Boing Boing

Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist, created Show Your Stripes as a way to easily visualize the past century's climate change: give it a location and it will render a series of stripes representing a century's worth of average annual temperatures (above: global average temperature); as Kottke notes: "The warming patterns for particular regions are not going to be uniform…some places are actually forecast to get cooler and wetter rather than hotter and dryer." (via Kottke) Read the rest

Nicole Prause is a sex researcher who wanted to design a gender-neutral orgasm-measuring tool that would fit in the anus and detect and measure pelvic contractions but all the buttplugs she tried to modify ("We ordered like 20 of these butt plugs off Amazon, and it messed up my recommendation engine for all time") were designed to be pistoned in and out, and thus had a taper that made it prone to popping out at the moment of orgasm.Prause tweeted about her troubles and forged a partnership with a German cosplayer who had extensive 3D printing experience; they designed a research-optimized butt-plug they call the "anal pneumatic base for psychophysiology research" and released it as an open source hardware design that you can download from Thingiverse and 3D print at home or work.Prause can explore a range of questions beyond the physiology of the orgasm. This includes direct health problems like postorgasmic illness syndrome, in which men are struck with headaches and fatigue following ejaculation. It might be due to some sort of autoimmune response to ejaculate, or it might have something to do with the number of contractions these men have, which the device can measure.“We want to make sure there are no distinct qualitative differences between the climaxes of those patients and the control population,” says Prause. “We don't currently have a reason to believe that would be the case, but if there is then that leads us down a very different path.” The Strange Saga of the Butt Plug Turned Research Device [Matt Simon/Wired] Read the rest

This battery-powered (4 AA cells, included) adjustable work light is bright and has a clamp, making it a great option for people with fewer than three arms. The clamp even doubles as a stand, so you can put it on a floor or desk while you work on your project. Read the rest

In Q2 2018, Chinese investors sank $2.87b into AI startups; in Q2 2019, it was $140.7m.It's part of a massive slowdown in China's AI industry, which kicked off with massive political/economic fanfare from the Chinese state, which promised that the sector would be worth $150b by 2030, a boast that touched off anxiety about a global AI arms race.Two years later, valuations for the companies that bet biggest on AI are plummeting. Baidu has sunk to a valuation of 10% of the worth of rivals Alibaba and Tencent, though they were all level as recently as 2017; the company's top AI scientists have quit, and the company just booked its first losses since 2005. Many of the early promising AI demos have fizzled or turned out to be smoke-and-mirrors: much-vaunted demonstrations of health-tech companies like Ping An to diagnose diseases early and head them off before they could spread represent mere incremental improvements over techniques that were documented and demonstrated in the 1970s.The other problem is that China simply can't produce the semiconductors that it needs for AI research; as a nation, China now spends $300b/year importing microchips (largely from South Korea) -- more than it spends on imported oil.McKinsey, noting China’s modest progress in the field, points to the exponential growth in money and effort required as chips advance: it takes about 500 steps to create a 20nm chip, but 1,500 steps for a smaller 7nm chip.Meantime, the wealth of fab projects has triggered a scramble for talent and exposed a talent shortfall of more than 400,000 employees. Read the rest

London bobbies were quick to arrive on the scene after a Mercedes driver tried to drive down the wrong side of a street, endangering a cyclist. When the cyclist told the driver to back up and drive on the correct side of the street, the driver took umbrage and bumped the cyclist. Other than the driver, who was incandescent, everyone else in the video kept a stiff upper lip, enforcing a stereotype of British people. The cyclist also demonstrates a good working knowledge of the NATO phonetic alphabet when he recites the license plate number of the vehicle. Here's the video without the perpetrator's face fuzzed out.Image: YouTube Read the rest

In a characteristically brilliant essay, historian, activist and writer Rebecca Solnit connects the dots between the sexual abuses of Jeffrey Epstein, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Brett Kavanaugh, Harvey Weinstein, and the unnamed 16-year-old boy whose admitted rape was excused because the judge said that This young man comes from a good family who put him into an excellent school where he was doing extremely well: in each case, there was an elaborate scheme to silence and discredit the survivors of sexual violence, abetted by networks of (mostly) men who treat the disclosure of sexual assaults as a worse offense than committing the assaults themselves.Patriarchy is thus, first and foremost, a denial of the rule of the law, which relies on no man being above the law (contemplate that one of Epstein's survivors did a longer prison stint for drug dealing that Epstein did for raping her as a child). Even when powerful men settle the rape claims against them, the settlements are invariably shrouded in nondisclosure agreements: worse to speak of the thing than to do the thing.Patriarchy is part of a culture of impunity: where power means the power to get away with stuff, and where the more power you have, the more you get away with, and where the people who have more than the rest of us combined can get away with anything. Monsters rule over us, on behalf of monsters. Now, when I think about what happened with Strauss-Kahn, who was subsequently accused of sexual assault by several other women, and with cases like his, it’s the secondary characters who seem to matter most. Read the rest

