Boing Boing

There's domesticated animals and then there's domesticated animals. Where most dogs have had the mean bred right out of them, this one's an evolutionary step further down the road: it's not just friendly, it's friendly enough to do its owner's laundry. Read the rest

Rose-colored glasses are out. Sunglasses filtered with a color palette reminiscent of a Wes Anderson movie are in, at least according to "filter sunglasses brand" Tens. Spectachrome is a new and limited edition lens filter inspired by the distinct colour palettes of Wes Anderson films such as “Moonrise Kingdom”, “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Hotel Chevalier”... Experience a view that transports you to a whimsical world of vintage cinema and celluloid film, a place you’ll want to revisit time and time again. At first glance, the lens may appear to look primarily orange but whilst looking through it, it offers a far wider colour spectrum than what initially meets the eye. Wearing Spectachrome feels like walking into a scene of a sun-bleached 1970’s postcard.Tens is currently crowdfunding these Spectachrome sunglasses ($87/pair).(Nag on the Lake) Read the rest

The inside of my head is an absolute crap place for productivity. I tend to fixate on old horrors, recent regrets and small shames that swirl around the inside of my brain like greasy water bound down a drain. It makes for a lot of noise while I'm trying to write or focus on my day job--listening to music with lyrics or, on bad days, even a melody, can lead me to distraction. When I'm set up in a coffee shop or another noisy locale and need to churn out some words, I wind up getting nowhere. Last year, a friend turned me on to Lustmord: it's the working name of Welsh musician, sound engineer and, as near as I can tell, dark wizard, Brian Williams. Wikipedia notes that Williams is often credited with inventing Dark Ambient Music. I credit him with giving me the space I need in my skull to get work done. In turns, Lustmord's music has overwhelmed me with feelings of calm, dread and and well-being. Played late in the evening in concert with medicinal amounts of Jameson, it helps to distract me from the pain in my body and the dogs barking in my head.Image via Wikipedia Commons Read the rest

Jony Ive, Apple's longtime design chief and the creator of countless iconic designs, is leaving the firm to form his own agency. Apple will be his first client.“After nearly 30 years and countless projects, I am most proud of the lasting work we have done to create a design team, process and culture at Apple that is without peer. Today it is stronger, more vibrant and more talented than at any point in Apple’s history,” said Ive. “The team will certainly thrive under the excellent leadership of Evans, Alan and Jeff, who have been among my closest collaborators. I have the utmost confidence in my designer colleagues at Apple, who remain my closest friends, and I look forward to working with them for many years to come.” Read the rest

I'm coming to Houston on July 31 to appear with Hank Green at an event for the paperback launch of his outstanding debut novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: we're on a 7PM at Spring Forest Middle School (14240 Memorial Drive, Houston, TX 77079); it's a ticketed event and the ticket price includes a copy of Hank's book. Hope to see you there! (Images: Vlogbrothers, Jonathan Worth, CC-BY) Read the rest

If the British Royal Family is a reality TV show, the tabloids are their unseen scriptwriters.

Every now and again, a company will come up with a product "innovation" that seems to deprive people of their free will, driving great masses of internet users to look for Pokemon, or tend virtual farms, or buy now with one-click, or flock to Upworthy-style "You won't believe what happened next" stories, or be stampeded into buying something because there are "only two left" and "14 people have bought this item in the past 24 hours."These techniques, "nudges" drawn from behavioral economics, can exert a powerful pull on the public, driving unconsidered and even compulsive behavior.But marketing techniques don't age well: once you encounter a trick a few times, it starts to lose power, in the way that so many phenomena regress to the mean. Behavioral marketers know that they can prolong the efficacy of these techniques with "intermittent reinforcement" (that is, using each technique sparingly, at random intervals, which make them more resistant to our ability to grow accustomed to them), but marketers have a collective action problem, a little dark-side Tragedy of the Commons: it's in the advertising industry's overall interest to limit the use of techniques so that we don't get accustomed to them, but any given marketer knows that if they don't use the technique to exhaustion, some other marketer will, so each marketer "overgrazes" the land (that is, us), in order to beat the others.Shoshanna Zuboff's theory of "surveillance capitalism" is grounded in the idea that these interventions will gain effectiveness over time, and that marketers will discover powerful new persuasive tools with machine learning. Read the rest

Suggested marketing copy for the Breo iPalm520s Electric Acupressure Hand Palm Massager:"Put your right hand in the box," she said.Fear shot through Paul. He started to back away, but the old woman said: "Is this how you obey your mother?"He looked up into bird-bright eyes.Slowly, feeling the compulsions and unable to inhibit them, Paul put his hand into the box. He felt first a sense of cold as the blackness closed around his hand, then slick metal against his fingers and a prickling as though his hand were asleep.A predatory look filled the old woman's features. She lifted her right hand away from the box and poised the hand close to the side of Paul's neck. He saw a glint of metal there and started to turn toward it."Stop!" she snapped.Using the Voice again! He swung his attention back to her face."I hold at your neck the gom jabbar," she said. "The gom jabbar, the high-handed enemy. It's a needle with a drop of poison on its tip. Ah-ah! Don't pull away or you'll feel that poison."...He felt increased tingling in his hand, pressed his lips tightly together. How could this be a test? he wondered. The tingling became an itch... The itch became the faintest burning... It mounted slowly: heat upon heat upon heat... . The burning! The burning! He thought he could feel skin curling black on that agonized hand, the flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained. Read the rest

