Boing Boing

This ain’t it, chief.Previously: Fire at Notre Dame cathedralUPDATE: Ryan Broderick points out the plain fact: YouTube's little truth widget is algorithmically-generated fake news.I'm not sure there's a better metaphor for the state of the tech industry right now than an American social platform slapping an algorithmically-generated related article about an American terror attack on to a live stream about a completely unrelated French news story. pic.twitter.com/KLWGlg5NEc— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) April 15, 2019 Read the rest

As workers at companies from Kickstarter to Gimlet to Vox vote to unionize, and as traditional labor organizers call on game devs and others to organize, Silicon Valley is a lot more friendly to pro-labor policies than ever before.That's partly because tech companies can be terrible places to work, and party because their leaders keep trying to pad their quarterly numbers by selling some truly evil shit to some truly evil organizations, governments and people.And as monopoly has set in, tech workers are finding libertarian market-oriented pitches less and less convincing, as they see their potential for launching their own startup or for switching to a disruptive new entrant dwindling.The whole thing has made Silicon Valley ripe for the new, resurgent socialist movement in America, as technies sign up to join the Demcratic Socialists of America and begin to identify as socialists themselves.“I think there's a quiet group of people who are willing to speak about it to each other,” Areeb Ahmad, who works at an ad tech company in New York City, told Salon. “But I think there is also a second group of people who maybe are open to those ideas. But I think the word [socialism] still has a lot of stigma.”Ahmad said he was drawn to democratic socialism partly because he is a first-generation immigrant, and partly because he works in the digital advertising field, which is dominated by two megaliths, Facebook and Google.“Being that roughly 85 percent of the ad marketplace at this point are those two companies, and it's basically impossible to look at that ecosystem and not think those two companies are monopolies, and to not want to do something about that, and to say, ‘Hey, there are all these people who have concerns about privacy,’” he said. Read the rest

A fire at Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral was reportedly started by accident, and is related to ongoing work, according to France 2 News which cites police. The Paris bureau chief for Reuters said the news “is terrible and a hideous blow to the symbolic heart of the city.”MORE: Spire of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has collapsed https://t.co/mgO4CkDAwb pic.twitter.com/TPTs30FjZT— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 15, 2019The entire structure is involved. The spire has collapsed.This is the worst day for France since June 14, 1940. Patrick Galey of Agence-France Presse shot photos and video from Paris, and they're below. Police just evacuated the Île but that spire is lost #NotreDame pic.twitter.com/rd0g8SuSBo— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019#NotreDame right now. I feel sick pic.twitter.com/UFqsSrtwGu— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019#NotreDame now. Entire spire is on fire pic.twitter.com/3410wSwhf3— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019The smoke from #NotreDame is blocking out the sun pic.twitter.com/v3ibVL41T7— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019There are people crying. People on rooftops. I can hear the burning from here #NotreDame pic.twitter.com/Pd80q6Etcg— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019#NotreDame is on fire pic.twitter.com/8n6DaEEyGv— James McAuley (@jameskmcauley) April 15, 2019PARIS: Here's a closer view of the #NotreDame fire pic.twitter.com/JkQk2I9pHF— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) April 15, 2019Reuters: A fire broke out at Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris on Monday afternoon, a spokesman from the fire department said.Smoke could be seen billowing out from the top of the medieval cathedral, as flames lept out besides its two bell towers, a Reuters witness said. Read the rest

A consortium of Facebook investors led by Trillium Asset Management and controlling $3B in shares has put a proposal before the shareholders to fire Mark Zuckerberg for his mishandling of a string of ghastly scandals; they will lose, however, because Facebook's share structure gives Zuckerberg's personal shares more votes than other shareholders, ensuring that the company can run as a cult of personality beholden to his whims, rather than one disciplined by shareholder choices (this corporate structure is also in place at News Corp, Google, and other companies whose founders are able to raise funds in the capital markets without having to be beholden to their shareholders). Another shareholder proposal would put Zuckerberg's shares on even footing with other shares -- currently, each of Zuck's shares have ten times more votes than ordinary shares -- and this proposal will also fail. (via /.) Read the rest