This gentleman sowed discord and strife at a rooftop party and a coffee shop by affixing fake electrical outlet stickers to walls. People in need of a smartphone charge were dismayed to discover that free electrons would not be forthcoming. Such stickers are readily available at Amazon.com, a popular "e-tail" outlet on the World Wide Web. Read the rest

Magecart is the hacker gang that pulled off the British Airways and Ticketmaster credit-card heists; now they've build an Amazon cloud scanner that systematically probes S3 storage "buckets" for configuration errors that allow them to overwrite any Javascript files they find with credit-card stealing malware.Security researchers Riskiq have identified 17,000 domains that they say Magecart has compromised this way, including 2,000 of "the world's biggest sites." It's not clear how many of those actually have credit-card processing scripts that would allow Magecart to steal card details from their customers.Amazon S3 buckets are secure by default. Companies run into trouble when they actively change those permissions, either somewhere in the development process or when they hand off cloud work to a third-party contractor. Those Amazon S3 bucket misconfigurations have caused plenty of problems before. The fallout, though, was usually limited to the exposure of personally identifiable information, huge databases of usernames and passwords and birthdays and Social Security numbers that wind up for sale, or for free, on the dark web and elsewhere. That’s because those goofs typically give read permission to interlopers, but not the ability to write code. The Magecart hackers figured out a way to scan for misconfigurations that do both—and now they know 17,000 vulnerable domains.“This is a whole new level of misconfiguring,” says Klijnsma. “These buckets are pretty much owned by anybody who talks to it, which is on a different scale, a different type of data leakage. Pretty much anybody can do anything in those S3 buckets, and the reach of those is quite big.”Hack Brief: A Card-Skimming Hacker Group Hit 17K Domains—and Counting [Brian Barrett/Wired](Image: Mary Rose Trust, CC-BY-SA, modified) Read the rest

On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday expanded its investigation into Donald Trump and obstruction of justice by authorizing subpoenas to 12 officials, including the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former top National Enquirer executives David Pecker and Dylan Howard. David Pecker served as American Media's CEO, and Dylan Howard as its CCO.Here's the list of the names the Judiciary Committee has voted to authorize subpoenas for:1 Rick Dearborn2 Michael Flynn3 Jody Hunt4 Jared Kushner5 John Kelly6 Corey Lewandowski7 Rob Porter8 Rod Rosenstein9 Jeff Sessions10 Keith Davidson11 Dylan Howard12 David PeckerIt's official: National Enquirer bosses David Pecker and Dylan Howard have been subpoenaed... https://t.co/9yCZhHeWoi— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 11, 2019House Judiciary approves subpoenas for 12 key witnesses, including AMI executives David Pecker and Dylan Howard https://t.co/JwNfaQFrPn— Brian Schwartz (@schwartzbCNBC) July 11, 2019Here's Trump's response:....conflicted and compromised Mueller again. He said he was “done” after his last 9 minute speech, and that he had nothing more to say outside of the No Collusion, No Obstruction, Report. Enough already, go back to work! I won, unanimously, the big Emoluments case yesterday!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 11, 2019From Politico's coverage of the Thursday House vote:On a party-line vote, the committee empowered Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) to issue subpoenas to current and former Trump administration officials who were central figures in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign. Read the rest

Four years ago, there were 15 known black rhinos left in Tanzania -- "ground zero of the poaching crisis" -- and today there 167 of them; elephant populations (which dropped 60% between 2009-2014) are rebounding too, up to over 60,000 from a low of 43,330.The recovery is attributed to the administration of resident John Magufuli, whose 2015 election campaign included a promised military crackdown on poachers, with stiff criminal penalties. Following the election, poachers -- many of them Chinese nationals -- were caught, arrested and sentenced; four men are serving 20 years for smuggling rhino horns, and the so-called Chinese "ivory queen" has been jailed for 15 years.Wildlife experts say that the rising numbers can't be attributed solely to fertility, as rhinos and elephants gestate too slowly for the rebound to come solely from births in the wild; they say that some of the rebound is due to migration of animals into Tanzania (however, now that they're there, they're safer from poachers than they've been in a long time).Tanzania’s figures were released as wildlife investigators worldwide revealed thousands of species had been seized in a major crackdown at borders last month.“Operation Thunderball” led to seizures of 23 live primates; 30 big cats; more than 4,300 birds; nearly 1,500 reptiles and 10,000 turtles and tortoises globally.UK teams seized two bear skulls and skins, and four products derived from crocodiles, 10 tanned skins, and four ivory products including binoculars.Endangered rhino numbers ‘soar by 1,000%’ in Tanzania [Jane Dalton/The Independent](Image: Bernard DUPONT, CC-BY-SA)(via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Every day, the world's poorest countries lose $3b in tax revenues as multinationals sluice their profits through their national boundaries in order to avoid taxes in rich countries, and then sluice the money out again, purged of tax obligations thanks to their exploitation of tax loopholes in poor nations.The secret to all this tax-dodging is a complex grift called "base erosion and profit shifting" (BEPS). Like many of the most important and dangerous things in the world, it's boring, complicated, and very important, and the reason it persists is that the boringness and complexity baffles and bores people so they stop paying attention to it, leaving it to chug along, despite its importance.At its core, BEPS involves using bookkeeping fictions to transfer your profits to low-tax jurisdictions and your costs to high-tax jurisdictions. BEPS abuses "transfer pricing," which is the pricing of goods and service between multinational companies, by using prices of convenience for transactions within a single company's international divisions. Here's how that works, in a real-world example detailed in an IRS lawsuit against Amazon, which is one of the world leaders in BEPS tax-avoidance. Amazon transfered all its "intellectual property" assets to a company called Amazon Lux, in Luxembourg, where taxes are very low. Then, every time Amazon's other divisions make a profit, they send that profit to Amazon Lux, which sends them an invoice for their use of Amazon's trademarks, software, etc. That way, Amazon's other divisions break even (or even lose money, if that makes them eligible for a tax-credit on the loss), and Amazon Lux makes all the company's profits in a tax-free jurisdiction (Luxembourg). Read the rest