San Francisco passed a law requiring owners of multi-unit buildings to choose which ISP they use, ending the practice of landlords selling access to tenants to ISPs, locking in the tenants to ISPs who don't have to keep them happy to keep their business.Enter Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a former Verizon exec who never met an anticompetitive telcom practice he didn't love. Pai says he'll use the FCC to block the city's rules, on the grounds that telcoms are a federal matter. This is the opposite position that Pai took during the Obama years, when the FCC tried to annul state-level rules banning cities from offering municipal broadband services; back then, he argued that the FCC's authority only extended to interstate lines, and that "states rights" meant that local governments could regulate telcoms in their borders.But then the Democratic Congress intervened, with Rep. Katie Porter's [D-CA] amendment to the budget bill, which "prohibits the Federal Communications Committee from finalizing a draft declaratory ruling that would overturn local ordinances that promote broadband competition." The amendment passed.Now it has to clear the Senate and get Trump's signoff. "The FCC's mission is to promote competition," Porter said in a statement her office provided to Ars. "We should be holding them accountable to fulfilling this mission, which is why I'm seeking to defund their declaratory draft ruling preempting San Francisco's local ordinance, effectively preventing competition."House votes to block Ajit Pai’s plan to kill San Francisco broadband law [Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica](Image: Noahnmf, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Bad News is a free webgame created by two Cambridge psych researchers; in a 15-minute session, it challenges players to learn about and deploy six tactics used in disinformation campaigns ("polarisation, invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, trolling people online, deflecting blame, and impersonating fake accounts").The game was created to test the hypothesis that learning how these techniques worked would make players more discerning when they were encountered in the wild. To evaluate the proposition, players are quizzed before and after the game and asked to evaluate the credibility of a series of tweets. In their analysis of the results, the study authors make the case that the game is indeed capable of "vaccinating" players against disinformation. During the three months that the study ran, 43,687 subjects played the game. These subjects (a "convenience sample") were self-selecting and skewed older, educated, male and liberal, but "the sample size still allowed us to collect relatively large absolute numbers of respondents in each category."Based on the pre- and post-game quizzes, the authors conclude that learning the mechanics of disinformation teaches players to detect these techniques in the wild; however, the study does not explore whether these effects are persistent beyond the few moments after a fifteen minute intervention. It's a promising start, but -- as the old saying goes -- "more study is needed."Overall, despite these limitations, we highlight the potential of game-based psychological interventions to combat the problem of misinformation at the individual level. The participation rate and overall success of the game as a translational intervention (outside of the research context) further show that there is a high demand for evidence-based materials that help stem the flow of online misinformation. Read the rest

Laurie Santos, a psychology professor, teaches the "most popular class in the history of Yale University," according to this article in The Atlantic. Her class is called “Psychology and the Good Life.” She spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Monday to present the “shortest possible crash-course version of the class.” She said the human mind has two glitches that make it hard to be happy.The first glitch is “hedonic adaptation.” We get used to the good stuff we have (like a warm bed, food, tech gadgets) and stop appreciating them. She offers two ways to reduce hedonic adaptation -- the first is to spend your money on novel experiences rather than things. The second is to set aside time to think about the things you should be grateful for in your life.The second glitch is that we tend to compare our lives to people who are doing better than us:People, says Santos "dwell on relative comparisons instead of absolutes—in other words, how what we have compares with what others have, not whether what we have is plenty for us. She pointed to research that looked at Olympic medalists: Those who won gold were of course visibly thrilled after their event, but bronze medalists appeared happier on the medal stand than silver medalists. That’s because of, the psychological theory goes, each medalist’s reference points. The silver medalists were probably fixated on the gold medal they didn’t get, but the bronze medalists were probably thinking about how their alternative reality was receiving no medal at all."Image: kovop58/Shutterstock Read the rest

NYC Mesh -- the meshing, neutral, community based wireless ISP in New York City -- has undergone a drastic expansion beyond its initial supernode.That first supernode, at 375 Pearl Street in Manhattan, was serviced by gigabit fiber, and offered downlinks to 300 buildings whose own antennas offered service to further buildings, and so on.A new Industry City supernode has now been unveiled in Brooklyn's Sunset Park, boasting 50 times the capacity of the first node, which will extend coverage to Sunset Park, South Slope, Park Slope, Gowanus and Red Hook.NYC Mesh is a nonprofit organized under New York City's chapter of the Internet Society (which administers the .org Top-Level Domain); users optional monthly donations of $20-50 (residences) and $100 (businesses). Hardware and setup costs $160. NYC Mesh does not retain or monetize user traffic, though it does sometimes analyze it to resolve service issues.New York City has legendarily poor internet service, with the Verizon/Charter duopoly performing so badly that they have faced legal jepoardy from customers, regulators, state officials and city governments. 25-33% of NYC residents don't have access to broadband at all.NYC Mesh is a non-profit project of the New York chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-NY), an organization tasked with building a better, more secure internet. And it’s part of a steadily growing trend of locals taking the problem of terrible US broadband (thanks to the apathetic government officials who enable it) into their own hands.“NYC Mesh is more than happy to support anyone interested in building a community network,” Rasmusen said. Read the rest