Alistair Wooldrige's MacBook Air died after a drop. So he popped it in the oven.With confidence high and the bake nearly finished, for the final 60 seconds I thought I’d go off-piste and crank up the temperature to 180 °C - I wanted to make sure things were cooked through. Curiously peering through the oven window, all hell broke loose within 30 seconds: The room filled with sounds of popcorn being made as resistors and components desoldered themselves from the logic board and dropped onto the oven floor. The previously clear air was replaced with an acrid haze. Then the bake reached it’s finale as the logic board bowed up in the middle, accompanied by the screeching sound of the CPU being wrenched off its socket. I lunged for the power switch and yanked open the oven door, hoping to limit damage.Chances are that your oven cannot nail or sustain the exact temperature to "safely" remelt solder without damaging the board, and it's a bad idea anyway: figure out the break, then use a heat gun and a temperature probe. Say experts. Read the rest

Carol Monahan writes, "In the summer of 1996, James Ernest began his quest to bring happiness and joy to all the people of the world, by creating clever tabletop games and selling them really cheap. He named his company Cheapass Games, and now he's writing a book about it." "Cheapass Games in Black and White: A Retrospective" includes the rules and histories of all of our black and white games, from the well-known Kill Doctor Lucky, Lord of the Fries, and Button Men, to many more obscure games, such as Escape from Elba, Pennywise, Dogfight, and The Lost Pueblo of Doctor Green, plus a few prototypes and unreleased games you've never heard of. Get the complete history of Cheapass Games, all collected into one big heavy book! On Kickstarter until April 30th.Cheapass Games in Black and White [Cheapass Games/Kickstarter] Read the rest

Torrentfreak published an article disclosing the fact that screeners of American Gods had leaked online ahead of their air date (they did not make the screeners available, nor did they link to any of the places where the screeners could be downloaded from) and they tweeted about the story.Starz, who puts out American Gods, sent a bogus DMCA takedown notice for the tweet, claiming that it infringed copyright (the tweet included a screenshot from one of the circulating screeners -- a single frame that contained no plot developments or other key materials, and which showed that the leaked copies were labeled as screeners).Then, Torrentfreak wrote an article about the takedown, which included a quote from EFF attorney Kit Walsh. EFF tweeted about the article, and -- wait for it -- Starz abused the DMCA again, to remove EFF's link to a story in which the fact that Starz had previously abused the DMCA was disclosed.You'd think that this could go on all day, but you'd be wrong: EFF has filed a counternotification, and if Starz knows what's good for them, they'll back down, learning a lesson from the eight years of stupid litigation that Universal engaged in to defend its right to abuse the DMCA, before losing big.Sending a DMCA complaint requires a sworn statement that the person sending the complaint actually believes it to be copyright infringement. Look at this sequence of events again and try to imagine sending a takedown for our tweet honestly believing it to be infringement. Read the rest

Last September, the French Directorate of Military Intelligence prepared a "highly classified" report on the Saudi war in Yemen to brief the "restricted council" of cabinet-level officials; the report has been obtained by the French media organization Disclose, which has published it jointly with The Intercept and four other French media organizations.The report paints a damning picture of western complicity in the Saudi war. It lays out how the Saudis are completely dependent on US arms sales to continue their campaign against the Yemenis, and how if the US were to pull out, replacing US arms with Russian or Chinese systems would involve years of retrofitting and incredible expense.It also implicates the US in "targeting" operations that have resulted in massive civilian casualties, and describes the key role that French tanks and other armaments are playing in the fighting.Finally, it paints a picture of the Saudi forces as bungling incompetents whose strikes do little of military value despite the terrible toll they are taking on the country's civilian population (by contrast, the report is very complimentary to the UAE forces operating on the Saudi's behalf in the theater of war). The French intelligence report also describes a massive operation by the Saudis to secure their border with Yemen, and says that five brigades of the Saudi army and two brigades of the Saudi National Guard — about 25,000 men — are deployed along the border. The troops are reinforced by 300 tanks and a battalion of 48 French-made Caesar self-propelled Howitzer guns capable of firing dozens of miles into Yemeni territory. Read the rest