In 1994, Pizza Hut aired this TV commercial in the UK that was reportedly the first completely non-English advertisement on British television. The entire thing is in Klingon. (via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Bird, the electric scooter company that foolishly took on Boing Boing and had their asses handed to them, is reportedly in fresh financial distress.The electric scooter company has been having conversations with investors about raising more money for several months, and wants to raise $200 million to $300 million by the end of the summer, report The Information's Cory Weinberg and Amir Efrati:The company is seeking to raise at a higher price than its current $2.3 billion post-money valuation, which it attained last summer after less than a year of existence. Since then—when it was able to increase its valuation from $1 billion to $2 billion in just a few weeks between deals—the investment frenzy has cooled. (...)In the third and fourth quarters of last year, Bird said it generated about $25 million and about $40 million in gross revenue, respectively, the person said. Net revenue was more than $20 million in the third quarter and about $25 million in the fourth quarter, this person said. Some of that gap was due to rider discounts, which Bird eliminated in the first quarter of this year, when it pulled in just $15 million in gross revenue. A year earlier, in the first quarter of 2018, Bird generated several million dollars in revenue when it was in few markets, said a person briefed on the matter.Bird executives, including Mr. VanderZanden, have been open about the company’s decision to sacrifice growth to trim losses over the winter. After the $100 million loss in this year’s first quarter, Bird made several quick moves to reduce its cash burn. Read the rest

In recent years, Chinese oligarchs have been buying up vast swaths of Vancouver real estate as a way to park their money. They often don't set foot in the luxury townhouses they buy, which has led the Vancouver city government to issue a 1% Empty Homes Tax. A Chinese woman named He Yiju, who is married to a "top politician in China's rubber-stamp parliament" according to CNN, owns a $200 million waterfront mansion and is suing the city to avoid paying the $200,000 tax bill. She and her husband have a combined net worth of $925 million according to Forbes. $200,000 to someone with a net worth of $925 million is equivalent to $210 to someone with a net worth of $1 million.From CNN:In 2018, Vancouver's government ruled that He was subject to Vancouver's Empty Homes Tax, which requires owners of unoccupied homes to pay a 1% levy on their properties' value.He [Yiju] denies, however, that the property was empty. In a petition filed last month to the Supreme Court of British Columbia, her legal team argued that the lot was being prepared for renovations pending the city issuing redevelopment permits.He's attorney, Joel Nitikman, declined to comment when asked by CNN about the case.Image: Shutterstock/Spiroview Inc Read the rest

Police in Guthrie, Oklahoma arrested Stephen Jennings and Rachael Rivera after pulling them over due to an expired license tag. Turns out, the car was reported stolen. Also turns out that inside the car, the pair had a pet rattlesnake, a gun, open bottle of Kentucky Deluxe, and "a canister of radioactive powdered uranium." From KFOR:"When that happens of course, we call in a company that deals with that specifically and it`s taken safely into possession," (Guthrie Police Sgt. Anthony) Gibbs said. "The uranium is the wild card in that situation."The uranium hasn't resulted in charges. Guthrie police are still trying to figure out exactly what the suspects were going to use it for. There are no charges from the rattlesnake either."It happens to be rattlesnake season at the time, so he can be in possession of this rattlesnake because he has a valid lifetime hunting and fishing license," Sgt. Gibbs said."Logan Co. man allegedly driving stolen vehicle filled with uranium, a rattlesnake, and Kentucky Deluxe" (KFOR via Fark) Read the rest

Allyson Medeiros (32) was riding his bike home from his job as a tattoo artist in Chicago when a person riding a rental scooter on the wrong side of the street ran into him and caused a number of injuries, including a broken nose and a broken jaw. He received 20 stitches. The scooter rider didn't stick around to identify himself or offer aid, and Medeiros filed a lawsuit to force all 10 e-scooter companies to disclose their records of who was using scooters at the time of the accident.From The Chicago Sun-Tribune:He plans to use the information to prosecute “the negligent company and rider,” according to the statement.“The responsible parties must be held accountable, including covering the costs of the medical bills, lost wages and pain,” Greening said in the statement. He said Medeiros has had multiple surgeries and owes thousands of dollars in medical care.Medeiros has launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay his medical bills. The photo is from his GoFundMe page. Read the rest

