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Tyson Foods recalled 5,814 cases of "Fully Cooked, Whole Grain Golden Crispy Chicken Chunk Fritters" after consumers reported finding pieces of plastic in them. Fast Company:The product was produced at one plant location on February 28, 2019, and each case bears the case code 0599NHL02 and the plant code P-1325 inside the USDA mark of inspection.Previously: Enjoy delicious Tyson rubber nuggets while you can Read the rest

Back in 2012, Jon Corbett made headlines by showing that he could easily get metal through TSA checkpoints' full-body pornoscanners: his experiences fighting the TSA convinced him to get his law license and hang out a shingle, and now he has his first client: Rhonda Mengert, a grandmother who was illegally strip-searched by the Tulsa TSA because they felt a panty-liner when they patted down her crotch. On Mother's Day.Corbett has filed suit against the TSA on Mengert's behalf, seeking injunctive and monetary relief. If you have been similarly targeted by the TSA, Corbett would like to hear from you.Once in the private room, the screeners told Mengert that they needed to “clear the area” (“the area” being her underwear). After being asked how they would like to do that, the screeners directed Mengert to take down her pants and underwear down to her knees to show them the pad. Mengert was made to feel that she had no choice and complied. Having been forced to expose herself, Mengert had to ask four times before she was finally allowed to leave.The TSA publicly states that “TSA does not include strip searches in its protocols.” But given that they were accused of doing basically the same thing to another woman last year, and seem to have a thing for strip searching older women, it seems the screeners and lower management have not gotten the message.TSA Strip Searches Grandmother on Mother’s Day Over Feminine Hygiene Product, Gets Sued [Jonathan Corbett/Professional-Troublemaker](Thanks, Sai! Read the rest

A new study from the United Way claims that 43% of American households are in a status called "asset limited, income constrained, employed" (ALICE), which denotes employed people who can't afford housing, food, childcare, healthcare, transportation, and a cellphone -- the basics of modern living.Umair Haque (previously) connects this to the idea of America as the world's first poor rich country, a country that is awash in wealth, yet so unequal that nearly half its residents sink deeper into debt every month -- and most Americans die in debt.As Haque says, if you work hard all your life and die with no assets, no savings, and debt, that's not employment, it's serfdom. America's former middle class have now hit the limits of their ability to survive with stagnating wages by taking on debt secured by their meager assets -- the family home, pensions and so on. Now, Americans are both kinds of poor: asset-poor and wage-poor. Americans aren't poor because they don't work hard enough: they're poor no matter how hard they work.And unlike poor people in countries like Pakistan or Nigeria, American poor people live in a country where things like childcare, medicine, rent and food are very, very expensive. American poor people are poorer than the poor people in poor countries.Poverty in America, in other words, has become endemic and ubiquitous because its systemic and structural. It’s baked into the system. It’s a feature, not a bug. And most Americans these days, I’d wager, understand this intuitively. Read the rest

I'm all for making Big Tech small again and fixing the internet so that it's not just five giant websites filled with screenshots from the other four, not to mention doing something about market dominance, corporate bullying, rampant privacy invasions and so on.But a persistent thread in the past year's efforts to "fix the internet" has been to pass out badly constructed regulations that only the very biggest companies can afford to comply with, making it that much harder to enact policies that might shrink those companies down to size, and ensuring that small companies will be forced out of business by compliance costs long before they grow big enough to challenge the big guys.In a column I just published in The Economist, I try to show how rules about harassment, sex trafficking, copyright infringement, terrorist recruiting and stopping kids from seeing porn have backfired, making the big platforms much stronger. Unless we do something about this -- like clarifying patent, copyright and other rules to allow little companies to plug their tools into the big companies' silos to help users escape them -- the big platforms will only get bigger, stronger, and harder to topple.As has been the case so often in the internet's brief life, humanity has entered uncharted territory. People (sort of) know how to break up a railway or an oil company and America once barely managed to break up a phone company. No one is sure how to break up a tech monopolist. Read the rest

SIM swapping attacks involve tricking or bribing a phone company into assigning someone else's phone number to you; once you have the number, you can intercept SMS-based two-factor authentication messages and use them to take over accounts.Though SIM-swapping is laughably easy (thanks to lax security in the mobile phone industry), it's still not fully automatable, and so SIM-swapping attacks usually target higher-value accounts, such as valuable social media handles, domain takeovers, and cryptocurrency wallet hacks.Last weekend, parties unknown launched a wave of SIM-swap attacks against US cryptocurrency owners, succeeding in some cases, with at least one $100k score.Some of the targets were saved by their use of hardware tokens or mobile apps for their two-factor authentication. 2Fa is generally very effective, even against targeted attacks; using a separate app or token is an extremely powerful form of security.ZDNet also spoke with some of the other victims over the weekend. Some candidly admitted to losing funds, while others said the SIM swapping attacks were unsuccessful because they switched to using hardware security tokens to protect accounts, instead of the classic SMS-based 2FA system.One victim, who wanted to remain anonymous, said that once hackers realized access to cryptocurrency exchange accounts was not possible, intruders quickly switched tactics and targeted social media and email accounts, successfully hijacking the victim's Instagram account.This exact same thing also appears to have happened to other users, with hackers taking over social media accounts over the past week when they realized they couldn't access cryptocurrency accounts. Read the rest