Robert Reich (previously) served in the presidential administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, was Clinton's labor czar, and sat on Obama's economic transition advisory board; though he is generally on the Democratic Party's left flank, his own history shows that he has credibility with the establishment wing of the party as well.That's why it's so significant that he has backed Elizabeth Warren's plan to break up the Big Tech companies. Reich says that the Big Tech giants are the most visible symbol of a new Gilded Age, in which corporate concentration threatens the power of states to regulate companies and keep them from abusing their customers and blocking innovation and competition, and attributes the collapse of new American job-creating businesses to their stranglehold.He also condemns Big Tech for its environmental devastation, its tax evasion, and its low wages to all but a few workers (90% of Silicon Valley workers have experienced a real-terms pay cut since 1997)The Democratic Party has an intimate relationship with Big Tech, relying on the companies, their executives, their industry associations and their rank-and-file for cash contributions. The answer is to break them up. That way, information would be distributed through a large number of independent channels instead of a centralized platform. And more startups could flourish.Even one of Facebook’s founders has called for the social media behemoth to be broken up.Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced a proposal to do just that. It would force tech giants to open up their platforms to more competition or break up into smaller companies. Read the rest

The American Civil Liberties Union released internal NSA memos received under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealing that, once again, the NSA improperly collected phone call and text message metadata of US citizens.A spokesperson for the agency was quick to pin the blame on the telecommunications companies that provided the information:“While NSA lawfully sought data pertaining to a foreign power engaged in international terrorism, the provider produced inaccurate data and data beyond which NSA sought,” NSA’s media relations chief Greg Julian told The Wall Street Journal.In other words, "We didn't want the data we took, and anyway, we were busy catching TERRISTS.ACLU staff attorney Patrick Toomey said in a statement, “These documents only confirm that this surveillance program is beyond redemption and should be shut down for good. The NSA’s collection of Americans’ call records is too sweeping, the compliance problems too many, and evidence of the program’s value all but nonexistent. There is no justification for leaving this surveillance power in the NSA’s hands.”Image: Rena Schild/Shutterstock Read the rest

EXCELLENT!I can not wait for Bill and Ted 3. Read the rest

If you think your V is for Vendetta mask will hide your identity, think again. The Pentagon has a laser device that "can pick up on a unique cardiac signature from 200 meters away, even through clothes," reports MIT Technology Review.A new device, developed for the Pentagon after US Special Forces requested it, can identify people without seeing their face: instead it detects their unique cardiac signature with an infrared laser. While it works at 200 meters (219 yards), longer distances could be possible with a better laser. “I don’t want to say you could do it from space,” says Steward Remaly, of the Pentagon’s Combatting Terrorism Technical Support Office, “but longer ranges should be possible.”Image: Shutterstock/Tinxi Read the rest

On Topic, the fantastic podcast by Renato Mariotti and Patti Vasquez is one of the few shows I will not miss. This week Renato is joined by legendary Constitutional law scholar and Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe to discuss the whys and why not of impeaching Donald Trump for his obvious crimes.OnTopic with Renato Mariotti Read the rest

The Hydroflask kept my daughter's water super cold during a baking hot road trip. I had a recyclable plastic water bottle and drank warm to hot water.I usually don't buy into my daughter's fancy waterbottle addiction and stick with refilling empties. The Hydroflask stainless steel, double-walled, slip-proof water flask with a leak-proof lid is worth having! My kid put water and a few ice cubes in her lovely flask before we hit the road while I had frozen a Daisani waterbottle overnight. By noon I had hot water, and she still had cold water.Then someone dropped a camera bag on my water bottle and a lot of my warm water escaped onto our camper van's floor.I made my kid share her cold with the dogs.I'm getting the 40oz version. She has a 64.Hydro Flask 40 oz Water Bottle - Stainless Steel & Vacuum Insulated via Amazon Read the rest

That Paul Manafort perp walk you've all been waiting for. pic.twitter.com/6eu4R84NDq— Tami Burages (@tburages) June 27, 2019 What a difference an expensive suit makes! Read the rest

Projects included work for the Central Military Commission to extract and classify emotions in online video comments.

You know those 'Presidential Alerts' and the Hawaii oops? Bad guys could weaponize the mobile alert system, and here's how.

Buried in that Los Angeles Magazine profile of Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's idiot wife Louise Linton was a gem, newly highlighted in a New York Times piece today.From the Los Angeles Magazine piece:Do you travel with a ton of security these days?Only when my husband’s around. Every time he goes out he has to travel in this endless motorcade. A bunch of Secret Service guys trail him when he comes to L.A. But when he leaves, they all go with him, leaving me utterly alone. (Laughs.) There are even these little yellow kits equipped to handle emergencies and explosions that come along when Steve’s in town, and then, poof, they disappear as soon as he leaves. No one’s really all that concerned about saving me! (Laughs.)Does the Secret Service follow him everywhere?Just about! They especially like coming to SoulCycle. They take all the bikes around Steve and just pedal away! One day when we were there Perez Hilton was also there. He later wrote a dumb item blasting us for taking so much security on the taxpayer dime. I wanted to call him and say, “You know we don’t make our own security decisions, Perez? These decisions are made for us!”Oh yeah, and Mnuchin is trying to take control of the Secret Service. THe United States Secret Service is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security.The Secret Service used to be under the control of Treasury. In 2003 under the Bush administration, and a couple of years after 9-11, the Secret Service was moved to the Department of Homeland Security. Read the rest

Looks like Facebook has decided that going on the offensive is better when it comes to government regulation. Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Fest in Colorado, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday said America's weak response to Russia's interference in the 2016 elections has inspired similar disinformation attacks from other countries, notably Iran.Writes Salvador Rodriguez at CNBC:“The signal that was sent to the world was that ‘O.K. We’re open for business,’” Zuckerberg said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. “Countries can try to do this stuff and our companies will try their best to try to limit it, but fundamentally, there isn’t going to be a major recourse from the American government.”Facebook prohibits the coordinated use of a network of accounts to spread misinformation on its services, or what the company refers to as “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”Here is Zuckerberg’s comment in full:As a private company we don’t have the tools to make the Russian government stop. We can defend as best as we can, but our government is the one that has the tools to apply pressure to Russia, not us.One of the mistakes that I worry about is that after 2016 when the government didn’t take any kind of counteraction. The signal that was sent to the world was that “O.K. We’re open for business.” Countries can try to do this stuff and our companies will try their best to try to limit it, but fundamentally, there isn’t going to be a major recourse from the American government. Read the rest

