nuts. They've even left in the OG commercials that those keeping up with the mission's progress would have watched. It's a great way to grasp a better understanding of the risk, tension and wonder that our venturing beyond our home brought to the world.Image via The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force Read the rest

Hey! Remember last month when the World Health Organization was like 'nah, let's not declare this outbreak of a viral hemorrhagic fever that's killed over 1,000 people this time around a public health emergency of international concern'? They were afraid that the flow of aid could be impeded into the outbreak's hot zone, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as nations around the world closed their borders to flights in and out of the disease and civil war-addled nation. Welp, screw that: earlier today, the WHO back-peddled on their nah, transforming it into a slightly panicked Yeah.From The World Health Organization:WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus today declared the Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).“It is time for the world to take notice and redouble our efforts. We need to work together in solidarity with the DRC to end this outbreak and build a better health system,” said Dr. Tedros. “Extraordinary work has been done for almost a year under the most difficult circumstances. We all owe it to these responders -- coming from not just WHO but also government, partners and communities -- to shoulder more of the burden.”At the time that this post was well, posted, the count for the number of individuals known to have died due to Ebola had risen to 1676 deaths (1582 confirmed, 94 probable) in the Democratic Republic of Congo. What made the WHO change their minds on declaring an emergency? Read the rest

Donald Trump was directly and personally involved in the discussions that led to Stormy Daniels being paid to keep quiet about her story of an affair with the then presidential candidate, the FBI says.READ THE COURT DOCUMENTS HERE.According to court documents released today, Donald Trump spoke with Michael Cohen on the phone at least two separate times on the same day Michael Cohen initiated a $131,000 wire transfer which would eventually make its way to porn performer and alleged Trump paramour Stormy Daniels.Prosecution wrote in a letter to the judge that it has “effectively concluded its investigations of “who, besides Michael Cohen, was involved and whether certain individuals, made false statements, gave false testimony or otherwise obstructed justice with this investigation.”Trump lied about it. Repeatedly. Into the cameras. On Twitter. Everywhere, all the time.NEW: Pres. Trump tells reporters he did not know about $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. https://t.co/iM43w2tJSK pic.twitter.com/qmnpQDl8wE— ABC News (@ABC) April 5, 2018From last April. Just a bold faced lie: https://t.co/LeFyJeZ584— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) July 18, 2019Looks like a number of people are in brand-new trouble today.Breaking news responses from Twitter notables and reporters on the story, below.Trump, Hicks, and Cohen had a conference call the day after the Access Hollywood tape became public. Cohen had a series of calls with the National Enquirer right afterwards. https://t.co/FDbHiLDuWt pic.twitter.com/Our18Q0h6X— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) July 18, 2019NEW YORK (AP) — Court records show Trump was on calls with aides rushing to squash stories about alleged affairs before election. Read the rest

Hot dog! First, Hearst Castle made it possible for everyday folks to swim in their pools (as a fundraiser). Now, Oscar Mayer has turned one of their Wienermobiles into a rentable RV of sorts. AlexanDog + Jake N' Bacon, two Chicago area Hotdoggers (that's what the drivers of these iconic hot dogs on wheels are called), have listed their one-bedroom Wienermobile on Airbnb.And, starting on July 24, you can rent the darn thing for $136/night:Housed inside an authentic Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, this cozy space for two is located in Chicagoland. Complete with a bed for dreaming of wienies, sitting area for discussing at length whether a hot dog is a sandwich (spoiler alert – it is!) and other amenities like adjacent outdoor spaces for the bathroom and a hot dog picnic zone, this hot dog paradise is the ideal respite for two music lovers in town for the festival weekend… or just those who relish a good story.Amenities include a mini fridge stocked with Oscar Mayer hot dogs and all the Chicago-style hot dog essentials, an Oscar Mayer roller grill to take home, an outdoor space for comfortable hot dog eating and a custom Wienermobile art piece by local artist Laura Kiro. And to help you celebrate your love of hot dogs during your visit, each guest also will receive a welcome kit, complete with all the hot dog-inspired accessories you could want after a music-filled, festival day.It sleeps two non-smoking adults (on a sofa bed) and breakfast is included. Read the rest