A friend was recently telling me about some IOS app they felt I should share on Boing Boing. The app reminds them, once daily to take a moment and appreciate themselves for who they are, be grateful for their time on Earth, and enjoy the opportunity to be here on this unique planet!You know, all that shit.I told this friend, "Friend, I don't need that! I have an Apple Watch."My Apple Watch plays a key role in managing my mental and physical fitness. The watch serves me in two ways:My lower back pain is marginally better. Pain is less likely to strike when I weigh less, and have 'core strength' AND my weight and fitness are one of the very few things I can actually control in my life. Being in control of something reminds me trying does make a difference.The Apple Watch has a wonderful display that reminds me to move and helps gauge both Calories In and Calories Out. That is most of how I stay thin. The Watch also takes messages in from other apps and displays them where I can see them!In order to maximize the anxiety created by any random alert from my Apple Watch, I have turned on notifications of withdrawals from my personal checking account.Every time money leaves my account, my wrist buzzes.Life is a never-ending circus of joy!The amount of dread the mere existence of this notification creates is incredible! At first, I didn't really notice and wasn't bothered by it. Read the rest

I have the larger version of this Tacklife USB rechargeable electric lighter. It's normally but you can get it for less than half that price with promo code E3I83BAJ. Read the rest

Vivian Gomez posted the above home security cam video to her Facebook page. She writes:"So I woke up Sunday morning and saw this on my camera and am trying to figure out...what the heck?? First I saw the shadow walking from my front door then I saw this thing....has anyone else seen this on their cameras?? The other two cameras didn’t pick it up for some reason."Internet commenters insist that the mysterious creature is Dobby the house-elf from Harry Potter, but following Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is that it is an extraterrestrial. Read the rest

Two "giant" fatbergs were removed last week from the sewers of St. Andrews, Scotland, reports the BBC. 20 tonnes (22 tons) of congealed grease, sewage and toilet paper had to be broken down, and Fife authorities embarked upon an educational campaign to get locals to stop pouring cooking fat down the drain.Mike Will, waste water operations general manager at Scottish Water, said that businesses had collectively spent about £500,000 fitting new grease trapping equipment.Philip Soden, managing director of ECAS, added: "Most people simply didn't realise their own actions could potentially lead to sewer flooding, causing irreparable damage to their own community.A fatberg near Cincinatti caused an overflow, report local media, with "odor and discoloration" shutting down Winston Lake. The overflow in Winton Woods was caused by a so-called fatberg, a large, solid blockage that forms inside a sewer system. This one was made of grease, wipes and other waste that wedged into spaces between tree roots, clogging the sewer. The fatberg was about 15 inches in diameter and 2 feet wide.Valencia, Spain, became home to a fatberg that sent sewer workers on a nightmare operation compared by Valencia Plaza (English, ish) to the movie "Alien."It all started one day when they realized that "something was not working well," says [Sanitation Engineer Jesus] Ceniceros. During the routine review mentioned they discovered that "there was a sewage relief to the old Turia channel" from this collector. It did not make sense, since these reliefs can only occur in case of heavy rains and that was not the case. Read the rest

The "No Frills" series was a collection of genre fiction paperbacks published by Jove Publishing in 1981 with plain covers, no author names, and maximally pulp plots. From Weird Universe:Terry Bisson, who was one of the instigators of this project, reports:Mystery was written by Clark Dimond, a men's mag editor/writer who also wrote for comics. The Romance was written by Judy Coyne (former Glamour mag editor) nee WederholtThe SF was written by John Silbersack, SF editor and now an agent.The Western was by Vic Milan (SF author)We were working on a No-Frills Besteller (by me) andA No-Frills movie (by film critic David Ansen) when the series was dropped.My partner selling the series was Lou Rosetto who went on to found WIRED magazine."No Frills Books" (Weird Universe)More at this old post on Bill Crider's blog: "Forgotten Books -- Mystery" Read the rest

The Burger King at State Road 13 in Fruit Cove, Florida has received a stern warning from headquarters to refrain from using a floor mop to clean tables in the children's area. News4Jax has the details, along with a video of a worker swabbing a table with a dirty-looking floor mop.Image: News4Jax Read the rest

Despite heavy backing from the big gun manufacturers, the NRA is absolutely dependent on small-money donations from ammosexuals and musketfuckers across America, who donate to fund the political operations of the nonprofit.But an internal struggle over the organization's leadership, between longtime CEO Wayne LaPierre and his old guard and erstwhile new leader Oliver North has kicked off rounds of audits, leaks and accusations that shed light on the way the organization (mis)spends its money.It all seems to start with Oliver North seeking to consolidate power by accusing LaPierre of dipping his snout in the trough of NRA donors' money, with the usual oligarch roster of pocket lining ($275,000 for fancy clothes at a Beverley Hills boutique, $253,000 for luxury travel far from the USA, $13,800 for a summer intern's apartment), and also accusing him of multimillion-dollar cronyism, paying outside attorney William Brewer $24m over 13 months.Then North was ousted for allegedly setting up a mulitmillion-dollar kickback scheme with ad agency Ackerman McQueen, whose CEO is the father-in-law of Brewer. Now comes a blockbuster report in the Washington Post about self-dealing by NRA directors, who, as nonprofit directors, would normally be expected to be raising funds for the NRA, rather than draining them, with 18 of the 76 board members collecting massive paydays at the organization's expense (just a side-note here: 76 board members?! That is one giant fucking board for a nonprofit).Some examples: ex-cop Lance Olson billed the organization $225k for "outreach to gun collectors and fundraising"; former NFLer Dave Butz got $400k for "public outreach and firearms training"; former board member Mercedes Schlapp (now a White House communications aide) billed $85k for "media strategy consulting"; ex-president Marion Hammer got at least $610K for lobbying and "consulting services"; writer Bart Skelton got at least $28,750 for "writing articles"; Ted Nugent got $50k for playing the NRA convention; country singer Craig Morgan got $23,500 for NRA shows; former president David Keene got $112,000 for "speaking and consulting."Meanwhile, Pete Brownell -- ex-NRA president, current director -- billed the NRA Foundation $3.1 million for ammo through his company Crow Shooting Supply. Read the rest

