Ransomware has been around since the late 1980s, but it got a massive shot in the arm when leaked NSA cyberweapons were merged with existing strains of ransomware, with new payment mechanisms that used cryptocurrencies, leading to multiple ransomware epidemics that locked up businesses, hospitals, schools, and more (and then there are the state-level cyberattacks that pretend to be ransomware).The boom in ransomware infections is also a boom for companies that provide services to the infected. A lot of these companies are in the business of taking your money, sending some Bitcoin to your attackers, then holding your hand as you use the codes the attackers provide to get your files back (assuming the malware performs according to spec and that the ransomware attackers don't just run off with your dough).But not everyone wants to pay ransom! There are ethical and political reasons to avoid paying ransom, and the more money ransomware attracts, the more clever programmers will throw themselves at the project of making ransomware even more virulent and widespread.Some companies advertised that they could decrypt your locked-up files without paying the ransom, using proprietary methods they'd developed in house to undo the attackers' encryption. This isn't outside the realm of possibility (programmers make mistakes) but it's still a bit of a stretch (well-implemented encryption is extremely robust).Propublica's Renee Dudley and Jeff Kao provide a deep investigative look at two of these "don't pay ransom" companies, Proven Data and MonsterCloud, and reveal that these companies made false representations and had no ability to decrypt their customers' files. Read the rest

Just after teenage Edward Furlong blew up in Terminator 2, he released an album, titled "Hold On Tight," in Japan. It also enjoyed a CD and vinyl release in South Korea and sweet sweet cassette in Indonesia. Here's 14-year-old Edward doing The Doors' "People Are Strange." (via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Gucci’s new $800 ‘Indy Full Turban’ was not a good idea.“As a Sikh, I see this as a huge sign of disrespect and disregard toward Sikhism,” an observer tweeted about images of a thin white guy model strutting down the catwalk with the Gucci “Indy Turban” on. The turban is styled to look like to the headwear that followers of the Sikh faith wear. “The Sikh Turban is not a hot new accessory for white models but an article of faith for practising Sikhs,” Harjinder Singh Kukreja tweeted.‏“Your models have used Turbans as ‘hats’ whereas practising Sikhs tie them neatly fold-by-fold,” @SinghLions continued. “Using fake Sikhs/Turbans is worse than selling fake Gucci products.”The elite Italian designers were dragged on social media in 2018 for not at least sticking that bright blue turban on a South Asian model.But Gucci don't care, and so in May 2019, this week, they started selling this crap online at Nordstrom. From Allyson Chiu, reporting for the Washington Post:But the initial backlash apparently had little effect, as keen-eyed social media users discovered this week that Gucci’s “Indy Full Turban” — described as a “gorgeously crafted turban” that is “ready to turn heads while keeping you in comfort as well as trademark style” — was being sold by Nordstrom for a reported price of nearly $800. The revelation has since prompted Sikhs and other critics to come after Gucci again, accusing the brand of trivializing an article of faith whose wearers often face discrimination and are attacked for expressing their religious identity. Read the rest

If you watched the Fyre Festival documentary that came out earlier this year, you might remember Maryann Rolle, who provided catering services for the catastrophic Fyre Festival and lost $50,000. After the documentary, an online crowdfunding campaign was organized to raise money for Rolle. She got over $220,000. In this Vice video, Rolle describes how she was almost scammed again.Image: Vice/YouTube Read the rest

UPi is a full-size rack mount for the Raspberry Pi. Though it can apparently accomodate three Pis, it is clearly best if you just put one in, just as depicted in the product photograph. Then, I further reccommend, do not put it in a rack. Just have a single rackmounted Raspberry Pi lying on your desk, the ultimate personal computer.On Twitter, Foone (patreon) collected this and other increasingly exotic mounting/clustering solutions for the Pi. Read the rest

A dozen mating manatees stopped traffic on the Courtney Campbell Causeway in Tampa, Florida. Apparently some drivers reported a whale in distress but it turned out to be the manatees in a "mating ball" or "mating herd." And it happened before, a few years ago, in the same spot! Must be something in the water...From the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission:Manatees mate in herds consisting of a focal female and multiple males, from a few to over a dozen, attempting to mate with her. Mating herds are most often observed during the warmer months, but can occur year-round. They can last anywhere from a few hours up to a week long. The manatees are often observed splashing or climbing on top of each other in the water. (The Drive via Daily Grail)#MANATEES! Raw aerials from Action Air 1 of a group of manatees off the #Tampa side of the Courtney Campbell Causeway this morning. We suspect that they may be mating. Any manatee experts out there? @abcactionnews pic.twitter.com/Y3UZlWd55a— Ryan French (@RyanFrenchWFTS) May 10, 2019 Read the rest