Pioneering cyberpunk author and old-school bOING bOING contributor Rudy Rucker hips us to his forthcoming novel about "three teens driv(ing) across space to save our world from invading UFOs" and asks for support:My wild SF adventure Million Mile Road Trip is being published in hardback and paperback by Night Shade Books in May. And I'll publish the ebook version via my Transreal books. Also I'm publishing my novel's companion, Notes for Million Mile Road Trip.So I'm running a Kickstarter again. The campaign is athttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rudyrucker/million-mile-road-tripThere's a fun video trailer for the book at the top of the Kickstarter page, so if nothing else, take a look at that. It's fast-paced.And the permanent Million Mile Road Trip home page ishttp://www.rudyrucker.com/millionmileroadtrip. Read the rest

Engineers digging to lay water pipes in Oxfordshire, England turned up more than two dozen 3,000-year-old human skeletons, some of which were likely killed in sacrifices. From CNN:The remains of 26 people from the Iron Age and Roman periods were found, including a woman with her feet cut off and her arms bound behind her head, and another person with their skull placed by their feet...Archaeologists inspecting the remains believe the people found were from the same community involved in creating the Uffington White Horse, a prehistoric chalk sculpture on a nearby hill...The findings "provided a glimpse into the beliefs and superstitions of people living in Oxfordshire before the Roman conquest," said Neil Holbrook, chief executive of Cotswold Archaeology. "Evidence elsewhere suggests that burials in pits might have involved human sacrifice." Read the rest

Scammer software is usually quite crude and, as demonstrated here, vulnerable to clever victims aware of their shortcomings. Engineer Man: "Taking it to another scammer using some nmap analysis and a common exploit to save 105 people. Mission accomplished." Note that what he's showing here is not necessarily what he's doing, and doing it without due care and attention to the risks is gonna get you in trouble. Read the rest

Jonathan Frakes, the actor and director associated most strongly with his Star Trek role as bearded lothario William Riker but with many other feathers in his cap, here informs you that you are wrong for a solid 47 seconds. Read the rest

Enjoy the sense of scale in this image, stitched together from 16 smaller images and 1060 hours of exposure.The image is a mosaic made of 16 smaller fields of view, which, once stitched together form a high-resolution image of 204 Million of pixels! As of matter of fact, this is not the work of a single person but by a team of five french amateur astronomers called "Ciel Austral": Jean Claude CANONNE, Philippe BERNHARD, Didier CHAPLAIN, Nicolas OUTTERS et Laurent BOURGON. Read the rest

Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Democratic candidate and a proponent of "democratically influenced capitalism", has his own campaign brand typography. Faces include Aktiv Grotesk ("sleek lines [that] feel equally modern today as they would have in an old Studebaker ad"), Industry ("the visual language of American manufacturing ... industrial, sporty or military") and Domaine Text ("a sophisticated companion to the modern geometry of Aktiv and the stark boldness of Industry")Here's the (since removed) placeholder text, as spotted by Brett Banditelli.Says it all, really. Read the rest

There's an unimaginable amount of data out there on the web today, more than any IT team could possibly manage. That's the real, nuts-and-bolts purpose of machine learning: Enabling AI to do the heavy lifting, sifting through the data to find out what's important - and valuable. If you're looking to break into this field, there's a number of ways in, and the Complete Machine Learning A to Z Bundle covers most of them.After an overview that allows you to understand AI and deep learning through the innovations of Siri and Tesla's self-driving cars, you'll learn the many ways it can be implemented. There are separate courses on how to create chatbots using Google DialogFlow or Amazon Lex, and another on how to build voice apps using Amazon's popular Alexa device. You'll get deep dives into the art and science of data analytics with Spark 2.x, plus walkthroughs on the framework of systems like ApacheMXNet and Pytorch.Right now, lifetime access to the Complete Machine Learning A to Z Bundle is $25. Read the rest