The Coca-Cola your rotting your guts out with today isn't the Coca Cola that rotted out your great grandfather's guts. On their way from a recipe sorted out for individual use and one developed for mass consumption, things change. Nuances of flavor or texture may be lost or gained. One recipe involves cocaine. The other? Not so much. Back in 1886, John Pemberton had what you might call a bit of a morphine problem. His solution to sorting this addiction out was to replace morphine addiction with a cocaine addiction. Genius! Instead of snorting or shooting it, Pemberton developed a tasty tonic that he could infuse the drug into and down in a few refreshing gulps. It was the birth of Coca Cola--one of many. There's a number of formulas out there, some written in Pemberton's own hand, that are reputed to be the original. In addition to the fact that today's Coke products don't come packing cocaine as part of their punch, a modern can of the cola has little in common with these early recipes. The YouTube food aficionados at Glenn and Friends Cooking whipped up a batch of Coca Cola, based on Pemberton's hand scrawled instructions. While its missing a couple of hard-to-get ingredients (like coca leaves), the crew stay as true to the recipe as modernity and their finances will allow. Image via YouTube Read the rest

Bob Shaw's "Light of Other Days", nominated for a Hugo award in 1967, presented the concept of slow glass: a material that takes light days, months or even years to pass through. A pane set in front of a lake for a decade, for example, could then be sold to city-dwellers wanting a nicer view. The gorgeous vista would last only 10 years, obviously, then become a delayed view of the slow glass being transported from the lake, shipped to the SlowGlass showroom, purchased and installed, before, finally, becoming a view of the bare wall behind it--as it looked ten years earlier. A more mundane applications might be to use 12-hour slow glass to provide offices and malls with permanent daylight.Such a material still can't be bought at Home Depot, but this CGI mockup shows how we might fake it: all we'd need is a big LCD display, a camera, and lots of storage to hold months or years of HD footage.Visualization of an outdoor installation. The monitor shows what's behind it, with 6 months delay. Read the rest

In case it wasn't clear from the Google pedigree, Google Go has a ton of support in the coding world. Already, this new programming language is the fourth most active on Github, and developers who work with Go are the third-highest paid globally in the Stack Overflow developer survey for 2019. Globally, the average Go coder can expect to bring home $109,483 per year or $136,000 per year in the US. Search popularity on Google Go has been constant this past year, and you can only expect it to ramp up as more companies integrate it into their systems.If that's not enough to make you want to hop on board, there's also a painless way to get up to speed: The Complete Google Go Developer Master Class Bundle.This 50-hour course package is designed to get even non-programmers working with Go in no time, but it doesn't skimp on the details. By the end of the later lessons, you'll be able to work confidently as a full stack developer in any production environment.Pick up lifetime access to the Complete Google Go Developer Master Class Bundle for $29. Read the rest

Working for a ride-sharing company like Uber or Lyft can be a tough gig that offers low pay, long hours that keep drivers on there road and away from the people they love and, at times, wheeling under dangerous working conditions. In some parts of the world, pissed off drivers have walked off the job and protested their crappy working conditions and demanded--and I know this is crazy--a living wage. Up here in Canada, we tend to do things with a little more of a socialist flare.From Gizmodo:First announced on Monday, Uber drivers based in Toronto expressed their intention to join the United Food and Commercial Workers, a 250,000-strong trade union which operates in both Canada and the U.S. The actual number of drivers who had signed cards was not released, but during a press conference this afternoon, UFCW Canada staffer Pablo Godoy claimed their support had hit the “high hundreds” and were growing rapidly. The move comes at a time when Toronto's city counsel is attempting to sort out a balance between cab companies and the ride share operations that have been drinking their milkshakes. With this in mind, there couldn't be a better time for Uber drivers to invest in the power of a union. That said, there's still a number of legal issues to be ironed out before Toronto's Uber drivers are rubber stamped as a bona fide part of the union and afforded the protections that membership in UFCW provides. Given the amount of trouble that Uber has had in recent years in locales like New York where the city has implemented strict living wage laws for ride share drivers and in Cancun, where they were forced to suspend operations to keep their people safe from pissed off taxi and colectivo drivers, its possible that the company might just consider not giving it's Toronto employees a tough time, at least in the short term: even giant, plundering corporations need a breather from all the bullshit they generate, every now and again. Read the rest

Last December, 23-year old Ebony Johnson shot 27-year old Marshae Jones during an argument outside of a Dollar General store in Birmingham, Alabama. The gunshot wound to the stomach caused Jones to miscarry a 5-month pregnancy. Ebony Johnson was initially charged with manslaughter, but a grand jury failed to indict her and the charges were dismissed. Yesterday, a grand jury indicted Marshae Jones, the victim of the shooting, with manslaughter. Welcome to Gilead. From AL.com:“The investigation showed that the only true victim in this was the unborn baby,’’ Pleasant Grove police Lt. Danny Reid said at the time of the shooting. “It was the mother of the child who initiated and continued the fight which resulted in the death of her own unborn baby.”Reid said the fight stemmed over the unborn baby’s father. The investigation showed, he said, that it was Jones who initiated and pressed the fight, which ultimately caused Jemison to defend herself and unfortunately caused the death of the baby."Let’s not lose sight that the unborn baby is the victim here,’’ Reid said. “She had no choice in being brought unnecessarily into a fight where she was relying on her mother for protection."The 5-month fetus was "dependent on its mother to try to keep it from harm, and she shouldn’t seek out unnecessary physical altercations,” Reid added.Jones is being held at the Jefferson County Jail on a $50,000 bond. (Photo: Charles Miller/Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0) Read the rest

