Since it's illegal to take your dog on a subway in New York if it's not shoved into a "carrier," this man shoved his large dog into a tiny burlap sack, if that's what you can call it. But the conductor doesn't buy it, and bans the creative dog owner from boarding the train. Saw this guy arguing with an @MTA conductor about bringing his dog on the subway. Dude said the dog’s burlap sack was a bag; conductor said nope, wouldn’t let him on the train. @Gothamist @A_W_Gordon @2AvSagas #NYCSubway pic.twitter.com/qjgN5anKV3— Will Sabel Courtney (@WillSCourtney) April 7, 2019So much for over-the-shoulder hammocks.Via Mashable Read the rest

A 67-year-old retired teacher is working out at the gym in Culver City, California when a red SUV bursts through the glass wall and and shoves his treadmill across the room. Although it looks horrifying, he amazingly survives without any major injuries.According to Inside Edition:Moments after the crash, the shoeless driver emerged from the car to see what had happened. She then tried to get back in her SUV, but an off-duty cop who was working out at the gym stepped in. She reportedly told police her brakes failed. When cops arrived on the scene she was not taken into custody and was not charged. "I got thrown back and I could see the treadmill coming at me and I was afraid of being crushed," the man on the treadmill told Inside Edition. "I rolled to the side and I think that is what saved me." Read the rest

[[Editor's note: I was the Electronic Frontier Foundation's first-ever European Director, which was a crazy and amazing job at a time when the organization was much smaller; now EFF is much bigger, and international issues are a much bigger deal for us, with bad policy ideas ricocheting around the globe and needing a coordinated response; the below is from my colleague Rainey Reitman, EFF's Chief Program Officer; you can find the formal listing here -Cory ]]EFF is hiring an International Policy Director to help us defend digital rights beyond the United States borders! The ideal candidate will act as a bridge between EFF's legal strategy and our international policy work. We're especially looking for someone with deep expertise in the European lawmaking process, with a specialization in global copyright law and intermediary liability issues. The role combines strategy, management, coalition building, and policy analysis.This role will be key in helping to guide EFF's future engagement around technology policy in Europe in the coming years. If this role seems like a good fit for your expertise, please apply! And if not, you can still help EFF by sending it to your qualified friends and posting this to social media. We'll be accepting applications until April 23.International Policy Director [EFF/Bamboo HR] Read the rest

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada funded Screening Surveillance project: a trio of Creative Commons licensed short science fiction films about "everyday issues around big data and surveillance." The movies run about 10 minutes each, and come with classroom materials.The movies were produced under the auspices of Queens University's Surveillance Studies Center as part of sava saheli singh's postdoc; singh is married to SF writer Tim Maughan, author of the wonderful recent debut novel Infinite Detail (Maughan also wrote one of the movies):Blaxites follows the story of a young woman whose celebratory social media post affects her access to vital medication. Her attempts to circumvent the system leads to even more dire consequences. (written by Nehal El-Hadi) In A Model Employee, to keep her day job at a local restaurant, an aspiring DJ has to wear a tracking wristband. As it tracks her life outside of work, she tries to fool the system, but a new device upgrade means trouble. (written by Tim Maughan) In Frames, a smart city tracks and analyzes a woman walking through the city. Things she does are interpreted and logged by the city system, but are they drawing an accurate picture of the woman? (Written by Madeline Ashby)Screening Surveillance project [The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada/Queens University's Surveillance Studies Center] Read the rest

I was sent some small-batch, whole grain, locally sourced flour. I baked some bread.One of my oldest friends recently went BreadCore on me. He is baking beautiful loaves, paying attention to hydration and scoring some cool designs with a fancy schmancy lame. To thank me for being his on-call baking consultant, he sent me 7.5 lbs of two different small-batch flours that he loves.I am a no-stress it'll all work out in the bake, baker. I am over a decade into delicious bread, pizza, pretzels, waffles, and bagels and I don't like to stress over baking. Baking is a relaxing and fun food preparation method. I guess this is the opposite of everything a highly technical Breadcore baker wants to hear. I do not weigh my ingredients. So, my first thought about specialty flour was "Fuck, this'll complicate things!"I was wrong.I opened the bag of Hard Red Spring Wheat. I baked my first loaf at 70% Trader Joes AP flour and 30% HRS. I did reserve some flour from the initial mix, as I was afraid the HRS would drink more water than market flour. I ended up adding it all in and developed a very sticky ball of dough that rose very well. It baked up beautifully.On this bake, I lowered my oven temperature 5 degrees. In my mind, I was holding back one Kadam for the imaginary Hebrew god to whom my parents dedicated the 12th year of my life. In reality, I'd noticed that my friend who baked at the same temps I did got a much less explosively crumbastic crust on his loaves. Read the rest