"I became obsessed with this old piece of film footage and it evolved into a music video," writes UK Animator Cyriak Harris on his latest work, "Breakfast." As one commenter quips, "1:40 Because it's not a cyriak video until something mutates into a horrible monster." True story. Read the rest

Thor: Ragnarok was, by one million miles (or parsecs, if you will) one of the most delightful surprises in a decade of superhero flicks. Much of the film's charm was arguably due to the joy that Taika Waititi brings to every project he's associated with. Good news everybody: he's coming back for Thor 4!From Gizmodo:Thor will be back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Taika Waititi will once again be steering the ship.The Hollywood Reporter says that the Thor: Ragnarok director has signed on to direct a fourth Thor movie. He’ll also write, according to EW. This happened after some issues arose with what was expected to be his next film, Akira, which is now going to be delayed.Yeah, the rear end of the good news is that Waititi's on-again-off-again push to make a live-action version of Akira is going to have to wait a little while longer. That sucks but hey: more Korg, more Hemsworth, more Waititi! I suppose it stands to reason that they'd let him take a crack at the sequel. the film, which had a budget of $180 million, made $853,977,126 in theaters, worldwideio9 has to say the delay could might be caused by the timing of Thor: Ragnarok (ironic) and issues with Akira's script. What'll happen to Waititi's Akira remains to be seen. However, I'd love to see it made. I might not be a huge Akira fan, but I'd be moderately enthused to see it made, because WAITITI! Read the rest

I'm not sure if the first thing on my to-do list with a late model $1,000 handset would be to tether it to a whack of party balloons and launch it into the atmosphere, but hey: to each their own. That said, you can't argue with the view! Read the rest

A judge has ruled that convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein will stay in detention pending his trial.Judge Richard Miles Berman, Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, said Jeffrey Epstein poses a threat to the community. Judge Berman called this the heart of his opinion. He also finds that Epstein is a flight risk.Judge Berman ended the hearing by scheduling a July 31 conference, primarily for purposes of case management and scheduling.Epstein is sitting still, his hands folded together on the table in front of him. Judge Berman schedules a July 31 conference.— Benjamin Adams (@BenAdamsO_O) July 18, 2019No bail for Jeffrey Epstein. Judge orders accused sex trafficker jailed while awaiting trial. https://t.co/rNfKPk7Ipq— JamesVGrimaldi (@JamesVGrimaldi) July 18, 2019BREAKING: Wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will have to wait out a sex trafficking trial from a jail cell after a federal judge in New York ruled against his request for release on bail. #PerversionofJustice https://t.co/8XOyRtHxhx— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) July 18, 2019Despite offering everything under the sun and close to $100 million, the judge described Epstein's proposed bail package, which would have allowed him to live in his Upper East Side mansion, as "irretrievably inadequate." @eorden— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) July 18, 2019Was just in court as Jeffrey Epstein was denied bail in his sex trafficking case. “I doubt any bail package can overcome danger to the community,” said Judge Richard Berman. https://t.co/UYAFXMJ7fn— Amber Jamieson (@ambiej) July 18, 2019Jeffrey Epstein gulped with force when Judge Berman announced he was going to deliver his conclusion. Read the rest