Jane has been playing Pokemon for many years. We were sent five Detective Pikachu Case Files and Jane went through each one for your enjoyment. We displayed images of the QR codes included in each pack, so if you're an online player, pull out your mobile phone and be the first to scan them. Read the rest

Infinity London is a planned 220-meter skyscraper topped with a wild infinity pool that completely covers the roof. There's a new video explainer from the designer below, but let's quickly answer the obvious question of how one gets in and out of the pool.“The solution is based on the door of a submarine, coupled with a rotating spiral staircase which rises from the pool floor when someone wants to get in or out – the absolute cutting edge of swimming pool and building design and a little bit James Bond to boot!" says designer Alex Kemsley. The details of who will pay for the building and exactly where in London it'll be located "is yet to be confirmed." From Compass Pools:The pool is made from cast acrylic rather than glass, as this material transmits light at a similar wavelength to water so that the pool will look perfectly clear.The floor of the pool is also transparent, allowing visitors to see the swimmers and sky above...Other advanced technical features include a built-in anemometer to monitor the wind speed.This is linked to a computer-controlled building management system to ensure the pool stays at the right temperature and water doesn’t get blown down to the streets below.Boasting an innovative twist on renewable energy, the pool’s heating system will use waste energy from the air condition system for the building. Read the rest

[Randall Munroe traces the phenomenal success of his webcomic XKCD with this Boing Boing post; and I've avidly followed his career ever since (he's returned the favor), so I was delighted to learn in February that he had a new book coming out and I'm more delighted still to host the official announcement of his tour, which you can book extra dates for (see below) -Cory]Here's what Randall's publisher says about "How To": "A major work, chock full of deeply researched, entertaining, and often alarming scientific thought experiments, explained through Munroe’s clever infographics, amusing illustrations, and whimsical touches. HOW TO is the world’s most entertaining and useless self-help guide, full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole to predicting the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos."Randall and I have presented together and I can assure you that it's always worth your time to see him in person.TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3: CAMBRIDGE, MA7:00 PM | HARVARD SCIENCE CENTER presented by HARVARD BOOKSTORESanders Theater, 45 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138Tickets and informationWEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 4: WASHINGTON, DC7:00 PM | SIDWELL FRIENDS SCHOOL presented by POLITICS & PROSEMeeting House, 3825 Wisconsin Ave, Washington, DC 20016Tickets and informationTHURSDAY SEPTEMBER 5: NEW YORK, NY7:00 PM | COOPER UNION presented by STRAND BOOK STOREE 7th St, New York, NY 10003Tickets and informationFRIDAY SEPTEMBER 6: ANN ARBOR, MI7:00 PM | RACKHAM AUDITORIUM presented by LITERATI BOOKSTORE915 E Washington St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109Tickets and informationSUNDAY SEPTEMBER 8: PORTLAND, OR7:30 PM | POWELL’S CITY OF BOOKS1005 W Burnside St, Portland, OR 97209Pre-order with Powell'sMONDAY SEPTEMBER 9: SEATTLE, WA7:00 PM | THIRD PLACE BOOKS17171 Bothell Way NE, #A101, Lake Forest Park, WA 98155Tickets and informationTUESDAY SEPTEMBER 10: SAN FRANCISCO, CA 7:30 PM | FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF BERKELEY presented by KPFA and PEGASUS BOOKS2345 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA 94704Tickets and informationWEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 11: SANTA CRUZ, CA7:00 PM | SANTA CRUZ BIBLE CHURCH presented by BOOKSHOP SANTA CRUZ440 Frederick St, Santa Cruz, 95062Tickets and information THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 12: LOS ANGELES, LA8:00 PM | ARATANI THEATER presented by LIVE TALKS LA3131 Olympic Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90404Tickets and informationSATURDAY SEPTEMBER 14: SALT LAKE CITY, UT7:00 PM | LIBBY GARDNER HALL @ UNIVERSITY OF UTAH presented by WELLER BOOK WORKS & UTAH TRIANGLE FRATERNITY1375 Presidents’ Cir, Salt Lake City, UT 84112Tickets and informationMONDAY SEPTEMBER 16: KANSAS CITY, MO7:00 PM | UNITY TEMPLE ON THE PLAZA presented by RAINY DAY BOOKS707 W 47th St, Kansas City, MO 64112Tickets and informationTUESDAY SEPTEMBER 17: CINCINNATI, OH7:00 PM | JOSEPH-BETH BOOKSELLERS2692 Madison Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45208Tickets and informationWEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 18: LOUISVILLE, KY7:00 PM | LOUISVILLE FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY presented by CARMICHAEL’S BOOKSTORE301 York Street, Louisville, KY 40203To RSVP and for more information, click here: http://www.lfpl.org/upcomingevents.htm#munroe"Tickets and informationTHURSDAY SEPTEMBER 19: RALEIGH, NC7:00 PM | HUNT LIBRARY @ NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY presented by QUAILRIDGE BOOKS1070 Partners Way, Raleigh, NC 27606Tickets and informationAnnouncing: HOW TO Bring Randall To Your TownA challenge for booksellers, consumers and fans of all kindsWHAT: #1 New York Times bestselling author and xkcd creator, Randall Munroe, is hitting the road this fall for his new book, How To. Read the rest