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first human Moon landing on July 20, Vernacular photography collector Robert E. Jackson curated a lovely collection of vintage snapshots related to the Moon. I've always gotten a kick out of how TV viewers around the world used to snap photos of their screens to commemorate momentous moments. Read the rest

The dark lords of the underworld are best summoned by sparkly glitter bait.What an adorable murder kitty!How to summon a demon Read the rest

Report says legalization associated with decline in youth cannabis use

A woman in a grocery store directed a bigoted rant at another shopper, all captured on video. NBC News reports that the incident occured in Abingdon, Pennsylvania, and kicked off when the woman heard people speaking Spanish.Santana said the altercation had its genesis when a child spoke Spanish to the cashier while shopping with his grandfather. ... “I was born here, you don’t belong here … go back to your own country,” Santana is told, with the white woman adding, “You don’t belong here, you came here illegally. You should be deported…I hope Trump deports you,” before calling her a “b*tch” using a Spanish slur.Protip for racists: one cannot deport Puerto Ricans to Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Read the rest

We're through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole in this week’s tabloids that give Alice in Wonderland a run for her money in their wild imaginings.

A plane made an emergency landing at Raleigh-Durham International Airport earlier this week after "mechanical issues arose," according to reports.“The flight crew of Delta flight 1425 from Atlanta to Baltimore elected to divert to Raleigh, N.C., out of an abundance of caution after receiving an indication of a possible issue with one of the aircraft’s engines,” a Delta spokesperson said in an email. “The flight landed without incident.”A video of the incident posted to social media shows the engine's spinner loose and rattling around whatever is left of the turbofan. It's really quite alarming! Video I took from my seat on my flight from Atlanta to Baltimore yesterday! Thanks @Delta for the silly smooth emergency landing! #perfect #execution To use this video in a commercial player or in broadcasts, please email licensing@storyful.com pic.twitter.com/TUFzREl0Lc— Logan Webb (@Micahlifa) July 9, 2019 Read the rest

Much like the "War on Drugs," no one won the Cola Wars.In 1975 Pepsi started a blind taste test called 'The Pepsi Challenge' the idea was to show folks enjoying Pepsi far more than Coca-Cola, and thus steal Coke's customers.WAR.Coke abandoned its peaceful methods of attracting customers, like teaching folks to sing about the unifying joys of sweet soda, and started to play on our patriotism.Thus a massive escalation began, and the Cola Wars destroyed society. Many commercials were flighted, many lives were destroyed, and teeth. Those sugary drinks are bad for your teeth!Now look where we are: Read the rest

Came for the classic BMWs, stayed for the fun.(Thanks, Airheads!) Read the rest

You might be popular, but are you Chinese hacker following your every move, no matter where you go popular?No? It's cool. Not many people are.According to cybersecurity firm Cybereason, Softcell, is digital attack and surveillance operation being run by a Chinese hacker group, most likely working their keyboards for the Chinese government. The focus of the operation: keeping track of around 20 high-profile targets that Chinese intelligent officials aren't all that crazy about.From IntelNews:The operation is thought to have compromised close to a dozen major global telecommunications carriers in four continents — the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa. According to Cybereason, the hackers launched persistent multi-wave attacks on their targets, which gave them “complete takeover” of the networks. However, they did not appear to be interested in financial gain, but instead focused their attention on the call detail records (CDRs) of just 20 network users. With the help of the CDRs, the hackers were able to track their targets’ movements around the world and map their contacts based on their telephone activity. According to The Wall Street Journal, which reported on Cybereason’s findings, the 20 targets consisted of senior business executives and government officials. Others were Chinese dissidents, military leaders, as well as law enforcement and intelligence officials.What makes this even more impressive is that, as Operation Softcell's targets bopped around the globe, switching cellular carriers as they traveled, the hackers were able to crack the target's new wireless carriers to continue surveillance. Read the rest

There are 25 of them in this video -- tricks, that is, not guinea pigs -- but I was happy to lose count. Read the rest

From the look of things, The Art of Self-Defense looks to be full of toxic masculinity and Iron John bullshit--to hilarious effect. Jesse Eisenberg is at his best in movies where he plays the straight man: deadpan, confused and terrified.It looks like that's all going on here.I haven't been interested enough in a film to bother seeing it in the theater, for a while now. This flick might just break my watch-it-at-home streak. Read the rest

After the Snowden revelations, US-based Big Tech companies raced to reassure their non-US customers that the NSA wasn't raiding their cloud-based data, moving servers inside their customers' borders and (theoretically) out of reach of the NSA; then came the Cloud Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act), in which the US government claimed the right to seize data held on overseas servers and the companies began consolidating their servers back in the USA.Microsoft recently moved its cloud servers -- the ones hosting data for Office 365 users -- out of Germany to the USA, a mere two years after their decision to site data-centers inside Germany.The privacy commissioner for the state of Hesse has responded by advising schools to discontinue their use of Office 365 and Windows 10 (which transmits a steady stream of usage data to Microsoft). The move came after Microsoft repeatedly failed to answer the commissioner's repeated requests for clarification on its data-handling practices.As Office-Watch points out, all of the US Big Tech companies have a version of this problem -- even if they continue to locate servers in Germany, the specter of the Cloud Act means that all that data might as well be in Fort Meade. “…in connection with the use of Office 365 in the cloud, …. the security and traceability of the data processing processes are not guaranteed. Therefore the data processing is inadmissible” – Translated from original German.It seems Microsoft is staying quiet on the issue “… data is also transmitted when using Office 365. Read the rest