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, an unidentified man, age 40 is suing his parents for $87,000 for dumping his porn collection. Apparently he had been living with his folks following a divorce but recently moved into his own home. When his folks delivered his stuff to the new digs, his 12 boxes of porn magazines and films were nowhere to be found. He called the cops but the Ottawa County prosecutor would not pursue charges. In an email filed as evidence in the suit, the man's father wrote: "I did you a big favor by getting rid of all this stuff."According to the Associated Press, the porn has an estimated value of $29,000 but "the man is seeking triple financial damages."(image: Frank Carroll/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Read the rest

More than a century before the Disneyfication of Snow White, German folklorists the Brothers Grimm collected the fairy tale in their anthology Nursery and Household Tales. But their version, and earlier tellings including one titled "The Young Slave" from the 17th century, was not quite the Snow White that in 1937 became Disney's first animated feature film. No, the original story, as summarized by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo at the Daily Grail, "has elements of murderous jealousy, ritual cannibalism, sexual temptation, necrophilic imagery and capital punishment." From the Daily Grail:Mad with envy, feeling that her power is at stake by the young girl’s increasing beauty, the queen orders the huntsman (who in other versions is her lover) to kill Snow White and bring back her lungs and liver. The huntsman takes her to the forest, but when he is about to kill her, she begs for mercy and he feels incapable of harming someone with such beauty. He finally abandons her in the deep forest, convinced that the wild beasts will take her. The queen wanted her internal organs, so the huntsman, in what historian of religions Norman Girardot suggests is a reminiscence of the “sacrificial rites of the virgin maiden”, kills a wild boar instead – in antiquity, these were frequently used as a substitute for human sacrifice to appease the gods.The subsequent event has been largely forgotten – and rarely shown in film adaptations. When the queen receives her daughter’s viscera, she decides she’ll have them salted and boiled, then feasts upon them with epicurean pleasure, convinced that they’re Snow White’s. Read the rest

Marvin Hajos, 75, of Gainesville, Florida, fell in his backyard and was then attacked by his pet cassowary, a giant bird from ratite group that also includes emus and ostriches. Native to northeastern Australia and tropical forests of New Guinea, cassowaries have three-toed feet with long, sharp claws. From CNN:The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission considers cassowaries Class II wildlife, meaning they pose a danger to humans and are subject to specific cage requirements. Owners must also have "substantial experience" with the animals, the commission says...They can grow more than 5 feet tall and the heaviest females can weigh more than 160 pounds, the (San Diego Zoo) says. Males weigh up to 120 pounds."The cassowary is rightfully considered the most dangerous bird in the world!" the zoo says. "Each 3-toed foot has a dagger-like claw on the inner toe that is up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) long! The cassowary can slice open any predator or potential threat with a single swift kick."image: "Southern cassowary" by Scott Hamlin/CC BY-SA 2.0 Read the rest

Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg continue to dissect the turbulent comic book speculator boom on the 1990s while looking through antique copies of Wizard Magazine.Some of this issues contents:* Jack Kirby comes back to comics via his line of Topps Comics* Palmer's Picks. Rick Veitch*Jae Lee's Youngblood Strikefile is on the horizon!* Larry Hama's origin story* Mike Mignola talks about drawing the Topps adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula* Dave Sim writes an issue of SpawnSubscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel for more vids celebrating the medium of comics. Read the rest

Pepsi has announced plans to contract with the Russian space startup Startrocket to project massive "artificial constellations" spelling out ads for a "nonalcoholic energy beverage" in the night sky; Startrocket is planning to launch a cluster of cubesats with reflective mylar sails in 2021.Futurism first reported on StartRocket back in January, when the company announced plans to project huge ads into the night sky using cubesats with Mylar sails that’ll reflect sunlight back down to Earth during the twilight of early morning or evening.“We are ruled by brands and events,” project leader Vlad Sitnikov told Futurism at the time. “The Super Bowl, Coca Cola, Brexit, the Olympics, Mercedes, FIFA, Supreme and the Mexican wall. The economy is the blood system of society. Entertainment and advertising are at its heart.”Pepsi plans to project a giant ad in the night sky using cubesats [Jon Christian/Futurism] Read the rest