Daniel Danger says: "my post-art plan is opening a grilled cheese cart. it will serve $1 grilled cheese made with white bread, bulk cheese, bulk butter, and thats it. greasy as hell. no options, no artisan, nothing. there will be no change. you give me $5 youre getting 5, you figure your own life out"<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">ok, finished the trailer design. <a href="https://t.co/KQizSptz0U">pic.twitter.com/KQizSptz0U</a></p>&mdash; Daniel Danger (@tinymediaempire) <a href="https://twitter.com/tinymediaempire/status/1137073389410181121?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 7, 2019</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Image: Daniel Danger/Twitter Read the rest

New wave comic artist Gary Panter who famously designed the sets on Pee-Wee's Playhouse also created this fantastic TV commercial for Crunch Fitness in the 1990s. I wish this were a full-length cartoon! Animation by Tissa David; voices by James Urbaniak.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Keanu Reeves went on stage at E3 to pitch Cyberpunk 2077, an open-world game from CD PROJEKT RED. Release date is April 16, 2020.Image: YouTube Read the rest

In these two excellent short animations, data science professor Jeffrey Leek of the Simply Statistics blog and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and his university colleague, postdoctoral research Lucy McGowan, explain how "in medicine, there’s often a disconnect between news headlines and the scientific research they cover." Read the rest

Two officers at Cuyahoga Country Jail were filmed beating up a man strapped into to a restraint chair, and the video was released to the media. Nicholas Evans and Timothy Dugan are each charged with felonious assault, unlawful restraint, and interfering with civil rights. Evans also tampered with the evidence, prosecutors say, when he turned off his bodycam to prevent it recording the beating.wall camera footage was released to News 5 – it clearly shows both officers punching the inmate repeatedly in the head as he sits in a restraint chair with both his arms bound with his mouth covered. The video shows the officers speaking to the inmate, but audio was not recorded.The indictments allege that Evans and Dugan left the inmate in the restraint chair for over two hours after beating him, instead of immediately transporting him to medical.Be warned: the video depicts a brutal attack on a man who cannot even raise his hands to shield his face. The machine-vision quality mades it particularly disturbing. Read the rest

There is still time to have a beautiful Santa Fe Stoneworks pocket knife delivered for Father's Day.I kinda like the model with the red stones in the handle, however, when gift giving I go for the Damascus steel.I do find it a lot easier to just carry around an Opinel, however. Read the rest

One's a crazy guy in a bow tie. The other's Tucker Carlson. Read the rest

The 5-Minute Crafts youtube channel offers 35 wonderful uses for cement. You can put cement in novelty ice cube trays to make cement sticks. You can submerge books in cement to make beautiful, useful cement books. You can pour it into coke bottles or light bulbs to make unique home accouterments. Or into plastic bags, to create... gnome heads? Imagine a crowd of happy young people leaping together on a grassy hillside, captured aloft in a free-frame moment, arms high and smiles broad, a chorus crying out in joy: "Cement!" [via Metafilter] Read the rest

It's been two years since the Grenfell tower block in north Kensington burned, killing at least 72 people: the blaze revealed deep corruption and indifference among Britain's richest people and the millionaire Conservative politicians who do their business in Parliament, from the fact that the highly flammable cladding responsible for the blaze was added so that the building would be more attractive to rich people in nearby luxury tower blocks, to the fact that the fire came five years after Tory PM David Cameron declared war on "safety culture" to the fact that Tory politicians (overwhelming landlords themselves) had voted down a bill to require landlords to ensure that the properties they rented were safe and "fit for human habitation", to the fact that local Tory councillors had deliberately chosen a more fire-prone cladding to save 5.7% on the cost of materials -- the same local government that forced Grenfell survivors to bid against each other for new homes and then paid the same company that installed the flammable cladding to replace it.We may never know exactly how many other towers are at risk: the Tories say that "IP rights" prevent them from disclosing which blocks failed their housing safety tests, and refuse to disclose which towers are clad in the same materials in Grenfell because otherwise, the terrorists will win (no, seriously).Meanwhile, the companies involved have paid no meaningful consequences for their role in the Grenfell deaths: Rydon, the contractor had a banner year and handed out whopping pay rises for its execs, and the company that made the cladding continues to insist that the problem could have been solved with a kitchen fire-extinguisher. Read the rest

This alarmingly funny video shows an "Apple Engineer" explaining the company's forthcoming $999 monitor stand. This guy is better than the "Downfall" meme!Also funny: to see people who had complained vocally about Apple's lack of truly "pro" gear denouncing it when it finally came along, because it was too pro. Perhaps Apple should have made a promotional video shamelessly explaining the stand and its veblen-tech price. People would have hated it, all the same, but at least it would have been clear who the customer was.If by "pro" we didn't mean that kind of "corporate buyer" level, what does it mean? That fuzzy-edged class of designers, developers and "creatives" often identified as Apple fans?Here's one way of looking at it: if you're all in for Apple and were waiting to spend $2500 on a modular computer to edit photos or book designs or write beautifully-typeset articles or the simple code that generates them—people like me!—Apple's answer to that is no. We can get a non-modular iMac, or we can get a Mac Mini with an eGPU and external monitor for the specialized work that requires those things.If someone sold an eGPU that actually matches the Mac Mini (they're all either huge ugly PCI-slotted toasters or plasticy MXM-slotted bricks) I bet they'd clean up. Hell, I'd be all in for a pro version with XLR connectors, phantom power—and maybe a SCSI port or two. Read the rest