Did you know that Ken's theme from Street Fighter II is a bit infringey-whingey when it comes to a Cheap Trick song from the Top Gun soundtrack? Somehow I went for decades without noticing this—or any of the other infringey-whingey examples offered in this set of "Video game themes that sound familiar." Granted, not all of them are quite so cut and dry as the Capcom lift.Many of the soundalikes emerge from a very specific period in the early 1990s. It might just be the stuff that the video's creator grew up with, but the earlier examples tend to be straightforward covers (such as Spy Hunter's 1983 rendition of Henry Mancini) while later ones are more lawyered (sticking the intrumentation and beat but changing melodies). There was a magic point where they were still making ephemeral kids' entertainment, yet making it very well, but before they realized that it wasn't so ephemeral.Embedded below is one that's not in the video: Friendship's Let's Not Talk About It (1979). I won't name the culprit, but I guarantee you'll know the lift when you hear it. Read the rest

Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey (42) walks 5 miles to work every day, eats only one meal a day, fasts all weekend, and tries to meditate two hours a day. CNBC looked at 11 of his "wellness" habits, which he discussed on a recent episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.From CNBC:“Nothing has given me more mental confidence than being able to go straight from room temperature into the cold,” Dorsey says. ”[E]specially in the morning, going into an ice-cold tub from just being warm in bed is — it just unlocks this thing in my mind and I feel like if I can will myself to do that thing that seems so small but hurts so much, I can do nearly anything.”Image: By cellanr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/rorycellan/21834269682/, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Read the rest

Public Sans is a free, open font (available in weights from 100-900) from the federal United States Web Design System with a Github project that you can contribute to: it's billed as "A strong, neutral typeface for text or display." (via Four Short Links) Read the rest

Former Michigan Republican State Senator Patrick Colbeck has put together an ambitious, far-ranging educational "reform" package that is being voted on today by the Michigan State Board of Education.The plan purges the curriculum of all mentions of LBGTQI issues, to Roe v Wade, and almost all references to climate change. More disturbingly (and more tellingly), the plan pushes for the removal of the words "democracy" and "democratic" to describe America's system of governance, on the grounds that they are not "politically neutral and accurate." Instead, Colbeck and his allies advocate for the meaningless, ambiguous temrs "American government" and "Constitutional government."These efforts by Colbeck and other local conservatives are a little less direct than recent anti-democratic positions taken up by state Republicans — a proposed “poll tax” in Florida, the wholesale gerrymandering of Wisconsin — but could have an equally long tail of consequence, considering that they target young students figuring out their own political stances and the basic functions of “constitutional government.” At least one student, concerned about the standards’ language on gender and race, isn’t thrilled about grown advocates arguing on his behalf. Alex Hosey, a high school sophomore in East Lansing, wrote to the State Board of Education: “Hiding our nation’s sins isn’t the right way to do it. Teach us about everything — the good and the bad, so we can learn to think for ourselves.”Michigan Conservatives Don’t Want to Teach Students That America Is a Democracy [Matt Stieb/New York](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Learn all about Batuu, the Black Spire Outpost, and some of the things you should fear in the Unknown Regions in Star Wars Thrawn: Alliances.Disneyland's new theme land is set on the planet of Batuu. Timothy Zahn's second update to the Grand Admiral Thrawn story COINCIDENTALLY spends a lot of time describing this planet and the Unknown Regions it acts as a gateway to.The Thrawn story is fantastic on its own. Adding in that I get to learn a bit about the new Star Wars land's backstory is a huge bonus. Knowing 'who is who in Batuu' will help maintain my credibility when I take my daughter to see the new park.Thrawn is a real badass. This novel covers both young Thrawn encountering and assisting the Jedi General Skywalker near the end of the Clone Wars, and a joint mission later assigned Grand Admiral Thrawn and his battle group supported by Darth Vader and his elite commando unit. Both stories transpire along the Outer Rim, and introduce us to Disneyland's new portion of Star Wars space.Thrawn: Alliances (Star Wars) by Timothy Zahn via Amazon Read the rest

Seeing as they started out as cartoons by the amazing Charles Addams, an animated Addams Family seems right.I did love the old show tho. Read the rest

“Feels like summer in Norway,” says Tomasz Furmanek, who shot and shared this serene and beautiful video of kayaking down a lazy river on a beautiful April day.If you need a serenity break at the computer today, and you probably do, this might just do you right.Shot with a GoPro, and isn't it gorgeous.Can't wait to get back out on the water myself.Feels like summer in Norway[via] Read the rest

“These Disney live action remakes are amazing.”These Disney live action remakes are amazing.[via] Read the rest

Same. Read the rest

Americans have a mostly negative view of the state of racial progress under Trump.