I was attracted to Station Eleven by the short description,it smacked of Commedia dell'arte: a post-apocalyptic tale of new-troubadours desperate to keep music and performance alive in a time of death. I was captivated, however, by the author's format in story telling.Emily St. John Mandel starts this book off like almost any other book about the apocalypse. People are doing things so high-up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs to demonstrate how far or bad they are about to fall. The book opens in a theater, where stuff happens. Shortly thereafter humanity loses its shit.Years after the collapse, we meet the Traveling Symphony, a group of musicians and a troupe of Shakespearian actors who merged and travel the north-central former United States and Canada, entertaining folks. Star Trek gave a member of the Symphony the quotation “Because survival is insufficient.” and it has become their guiding light. Life on the road is very hard, but it is their life.The book temporally jumps all over the place, telling the life story of a famous Hollywood actor who died the night before the world fell apart, and following some key players in his life through their experience of the new world order. The jumps are connected, but disjointed. The story is touching, occasionally heart-rending, and utterly meaningless to the destiny of the folks who survive the actor. The interactions with him helped make them who they are, they may inform some decision-making, and perhaps even scarred one or two for life, but they mostly serve to show how everyone's concerns about everything beyond survival are either immaterial or amazingly important. Read the rest

They might be the shiny new thing, but AirPods aren't for everybody. Maybe you're looking for a new sound or you understandably lost those tiny buds during a brisk run. If so, here's 10 headphones and earbuds that break out of the Apple mode with a return to quality and wearability.Klipsch R5 Bluetooth Neckband In-Ear HeadphonesThe Bluetooth 4.2 aptX audio is top-notch, but these earbuds are all about the comfort with four different types of ear tips, including the super-secure Comply Comfort Ts-100s. Pick up the Klipsch R5 Bluetooth Neckband In-Ear Headphones for $66.95, a full 43% off the list price.TRNDlabs Ventura Wireless HeadphonesThe 40 mm drivers on these headphones deliver a big sound, and you'll be able to blaze through multiple playlists with up to 10 hours of battery life. Grab a set of TRNDlabs Ventura Wireless Headphones for $34.99, down 64% from the original price.360 5.1 Virtual Surround Sound EarbudsWith infrasonic frequencies in the back cavity, these headphones replicate the seat-rattling feel of a subwoofer in a tiny package. Perfect for gaming, these 360 5.1 Virtual Surround Sound Earbuds are $72, more than half off the MSRP.Culture Audio V1 Noise-Cancellation Bluetooth HeadphonesThe AptX and AAC low latency tech in the V1s filter out surrounding noise for a fully immersive experience. But if you absolutely must get back to the real world, a built-in sensor automatically pauses the music when you remove the headphones. The Culture Audio V1 Noise-Cancellation Bluetooth Headphones are now $135, more than 30% off the original cost of $200. Read the rest

Texas Rep. Al Green introduced articles of impeachment against President Trump this week. Today, the House voted against them.The vote was to table, or kill, impeachment.332-95, House rejects Al Green effort to impeach Trump over racism. While an overwhelming bipartisan rejection, 95 Democrats voted against tabling it. That's more than the 58 Democrats who voted against tabling impeachment in 2017 and 66 Dems in 2018. https://t.co/dMs0aNc1Cg— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 17, 2019The House has voted to table Rep. Al Green's impeachment resolution. The vote was 332 to 95. Of note: More Democrats voted against tabling the resolution than have publicly come out in support for impeachment. @MSNBC— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 17, 2019332-95-1 final vote. Trump NOT impeached.— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) July 17, 2019UPDATE: House overwhelmingly votes to table measure to impeach the President. While easily ending the effort, more Democrats that ever voted to continue impeachment proposal, at least 90 including Judiciary Chair @JerryNadler, who wants to refer the matter to his committee.— Nick Weig (@tbweig) July 17, 2019Al Green never has a strategy for *passing* the impeachment resolution; all he ever does is irritate Dems who have to explain why they oppose it. Plenty of Dems who want to begin the actual process will oppose this bc it's toothless. https://t.co/Hadex1xXpf— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 17, 2019Impeachment article against @POTUS, drafted by @RepAlGreen, voted down by the House.— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) July 17, 2019The House now voting to table Al Green’s resolution https://t.co/i1p0VwF9g8— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 17, 2019 The House of Representatives is voting to table impeachment resolution. Read the rest

Government prosecutors just revealed new details about that super suspicious passport —- his photo, different name -- Jeffrey Epstein kept hidden in a safe..Epstein's lawyers previously said the government did not offer evidence that Epstein had used the passport.Not so fast, say federal prosecutors.“In fact, the passport contains numerous ingress and egress stamps, that reflect use of the passport to enter France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.”Epstein's lawyers said in a previous filing he had the doctored passport in case he encountered hijackers or terrorists. Mr. Epstein and his attorneys have some splaining to do.Epstein didn't say he never used it, but his lawyers said the government didn't offer evidence that he used had it. Now, they have. https://t.co/oJwxUompuP— erica orden (@eorden) July 17, 2019 Read the rest

The company hasn't ruled out doing other work for China.