What a cool idea! Here's a music video for a cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" that over 2100 kids contributed to, by coloring with crayons.Colossal: An animated music video for Meg Myers’ cover of a Kate Bush song brings kid’s coloring books to life. Director Jo Roy first filmed Myers on a green screen, performing the crawling, climbing, and flying shown in the music video (see behind-the-scenes below). Then, each of the 3,202 frames was printed off as a black and white coloring book page. Elementary school-aged children from ten schools and an art program in the U.S. and Canada colored the pages however they wanted, with a provided crayon color palette.(Colossal) Read the rest

I spent a long time in Mexico this past winter. My wife and I traveled to Play Del Carmen and stayed there for months while she completed some rigourous scuba instructor training. While she was in the water, which was most days, I stayed ashore to write, drink and nosh. Many a chilled beverage was had on beach front patios (I was there for the WiFi, honest.) I squeezed lemons and limes into my drinks. They were amazingly fresh--like nothing I'd ever had up north. Apparently, I dodged a number of bullets.From The CBC:On a sunny day in June, Amber Prepchuk spent an afternoon by the lake making margaritas for a group of friends. The following morning she ended up with much more than she bargained for — a painful side effect entirely unrelated to tequila."I can handle pain, but I woke the next morning and I was in pain. I was crying my eyes out." she told CBC's Radio Active. "I was covered in little blisters."Amber Prepchuk... learned the hard way the meaning of 'margarita burn,' when she juiced limes in the sun and the next morning woke up with blisters all over her hands. Margarita burn. Never heard the tell of that. So, I looked it up. Oh my stars and garters.Margarita burn, better known as margarita photodermatitis, is a condition which occurs in folks who are exposed to a photo-sensitizing agent (lime juice, for example,) and ultraviolet light (ye olde sunlight.) According to Wikipedia, those dinged by Margarita burn will notice the first symptoms of the ailment within 24 hours of exposure to the photo-sensitizing agent that they came into contact with and ultraviolet light. Read the rest

When it comes to storage, you've typically got a couple of options: Keep those priceless pics and videos on your phone or laptop (then lose them when either breaks down), or cough up hundreds every year for a decent Dropbox account or another cloud service like iCloud.Trust us, you're not the only one asking how cloud storage can so ubiquitous and so expensive at the same time. Turns out it doesn't have to be because Degoo has an affordable middle path.This service packs more backup space than Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive combined, and you can access it easily. Files can be shared via email or link, and the automatic file change detection means modified files will be saved and up to date. Everything you backup on Degoo is protected behind 256-bit AES encryption, and there's a variety of plans available. The important thing they have in common: They're all lifetime access; pay once and never get charged or pestered again. Check out the offers below:Degoo Premium: Lifetime 10TB Backup Plan - $99.99 (97% off the MSRP)Degoo Premium: Lifetime 3TB Backup Plan - $69.99 (95% off, and a price drop off the previous sale price of $73.99)Degoo Premium: Lifetime 2TB Backup Plan - $59.99 (95% off, and a price drop off the previous sale price of $65.99)Degoo Premium: Lifetime 1TB Backup Plan - $49.99 (94% off the MSRP.) Read the rest

After Bloomberg revealed that Amazon secretly sent recordings from Alexa to subcontractors all over the world in order to improve its speech-recognition systems, a whistleblower leaked recordings from Google Home to investigative reporters from VRT, revealing that Google, too, was sending audio clips from its voice assistant technology to pieceworkers through the Crowdsource app.The contractors who review Google voice assistant recordings say that they often screen audio from people who aren't even talking to their Google devices: instead, the devices mishear conversations and mistake sound for their "wake-words."The whistleblower told VRT that he transcribes 1,000 recordings per week in Flemish and Dutch, and that once, he transcribed a recording that appeared to capture a domestic violence incident.Tech policy researcher Michael Veale of London's Alan Turing Institute (who filed a complaint with the Irish data regulator over Apple's Siri) (Apple, like many tech giants, pretends that its business takes place in Ireland, a legacy of Ireland's willingness to assist multinationals with illegal tax-avoidance schemes) says that Google could also face GDPR jeopardy, particularly because it did not disclose its practice, which may be because the public would have found it "creepy."Google says it is seeking redress from its subcontractors for sharing the secret recordings with journalists.It is true that Google does not eavesdrop directly, but VRT NWS discovered that it is listening in. Or rather: that it lets people listen in. We let ordinary Flemish people hear some of their own recordings. ‘This is undeniably my own voice’, says one man, clearly surprised. Read the rest