Last year the US Congress passed SESTA/FOSTA, an "anti-sex-trafficking bill" that has resulted in the shuttering of all the services formerly used by sex workers to vet their johns, massively increasing the personal physical risk borne by sex-workers and reinvigorating the dying pimping industry, as sex workers seek out protectors. Not incidentally, SESTA/FOSTA has led to an overall hair-trigger on the part of platform operators, who -- facing massive liability for allowing a single prostitution ad through -- have simply shut down the places where sexuality is discussed (even Craigslist shut down adult-oriented message section).Then, last month, the EU passed the Copyright Directive with Article 13 intact, forcing platforms to filter user speech -- including images, sounds, videos and every other copyrightable media, down to Minecraft mods -- for "copyright infringement," at a massive cost that will destroy small and independent forums for communication. The system has no checks and balances, allowing anyone to claim copyright over anything to see it censored Europe-wide -- it doesn't even allow platforms to ignore future claims from known hoaxters or censors.Then, in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks, Australia -- already a world leader in shitty internet policy -- passed a law requiring platforms to remove "extremist" or "violent" content within an hour. Getting it wrong means fines of up to 10% of global gross revenue.And now, the British Parliament, in a bid to cement its status as the decade's most dysfunctional of all legislatures, is considering legislation that would create a Chinese-style internet censorship ministry that would instruct the country's ISPs and online services about which subjects are and are not permissible, and force them to monitor all user communication in order to prevent any "illegal content" from appearing online. Read the rest

Text-to-speech tech has moved on from the angry robot talk of Steven Hawking's voice box, but most of it still lingers in an uncanny place short of natural. YouTuber Alex's unsettling ability to impersonate it should take him far. Do some prank calls, Alex! Read the rest

Trump's handpicked Attorney General Bill Barr says the report prepared by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office will be ready for public release within about a week.Barr also said: “I do not intend” to provide “the full, unredacted report” to Congress — even as House Judiciary has threatened to subpoena for it.The Department of Justice is working with the office of the Special Counsel to color code its contents, redact, and add explanations for the basis behind each redaction.Yes, that's right. They're gonna color code it.AG Barr says the Mueller report will be ready for release within a week. DOJ is working with the special counsel's office and DOJ will color code the report and add explanations for the basis of each redaction of the report.— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) April 9, 2019Attorney General William Barr: “I think that from my standpoint — within a week — I will be in a position to release the (Mueller) report to the public” https://t.co/1tSC6oaH46 pic.twitter.com/EFVOGAoKYm— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 9, 2019Barr shuts the door on Nita Lowey when she asks if the WH has seen or been briefed on Mueller report. ”Im not going to say anything more about it.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 9, 2019"I've said what I'm going to say about the report" AG Barr says in response to Dem Rep Lowey Qs about whether WH has seen the Mueller report. who inside DOJ he's consulted with --adding he wont say anything more about it until it's out. Read the rest

What happens to planets that survive being smothered by bloated old stars? A "chunk of metal debris" orbits white dwarf SDSS J122859.93+10432.9 so closely it reveals the outcome of such an apocalyptic event. Here's the New York Times's Dennis Overbye, quoting physicist Christopher Manser: It came as a surprise, Dr. Manser said. Such debris disks were typically understood to be the remains of a small body, such as an asteroid or comet, that had come near the white dwarf and been torn apart by tidal forces. The newly found fragment would have to be solid metal, perhaps iron, to have withstood the tidal stretching, Dr. Manser said. But it now orbits too close to the white dwarf for life as we know it to exist on it.Nor is there better news to be found elsewhere around the white dwarf. Other planets may exist, orbiting farther out, but the star is now too faint to deliver sustenance at such a distance. “It is unlikely that the system is habitable,” Dr. Manser said.Hey, for all we know, SDSS J122859.93+10432.9 is the most beautiful place in the universe! The artist's impression is by Mark Garlick, for the University of Warwick. Check out Garlick's website. Read the rest

After collaring a woman who got past security at Mar-a-Lago (described by Chris Hayes as President Donald Trump's "bribery palace") the Secret Service found a USB drive in her possession. So they stuck it in a computer to see what was on it.From the Miami Herald:Secret Service agent Samuel Ivanovich, who interviewed Zhang on the day of her arrest, testified at the hearing. He stated that when another agent put Zhang’s thumb-drive into his computer, it immediately began to install files, a “very out-of-the-ordinary” event that he had never seen happen before during this kind of analysis. The agent had to immediately stop the analysis to halt any further corruption of his computer, Ivanovich said. The analysis is ongoing but still inconclusive, he testified. Read the rest

Zain Qaiser, from Barking in London, scammed millions of pounds out of website visitors and is off to jail. He may be the world's most prolific ransomware distributor, reports the BBC, exposed in a trial that focused on easy-to-blackmail porn site visitors.Qaiser, 24, was jailed for more than six years at Kingston Crown Court. The court heard he is the most prolific cyber criminal to be sentenced in the UK. Judge Timothy Lamb QC said: "The harm caused by your offending was extensive - so extensive that there does not appear to be a reported case involving anything comparable." ...Qaiser was first arrested almost five years ago - but the case has been delayed because of the complexity of the investigation and mental health concerns. Initially working from his bedroom at his family home in Barking, Qaiser began to make money through "ransomware" attacks when he was only 17 years old. Read the rest