After five years without an update, MS Flight Simulator is getting refreshed. The XBox exclusive was demoed at the E3 trade show Sunday. Some of the scenes are spectacularly realistic. I would have been unable to tell it was video of a simulation when I was a kid, playing stuff like F-18 Interceptor and Falcon. This makes it both more intense (because I can experience a more perfect replacement for reality) and less impressive (because I'm no longer afflicted with the xennial awe derived from comparing the quality of a simulation to the simulator's known technical limitations). Read the rest

There is a myriad of ways to market on the web. With a limitless audience out there, its almost always true that whatever you're selling, there's a buyer out there. It's just a matter of reaching them.Whether that business is your own start-up or an established company, the principles in the Complete Digital Marketing 12-in-1 Course will show you multiple roads to your target market.This 38-hour online master class incorporates lectures, quizzes, and exercises to show you the best selling techniques on the web. From a foundation in marketing principles, you'll proceed to learn the secrets of SEO and Google AdWords that will bring your brand to the top of the hit list in any search. When those buyers start clicking, you'll be able to build an efficient website to drive sales and email subscriptions. And of course, you'll learn how to engage your audience on major social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter.Right now, you can pick up the Complete Digital Marketing 12-in-1 Course for $14.99, more than 90% off the MSRP. Read the rest

A legendary video game franchise pretty much flushed a 15-year legacy down the toilet with 2015's "Halo 5: Guardians." This next installment will hopefully erase the bitter memory of the game where the UNSC ever doubted gaming's greatest hero: the Master Chief, Spartan John-117.Locke, the dude who tried to hunt down the Chief, should just be forgotten, an ignored and forgotten storyline. The Chief and Cortana are all we need, and maybe a Keyes relative of some sort. Read the rest

I guess business is slow.Forward:“When Harry Met Sally” hit theaters July 12, 1989, and it combined all good things in the world — writer Nora Ephron’s wit, Central Park in the fall, Billy Crystal in a sweater, and, of course, Meg Ryan performing an elaborate, fake orgasm at the historic Katz’s Deli on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.To celebrate three decades of this gorgeous film (in which Carrie Fisher was under-used, if you ask us,) the family-run Katz’s Deli will hold a search for a person who can fake an orgasm as well as Meg Ryan did in the iconic scene in the movie, Forbes reports. The company’s World War II-era slogan, “Send A Salami To Your Boy In The Army,” is living up to its lascivious sound at last.Heavy breathers of any gender can simply show up at the 131 year-old deli on July 12 and wait their turn to sit at the exact table where Meg Ryan displayed, on behalf of all women, the power of acting. A panel of judges will decide which fake orgasm (yes, it does have to be fake) is most likely to make other patrons say, “I’ll have what she’s having.”Honestly, Los Angeles delicatessens are better than NYC. Chicago and San Francisco are wastelands. Read the rest

There's a lot of hidden treasure on the VHS tapes gathering dust on thrift store shelves, pawn shop bins, or maybe even your own attic. The thing is, those treasures won't last forever. Depending on the storage, VHS media might last as few as 10 years.If you've got memories that are worth preserving, it might be time to invest in the VHS-to-Digital Video Transfer Device and Software Package. And thanks to the interface, it's easier and faster to save those memories than you might think.Even if your technological savvy hasn't advanced much since the days of Blockbuster Video, this software's three-step process makes the copying process painless. You can capture video from any composite source along with audio (no sound card required), all through a high-speed USB 2.1 interface. VHS or DVD video can both be converted just as easily with high-speed rendering, ready to view or share on the web or any mobile device.The VHS-to-Digital Video Transfer Device and Software Package is on sale now for $16.99, 75% off the MSRP. Read the rest

As you may have heard by now, news began to break Friday night that Maker Media, home to Make: magazine, Maker Faire, and Maker Shed, was folding up their big top and calling it quits (though founder Dale Dougherty has vowed to attempt a resurrection in some form). As the sad news began to thread its way through social media, the sense of shock, grief, and confusion was palpable. As when a beloved artist, entertainer, or other famous figure dies, people began posting pictures of themselves with the deceased, sharing peak experiences at Maker Faire, and sharing stories of the impact that Make:, Maker Faire, and the maker movement has had on their lives. Many of these have been quite inspiring and moving.As someone who worked with or at Make: since its inception in 2005, my inboxes began filling up with people asking me if I was OK, if they could do anything to help (bring over cake and whiskey?), and they too began pouring out their feelings to me. Several people shared stories on social media and asked me to share some of mine. This made me immediately think of an essay I wrote for my 2014 memoir, Borg Like Me. Called "Make vs. The Blob," in it, I attempted to capture some of the magic and inspired sense of wonder I experienced while working at Maker Media and attending nearly all of the Bay Area, New York, and the two Austin Maker Faires. As part of that piece, I shared three particularly enchanting tableaux from the 2007 Austin Maker Faire. Read the rest