This is not a riddle, but two questions inspired by two very weird stories circulating about financier Jeffrey Epstein, who is in federal custody over charges of trafficking and sexual abuse of young girls.First, from today: Why did Jeffrey Epstein build a temple on his private island?Go see the photos.“A contractor and engineer who spoke with INSIDER highlighted an odd design anomaly: The medieval-era lock on the front door appears designed to keep people inside.”Gulp.Second, also from today: The Intercept reports that right after Epstein reached that ridiculously sweet non-prosecution deal in July 2008 with then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta in Florida, maritime records show that Epstein shipped himself a paper shredder from the U.S. Virgin Islands to his Palm Beach home.But that's not all. In March of this year, not long after federal judge in Florida invalidated that sweet Acosta agreement, the records show that Epstein shipped a tile and carpet extractor from the Virgin Islands to his Manhattan townhouse.Totally normal.Excerpt:On July 7, 2008, federal prosecutors told Epstein’s attorneys via email that they intended to notify the 32 victims about the agreement. Epstein’s lawyers and the prosecutors debated how much of the agreement to reveal, settling on a less than full accounting.A week later, on July 15, Epstein received a shipment at his Palm Beach home from the port in the U.S. Virgin Islands closest to his home there, according to maritime shipping records compiled by ImportGenius and provided to The Intercept. Read the rest

Bernie Sanders wants you to know who hates him: billionaire sociopaths like Andrew Pudzer, Kenneth Lagone ("This is the antichrist!"), Lowell McAdam ("contemptible"), Lloyd Blankfein ("dangerous"); Alan Greenspan; Third Way ("an existential threat"), Bernard Marcus ("the enemy"), and more! (via /r/LateStageCapitalism) Read the rest

When Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta was a federal prosecutor in 2008 he gave sex predator Jeffrey Epstein a joke of a plea deal on sex crime charges. Epstein was given a 13-month prison sentence, but the billionaire spent most of the time in his plush office. He never faced federal charges. Now that Epstein has been arrested on additional charges of sickening sex crimes against children, people are asking Acosta why the hell he let Epstein off the hook the first time around by giving him a secret deal that a federal judge ruled had violated the victims' rights. At a press conference, Acosta answered that question by telling reporters that he did the best he could, that times have changed since 2008, and that the victims weren't cooperative enough. He concluded his statement by lavishing fulsome praise on President Trump.CBS News White House correspondent Paula Reid, a former federal prosecutor, said Acosta's defense is bogus. "They had potentially dozens of witnesses they could have used to push this case forward," she said.Image: YouTube/CBS News Read the rest

Peek inside this corporate report to see how private prison companies make money from migrants in ICE concentration camps.

General John Hyten is the Trump administration nominee for Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His background check already cleared, but today news of a credible allegation of sexual assault against Gen. John Hyten, and a subsequent investigation, reports DefenseOne.“There was insufficient evidence,” a source tells the news organization.Hyten currently leads U.S. Strategic Command, and was recently nominated to become the next Joint Chiefs vice chair. The Air Force opened an investigation into the alleged incident of sexual assault, between late 2017 and early 2018, reports DefenseOne citing “multiple defense and congressional aides familiar with the matter.”Hyten was cleared by “a comprehensive investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations,” Pentagon spokesman Col. DeDe Halfhill wrote in a Wednesday statement to Defense One. “There was insufficient evidence to support any finding of misconduct on the part of Gen. Hyten,” who cooperated with the investigation, Hoffman said.A spokesman for Hyten did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Officials briefed members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will review Hyten’s nomination, behind closed doors on Wednesday. Hyten’s accuser had contacted committee members directly, according to defense officials and lawmakers.“I think a letter was sent to a variety of offices,” said Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.In early April, the Air Force received allegations that Hyten had perpetrated “abusive sexual contact” and created “an unprofessional relationship,” a senior military official familiar with the investigation said Wednesday. The Air Force Office of Special Investigation talked to more than 50 witnesses in three countries and 13 U.S. Read the rest

Public companies are legally required to disclose their risks to investors, but it's a rare company that incorporates climate change into those mandatory disclosures; under a new presidential campaign platform proposal from Elizabeth Warren (disclosure: I am a donor to both Warren and Sanders's campaigns), the SEC would require public companies to incorporate two kinds of climate risk in their warnings: first, the risks of an out-of-control climate (fires, floods, etc); and second, the risks from the a transition to clean energy (collapsing fossil fuel prices). The idea is to accelerate divestiture from climate-destroying industries like oil and fracking, and to spur investors to favor companies with a plan to mitigate the effects of climate chaos on their operations. Read the rest

Congresswoman and force of nature Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and student activist and force of nature Greta "Extinction Rebellion" Thunberg conducted a videoconference to meet one another and talk tactics for saving the world from dying in its own waste-gases; the wide-ranging conversation touched on the unique power and problems of being a young activist; the problem of holding up Nordic countries as paragons of climate virtue; winning the fight over climate denialism; the true nature of leadership; keeping motivated in the face of desperation and crushing setbacks, and the tipping point we're living through.GT Yeah. I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, “What should I do?” And I say: “Act. Do something.” Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression. I remember the first day I was school-striking outside the Swedish parliament, I felt so alone, because everyone went straight past, no one even looked at me. But at the same time I was hopeful.AOC It’s true that people don’t know when those small actions can manifest into something. I’ve seen it even in office. There’s so much cynicism about, how powerful can this be? Just me showing up?I think sometimes we’re so obsessed with measurement. What does me standing outside of parliament with a sign do? It doesn’t lower any carbon emissions immediately. It doesn’t change any laws directly. But what it does is make powerful people feel something, and people underestimate the power of that. It is becoming harder and harder for elected officials to look people in the eye. Read the rest