Eliza Gauger produced these "shut the fuck up" stickers to provide Seattle locals with an appropriate response to an obnoxious marketing campaign there, but their appeal strikes me as universal to all communities, offline and on. A set of 10 is $5.Sturdy, flexible stickers printed professionally onto UV-resistant gloss backing to endure the inevitable fury of your local contingent of liberal positivity drones.Seattle has an infestation of stickers that say "be the light." Everyone is absolutely fed up with them, their corny omnipresence, and the shallow banality they represent. Thus, we find ourselves here, with enough "shut the fuck up." stickers to shut this hippie nonsense down for good. And so can you! Read the rest

Artist and writer Jenny Odell (previously) is justifiably beloved for her pieces and installations that make us consider the economics and meanings of garbage, weird markets, and other 21st century plagues; in her first book, How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Odell draws on art criticism, indigenous practices, "Deep Listening," anti-capitalist theory, and psychology to make the case that the internal chaos we feel is no accident: it's the result of someone's business-model, and until we reject "productivity" in favor of contemplation and deliberation, it will only get worse.Odell's central thesis is hard to pin down; part of her subject-matter here is that really important ideas don't neatly distill down to short, punchy summaries or slogans -- instead, they occupy a kind of irreducible, liminal complexity that has to be lived as much as discussed. With that in mind, the broad strokes of her book are that:* The rise of "productivity" as a measure of the quality of life is incredibly destructive, and it obliterates everything inside and outside of us that make us happy, because sleep and love and laughter and beauty are not "productive."Odell links this to neoliberal capitalism, and the requirement that each of us be a hustling entrepreneur, which, in turn, is a way for capital to shift risk onto labor. It's a scam that moves both wealth and joy off of our balance sheets and onto the balance sheets of the super-rich. This is very strong material, and it reminds me of the one conversation I had with David Allen, author of "Getting Things Done." Allen lamented that everyone pays close attention to the first two parts of his book (which focus on making sure that the stuff you decide to do get done) and skip over the third part (which focuses on deciding what to do). Read the rest

The one place you want your internet service to work flawlessly is your home - especially if you work there. Sadly, we all know that spotty Wi-Fi is all too common, even with the best package. If you've lost crucial projects or had trouble streaming movies, NetSpot Home can not only show you why and where these internet gremlins attack but how to kick them out.It's a troubleshooting tool for your connection that goes through your wireless network with a fine-toothed comb, letting you see where the "dead zones" are in your house with a visual map. It can further analyze your coverage for any location and help you set up the best hotspot for your needs. You can then monitor your setup with accurate speed tests, and even set up multiple access points and organize them by SSID, vendor or security level. No matter what you've been running on, NetSpot Home can likely make it better.Right now, a lifetime license to NetSpot Home is $19 - a 72% cut off the list price. Read the rest

In this remarkable 7-minute video shot in 2016, Stewart Brand recalls his experiences as a Merry Prankster in the San Francisco 1960s, the back-to-the-land movement, hippies, and the low-dose acid trip he took that made him wonder how humanity would be affected if people saw a photo of the entire earth taken from space. This led to the creation of The Whole Earth Catalog in 1968. Ask me to reminisce about LSD, hippies, the Trips Festival, Whole Earth, etc., and this is what you get in 7 minutes.https://t.co/qoe1uYacKn— Stewart Brand (@stewartbrand) April 5, 2019He was there. In fact he help create the there. https://t.co/ugFKjn2bwy— Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) April 6, 2019 Read the rest

Thieves in Dungiven, Northern Ireland, figured out a clever way to get cash at an ATM without having to install skimmers and wait for punters to come along: tear the entire thing out with a fourteen-ton digger. The footage shows the digger driving through a security gate then tearing the machine from the wall. ... The cash machine was lifted into a Citroen Berlingo car which had part of its roof cut off. A number of masked men are seen in the footage. The raid lasted just over four minutes. Afterwards the car was driven away with the cash machine sticking out of the roof.The Komatsu PC130 Hydraulic Excavator is 25ft long and 9ft wide, with a maximum reach of 26 feet, a digging depth of 18ft, and 85hp of gross power provided by a 4-cycle, water-cooled, direct-injection turbocharged Komatsu S4D102E engine. I'm afraid if you want to get one delivered from Amazon Prime you'll have to upgrade to the Komatsu PC210. Read the rest