I just published the 300th installment of my podcast, which has been going since 2006 (!); I present a reading of my EFF Deeplinks essay Adversarial Interoperability: Reviving an Elegant Weapon From a More Civilized Age to Slay Today's Monopolies, where I introduce the idea of "Adversarial Interoperability," which allows users and toolsmiths to push back against monopolists.Facebook's advantage is in "network effects": the idea that Facebook increases in value with every user who joins it (because more users increase the likelihood that the person you're looking for is on Facebook). But adversarial interoperability could allow new market entrants to arrogate those network effects to themselves, by allowing their users to remain in contact with Facebook friends even after they've left Facebook.This kind of adversarial interoperability goes beyond the sort of thing envisioned by "data portability," which usually refers to tools that allow users to make a one-off export of all their data, which they can take with them to rival services. Data portability is important, but it is no substitute for the ability to have ongoing access to a service that you're in the process of migrating away from.Big Tech platforms leverage both their users' behavioral data and the ability to lock their users into "walled gardens" to drive incredible growth and profits. The customers for these systems are treated as though they have entered into a negotiated contract with the companies, trading privacy for service, or vendor lock-in for some kind of subsidy or convenience. Read the rest

It hasn't even been a full week since Riviera City, a town that fell victim to ransomware hackers, paid almost $600,000 in an attempt to regain control of vital city networks. Today, there's news that the government of yet another Florida town, Lake City, has voted to pay $500,000 in bitcoin to hackers for the same.From a report by ZDNet/Zero Day's Catalin Cimpanu:On Monday, in an emergency meeting of the city council, the administration of Lake City, a small Florida city with a population of 65,000, voted to pay a ransom demand of 42 bitcoins, worth nearly $500,000.The decision to pay the ransom demand was made after the city suffered a catastrophic malware infection earlier this month, on June 10, which the city described as a "triple threat."Despite the city's IT staff disconnecting impacted systems within ten minutes of detecting the attack, a ransomware strain infected almost all its computer systems, with the exception of the police and fire departments, which ran on a separate network.Lake City government work has been crippled for nearly two weeks because of the incident.A ransom demand was made a week after the infection, with hackers reaching out to the city's insurance provider -- the League of Cities, which negotiated a ransom payment of 42 bitcoins last week.City officials agreed to pay the ransom demand on Monday, and the insurer made the payment yesterday, on Tuesday, June 25, local media reported [1, 2, 3].The payment is estimated to have been worth between $480,000 to $500,000, depending on Bitcoin's price at the time of the payment. Read the rest

Their paws were fast as lightning.Pew, pew, pew!This is EPIC ! Still better than a Mayweather fightReally need to know the story behind this video capture, apparently shot from a small plane. Read the rest

Carla doesn't care much for fancy pens. She wants ones that are foolproof and cheap. That's why she likes the Bic Round Stic. I was in a generous mood, so I bought her a box of 60 Stics for on Amazon. Read the rest

Back in January, Amy Hawkins and Jeffrey Wasserstrom published a fascinating, nuanced look why Chinese state censors had banned the mention of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on social media, but not the book itself.Now, the pair are back with a wider look at the way that Chinese authorities and the Chinese people adapt western culture for both a local audience and local politics. Some of this is just funny twists of syncretism, like Santa Claus invariably being depicted with a saxophone (!), but there's a much more interesting and meaty political story.Hawkins and Wasserstrom begin their story with the adoption of Marx's ideas by the Chinese Communist Party, producing "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and banishing Confucionism to the scrapheap of history -- and how that turned into today's "capitalism with Chinese characteristics," overseen by Xi Jinping, who describes himself as being a fan of both Marx and Confucious.Another deeply contested western idea is International Women's Day, which has taken on many meanings at different times in Chinese history -- being celebrated as a tribute to women who stayed home to care for family, then as a holiday celebrating the revolutionary cause of women's equality, finally turning into a shopping holiday where companies offer discounts on spa treatments (one Beijing pizza chain offered 50% off to women -- but only for salads).This fluxuating nature of political meaning for western symbols is neatly described in the rise, fall, and rise again of Peppa Pig, who entered China as a counterculture icon for millennials, with a fad for Peppa tattoos leading the state to denounce Peppa as "an unexpected cultural icon of gangster subculture in China." But Peppa was rehabilitated by the state, who drafted Alibaba Pictures to produce a Peppa movie embodying Confucian values, wiht a story about "a rural grandfather who makes a Peppa Pig toy to bring to his grandson in the city at Chinese New Year."Likewise with rap music: first it was banned as "tasteless, vulgar and obscene," then it was rehabilitated with a state-sanctioned TV reality show called The SHow of Rap, and now China exports made-in-China hiphop around the world. Read the rest