The payday lending industry is the pinnacle of predatory, corrupt capitalism, unabashed loan sharks who prey on the poorest and most desperate Americans, charging interest rates in the hundreds and even thousands of percent APR, using strongarm tactics including threats of violence and rape to collect on debts, and papering over the whole thing by flooding notice-and-comment proceedings with bot-generated comments and secretly bribing academics to write papers explaining that usury is a social good. Payday lending got a lot more vicious and a lot more profitable under Obama, thanks to the financial crisis and the decision to bail out banks but not the people they stole from, but in a parting shot, Obama created Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which imposed modest regulations on the sector, just as Obama was leaving office. Predictably, Trump reversed all that, even making a loan-shark an assistant AG (the Trump campaign took millions from payday lender PACs).Now, Propublica reports from the second annual payday lending convention to be held at the Trump Doral resort (the industry had never held an event at a Trump property prior to Trump's election), which have pumped at least $1m into Trump's personal coffers. The investigation reveals the suite of measures that Trump has put in place to benefit the predatory lending industry, and describe how Warren and Obama's plan to Republican-proof the CFPB by giving it an untouchable executive who wouldn't be subject to executive or congressional meddling backfired spectacularly when their chairman, Richard Cordray, quit to run unsuccessfully for the governorship of Ohio, leaving his position vacant for Trump to fill with a series of deplorable swamp creatures who have gutted the bureau. Read the rest

In 1971, the Australian indigenous artist Harold Thomas created the iconic Australian Aboriginal Flag which has since been named one of the "official flags of Australia," which resulted in Thomas successfully suing to assert copyright over the design.Thomas subsequently sold the "exclusive, worldwide copyright license" to a business called WAM Clothing. WAM is using its copyright to target the aboriginal-owned social enterprise Spark Health whose registered social purpose is "health promotion and Aboriginal Community engagement" and who manufacture promotional clothing bearing Thomas's flag. Spark has taken issue with Thomas's licensing choices and has started an online petition, calling for the creation of "viable channels for new licensing agreements, especially those for Aboriginal organisations and businesses." Read the rest

Have you started using the oven more than your microwave yet? For most of us, it's an important signpost on the road from adolescence to adulthood. But it doesn't mean cooking has to get harder. Believe it or not, "easy" and "tasty" are not mutually exclusive adjectives in the kitchen - as long as you have the right tools. Here are ten pieces of kitchen tech that will elevate your meals no matter who you're making them for.VitaChef Electric Steamer Skillet Cooking SystemWhen it comes to fire up-and-forget meal prep, nothing beats a slow cooker - unless it's a modular system like the VitaChef, which can slow-cook, steam, bake or saute. It comes with multiple removable plates to handle everything from burgers to lobster, and the PFOA-free Vitanium surface makes it easy to clean. The VitaChef Electric Steamer Skillet Cooking System is now $99.99, a full 66% off the list price.Damasukasu 3-Piece Japanese Chef Knife Set The undulating patterns on these precision blades are just a beautiful side effect of the nitrogen-cooling process that's used to make them. Rust-resistant and triple-riveted, this cutlery is built to take on the tough jobs. This Damasukasu 3-Piece Japanese Chef Knife Set is now $49.99, more than 90% off the original MSRP.20-Piece Non-Stick Cookware With Lids & Bakeware SetYou can usually count on non-stick pans to scratch or otherwise lose coating after a couple of years. Not this set, which sports a PFOA-free Ti-Ceramic layer that combines titanium with ceramic for a perfect mix of durability and slickness. Read the rest

In memory of Leon Redbone and Dr. John who both died in recent days, please enjoy the duo performing "Frost the Snowman" recorded for Redbone's 1988 album Christmas Island.(r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Sheletta Brundidge, @TwoHauteMamas1 on Twitter, shared an awesome story about her son. And there's video.Brundidge is the co-host of the Two Haute Mommas podcast. Her child Daniel has non-verbal autism. Mom tweeted, “We had an #oldtownroad miracle at my house. My son Daniel has #autism and doesn't talk. We caught him humming the @LilNasX and @billyraycyrus tune the other day. Then Bless God, my baby started singing the song on his own. His therapists have started to use it in his sessions!”Pretty cool.We had an #oldtownroad miracle at my house. My son Daniel has #autism and doesn't talk. We caught him humming the @LilNasX and @billyraycyrus tune the other day. Then Bless God, my baby started singing the song on his own. His therapists have started to use it in his sessions! pic.twitter.com/vtCNWeg6ax— Sheletta Brundidge (@TwoHauteMamas1) June 4, 2019“At first I thought I was hallucinating,” Sheletta told Today Parents. “When I realized it was really happening, I almost started screaming, but loud noises are upsetting to Daniel, so I stayed very calm.”Excerpt:"Daniel went from humming to actually singing the lyrics," Sheletta told TODAY Parents. “I was crying so hard that tears were dropping on his head. I was like, ‘This is the beginning. This is the light!’ It took him 6 months to learn the letter 'A' using flash cards, but he taught himself a song all by himself."Sheletta, who co-hosts the Two Haute Mamas podcast, took to Twitter on June 4 to share the incredible footage — where it quickly went viral with more than 1.32 million views. Read the rest