“BIG DEAL,” says the ACLU's Matt Cagle about this story. “Amazon shareholders will vote on whether the Board must reconsider company sales of face surveillance to governments. The SEC rejected Amazon's attempt to prevent this proposal from moving forward.”Amazon's facial recognition technology is branded 'Rekognition.'The fact that Amazon shareholders now get to vote on this *is* a big deal. Remember also that Amazon is one of the companies identified as providing services to Trump's “lock up all the brown people in cages” Department of Homeland Security and ICE and the Border Patrol -- as we understand it, AWS helps with the databases agents use to identify the detained men, women, and children.From openmic.org, an article posted a few days ago on April 4 when SEC said it would not allow Amazon executives to stop the proposal:The SEC’s ruling comes amidst mounting criticism of the Amazon technology, “Rekognition,” as racially biased. Only yesterday (4/3), the New York Times reported that at least 25 prominent artificial-intelligence researchers, including experts at Google, Facebook and Microsoft, have signed a letter calling on Amazon to stop selling its facial-recognition technology to law enforcement agencies because it is biased against women and people of color.The Times said the letter “reflects growing concern in academia and the tech industry that bias in facial-recognition technology is a systemic problem. Some researchers — and even some companies — are arguing the technology cannot be properly controlled without government regulation.”The two shareholder resolutions, which were filed with Amazon in December, focus on the business risks to the company from sales of Rekognition. Read the rest

COURT SKETCH: WILLIAM HENNESSY. Yujing Zhang, the Chinese woman who was arrested for illegally entering the president's Mar-a-Lago resort, appeared in court Monday. Yujing Zhang was arrested in March for lying to Secret Service agents at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, to gain access to the private club. According to investigators, the 32-year-old Chinese national had malware on her person, and behaved more like a bumbling spy than anything else. So who is she?Looks like we're about to find out.“Yujing Zhang appeared in West Palm Beach court, after having been arrested March 30 for illegally entering Trump’s resort and lying to a Secret Service agent,” reports Jonathan Levin at Bloomberg News. “She may be formally indicted as early as this week, prosecutors said.”According to the feds, at the moment she was caught lying to Secret Service agents in March, Yujing Zhang was carrying on her person:• Two Chinese passports• Four (4!) cellphones• One laptop• One external hard drive• One USB thumb drive containing malware.• She had no swimsuit.The Secret Service agents apparently believed her. She briefly gained access to the club during the President's visit there that weekend.Excerpt from the new Bloomberg story:In addition to the electronics she carried into the resort, Zhang also had a signal detector, five SIM cards and more than $7,600 in U.S. currency in her room at the Colony Palm Beach hotel, about two miles north of Mar-a-Lago, Garcia said. Read the rest

“Private equity firm Great Hill Partners has agreed to acquire Gizmodo Media Group from Univision, forming a new company led by digital media exec Jim Spanfeller,” reports the Wall Street Journal's Benjamin Mullin.Here's the story: The new boss of GMG, Jim Spanfeller, plans to invest in paid content and e-commerce.https://t.co/pcx4YyTEeR— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) April 8, 2019Excerpt: For the second time in four years, the former Gizmodo Media Group — home to both the eponymous tech site, as well as Deadspin, Jezebel, the Onion, the Root, and ClickHole, among others — has a new owner. Great Hill Partners, a private-equity firm based in Boston, has reached an agreement to purchase Gizmodo Media Group from Univision for what will likely be “much less than the $135 million Univision paid in 2016 to acquire most of the Gizmodo properties.”Wow. The deal was previously reported by the WSJ as a potential option for GMG, so it doesn’t come as a total shock, as NYMag's Madison Malone Kircher writes:Also for the second time in as many years, the company will be getting a name-change. Gizmodo Media Group will henceforth know be known as G/O Media Inc. — a nod to Gizmodo and the Onion, both GMG properties. Its new boss will Jim Spanfeller, who’s worked at Forbes.com, PC Magazine, and RealClearPolitics.Spanfeller sent an email to his notoriously independent new staff this morning, saying he looks forward to meeting everyone soon and answering their (likely many) questions. Including ones about editorial independence: “While editorial independence is critically important, there needs to be a healthy and productive partnership with the business side for the company to be truly successful,” Spanfeller wrote. Read the rest

Trump told border agents to break U.S. law and ignore judicial orders, CNN reported.