CBD is definitely screaming up toward the peak of inflated expectations, but it's not pure grift: the actual molecule and the way it interacts with our bodies is pretty amazing. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Moises Velasquez-Manoff dives deep into the history of therapeutic uses of CBD (which are necessarily small-scale and inconclusive, thanks to both legal prohibition and centuries of intense selective breeding to increase the THC content of marijuana, which downregulates production of CBD). Small-scale studies and personal experimentation produced a wealth of anecdata, but not much by way of solid conclusion. That may change soon, thanks to both the breathless commercial hype and the true believers whose lives have been altered by taking CBD (maybe). In the wake of state-level legalizations (and Canada's national legalization), there is a renaissance in the science of CBD, and in more rigorous manufacturing standards (many "high-CBD" marijuana products have little or no CBD in them, and the people who claim health benefits from these are experiencing some combination of a placebo effect and just getting really high).Preliminary data shows that CBD has 65 cellular target ("CBD may provide a kind of full-body massage at the molecular level") which may account for the very wide range of symptoms and pathologies it has been used to treat, from opioid addiction to "autism spectrum disorders... [an] aggressive brain cancer called glioblastoma... [lessening the] incidence of graft-versus-host disease in bone-marrow transplant patients" and more. In the meantime, actual CBD vendors no longer make actual health claims because the FDA has (quite rightly) told them to cut it out with that shit. Read the rest

We previously posted about a robot that solved a Rubik's Cube in .637 seconds. Somehow I missed this astounding clip of an MIT robot killing that previous world record by spinning a solution in .38 seconds. I would think that at those speeds, the specific starting state of the scrambled cube can have a measurable impact on the solving time. Don't blink.(via Kottke) Read the rest

Rebecca Tickle is a PhD student in the Faculty of Science at the University of Nottingham, explains what big data is. She uses a handy "Five Vees of Big Data Mnemonic" -- volume, velocity, variety, value, and veracity. She mentions that other people have come up with the "Seven Vees of Big Data Mnemonic" and even the "Ten Vees of Big Data Mnemonic."Image: YouTube Read the rest

No acchiappaclick here: you're getting exactly what the headline promises. Weasels are a symbol of sexuality in portraiture and there are so very many to choose from.Dr Chelsea Nichols:Weasels sometimes also appear in Renaissance paintings where the woman is already successfully pregnant. In these cases, the weasel can better be understood to represent the hope for safe childbirth.Some believed that wearing weasel fur directly on the skin could also help ease childbirth. Letters between Christina de Medici, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and her daughter Catherine, for instance, show that the Dowager sent her daughter an ermine or marten belt when Catherine was believed to be pregnant, claiming that it had helped her during the birth of her children. Read the rest

Bitfont Maker 2 is a free online app that lets you design and save pixelated low-fi fonts. You can import TTFs too, if you just want to edit an existing one. Be sure to check out the gallery. Read the rest

Behold "Karen of the Boreal Valley," whose adventures are made perfect by epic music played so loud it clips like a VHS sword-and-sandals movie at maximum volume on the cheapest television set of 1982. Read the rest

The giant talking pitcher of Kool Aid was always absurd to me. Glad to see he is still out there "Oh YEAH!!!"ing. I never understood why it was acceptable to make fun of group suicide by using "drinking the Kool Aid" as a business term."Thinking outside the box" refers to a casket. Read the rest

Just seeing this FunkoPop of Jim Henson made me want to cry.Funko POP! Icons: Henson - Jim Henson with Kermit via Amazon Read the rest

Fortnite is constantly 'changing the meta' by altering weapon characteristics, adding or simply dropping weapons from the available arsenal. The new Tactical Assault Rifle takes the game a step further away from Close-Quarters-Combat and tries to open up the mid-range.The new Combat Shotguns, a faster firing, longer-range shotgun that can not 1-hit kill is joined by the Tactical Assault Rifle. With the introducion of the Combat Shotgun, Fortnite vaulted the extremely popular Pump Shotgun, formerly considered a must carry by most players. Similarly, the P90 heavy submachine guns have been removed.The old 'meta' for Fortnite was to hit someone with a pump shotgun and finish them with a spray of bullets from the SMG. In CQC this combo was so hard to counter that Fortnite just eliminated this style of play.The TAR is an accurate, fast firing and hard-hitting AR that uses SMG ammo! Players on PC, PS4 and Xbox were all loving it as we played last night. I was on my Nintendo Switch and could hardly hit a thing. I was effective with the Combat Shotgun, however. Read the rest