When California's legislature opened hearings on a proposed ban on fur sales, they met with stiff opposition: Andrew Aguero, who described himself as a Native American student said that it was "people from a privileged culture are telling people of my culture that our culture is inhumane" (the bill exempted traditional indigenous uses of fur from the ban); they also heard from Andrew DiGiovanna, another student who said he opposed the bill on environmental grounds; Edwin Lombard said it was “an affront to the African-American community" who used furs to "show we could overcome barriers" like redlining.At least some of these protesters were paid: Matt Gray (who complained that the regulation of fur and the legalization of cannabis were a "baffling" double-standard) got $7,000 from the Fur Information Council of America; while Aguero had published a Facebook post before the hearing reading, "Anyone in LA down to make an easy $100 this Tuesday in Sacramento and fight tyranny?"An undercover researcher from a group that supported the bill took Aguero up on his offer and was referred to Republican consulting firm Mobilize the Message, who gave him a contract offering a system of payouts and bonuses for presenting himself to lawmakers as a concerned citizen and repeating their talking points. Mobilize the Message was founded by Cliff Maloney, who is also president of Young Americans for Liberty, which contracts to many GOP PACs and groups, including the Stop AOC PAC, dedicated to neutralizing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.It wasn't just California that heard from a suspiciously on-message cohort of pro-fur activists who claimed than bans on fur were racist: in New York, Harlem's Rev. Read the rest

In Numerical investigation of the convection heat transfer driven by airflows in underground tunnels (Sci-Hub mirror), a group of engineers from L'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology propose that low-cost heat-exchangers placed in subway tunnels could be used to heat and cool homes essentially for free (the system would last 50-100 years, and the pumps would need replacing every 25 years).The system would pump water or another heat-exchange medium through pipes in the subway tunnels, scavenging the underground cool in the summer and the trapped exhaust heat in the winter, then transfer the heat or cold to nearby residences, businesses and offices for efficient heating and cooling.The research stems from the incredibly appropriately named co-author Margaux Peltier's Master's thesis; Peltier calculates that installing heat exchangers in just half of one of Lausanne's subway lines could provide heating and cooling for 800 apartments.As Treehugger's Lloyd Alter points out, the work illustrates how important well-planned, high-density cities are mitigating climate change: high density systems allow for waste from one process to flow into another process as its input; to say nothing of the carbon benefits of building cities where the primary mode of transport is efficient subway trains rather than private automobiles.Numerical investigation of the convection heat transfer driven by airflows in underground tunnels (Sci-Hub mirror) [Margaux Peltier, Alessandro F. Rotta Loria, Loïc Lepage, Etienne Garin and Lyesse Laloui/Applied Thermal Engineering]Engineering heat out of metro tunnels [L'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)]Energy from subway tunnels could heat and cool thousands of homes [Lloyd Alter/Treehugger](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: MS / EPFL 2019) Read the rest

Diligent Robotics's Moxi is a robot created by Andrea Thomaz (a former robotics professor at UT Austin and Georgia Tech's Socially Intelligent Machines Lab) and Vivian Chu (one of Thomaz's former grad students); they funded by a National Science Foundation grant to create a robotic nursing aide that is designed to do routine, non-human-interaction chores for nurses with a minimum of effort from nurses.For example, when a patient is discharged, a Moxi can fetch and deliver an "admission bucket" (a standard package of supplies for a new patient) automatically; some nurses in a limited trial say they never saw Moxi undertake this chore, but rather simply found that every recently vacated room had an admission bucket waiting at the appropriate time.The design is meant to relieve nurses of mechanical, robotic tasks (errands) and free them up to concentrate on care and humans. After four one-month beta trials, the company says Moxi robots do that very well, but they were surprised by the affection that both nurses and patients expressed for the robots, which was so intense that the technicians began to schedule an hour-long "social lap," in which the robot wanders around and makes heart-emoji eyes at patients. The physical design of Moxi reflects Thomaz's "Socially Intelligent Machines" research; they are designed to be cute and nonthreatening, and to give social cues that humans intuitively grasp, like looking in the direction they're moving.After declaring success in its beta program, Diligent plans to roll the robots out in three or four hospitals in 2019. Read the rest