This kit comes with plenty of components to get you started learning how to use the Arduino electronics prototyping platform. It's at one of the lowest prices I've seen. If you don't know anything about Arduino and are curious, check out Tinkercad's Circuits website, which has an Arduino simulator. Read the rest

Newsweek reports that yoga classes were reinstated in Russian prisons this week after being suspended due to a "religious scholar's" warning that it cold make prisoners gay.Theological professor Alexander Dvorkin wrote a document suggesting yoga could cause uncontrolled sexual arousal and homosexuality in detention centers, leading to riots, the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomlets reported. Senator Elena Mizulina, who is known for her conservative views, used the document to appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office to check the legality of the yoga classes, and asked for them to be suspended, according to the paper. Read the rest

The New York Post reports: "An NYPD cop went on a wild dirt-bike ride in Harlem on Sunday afternoon — and injured himself when he tumbled off the bike and slammed into the road, video of the crash shows.The cop popped a wheelie, and then sped off into traffic on the bike on Lenox Avenue and 135th Street at about 6 p.m., according to the video and police."@THEKIDMERO @desusnice fam.... pic.twitter.com/MXQ0rISkq3— Scott Johnson (@_scottjohnson) April 8, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

China has a massive livestreaming industry, centered around the YY platform, which started out as a Twitch-style gamer livestreaming platform and now hosts a huge number of wildly popular vloggers who earn money when viewers toss them virtual tips that they can redeem for cash.The system is a toxic soup of misogyny and disaffectation, with both the streamers and the audiences drawn heavily from poor and rural Chinese people who sense that the country's prosperity boom is over and that they have lost out -- that all future gains in China will be captured by affluent people and their children and that they will forever be frozen out. This is also a cohort that has been denied postsecondary education (and may have also missed out on a decent secondary education).People’s Republic of Desire is a new documentary on the phenomenon (it won SXSW's Grand Jury Award for best documentary feature in 2018). In an interview with director Hao Wu, Sixth Tone's Matthew Walsh digs into the fraught world of Chinese livestreaming, and the ways that the authoritarian Chinese state are interacting with it.Sixth Tone: Your film also looks at the theme of gender. How does livestreaming reinforce traditional gender roles in China?Wu: The appeal of the male livestreamer lies in his ability to be an alpha male; fans rally around him, because they see him as both a funny drinking buddy and a natural leader. But a lot of the [female livestreamers] sell sex appeal — they have to sexualize themselves to win fans. Read the rest

Pete Buttigieg is one of the prominent members of the progressive wing of the Democratic party who opposes free college tuition, on the ground that the "benefits" of college accrue to those who attain a degree and that it's unfair to ask the majority, who don't attend college, to subsidize the minority who do. As sociologist (and economics critic) Elizabeth Popp Berman writes in the Washington Post, these objections only make sense in the context of two major, economics-driven shifts in how we think about education and public goods -- changes that are relatively recent, dating back to the 1960s.The first change is in how we evaluate the worth of public goods, like education: do we value them in and of themselves, or in terms of their cost-benefit? The triumph of cost-benefit framing for education led to the rise in both tuition and lending (and thus the student debt crisis); the argument had it that public college educations were "irrationally cheap" and that the predominantly better-off attendees should have to bear the cost of it. But consider J.W. Mason's rebuttal: "Suppose users of Central Park are higher-income on average; is progressive policy then to fence it off and charge admission?" In other words, if public goods disproportionately benefit the affluent, we can either strive to make them more inclusive or to recoup the cost of providing them, but not both.The other shift is in the worth of an education: education can be seen as intrinsically beneficial, creating "citizens as well as economic actors," and publicly funded education "socialized the risk" of pursuing educational attainments that have uncertain individual upsides, fueling class mobility. Read the rest

Here's a guy demonstrating how to exploit a loophole in McDonald's menu. He used one of the video kiosks to order 10 burgers, priced at one dollar each. Then he customized the burgers by removing the beef patties from the order, which knocks $1.10 of the price of each dollar burger. Then he added one more dollar burger to the order, but kept the meat this time. The total price for the 10 patty-less burgers and one regular burger was zero dollars. Read the rest

Floating communities aren't just for libertarian billionaires looking for places to do things they might not otherwise get away with. A UN partnership is looking into whether they could be part of a sustainable urban development program, for when the floods roll over the lowlands and don't go away.Oceanix City, or the world's first sustainable floating city, would essentially be groups of hexagonal platforms - anchored to the seabed - that could each house around 300 people, effectively creating a community for 10,000 residents. Cages under the city could harvest scallops, kelp, or other forms of seafood. Marc Collins Chen, the chief executive of Oceanix, said the technology to build large floating infrastructure or housing already exists."The biggest question in people's minds is if these cities can actually float," Mr Collins Chen told the BBC. Still waiting for Sea City 2000, the floating pyramid I was promised by the Usborne books in the 1980s. Read the rest

Web site operators who want to spy on their users can add a "ping" directly to hyperlinks in their pages; these "ping" URLs are invisibly, silently by the browser when the user clicks the associated link, allowing third parties to be notified about your clicking activities.When "ping" was standardized as "hyperlink auditing," browser vendors made it possible (if difficult) to disable it (for example, Safari had a hidden preference for this: "defaults write com.apple.Safari com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2HyperlinkAuditingEnabled -bool false"). But in their latest versions, most browsers are removing this option. It's been eliminated from Safari and Chrome (and their derivatives like Chromium, Opera and Edge). The exception is Firefox (and Brave, which is a derivative of Firefox), where hyperlink auditing is turned off by default. With privacy and online tracking being such a large problem and major concern for many users, you would think that browser developers would give you the option to disable anything that could affect your privacy.Unfortunately, this seems to be going in the reverse direction when it comes to hyperlink auditing.Major Browsers to Prevent Disabling of Click Tracking Privacy Risk [Lawrence Abrams/Bleeping Computer](via /.) Read the rest