Season two of Future Man continues the hilarity while focusing more on your favorite characters.The first season of Future Man was a ridiculous comedy designed to feed lovers of science fiction nostalgia. I had hopes that Season 2 would be as good, but recent trends in television had me doubting. I enjoyed the first season so much I was actually reluctant to put this show on. I had nothing to worry about. Season 2 is wonderful.The first season of Future Man told the story of Josh Futterman saving the future. Josh and his allies from the Future, Tiger and Wolf, commit a heinous act of terrorism to destroy that which turns the future into an awful dystopia. Season 2 picks up where they left off with individual episodes focused on each character. The deep character building sets up a season more focused on their decision-making and growth, rather than simply stopping the evil from taking over the future.Insanely absurd takes on time travel, paradox, and gourmet cooking punctuate the storyline. Future Man continues to take irreverent pokes at favorite science fiction and fantasy themes, tropes and actual stories. Where season 1 seemed to be running a race to drop silly references to old movies, season 2 tries to be more subtle but no less dedicated.The actors work just as hard as the writers on Future Man. Josh Hutcherson, Eliza Coupe and Derek Wilson all shine. Each masterfully plays various versions of their characters, frequently playing off themselves, like Patty Duke talking to her 'cousin.'The story is wonderful, the jokes come fast and hilarious, and the actors deserve awards. Read the rest

Whether you're writing company memos or meticulously crafting a novel, everybody needs an editor - and we're not just talking about a spell checker. Writing software has gotten pretty intuitive, to the point where programs like ProWritingAid can guard against more than just silly mistakes. They can actually improve your style.Designed as the first line of defense between professional authors and their editors, ProWritingAid can be a boon for bloggers, copy editors, entrepreneurs or anybody who needs to communicate more effectively. With a click, it can comb through your manuscript and flag a range of issues, including excessive adverb use, vague sentence construction, and even passive language. What's more, it will suggest effective solutions to these common style snags with a context-sensitive thesaurus and dictionary, allowing you to learn from your mistakes. (And yes, it corrects spelling and grammar too.)You can pick up a two-year subscription to ProWritingAid Premium for $44.99, a full 50% off the original MSRP. Read the rest

Back in 2015, the incomparable Ian McDonald (previously) published Luna: New Moon, a kind of cross between Dallas and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, with warring clans scheme and fighting on a libertopian lunar colony where the only law is private contracts and you're charged for the very air you breathe; McDonald raised the stakes to impossible heights with the 2017 sequel Luna: Wolf Moon, and now, with the final volume, Luna: Moon Rising, McDonald proves that he despite the wild gyrations of his massive cast of characters and their intricate schemes, he never lost control.Luna: Moon Rising is a practically perfect concluding volume, and not just because it ties off all the loose ends -- before it does that, it brings the characters to places that are both utterly unexpected (in the moment) but totally justifiable (in hindsight).McDonald's richly imagined Lunar culture and interplanetary poleconomy make for a superb backdrop for literally dozens of richly realized human dramas, and it's hard to say which is more fascinating. McDonald's wildly imaginative worldbuilding (present since his debut novel, the utterly wonderful standout Out On Blue Six) and his ability to spin out intrigues are both in full flight in this final volume.CBS has the rights to adapt the series, and no wonder. McDonald's got the zeitgeisty magic with an intergenerational space opera that turns on a plan to make humans obsolete and cover the surface of the Moon with solar-powered cryptocurrency mining rigs, with set pieces as grand as any that Bollywood or George Lucas ever imagined, from hand to hand combat in a ring to massed armies battling on the surface of the Moon. Read the rest

On May 9, the whistleblower Chelsea Manning was released from jail after serving 62 days for refusing to testify before a Grand Jury about Wikileaks; she was released because the jury was dissolved.Now, a new jury has been impaneled and Manning has been summoned to testify before it again. She will appear before it tomorrow. Manning has announced that she will not testify before this jury, and as a result, she is facing likely re-imprisonment. Manning's supporters are asking the public to email the prosecutors of the Eastern District of Virginia to request that they rescind her subpoena. Below is a sample letter. If you are willing to support Manning, please use it as a template to write your own letter to the EDVA.To: usavae.usattys@usdoj.govcc:joshua.stueve@usdoj.govJoshua Stueve, Director of Communications for the Eastern District of VirginiaAlexandria DOJ office: (703) 299-3700 Subject: Rescind Chelsea Manning’s SubpoenaDear (USAO EDVA)I am aware that you have subpoenaed Chelsea Manning for a second time to appear before a grand jury. After Chelsea refused to testify before a previous grand jury, you had her held in civil contempt and jailed her for 63 days. (28 days of her 63 days were in solitary confinement conditions.) I urge you to drop the subpoena and decline to pursue any further civil contempt findings against Chelsea. Chelsea testified at length during her court martial and at least one target of the grand jury has been indicted. There is no need for her testimony. Given that Chelsea has already served an unprecedented prison sentence for disclosing information to the media, at times under conditions criticized by international human rights experts, further pursuit of her is excessive and cruel. Read the rest