Peter Bright (Twitter: @DrPizza), best known as a contributing writer to the tech publication Ars Technica, has been arrested on charges of soliciting sex with children online.This complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, shows that an undercover FBI special agent contacted Bright via KinkD, a social media platform for sexual fetish connections, on April 18.“Bright has been charged with one count of attempted enticement of a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity,” reports Claire Goforth at The Daily Dot:A federal complaint alleges that Bright sought to molest a 7- and 9-year-old and met with an undercover agent for this purpose, at which point he was arrested. It also states that Bright claimed to be in a sexual relationship with an 11-year-old. He is currently being held without bail.According to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, an undercover FBI special agent made contact with Bright on KinkD, a social media fetish platform, on April 18.Bright, using the handle “randomanon,” had responded to a message the agent posted a day prior in which she purported to be a mother seeking to connect with people who could teach her children about “birds and the bees.”The complaint states that in subsequent messages, the agent informed Bright that she had a 7-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.At Bright’s urging, the two then began chatting via WhatsApp, which continued for a few weeks. Read the rest

Witness in Mueller Trump-Russia probe arrested for child pornography

In Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP, three UMass Amherst computer science researchers investigate the carbon budget of training machine learning models for natural language processing, and come back with the eyepopping headline figure of 78,468lbs to do a basic training-and-refinement operation.This is about five times the lifetime, cradle-to-grave carbon budget for a car, including manufacture. The bulk of the carbon is expended at the fine-tuning stage, which involves a lot of trial and error. More complex models, like the Transformer model (employed in machine translation) use even more carbon -- 626,155lbs.Text and language processing are by no means the most compute-intensive (and hence carbon-intensive) forms of machine learning model -- things like vision systems are even more complex.One implication the authors explore: the computational intensity of today's machine learning research has priced it outside the realm of most academic researchers, moving the most important work in the field to private firms whose research doesn't necessarily contribute to our collective store of knowledge.What’s more, the researchers note that the figures should only be considered as baselines. “Training a single model is the minimum amount of work you can do,” says Emma Strubell, a PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the lead author of the paper. In practice, it’s much more likely that AI researchers would develop a new model from scratch or adapt an existing model to a new data set, either of which can require many more rounds of training and tuning. Read the rest

In the 2000s, the pharma company Questcor started raising the price of Acthar, an off-patent, 1950s-era drug prescribed for seizures in babies; they raised the price more than 10,000%, from $40 in 2000 to $38,892 today. To get doctors to prescribe their price-gouging meds, Questcor secretly offered bribes, a fact that came to light thanks to whistleblowers.Questcor's strategy was so successful that in 2014, the company was acquired by rival Mallinckrodt, who claim that they ceased bribery operations, but continued to raise prices by more than $8,000, with enormous success -- today, Acthar brings in $1b/year for Mallinckrodt.Now, Mallinckrodt (which is about to change its name to Sonorant Therapeutics) has settled with the FTC and agreed to pay a $15.4m fine, assuming the DoJ okays the deal.But this development isn’t just about drug prices; it’s about alleged bribery. Needless to say, other people often get prison time for bribery offenses. Recently, a Minnesota man got 29 months for trying to bribe a witness in a burglary case, a Texas prison guard got two years in prison for taking bribes, and a New York businessman got four years for repeatedly bribing New York cops. An Oregon man who recently tried to get his wife deported by bribing an ICE agent got four months in federal prison.But America’s largest businesses really do play by a different set of rules. Especially when those businesses are drug companies that can charge whatever they want and yet face no real consequences. Mallinckrodt’s CEO, Mark Trudeau, made $14 million last year, which means that he makes almost enough in just one year to pay the company’s settlement. Read the rest

Ars Technica reports that a judge ordered Comcast to pay a $9.1 million fine and refund 50,000 customers it tricked into subscribing to a worthless "protection plan."Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued Comcast in August 2016, accusing the nation's largest cable company of tricking customers into buying a "near-worthless 'protection plan' without disclosing its significant limitations."Buying the $5-per-month plan ostensibly prevented customers from having to pay each time a Comcast technician visited their home to fix problems covered by the plan. But in reality, the plan did not cover the vast majority of wiring problems, the AG's lawsuit said. Moreover, Washington state attorneys said that Comcast led customers to believe that they needed to buy a Service Protection Plan (SPP) to get services that were actually covered for free by the company's "Customer Guarantee."Image: Ken Wolter/Shutterstock Read the rest

Today, Apple is one of the largest, most profitable companies on Earth, but in the early 2000s, the company was fighting for its life. Microsoft's Windows operating system was ascendant, and Microsoft leveraged its dominance to ensure that every Windows user relied on its Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc). Apple users—a small minority of computer users—who wanted to exchange documents with the much larger world of Windows users were dependent on Microsoft's Office for the Macintosh operating system (which worked inconsistently with Windows Office documents, with unexpected behaviors like corrupting documents so they were no longer readable, or partially/incorrectly displaying parts of exchanged documents). Alternatively, Apple users could ask Windows users to export their Office documents to an "interoperable" file format like Rich Text Format (for text), or Comma-Separated Values (for spreadsheets). These, too, were inconsistent and error-prone, interpreted in different ways by different programs on both Mac and Windows systems.Apple could have begged Microsoft to improve its Macintosh offerings, or they could have begged the company to standardize its flagship products at a standards body like OASIS or ISO. But Microsoft had little motive to do such a thing: its Office products were a tremendous competitive advantage, and despite the fact that Apple was too small to be a real threat, Microsoft had a well-deserved reputation for going to enormous lengths to snuff out potential competitors, including both Macintosh computers and computers running the GNU/Linux operating system.Apple did not rely on Microsoft's goodwill and generosity: instead, it relied on reverse-engineering. Read the rest