From My Mechanics, a restoration project that turned out to be "a lot more challenging" than expected. I'm very fond of the wordless, meticulous yet leisurely mode of crafting footage.A few weeks ago I bought an old bench grinder to restore on eBay. The guy who sold it was actually selling more antiques, he had a room filled with old items. I took a look at his other stuff and this unique coffee grinder caught my attention right away. So I ended up buying it for $35. The one thing that really impressed me on this coffee grinder was the metal body, usually they're made of wood. I also liked the colour very much. The restoration itself turned out to be a lot more challenging than I first expected. I'm very happy with the final result of this coffee grinder. I really like how the handle turned out. Read the rest

Jonas Olsen Woodcraft's YouTube channel is replete with wonders (my favorite is the coffee cup) but with the new season of Thrones coming up, it's his amazing dragons going viral.Here's a dragon skeleton:Previously: Chainsaw sculptor creates spectacular wooden dragon benches Read the rest

But wait, there's more:Previously: Dune without words Read the rest

Ken Shirriff presents Iconic consoles of the IBM System/360 mainframes.This article describes the various S/360 models and how to identify them from the front panels. I'll start with the Model 30, a popular low-end system, and then go through the remaining models in order. Conveniently IBM assigned model numbers rationally, with the size and performance increasing with the model number, from the stripped-down but popular Model 20 to the high-performance Model 195.Each of the cabinets in the photo above contains a whopping 256 kilobytes of storage.Previously: How It Works: The Computer Read the rest

Big companies need to manage big stacks of data, and the language they use to access and manipulate it is SQL. If you want to make a career of IT, you'll need to master SQL like a native tongue to get started in the lucrative field of database management. With more than 120 hours of lessons and examples, the Complete Microsoft & Oracle SQL Certification Bundle is the surest way to do it.In 11 courses, this learning package covers everything you need to walk confidently into those server stacks in both Microsoft and Oracle platforms. You'll get a solid foundation in SQL, starting with a walkthrough doing basic queries and functions. Once you've mastered that, you'll quickly move on to learn the skills that set you apart from the IT herd: Developing data models and business intelligence infrastructure, designing and maintaining a database warehouse, safeguarding it against internal and external threats. You'll get prepared to take certification exams in all of the above and more by the time you complete the course package.Right now, you can pick up the Complete Microsoft & Oracle SQL Certification Bundle for $39. Read the rest

Toyota Engineering Society's CUE 3 is a 6'3" humanoid robot reportedly hits free throws with nearly 100 percent accuracy. From the AP:(The robot) computes as a three-dimensional image where the basket is, using sensors on its torso, and adjusts motors inside its arm and knees to give the shot the right angle and propulsion for a swish...Stanford University Professor Oussama Khatib, who directs the university's robotics lab, said Cue 3 demonstrates complex activities such as using sensors and nimble computation in real-time in what he called "visual feedback."To shoot hoops, the robot must have a good vision system, be able to compute the ball's path then execute the shot, he said in a telephone interview."What Toyota is doing here is really bringing the top capabilities in perception with the top capabilities in control to have robots perform something that is really challenging," Khatib said."Toyota robot can’t slam dunk but it shoots a mean 3-pointer" (AP/Asahi Shimbun) Read the rest

A suspected rhino poacher in South Africa's Kruger National Park was killed by an elephant and then eaten by lions. After the elephant attack, police said, "his accomplices claimed to have carried his body to the road so that passersby could find it in the morning. They then vanished from the Park.""Indications found at the scene suggested that a pride of lions had devoured the remains leaving only a human skull and a pair of pants," the statement said.From CNN:Three individuals who joined the illegal hunt were arrested Wednesday by the South African Police Service, and officers continue to investigate what happened.The suspects appeared in Komatipoort Magistrate Court on Friday to face charges of possessing firearms and ammunition without a license, conspiracy to poach and trespassing. Of special concern is the black rhino, which is considered critically endangered after its population tumbled from about 65,000 to 1970 to 2,400 in 1995, according to Kruger National Park. Conservation efforts have boosted their numbers, and the world's remaining 5,000 or so black rhinos live predominantly in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya and Zimbabwe. Read the rest

The main event begins! The boys, Ed Piskor, Jim Rugg, and Tom Scioli give their kayfabe commentary on the first volume of Katsuhiro Otomo's Magnum Opus, Akira!Get your hands on the newish 35 year anniversary box set and read along!Two earlier episodes tracked Otomo's previous works leading up to Akira:Part 1, FireballPart 2: Domu: A Child's DreamSubscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel for future episodes Read the rest