In her latest detailed policy proposal, would-be 202 Democratic presidential nominee Elizabeth Warren sets out a Green New Deal for the US military, whose own policy analysts have identified climate change and energy independence as serious risks to US security.The Pentagon is America's leading energy consumer (unsurprising, given the size and scale of the US military, which dwarfs every other country's military in both absolute and per-capita terms). Warren reasons that any expense incurred to reduce the military's domestic and foreign carbon footprint will more than pay for itself in savings realized by not having to endure floods and other extreme weather events, and by averting the global conflicts generated by climate change and its force-multipliers (famine, disease, etc).And I’ll invest billions of dollars into a new, ten-year research and development program at the Defense Department focused on microgrids and advanced energy storage. The Pentagon has been responsible for countless technological breakthroughs, working together with colleges and universities, our national labs, local governments, and private companies. Let’s put that effort toward new clean energy solutions that will improve our security by allowing military bases to remain operational when traditional power sources fail, and save taxpayers money through lower overall energy consumption.Finally, I want the Pentagon to produce an annual report evaluating the climate vulnerability of every U.S. military base at home and abroad, using real scientific methodology, so that we can make more informed plans moving forward.We don’t have to choose between a green military and an effective one. Read the rest

'Mythbusters' TV star Adam Savage's first book is out. 'Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It' is a wonderful read, in which Adam shares his own personal guidelines for creativity, from inspiration to execution.In 'Every Tool's a Hammer,' the sci-tech TV host and longtime Boing Boing pal encourages each of us to explore, build, make, invent, and fully enjoy the thrill of being alive and capable of creating. It's a wonderful book, and couldn't come out at a more perfect time. We've got a lot of building and creating to do.It's his first book, and he's out on his book tour right now. Info on the book and the tour at adamsavagebook.com.From Adam and his team, about the book:"Every Tool’s a Hammer is a chronicle of my life as a maker. It’s an exploration of making and of my own productive obsessions, but it’s also a permission slip of sorts from me to you. Permission to grab hold of the things you’re interested in, that fascinate you, and to dive deeper into them to see where they lead you.Through stories from forty-plus years of making and molding, building and break­ing, along with the lessons I learned along the way, this book is meant to be a toolbox of problem solving, complete with a shop’s worth of notes on the tools, techniques, and materials that I use most often. Things like——don’t wait until everything is perfect to begin a project, and if you don’t have the exact right tool for a task, just use whatever’s handy; Increase Your Loose Tolerance—making is messy and filled with screwups, but that’s okay, as creativity is a path with twists and turns and not a straight line to be found; Use More Cooling Fluid—it prolongs the life of blades and bits, and it prevents tool failure, but beyond that it’s a reminder to slow down and reduce the fric­tion in your work and relationships; Screw Before You Glue—mechanical fasteners allow you to change and modify a project while glue is forever but sometimes you just need the right glue, so I dig into which ones will do the job with the least harm and best effects. Read the rest

Naked Captalism is one of my favorite sites, both for its radical political commentary and the vigorous discussions that follow from it; now, John Siman has posted a review of my latest book, Radicalized, which collects four intensely political science fiction stories about our present day and near future. Siman's review frames Radicalized as a critique of neoliberalism, which is just right: from the story Unauthorized Bread, about the use of DRM-locked appliances to make the lives of refugees in subsidized housing miserable, to the title story Radicalized, which supposes that men who watch their loved ones die slowly after they're denied treatment by their insurers might start murdering health insurance execs and the politicians they've purchased, and that if the men doing the killing are white and respectable enough, America might not immediately brand them as terrorists. And the proof of the devil’s active existence in the Neoliberal USA is in the details, which Doctorow gets right in a way that is enrapturing in its precision: Here is the alluring beauty that arises from staring squarely at and studying what is most abhorrent. The reigning devil is, of course, the Neoliberal dispensation by which the USA has been consumed for going on four decades now, in whose workshop the country has been purposefully divided into an oligarchy consisting of the billionaires and their Creative Class, hipsterocratic lieutenants on the one hand, and the lumpen deplorables and the immigrants of ambiguous documentation and the vestigial middle class and the poor of many colors on the other. Read the rest

Pappy van Poodle, a character in Nintendo's Rusty's Real Deal Baseball, was so obscure no-one ever uttered its name on the Internet record despite his having an extensive in-game backstory and hand-painted media. That's zero Google or Twitter results—at least as of the publication date of Nick Robsinson's video about Pappy and the game's inventive play mechanics.Particularly interesting (and tres Nintendo) are the game's use of "light patterns" -- user interface and narrative prompts that encourage the player to haggle with in-game merchants instead of just give Nintendo money: Read the rest

I have self-healing cutting mats in a few different sizes. One of them is over 30 years old. I used it to help make the zine version of Boing Boing in the late 1980s. I still use it today. If you have never used a self-healing cutting mat, you don't know what you are missing. You can make thousands of craft knife cuts and the mat will still look new. Amazon has them on sale now for cheap. Read the rest

The creators, producers, writers, and showrunner of The Office talk about how they came up with the stories for one of the greatest comedy series in TV history. It was especially interesting to hear about how the personality of Michael Scott was changed from a thoroughly unlikable person to a sympathetic character early in the series, and why it was a smart move.[via Doobybrain] Read the rest