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol basically just admitted openly that it has all the supplies needed to take care of the children separated from their families at the border—-toothpaste, soap, beds to sleep on-- CBP just won't give any of the stuff to the detained kids.“We're using operational funding to provide those things. But those things are available now and they have been continuously... But those items, it's important to note, are available now.”Weird quote, right? That's a Border Patrol official talking to reporters on Tuesday.CBP doesn't want your soap.The United States Border Patrol has responded, telling my office they do no accept donations. How ridiculous is this? #DontGetMeStarted https://t.co/ZpzGRHtq2D— Terry Canales (@TerryCanales40) June 22, 2019As the Texas Tribune first reported, A Border Patrol official told one Texas lawmaker the agency doesn't accept donations for these facilities, where children are reportedly being held in dangerously unsafe and neglectful conditions.From CNN:Why wouldn't the agency accept donations? CBP officials said Tuesday that they aren't running low on supplies, but are looking into whether they can accept donations in the future. And a former CBP official told CNN it would be illegal for the agency to accept donations from the public.On a call with reporters Tuesday, a CBP official said that the agency is working with its lawyers to see whether it can accept donations in the future.Asked about reports that donations of hygiene products were not being accepted by CBP, the official said the agency isn't running low on such supplies. Read the rest

Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore isn't doing well in opinion polls, where he remains stuck in the teens. And that's just with Republicans!The poll from Cygnal shows Moore polling at 13 percent, placing him a distant third behind former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville and Rep. Bradley Byrne (R., Ala.). Moore's net favorability is 38 percent, and 31 percent of Republicans would consider voting for Sen. Doug Jones (D) over Moore in a head-to-head race.Moore famously lost to a Democratic adversary last time around after claims of pedophilia and sexual harassment kneecapped his campaign. Read the rest

When federal prosecutors drag corporations into court for business practices that hurt or even kill people, it's routine for corporate counsel to ask to have the evidence in the case sealed, and for prosecutors to agree, and for judges to rubberstamp the deal, meaning that the public never finds out about the risks around them.Nowhere is this more vivid than in the history of the opioid epidemic, which was first subjected to legal action in 2001, when Purdue Pharma was tried in West Virginia, in a case that revealed that the Oxtcontin manufacturer knew that its products were dangerous, and had gone on to present a fraudulent picture of the safety of opioids in its marketing to doctors and patients. In 2004, Judge Booker T Stephens reviewed this evidence and accepted Purdue's request to seal it. Purdue settled with prosecutors, but none of the evidence leading to that settlement was made public. The Oxycontin death toll mounted for the next 12 years while, more than a dozen judges repeated Stephens's sin, hearing and then sealing evidence that the public desperately needed to see. 12 years later, the evidence was leaked to the LA Times. By then, 245,000 Americans had died from opioid overdoses.Reuters has published a must-read report on the widespread practice of sealing court documents relevant to public safety and health in product liability cases, finding that about half of the largest cases heard in the past 20 years had their evidence sealed, in cases involving "drugs, cars, medical devices and other products." This is just the tip of the iceberg, only tracking federal cases -- the problem is likely even worse at the state level. Read the rest

A man poured acid on his own face in court in May after he was found guilty of fraud, finally dying yesterday of his injuries.Marshall, who was on bail, was carrying a metal water bottle - although CCTV footage is believed to have shown that he had sipped from it as he passed through security at the entrance to the building. He admitted a series of cheque fraud offences involving £135,000 and was heard to wail and scream when the judge sentenced him to two years and four months in prison.According to one person present, the defendant's face went white and there was a smell of acid."It looked like he had glue on his skin," the witness said.A female dock officer was also injured. Read the rest

The long-running kids' publication 'Highlights for Children' condemned the Trump administration's policy of separating children from families at the US-Mexico border in a statement published on social media.At Highlights, our core belief is that children are the world's most important people. In light of the reports of the living conditions of detained children & threats of further deportation & family separation, here is a statement from our CEO Kent Johnson. #KeepFamiliesTogether pic.twitter.com/CNF5LTv4az— Highlights (@Highlights) June 25, 2019The Trump program of maximum cruelty and mass human rights abuses against migrant children and adults has been escalating for more than a year. Stories of horrors involving infants, toddlers, teens, and adults are coming out every day now. An Associated Press photograph of a dead father and daughter who drowned trying to cross into the US -- the photo is everywhere.Did not expect 'Highlights for Children' to take a stand. But it's a really good thing. From Lee Moran at HuffPo:Kent Johnson, CEO of the venerable publication, urged the government to “cease this activity,” which he called “unconscionable” and said “causes irreparable damage to young lives.” He asked people to write to their elected representatives to express their outrage.“As a company that helps children become their best selves — curious, creative, caring, and confident — we want kids to understand the importance of having moral courage,” Johnson wrote. “Moral courage means standing up for what we believe is right, honest, and ethical — even when it is hard.”Johnson said the company’s core belief — that “children are the world’s most important people” — applied to “ALL children.”“This is not a political statement about immigration policy,” Johnson continued, but one “about human decency, plain and simple.”“Let our children draw strength and inspiration from our collective display of moral courage,” the statement concluded. Read the rest

r/The_Donald still exists at Reddit, but it's been pushed into the site's "quarantined" basement after a series of threats against police were posted there. “Recent behaviors including threats against the police and public figures is content that is prohibited by our violence policy,” a Reddit spokesperson said in a statement. “As a result, we have actioned individual users and quarantined the subreddit."The new quarantine was brought on by anti-police threats posted on The_Donald. Some users had apparently encouraged violence against law enforcement, angry that officials in Oregon were trying to bring back GOP state senators who fled the state to avoid voting on a climate-change bill. In a note to The_Donald moderators, Reddit administrators said they had “observed this behavior in the form of encouragement of violence towards police officers and public officials in Oregon.” Trump himself answered questions there in an AMA, apparently, "despite" its reptuation for abuse, bigotry and general grossness. At the time they were zipped into the plastic sheeting, the top item among the_donaldites was a rant about women's soccer. Read the rest