Responding to Professor Sir Angus Deaton’s report into the causes of inequality, economics writer Chris Dillow provides an excellent list of eight ways in which unequal societies sacrifice overall economic growth and national prosperity to preserve the fortunes of their elites.Topping the list is the diversion of investment resources from innovative products and services into socially useless and inefficient "guard labor" (everything from surveillance to high walls to alarm systems to actual armed guards). Beyond that, inequality produces an erosion of the trust that is a precondition for growth; unequal access to education and opportunity which means that poor peoples' contributions to national wealth are never realized.One interesting idea is that high managerial salaries entrench "the forces of conservatism" as top officials at monopoly businesses balk at taking risks that might hurt their profits, even if they result in better companies offering services that are more productive and profitable in the long run.7. The high-powered incentives that generate inequality within companies can backfire. As Benabou and Tirole have shown (pdf), they encourage bosses to hit measured targets and neglect less measurable things that are nevertheless important for a firm’s success such as a healthy corporate culture. Or they might crowd out intrinsic motivations such as professional ethics. Big bank bonuses, for example, encouraged mis-selling and rigging markets rather than productive activities.8. High management pay can entrench what Joel Mokyr calls the “forces of conservatism” which are antagonistic to technical progress. Reaping the full benefits of new technologies often requires organizational change. Read the rest

Amazon's Ring doorbells are surveillance devices that conduct round-the-clock video surveillance of your neighborhood, automatically flagging "suspicious" faces and bombarding you and your neighbors with alerts using an app called "Neighbors"; it's a marriage of Amazon's Internet of Things platform with its "Rekognition" facial recognition tool, which it has marketed aggressively to cities, law enforcement, ICE, businesses and everyday customers as a security measure that can help ID bad guys, despite the absence of a database identifying which faces belong to good people and which faces belong to bad people.Part of the home surveillance project is a fear-based marketing campaign -- a whole news vertical -- designed to convince Americans that their neighborhoods are so dangerous that they owe it to themselves and their neighbors to conduct surveillance of the streets in front of their homes.The latest salvo in the war is a paid "promoted post" Facebook campaign featuring Ring surveillance footage of suspected petty criminals (a woman trying a car door handle and walking away), urging viewers to get in touch with local cops in order to help solve a crime that may in fact not be a crime. A post on the the Mountain View Police Department's websites details the incident and also shares an image from the Ring camera. "Footage obtained from a neighbor’s home captured a woman who is believed to be the suspect in the theft," the post says. The woman is suspected of stealing someone's purse and wallet from inside a car, and making a series of purchases around town with those stolen credit cards. Read the rest

Finnish company Valkee sells the HumanCharger, a pair of $150 earbuds with integrated LEDs to shine light into your ears. Their claim:This revolutionary device is for your well-being and channels bright light directly to the light-sensitive regions of the brain, right where it is needed the most.HumanCharger® can be used to increase energy levels, improve mood, increase mental alertness, reduce the effects of jet lag and keep winter blues at bay.A site called Valkee's Earlight Swindle International argues otherwise.(via Weird Universe) Read the rest

NASA announced today that the International Space Station is now open to private astronauts for commercial business and, yes, tourism. It ain't budget travel, that's for sure. Kenneth Chang writes in the New York Times:NASA is not selling space vacations directly, but allowing commercial companies to arrange such trips. The agency plans to charge the companies about $35,000 a night for use of the station’s facilities, including air and water.The tourist companies would charge much more to cover the rocket flights to and from space, and to make a profit.Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, Nev., has already reserved four launches. The company will use SpaceX, the rocket company run by Elon Musk, to take private astronauts. Each flight would have four seats.Axiom Space of Houston is also arranging flights and hopes to fly tourists next year.From NASA:Pricing released Friday is specific to commercial and marketing activities enabled by the new directive, reflects a representative cost to NASA, and is designed to encourage the emergence of new markets. As NASA learns how these new markets respond, the agency will reassess the pricing and amount of available resources approximately every six months and make adjustments as necessary.To qualify, commercial and marketing activities must either:• require the unique microgravity environment to enable manufacturing, production or development of a commercial application;• have a connection to NASA’s mission; or• support the development of a sustainable low-Earth orbit economy.NASA’s directive enabling commercial and marketing activities aboard the space station addresses manufacturing, production, transportation, and marketing of commercial resources and goods, including products intended for commercial sale on Earth. Read the rest

This excellent 1982 TV commercial for Mattel's Intellivision game console features a "computerized" futuristic newscast that predates both Max Headroom's cyber-pisstake on the media and A-Ha's rotoscoped classic "Take On Me!" Read the rest

Rot in jail for cruelty to animals, Florida man.QCountry 103.7:A 25-year-old Florida man is jailed in upstate New York after police say he crashed a stolen car and was found naked in a chicken coop after a seven-hour manhunt.Kirkwood is 57 miles southeast of Ithaca.State police say John Mehne of Sarasota faces numerous charges, including criminal possession of stolen property for crashing an Audi A5 reported stolen in Florida and cruelty to animals for killing a dog and some chickens.Police say Mehne crashed the Audi on Interstate 81 about three miles north of the Pennsylvania line Tuesday morning, rode a passing pickup truck for a mile and ran into woods. Police say he stopped at several homes, killing a dog at one and attacking chickens at two others.He was arraigned Wednesday and jailed without bail. Police say he has requested a lawyer. Read the rest