Axon -- formerly Taser International -- makes police bodycams that they sell to towns on the cheap, betting that they'll make it up by gouging the towns for cloud-based storage for footage from the cameras (what could possibly go wrong?!). The town of Fontana, California bought some of Axon's bodycams to try them out with its police force, but after three years, decided to open up a general call for bids by Axon and its competitors to outfit the whole force. When a rival won the contract, Fontana tried to cancel its contract with Axon.Axon's sales reps falsely claimed that Fontana could not cancel its contract (the contract actually contained a "termination for convenience" clause that allowed the town to terminate the contract at will), and told town officials that they would arrange to have the town's credit rating damaged if the town did not continue to pay $4,000/year for a service it wasn't using.Muckrock used Freedom of Information Access requests to get a copy of the contract and the correspondence and discovered that the town had been lied to by Axon; when they contacted the town to ask about the discrepancy, officials finally reviewed the contract and discovered the lie. According to Muckrock, Axon's business relies on recurring payments from small towns for cloud services. Axon is entrusted with the most sensitive and potentially damaging information that many of these towns generate, and unethical conduct on Axon's part could lead to catastrophic consequences for people across the country. Read the rest

Mexico City has declared a smog emergency, warning residents to avoid spending time outdoors. From Mexico News Daily:At least 23 fires were reported in Mexico City yesterday, affecting nearly all of the capital’s 16 boroughs and contributing to poor air quality.To avoid possible respiratory ailments, the commission recommended that residents remain indoors with windows and doors shut, and avoid intense exercise or other outdoor recreational activities. According to Wikipedia: "after loosening regulations in 2015 by the Mexico City government, air pollution has steadily increased in recent years in Greater Mexico City."Ciudad de México, hoy a las 7pm. pic.twitter.com/dfgk4yoxA3— Santiago Arau (@Santiago_Arau) May 15, 2019Image: Shutterstock/Javier Garcia Read the rest

The US embassy in Austria has made a deal with the 194 McDonald's restaurants in Austria to help US citizens in distress by putting them in touch with embassy staff who can help with lost passports and other emergencies.From BBC:A 24-hour hotline to the embassy is part of the arrangement.The embassy said it was ensuring that American citizens had every option available to get in touch when in need - "the #1 duty of every embassy around the world".McDonald's said it saw itself as a type of support and telephone exchange and had agreed to the idea on the request of US ambassador Trevor Traina.A spokesman told the BBC it would also "help anyone who finds themselves in need of assistance, for example, by calling the police or emergency services".Images: grebeshkovmaxim/Silver Wings SS/Shutterstock Read the rest

Last year, Google was rocked by a succession of mass uprisings by its staff, who erupted in fury after discovering that the company was secretly pursuing a censored Chinese search tool and an AI project for US drones, and that it had secretly paid Android founder Andy Rubin $150m to quietly leave the company after women who worked for him accused him of sexually assaulting them.In the end, 20,000 googlers walked out in protest, and, after attaining victory for most of their demands, continued to press the company to hold itself to high ethical standards, successfully blocking the inclusion of a transphobic, racist, xenophobic ideologue on the company's "AI Ethics" committee.Google management didn't take this lying down: they illegally retaliated against uprising organizers Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton (leading to a predictable second uprising among googlers).Now, Google management is taking things further, circulating a company-wide memo warning employees what they can expect to be terminated if they access documents that are "need to know" (which would have included the documents that led to the unrest about the drone project, the China project, Andy Rubin's payoff, and the inclusion of a Heritage Foundation extremist on the AI Ethics committee). Googlers are predictably upset about this -- not least because there are no consistent standards for "need to know" classification, and not all "need to know" documents are correctly labeled, a situation that creates an employment minefield for googlers.It's part of a general trend towards secrecy within Google, including an end to the practice of archiving videos from the company-wide, weekly "TGIF" meetings, and also an end to the practice of allowing any employee to ask questions of management at these meetings. Read the rest

This week, we learned that the notorious Israeli cyber-arms-dealer NSO Group had figured out how hijack your Iphone or Android phone by placing a simple Whatsapp call, an attack that would work even if you don't answer the call.Apple has received a lot of praise for the security of its Ios devices, which are said to be so secure in part because of Apple's walled garden strategy, which prevents Iphone owners from running third-party software unless it comes through Apple's App Store; and which limits who can repair Apple devices, and whether they can use third-party replacement parts. All of this control is said to produce a much more limited attack surface, with fewer bugs, which are corrected more quickly.However, there are several cyber-arms-dealers that are in the business of selling exploits to hijack control over Apple's products, from Cellebrite to Grayshift to NSO Group. These companies keep the bugs they exploit a secret, making it harder for Apple to repair them.Meanwhile, security researchers who want to develop tools to perform forensics on Apple products to determine whether they have been compromised with one of these cyber-weapons are out of luck: Apple blocks the forensic apps from the App Store, and kicks the few that sneak in. That means that in order to test an Apple device, the user first has to jailbreak it -- and jailbreaking Apple devices has gotten harder and harder, as Apple defends its own security (against competing App Stores) while weakening its users' security. Read the rest