The Burning Man event is seeking a renewal of its 10-year permit to use the federally owned Black Rock Desert site managed by the Bureau of Land Management; the BLM has responded with a bizarre, overreaching Environmental Impact Statement that ignores the lavishly documented record of Burning Man's excellent safety and stewardship record.For example, the new Environmental Impact Statement calls for Burning Man to hire an outside security force to replace its all-volunteer, community-based Black Rock Rangers, and to have these rent-a-cops search all belongings of all attendees: 80,000 people in 30,000 cars, in a high-wind, low-visibility environment where, in addition to the threat to privacy there is also a massive risk of huge amounts of personal belongings being whipped away by the wind and blown all over the desert.The EIS also ignores Burning Man's status as the world's largest, best-managed "leave no trace" event, where every piece of waste down to individual sequins and metal shavings are picked up and packed out by attendees. Instead, the BLM wants Burning Man to install several football-fields' worth of dumpsters at the event's exit, with parking for 30,000 vehicles to pull up to them. In addition to eroding the norm of stewardship and waste-management that is intrinsic to the festival, this would also deprive the nearby Pyramid Lake Paiute dump sites of the millions they take in from burners who pay to have their waste legally disposed of.The EIS also calls for the creation of a 19,000,000 lb concrete jersey barrier to encircle the site, replacing the trash fence (a wildlife-friendly fence that catches blown waste) and the perimeter patrols (which are hugely effective at catching people sneaking into the event). Read the rest

Next week is my Southern California nonstop Radicalized and advocacy week: I'm starting with a signing at Burbank's Dark Delicacies on Sunday at 4PM, alongside Leslie S. Klinger & Lisa Morton, who are signing their new anthology Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror & Suspense.Next, I'm keynoting the San Diego Public Library's 40th anniversary celebration with a talk on Thursday from 7-9PM at the Central Library's Neil Morgan Auditorium (330 Park Blvd., San Diego 92101), talking about how "libraries are one of the few remnants of a world where people were valued because of their humanity, not their money, and how that works in the current moment of extreme inequality, epistemological incoherence, and fear of imminent collapse."The next day, I'm co-chairing the README/LA Cryptoparty event After Disruption, which is in two parts: a panel on the ways that Big Tech and monopolism have squeezed labor and the public interest, and what an inclusive and radical technological future might look like, and then a workshop where we try to design some of these futures. It's at UCLA on Friday from 7-930PM.Finally, I'm at the LA Times Festival of Books for a talk with John Scalzi on Sunday, April 14 at 3PM, followed by a signing at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore tent. I sure hope to see you! Read the rest

Ever heard of Agile? If you're on the ground floor of any big corporate project, it's more than likely you have. Agile is the methodology that major companies use to tackle big projects. And if you're looking to make yourself invaluable, a certification in Agile is what you need to lead that project development team. Packed with info for any level of experience, the Agile Expert Project Management Bundle is a direct path to that know-how.This online training course contains more than 50 hours of training and exercises, with a certification waiting for budding Agile practitioners at the end. It starts with a comprehensive primer on the overall Agile framework, plus the system known as Scrum that allows you to implement it by laying out group roles and targeting goals. From there, you'll be able to learn how additional methodologies such as Kanban and Lean fit into the overall scheme and get a bird's eye view of the whole process that will allow you to take any project across the finish line quickly and efficiently.Pick up the Agile Expert Project Management Bundle for $39 today. Read the rest

Shawn Smith, the soulful singer who was a legend in the Seattle music scene, died yesterday at age 53. I first encountered Shawn's voice in the early-1990s by way of Greg Dulli's bands the Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers. But Smith's influence on the Seattle music scene, and rock in general, dates back to the mid-1980s when he was part of the tight-knit community of musicians that birthed Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. Eerily, April 5 was the anniversary of the deaths of Seattle singers Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) and Layne Staley (Alice in Chains).My condolences to Smith's son, family, friends, and the Seattle music community that adored him. From the Seattle Times:In recent weeks, Smith was working on a new album with the band Brad, which he founded in 1992 with Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, drummer Regan Hagar and bassist Jeremy Toback. They were recording at Studio Litho, owned by Gossard. Born in Spokane, Smith came to Seattle in 1987, and formed a band called Malfunkshun with Hagar and Kevin and Andrew Wood (who would go on to form Mother Love Bone with Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament).In 1992, he released his first solo album under the name Pigeonhed. That same year, Brad released its first album, “Shame” in 1993. The band would put out four albums, including “Interiors,” which features one of Smith’s best-known songs, “The Day Brings.”He made two records with the band Satchel, and appeared on The Afghan Whigs’ album “Black Love,” as well as Whigs founder Greg Dulli’s solo album. Read the rest