Why is gold ($41,149/kg) more expensive than other metals that are as rare or rarer, such as ruthenium ($9,000/kg)? This video explains why. Image: YouTube Read the rest

The US government is forcing children to sleep in chain-link cages on concrete floors with aluminum foil blankets and depriving them of basic necessities like soap and toothbrushes.“The Taliban gave me toothpaste & soap,” tweeted David Rohde, a New Yorker editor who was held hostage by the Taliban for seven months.The Taliban gave me toothpaste & soap.— David Rohde (@RohdeD) June 24, 2019Michael Scott Moore, who was kidnapped and held captive by Somali pirates, also tweeted "Somali pirates gave me toothpaste & soap.":Somali pirates gave me toothpaste & soap. https://t.co/K8zCP3IVMm— Michael Scott Moore 🍑 (@MichaelSctMoore) June 22, 2019And Jason Rezaian, an opinion writer for Washinton Post Global, who was held in custody for a year-and-a-half in Iran, tweeted, "I had a toothbrush and toothpaste — not exactly Aquafresh or Tom’s — from the first night. Actually, I had almost nothing else in my cell while I was in solitary confinement. I was allowed to shower every couple of days."I had a toothbrush and toothpaste — not exactly Aquafresh or Tom’s — from the first night. Actually, I had almost nothing else in my cell while I was in solitary confinement. I was allowed to shower every couple of days. https://t.co/3Jc4U5g9Uy— Jason Rezaian (@jrezaian) June 22, 2019Now, look at this Justice Department lawyer twist her tongue into knots arguing that the children they've trapped in cages don't need the luxuries of soap and blankets that the Taliban and Somalian pirates lavish on their detainees:A Trump official tried to argue that detained children don’t need soap, toothbrushes, or beds to be ‘safe and sanitary’ while in Border Patrol custody pic.twitter.com/sRFPZsDbwy— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 21, 2019How can she live with herself? Read the rest

"Key Performance Indicators" -- KPIs -- are the metrics used by software shops to figure out whether their products are improving; notoriously, much of the software industry has converged on "engagement" (that is, minutes spent with an app) as a KPI, and everyone from designers to programmers to managers to execs earn their bonuses and promotions by making that number go up.Absent any of this, "engagement" actually is a pretty good proxy for product quality: if your users voluntarily increase the amount of time they spend with your product, it's likely that they're enjoying themselves. But as Goodhart's Law has it, "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." For example, Google revolutionized the search industry by counting links to pages as a measure of the pages' relevance -- competitors like Altavista had been using textual analysis to decide which pages were most relevant to a given query, but Google's founders had the insight that when a lot of people across the web independently linked to a page, it was a good bet that something important was happening on that page.The problem is that it's not hard to generate a bunch of links that look like independent links. So once Google's measure of page quality (inbound links) became a target for publishers, link farms were born, and the measure ceased to be a good measure.The inspiration for Google's link-counting is an academic practice called "citation analysis," in which the quality of an academic study is judged based on the number of times it is cited. Read the rest

The EU Commission's High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG) has tabled its Policy and investment recommendations for trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, recommending a ban on the use of machine learning technologies to generate Chinese-style Citizen Scores and limits on the use of the technology in monitoring and analyzing mass surveillance data.However, much of the report simply recommends "further study," while other recommendations, like limits on the use of emotional tracking and assessment technologies, are maddeningly vague. Members of the panel like philosopher Thomas Metzinger and Access Now policy analyst Fanny Hidvegi publicly condemned the report that emerged from their work, calling it "dumbed down" with "red lines" over bans on AI applications being reduced to mere "critical concerns" in the final document.Last March, the EU narrowly approved a proposal to subject all public online communications to algorithmic surveillance and automated censorship in the name of preventing copyright infringement. Fanny Hidvegi, a member of the expert group that authored the report and a policy analyst at nonprofit Access Now, said the document was overly vague, lacking “clarity on safeguards, red lines, and enforcement mechanisms.” Others involved have criticized the EU’s process for being steered by corporate interests. Philosopher Thomas Metzinger, another member of the AI expert group, has pointed out how initial “red lines” on how AI shouldn’t be used have been dumbed down to mere “critical concerns.” EU should ban AI-powered citizen scoring and mass surveillance, say experts [James Vincent/The Verge](via /.) Read the rest

Queens is the most populous district in the USA, with a population (2.359m) larger than many states; the District Attorney of Queens wields incredible power, and now that power has shifted dramatically.Like many of New York City's elected offices, the real race for DA is decided by the local Democratic Party machine, as the electorate is overwhelmingly Democrate-voting. In the case of the DA's office, the retirement (and subsequent death) of 30-year DA Dick Brown created an opportunity for one of Brown's proteges to step in and continue Brown's legacy of incarceration for minor offenses. A predictable crop of usual suspects presented themselves and one, Queens borough president Melinda Katz, got the establishment endorsement, including the blessing of Joe Crowley, the finance-friendly "Democrat" who lost a primary race to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year.Enter Tiffany Cabán: a 31 year old, Democratic Socialist, queer, Latinx public defender in New York City who stepped up to run against Katz and the other establishment candidates. Billed as a long-shot, Cabán won the endorsements of AOC, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and ran a grassroots campaign that saw her raising money from three times as many local supporters as any of the other candidates (the other candidates still outraised Cabán, by bringing in big checks from wealthy out-of-district donors).Cabán's campaign was also popular outside of Queens. I -- along with many other leftists and members of the Democratic Socialists -- donated small sums to her.When Joe Crowley lost his primary race to AOC, the Democratic establishment claimed that it had been taken by surprise -- and denied that the upset represented any deeper structural shift in the American mood or the Democratic Party's base. Read the rest