So soft. So relaxing.So sweet.So relaxing[via] Read the rest

Strawberry Short-fluff! “Oreo likes to talk with his mouth full,” says IMGURian OreoCat.Unmute it and turn up the volume.Strawberry shortfluff[via] Read the rest

Netflix released the trailer for the season 5 of the dystopic science fiction series Black Mirror. It launches June 5. Only 3 episodes!Image: YouTube Read the rest

Marginalized Native American communities throughout the United States could have better access to high-speed internet if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decides to allow tribes to use the Educational Broadband Services (EBS) spectrum for services like telemedicine, transmitting medical records electronically, or an online high school.The FCC says it has granted 2,190 EBS spectrum licenses, each of which cover a roughly 35-mile radius, and those licenses have been granted to 1,300 licensees. FCC is asking asked for public comment on “realigning the boundaries of the licenses, eliminating the educational use requirement, and allowing tribes, current licensees or new educational entities to access unassigned spectrum before a possible auction,” writes Felicia Fonseca reporting for The Associated Press.“Despite its name, the spectrum isn’t used solely for educational purposes. Licensees can lease it to commercial providers. Sprint is among the largest users.”Excerpt:The Federal Communications Commission has not issued any new permanent licenses for the Educational Broadband Services spectrum in more than 20 years. It asked the public a year ago to weigh in on possible changes to the licensing system to better define geographic areas, build in flexibility, create priorities for tribes and educational institutions, and possibly auction off the 2.5 GHz-band spectrum. It’s not clear when the FCC will act.The agency estimates that about one-third of the people living on tribal lands don’t have access to high-speed internet, but others say the figure is twice as high. That’s partly because homes on remote reservations are spread far apart. Read the rest

Embassies are basically "mini countries abroad," according to this explainer video from Wendover Productions. I learned that diplomats in embassies are:exempt from taxes in their host countryallowed free movement around their host countrycan carry diplomatic bags that cannot be seized or searchedare granted diplomated immunitytreated by the host country the same way in their private residences as they are in the embassyImage: YouTube Read the rest

The Verge's Josh Dzieza continues his outstanding coverage of Foxconn's shell-game in Wisconsin, where the company -- promised billions in subsidies and tax-breaks by former governor Scott Walker, a Koch darling, and by Trump, who used Foxconn's promise of a major new Wisconsin factory to claim his policies were working -- has lived up to its reputation for overpromising and underdelivering by absorbing billions in subsidies but never delivering on promised jobs.Foxconn keeps waffling on whether they'll build a factory at all (there's absolutely no reason to build giant LCD panels in Wisconsin) and most recently, they tried to diffuse criticism by buying a bunch of buildings around the state and declaring that they would be "innovation centers" (a term that seems to variously mean "co-working space," "incubator," "accelerator," and "commercial real-estate we'll rent to just about anyone for any purpose).As of a month ago, all of these buildings were empty.Dzieza called Foxconn out on their empty "innovation centers" and they told him that the centers were about to be filled with vigorously innovating Wisconsinites who would justify the billions that the state was handing over the Chinese company -- finally making up for all the residents who had their homes taken away at pennies on the dollar and knocked down to make way for the (still nonexistent) factory.A month later, the buildings are still empty.What's more, Foxconn's promised acquisition of more buildings turns out to be a lie, too (though given that these buildings would doubtless be sitting empty, this is something of a mixed blessing) ("the food here is terrible and the portions are so small!"). Read the rest

U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed a new rule to allow carriers to block robocalls. “The American people are fed up with illegal robocalls,” he said.He's right. And no, it's not your imagination — robocalls really are getting so much worse, with more than 48 billion robocalls placed in the US in 2018.The FCC Do-Not-Call list does nothing to help.From Makena Kelly at The Verge:On Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission announced a new measure that would grant mobile phone carriers new abilities to block the growing number of unwanted robocalls.The new rule would make it easier for carriers, like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, to automatically register their customers for call-blocking technology. As of right now, customers have to opt-in on their own. It would also allow customers to block calls coming from phone numbers that are not on their contacts list. Commissioners are expected to vote on the measure at their June 6th meeting.“Allowing call blocking by default could be a big benefit for consumers who are sick and tired of robocalls,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said. “By making it clear that such call blocking is allowed, the FCC will give voice service providers the legal certainty they need to block unwanted calls from the outset so that consumers never have to get them.”Ajit Pai proposes new rule that would allow carriers to block robocalls [theverge.com]Are you sick of robocalls? The number of those frustrating calls is skyrocketing, but there could be some relief coming soon. Read the rest