Public Domain Review calls our attention to the gorgeously illustrated 1921 Fabre’s Book of Insects.Like Jacques Cousteau in the twentieth century, Fabre’s greatest accomplishment was perhaps to have brought out the beauty and drama in the lives of creatures that had hitherto been regarded with horror, if regarded at all. He turned his attention not just to bees, whose praises have of course been sung since the classical era, but to wasps, weevils, ants, glow-worms, caterpillars, and cicadas. He also sometimes wrote about wild flora and fauna, and in one rare chapter about his cats — all in prose characterized, a little like Cousteau’s, by a well-informed wonder at the natural world, appealing to both children and adults:Few insects enjoy more fame than the Glow-worm, the curious little animal who celebrates the joy of life by lighting a lantern at its tail-end. We all know it, at least by name, even if we have not seen it roaming through the grass, like a spark fallen from the full moon. The Greeks of old called it the Bright-tailed, and modern science gives it the name Lampyris. Read the rest

Here's a tip: if you're thinking of getting a Nintendo Switch -- skip the current model (HAC-001) and wait for the HAC-001(-01), which offers significantly improved battery life.From Ars Technica:Switch model HAC-001-01 will last approximately 4.5 to 9 hours on a single charge, depending on the game being played, according to Nintendo. That's a 38 to 80 percent increase from the 2.5 to 6.5 hours of the original model HAC-001. For The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo promises an increase from approximately three hours of single-charge play on the old model to approximately 5.5 hours on the new model. For comparison, the Switch Lite will get three to seven hours on a single charge, and it can last four hours on Breath of the Wild, according to Nintendo. Read the rest

Hardly a day goes by that I don't use my Instant Pot to make chili, curry, soup, or yogurt. I paid about $100, but right now this 6-quart model is just , which is the lowest price I've seen for it. Read the rest

The Europa Disc Padlock Picked (Model P-370) is advertised as "UNPICKABLE" by the manufacturer. It took the Lockpicking Lawyer 15 seconds to open it using basic lockpicking tools.Image: YouTube Read the rest

AI Portraits does an amazing job of creating original portraits based on photos of faces. The generative network was trained with 45,000 portrait images."Not only colors, but shapes, the lines of the face are completely redesigned by the model. In the above example, the model decides upon a Renaissance style, highlighting the elegance of the aquiline nose, the smoothness of the forehead."Notice how the AI didn't show Isabella Rossellini's teeth. I tried it with a photo where I'm smiling and got the same result:According to the folks who made AI Portraits, "Portrait masters rarely paint smiling people because smiles and laughter were commonly associated with a more comic aspect of genre painting, and because the display of such an overt expression as smiling can seem to distort the face of the sitter. This inability of artificial intelligence to reproduce our smiles is teaching us something about the history of art." Read the rest

Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin made a fortune during the real estate boom when he “rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”This unctuous gentleman would like you to believe that Bitcoin is the place where financial crime is happening now, most likely as a way to distract people from the fact that the crimes perpetrated by the major financial institutions owned by his friends dwarf the fraudulent activities around Bitcoin.Mnuchin really wanted to go after financial fraud, he'd do something about Deutsche Bank. But he won't because he likes his job too much. Read the rest

NBC shared this video.Back in 1992 Trump and Epstein sure seemed to know one another. Since 1992 both men have independently been accused, multiple times, with criminal behavior towards women, many of them minors. Read the rest