Insulin prices have skyrocketed to the point where many people with diabetes live in insulin poverty, with one in four rationing their insulin and an even larger proportion trading off other life necessities (food, rent, clothing) to afford their insulin supply.The rise in insulin prices has nothing to do with recouping R&D costs (the majority of which are funded by government agencies, in any event): the cost of Humalog has risen 1000% in a decade, without any reformulations or refinements.Why are the prices so high? Because there's no competition to speak of. Re-patenting and legal saber-rattling have kept most new entrants out of the market, while lax antitrust enforcement has allowed existing companies to merge, eliminating potential competitors.Elizabeth Warren has made federal manufacture of generic drugs a campaign plank, with an emphasis on producing generic insulin.Insulin prices have been rising for years, with lethal consequences. The effects of being unable to afford lifesaving medicine are weird, too: from forming insulin caravans to Canada to making DIY small-batch insulin of your own. Trump's insulin czar, meanwhile, is the Eli Lily president who oversaw a tripling in the price of insulin.For Alec, that price was already steep: Even with his promotion, he was making $35,000 a year with no benefits. He and Smith-Holt had combed through Minnesota’s Obamacare marketplace for months in search of a decent plan, but the affordable ones all had sky-high deductibles. That meant that he’d be paying full price for his insulin for months before his junk insurance kicked in, on top of hundreds of dollars in monthly premiums—sucking up some 80 percent of his take-home pay once he paid the rent. Read the rest

A good way to understand how something works is to watch how it fails.Forgotten Weapons:Over many years of filming with my high speed camera, I have a decent little library of malfunctions in a wide variety of guns. These don't normally make it into videos, and I figured it would be neat to present a bunch of them together. Enjoy! Read the rest

Oh my heart. The Muppets of Sesame Street had their own Tiny Desk concert!NPR's Bob Boilen:The news has stopped! Count von Count and the NPR kids count us down: 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1!And there they are at the Tiny Desk: Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Rosita, Abby Cadabby and Cookie Monster, all singing about a sunny day and how everything is A-OK. The Sesame Street crew — including Elmo, Grover and other surprise guests — visited NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C., to celebrate Sesame Street's 50 years of teaching the world its A-B-Cs, its 1-2-3s, how to be kind and how to be proud, all while spreading love and joy.Sesame Street has won more major awards than any other group to play the Tiny Desk, including 11 Grammys and 192 Emmys. There was a lot of love as the cast of Sesame Street got to meet NPR hosts and newscasters, who in turn got to geek out meeting their favorite Muppets and the creators behind the felt and fur. These folks include Matt Vogel, Sesame Street's puppet captain and performer, and music director Bill Sherman.I even got to sing with Grover. And I'll also say, on a personal note, that this may well have been the hardest-working, most dedicated group of performers I've ever worked with. I'm so proud of these Muppets and so happy to celebrate all that they've meant to the world for these 50 years. Read the rest

I've never been able to get into Doctor Who, but I loves me some David Tennant. His performances in Broadchurch (Not that crappy American Gracepoint remake nonsense, mind you), Jessica Jones and, most recently, Good Omens, have been absolutely amazing. There's something about him that draws the eye and makes you believe in what he's selling on-screen. He doesn't oversell his characters and its rare to see him steal authority from those working a scene with him. His craft's earned him a huge amount of celebrity in recent years--a fact that he hasn't always been comfortable with.In this candid interview, Tennant talks about his having to come to terms with being 'public property,' and how celebrity can change one's life for both better and worse.Image via Wikipedia Read the rest

Here's something that might make you feel old: The first episode of Seinfeld ran July 5, 1989. Thirty years ago! To celebrate this 30th-anniversary milestone, designer Brent Waller has recreated Jerry's now-iconic Manhattan apartment in LEGO, along with minifigs of Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, George, and Newman. The set is only a concept right now -- not that there's anything wrong with that!. But, if it gets enough votes in the LEGO Ideas contest, it will become an actual product you can buy in stores. Vote now.(The Awesomer) Read the rest

San Fransisco-based Juul and other e-cigarette companies were given a swift kick in the stones today by the Golden Gate City as San Francisco became the first city in the United States to ban the sale of electronic cigarettes within its borders. From The New York Times:“We’ve worked for decades to decrease tobacco usage and try to end nicotine addiction,” said Shamann Walton, a member of the board of supervisors and a co-author of the bill, which will go into effect 30 days after it is signed by the mayor. “Now you have this device loaded with nicotine and chemicals that’s drawing people to addiction. We need to keep it out of the hands of young people.”Passage of the bill was praised by anti-tobacco advocates and the American Heart Association, among other health organizations.But the bill also has many critics, including researchers who say they worry that a blanket ban on e-cigarettes could harm the wider goals of anti-tobacco efforts by eliminating what experts consider a safer alternative to conventional cigarettes.While it might explode in your face, e-cigarettes present a significantly lower toxin level per puff than sucking on a conventional coffin nail does. The New York Times points out this fact, relating that the ban can be seen as knee-jerk appeasement to voters who are worried their kids could get hooked on nicotine... even though cigarettes will still be available in the city at every corner store. If you're looking to stock up before the ban take effect, you'll have six months to do it as the city of San Fransisco is giving businesses within its borders half a year to get rid of their current stock. Read the rest