Police in London conducted a public street trial with facial recognition cameras. A man who covered his face as he walked by the cameras was stopped by officers, forced to submit to being photographed, and then arrested on a charge of public disorder after complaining loudly. The segment starts at 3:35 in the embedded BBC video; here's more coverage from The Independent:The Independent revealed that more than £200,000 was spent on six deployments that resulted in no arrests between August 2016 and July last year. Two people wanted for violent offences were arrested after a trial in December.Critics have called the force’s use of facial recognition a “shambles” and accused Scotland Yard of wasting public money ... The Metropolitan Police has described the deployments as “overt” and said members of the public were informed facial recognition was being used by posters and leaflets. But no one questioned by The Independent after they passed through a scanning zone in central London in December had seen police publicity material, and campaigners claim the technology is being rolled out “by stealth”.I can barely beleive the motto of the Metropolitan Police is 'TOTAL POLICING'. Horseshoe theory is a limiting view of politics, but it is amazing how we get to the terminology of comic-book villainy by other means. The jobsworth "for your own protection" attitude of British cops is incredibly annoying, albeit less annoying than getting executed in the street by American ones. The real danger, though, lurks in how the cops dance their way between that nonsense and, as one plain-clothes officer puts it, "covering your face is grounds for reasonable suspicion." When authorities pick and choose rationalizations depending on the audience, the true answer is a secret. Read the rest

Classic video-clip humor site YTMND ("You're the man now dog!") is gone. Hailing from an era before web video was commonplace, its distinctive juxtapositions of images, superimposed text and looping audio had a towering influence over the emerging web culture of the 2000s.Death's approach was slow but inexorable. Gizmodo reported YTMND's imminent demise three years ago:On August 29, 2016, Max Goldberg announced that YTMND would likely soon be shutting down, citing ill health and the site's inability to fund its own hosting fees from ad revenue. Goldberg stated "Besides being a time capsule I don’t really see a reason for it to continue to exist... It seems like the internet has moved on...And I’ve moved on too. I don’t have much interest in the site beyond it being good memories."An explosion of abusive, politically toxic users appears to have been the point of departure for the site's creator; logins became impossible some time ago due to Google deprecating a Captcha library and Goldberg did not fix it.YOU'RE THE ARCHIVE NOW, DOGArchive Team just backed up YTMND because DUH. 787gb of repeating memesanity. Good work, team— Jason Scott (@textfiles) August 13, 2018 Read the rest

A man in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, was confused when the Tire Discounters next to Taco Bell refused to honor a quote, then bemused to learn that the place he'd called was actually Discount Tires—on the other side of the Taco Bell."What I experienced that day was crazy, funny, yet I'm still mad at the asshole who did this," adds Michael Gearlds.Gearlds offers a simple but perfectly cromulent critique of the hotelier model of location competition, the hotelling principle of minimal differention, and their spread to other retail segments. I wanted to see if the restaurant on the other side of the tire shop was a Chipotle, but according to Google Maps it's a Red Robin. Read the rest

Tesla cars have a "sentry mode" feature that amounts to dashcams pointed hither and yon: useful for video-recording accidents, road ragers, and vandals.Entire right side of car keyed and dented. MericaThe vandals' self-satisfied grinning really makes it. According to Reddit's crack team of investigators, it was at this location in old Town Sacramento and they were driving a Silver or Grey Dodge Ram pickup. Read the rest

[Austria's Epicentre Works is an incredibly effective European digital rights group, most famous for getting the EU's Data Retention Directive struck down; now, they're raising the alarm about a move to relax the EU's Net Neutrality rules to allow ISPs to conduct fine-grained surveillance and discrimination against services that aren't in bed with ISPs. I'm happy to provide Epicenter Works's Thomas Lohninger a space to highlight the group's efforts -Cory]Today 45 NGOs, Academics and Companies from 15 countries released an open letter outlining the dangers of the wide-spread use of privacy invasive Deep Packet Inspection technology in the European Union. The letter is referencing the ongoing negotiations about Europes new net neutrality rules in which some telecom regulators are pushing for the legalization of DPI technology. Deep Packet Inspection allows telecom companies to examine the content of our communications data. Information about which apps we use, the videos we watch and the specific news articles we read should be off limits for the telecom industry. Yet, with the proliferation of zero-rating to all but two European countries the industry has started to utilize DPI equipment on a large scale to bill certain data packages differently or to throttle services to cram more internet subscribers in a network already running over capacity. Europe's current net neutrality rules contain a clear ban on any Deep Packet Inspection technology that examines specific user information for the purpose of treating traffic differently. Yet, a mapping of zero-rating offers in Europe identified 186 such products which potentially make use of DPI technology. Read the rest

When you're half-asleep, nighttime bathroom breaks can get messy or even painful without a light. But let's face it: Nobody wants to think about their bathroom any more than they have to. That's why the LooLoo Automatic Toilet Freshener & Night Light might be one of the most useful gadgets you never knew you needed.First of all, the LooLoo is a night light that illuminates exactly where you need it, which not only might save you some stumbling but also money on your power bill. As soon as its motion sensors detect an approach, it lights up the toilet bowl. It's also equipped with infrared sensors on the interior of the bowl that detect body heat. When you sit down, the LooLoo hits the water with a quick spritz of essential oils, heading unwanted odors off before they even arrive.Right now, you can pick up LooLoo: The Automatic Toilet Freshener & Night Light for $39.99, 18% off the original MSRP of $49. Read the rest

“Alabama is one signature away from enacting a near-total ban on abortions.”