Ten years ago, Chase was forced to withdraw the binding arbitration clauses in its credit card agreements as part of a settlement in a class-action suit (the company was accused of conspiring with other banks to force all credit-card customers to accept binding arbitration) (one of the things binding arbitration does is deprive you of your right to join class-action suits!). Last May, the company stealthily reintroduced the clauses, and gave customers until August 7 to notify the company in writing if they do not agree to binding arbitration. You have ONE MONTH LEFT to opt out.Binding arbitration is a system of private law in which you surrender the rights that Congress gave you and resolve your disputes with massive, powerful companies by pleading your case in front of a contractor they hire (these contractors usually find in favor of the companies who are paying their bills, not the customers they've wronged.To get a sense of why you should always opt out of binding arbitration, even though the companies make it very hard to do so (you have to print and sign a letter opting out and then mail it to them), consider yesterday's news about T-Mobile, who were caught selling realtime access to its customers' location to brokers who sold the information on to bounty hunters, debt collectors and even stalkers. T-Mobile says that its customers can't form a class action suit against it, because they didn't opt out of binding arbitration when they had the chance. Read the rest

Rachel Bitecofer, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University's Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy has developed a US election prediction model that performed very well in the 2018 midterms; she has since refined it based on the results of the election and she says can predict elections a long way off, regardless of who the nominee is.Based on that model, she believes that Trump will lose the presidency in 2020, "barring a shock to the system"; which she attributes to a likely shift in midwestern voting, because "the complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020, who are convinced he’s the Terminator and can’t be stopped."Bitecofer says that a Democratic nominee who is "a woman, a person of color or a Latino, or a female who is also a person of color" will drive a Democratic turnout surge in "really important places" but she thinks that even if someone as pale, male and stale as Joe Biden gets the nomination, they can still win if they pick the right running mate.She also thinks that the Dems won't win Florida, because "Florida is really, really old," filled with conservative-leaning, Trump-forgiving "Greatest Generation" voters who "are also the nation’s most reliable voters." Add to them Florida's bumper-crop of "white, non-college educated voters, especially older ones," and the difficulty of mobilizing "young and/or Latino voters" for the Democratic party, and Florida is a write-off (see also: Texas, Georgia). Read the rest

The Old Weather project is a crowdsourced effort to gather data on historic climate patterns by transcribing entries from old, logbooks, some typed and some handwritten. The project is jointly run by NOAA and the Smithsonian. (via Kottke) Read the rest

New research reveals that sleep patterns of zebrafish are similar to the slow-wave and REM sleep of humans and other mammals, birds, and lizards. Furthermore, the study suggests that these sleep signatures emerged in the brain of our common ancestor more than 450 million years ago. According to the scientists, a better understanding of how sleep evolved could shine light on the biological processes behind it and perhaps lead to new treatments for sleep disorders. From National Geographic:Based on our understanding of the evolutionary relationships between fish and mammals, the team suggests that REM-like sleep states evolved more than 450 million years ago, making this type of sleep a deeply held biological phenomenon.“We share a backbone, but we share much more than that,” says study coauthor Philippe Mourrain, a neuroscientist at Stanford University. “It makes it easier to understand sleep and what it does in ourselves..."Lead author Louis C. Leung, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, built the microscope responsible for the complex imaging done for the study. Most body activity is choreographed by an intricate network of nerve cells, or neurons. When neurons are active, they release calcium, so researchers genetically engineered the zebrafish to include a protein that would flash fluorescent green when it detected calcium, indicating an area of the body is active...The advance could be particularly valuable for health professionals seeking to design new drugs to combat the growing epidemic of sleep deprivation in many countries. Better sleep-enhancing drugs could provide some relief for people who struggle to drift off. Read the rest

Jennifer Araoz says a recruiter brought her to Jeffrey Epstein when she was 14. She says she started giving him weekly massages, during which he masturbated and paid her $300 per session. When she turned 15 he forcefull raped her, she says in this Today Show interview.Watch @savannahguthrie’s full exclusive interview with Jeffrey Epstein accuser Jennifer Araoz, who’s sharing her story of alleged rape for the first time. pic.twitter.com/CjZdVpLz7i— TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 10, 2019Image: Today Show Read the rest

Noam Gottesman, a businessman worth $2.7 billion, added a curb cut to a public sidewalk in Manhattan's West Village and posted “No Parking” and “Active Driveway” warnings, even though there is no driveway. Anyone who parks there gets confronted by Gottesman's hired hands who warn the parker that their car will be ticketed and towed. For some Gottesman seems to think he deserves to use public space as his own private parking spot. New York's Department of Buildings says Gottesman does not have permission to have a curb cut, but Gottesman's lawyer says Gottesman has the right to the curb cut.From The Daily News:Any attempt to park there immediately brings out hired hands from the building to warn people off.When a News reporter pulled into the empty space Monday morning, a man emerged within seconds.“You will be towed,” he said, pointing to the yellow words on the black door behind him, which was open enough to reveal a set of stairs leading up to a balcony landing.Asked if the residence was a garage, he replied, “Yes, it is .... We tow people immediately. I’m sorry. Immediately."Neighbor Eyal Levin found that out the hard way in late May, when he parked in the spot in an act of defiance and then found his silver Toyota Camry towed. It took hours for Levin to track down his car in a lot in Queens ― and he had to pay $201 to get it back, according to documents reviewed by The News. Read the rest

Analysis of more than 1 million comments from the site finds dramatic shift toward racist hate content