The guy sure has a knack for compounding the maximum number of lies into one line.President Donald Trump today, while speaking to Sempra Energy employees in Louisiana, referenced the Green New Deal advocated by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). He seems to be obsessed and upset by it. “That's a hoax like the hoax I just went through,” said President Trump. “Under that deal, everybody in this room gets fired. All of the thousands of guys and women standing on these buildings gets fired.” “[Democrats] don't like anything,” Donald Trump ranted. “They don't know what they like.” Then Donald said something even weirder."When the wind doesn't blow you don't watch television that night.” “Your wife says, 'what the hell did you get me into with this Green New Deal, Charlie?'"WHAT.Trump on the Green New Deal: "That's a hoax like the hoax I just went through... under that deal, everybody in this room gets fired. All of the thousands of guys and women standing on these buildings gets fired... [Democrats] don't like anything. They don't know what they like." pic.twitter.com/zDDv4Cih2I— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2019Trump on wind energy: "When the wind doesn't blow you don't watch television that night. Your wife says, 'what the hell did you get me into with this Green New Deal, Charlie?'"The crowd responds with extremely tepid applause. pic.twitter.com/sHtPuHB2by— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2019Trump on the Green New Deal: "That’s a hoax like the hoax I just went through."— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) May 14, 2019Trump speaking now at the Cameron LNG terminal in Louisiana, which just started liquefying— Timothy Cama (@Timothy_Cama) May 14, 2019Trump mentions the Green New Deal. Read the rest

This Claude Monet landscape painting just broke a record by selling for $110.7 million dollars at auction.Above, the painting in question, Monet’s “Les Meules,” image courtesy Sotheby’s. From Bloomberg's report by Katya Kazakina:A sun-drenched landscape by Claude Monet fetched $110.7 million at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday, setting a record for the Impressionist painter.Painted in 1890, “Les Meules,” from the artist’s series featuring haystacks, had been estimated at $55 million. The final price includes fees.The previous auction record for Monet was $84.7 million, for one of his water lilies works sold at Christie’s last year.The bidding war lasted for more than eight minutes and drew at least six bidders. The winning bid was placed by a woman sitting in the back of the room, with paddle 989. Her identity wasn’t immediately clear.Not clear, you say?Hmm.Who could it be. Read the rest

No deep dive of this legendary comic exists online from a cartoonist's perspective, let alone 3 cartoonists! The boys, Ed Piskor, Jim Rugg, and Tom Scioli continue to unpack the Frank Miller 1986 Batman classic over the course of 4 jam-packed episodes, one chapter at a time!Part 1 here:For more videos and deep dives like this make sure to subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel You can support the channel by grabbing some stuff from our Spreadshop! Read the rest

This Saturday, May 18, I'll be appearing at the Nebula Awards Conference, at the Marriott Warner Center in Woodland Hills: I'll be participating in the 1:30PM mass signing in the Grand Ballroom and then I'll be on the "Megatrends for the Near Future" panel at 4PM in A/B Salon.And then on Thursday, May 23d, I'll be speaking at the Exposition Park Regional Library as part of the Los Angeles Public Library's Book to Action program, speaking on algorithmic manipulation, monopolies and technological self determination from 6PM-730PM. Read the rest

Back in 2018, evil got a shot in the arm when Nazi collaborators Bayer were allowed to buy Big Ag monopolists Monsanto, celebrating the marriage by getting rid of the Monsanto name (on the grounds that Monsanto's tactics had tarnished their reputation even worse than Bayer's use of concentration camp slaves and fatal medical experiments on Jews and others imprisoned by the Nazis, to say nothing of their notorious product Zyklon B). Monsanto's flagship product is Roundup (glyphosate), a weedkiller that works in combination with GMO strains of crops that are unaffected by glyphosate's active ingredients. Glyphosate has long been suspected of causing harm in humans and other living things, a conclusion supported by Monsanto's own accidentally exposed internal memoranda.Now, Bayer may be regretting its merger, after a California jury awarded a couple $2b in damages in a suit that alleged that Roundup had given them cancer (Bayer says it will appeal). 13,400 other Americans have pending suits against the company.Bayer's shares have dropped 45% over the past 12 months (2% this week!). Bayer management is facing a flurry of shareholder action from furious investors who say that Monsanto's future Roundup liability should have made the merger a nonstarter.Last month, over 55% of voting shareholders refused to endorse the actions of management at the company's annual meeting, a rebuke that Berenberg analyst Sebastian Bray described as "unprecedented" in Germany.Investors want to know whether management did their homework on Monsanto before moving ahead with a $63 billion merger, which closed in 2018. Read the rest