Sculptor Art Donovan (previously) writes in about "Event Horizon," his newest lamp, inspired by black holes.Two weeks ago, I had finished this design called, "Event Horizon" to find that the subject of Black Holes and that incredible, historic image was all over the news last week. My own "E.V." was inspired by both my NASA experience and also the 2014 Christopher Nolan film, "Interstellar". That film's beautiful vision of the fictional Black Hole, "Gargantua" was dramatically and accurately rendered courtesy of Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist, Prof. Kip Thorne. Yesterday, physicists claimed that Gargantua is remarkably similar to that actual image published yesterday by the Event Horizon Telescope. Now the specs: the "Event Horizon stands 24" tall and scratch-built from solid maple, bronze, brass and glass.The globe bulb is obscured front and back by a circular "veils" of bronze and the light echoes back and forth in the gold and glass reflections. An orbital kind of movement is nicely implied by the shield's different diameters and materials- Solid bronze on top and a hexagonal brass mesh in front. A forward trajectory pierces the glass globe like an arrow. Smoked gray maple. 24K plated brass and bronze. One-Of-A-Kind!Event Horizon [Art Donovan/New Art and Design] Read the rest

I'll be at the LA Times Festival of Books today, with a signing at 1PM at the Mysterious Galaxy booth (#368) and then a 3-4PM "in conversation" with John Scalzi, moderated by Maryelizabeth Yturralde from Mysterious Galaxy. I sure hope you can make it! Read the rest

We're well past the golden age of the internet, when you could surf where you liked without being sure that ad trackers or some other bot were hungrily following your trail of cookies - not to mention actual human hackers and other threats. Ever wish your virtual self had an invisibility cloak? A good virtual private network is the next best thing. And among VPNs, Nord VPN still stands out as one of the best.This is still the well-supported VPN that earned an "Outstanding" rating from PCMag, among other accolades. With it, you can route your signal through one of over 3,500 remote servers worldwide, thereby foiling tracking algorithms and enabling you to bypass the browsing restrictions of whatever country you're in. The service includes double data encryption and automatic shutdown in case of a dropped connection. And best of all, Nord VPN maintains a strict no logs policy, meaning nobody records your browsing history - not even Nord VPN.Get a three-year subscription to Nord VPN for $107.55 - a 75% discount off the list price. Read the rest

Within the topography of the human soul there is a strange land called the Uncanny. As Sigmund Freud wrote in his classic essay on the topic:The subject of the ‘uncanny’ (...) is undoubtedly related to what is frightening—to what arouses dread and horror; equally certainly, too, the word is not always used in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to coincide with what excites fear in general. The Uncanny is a liminal zone at the outer fringes of our normal awareness. Both repelling and attractive, the Uncanny magnetizes the mind with its potent brew of sublime and horrible, beautiful and obscene, familiar and alien, enchanting and morbid, the ultimate mysterium tremendum et fascinans. For the intellectually adventurous, a signpost of the Uncanny is the blog Bizzarro Bazar.Bizzarro BazarDevoted to all things “strange, macabre, wonderful,” Bizzarro Bazar is a virtual wunderkammer made up of queer collectibles, absurd oddities and twisted curiosities from the history of medicine, anatomical collections, anthropology, tanathology, alternative sexuality, literature, cinema and other obscure sources. The result is a swirling tapestry of eldritch, poignant, otherworldly delights.Bizzarro Bazar is the brainchild project (and nom de plume) of Ivan Cenzi. Based in Rome, Cenzi is a prolific author and eclectic intellectual, Arbiter Elegantiae of all things weird and wonderful. His books, with text both in Italian and English, are devoted to Italy's most unusual anatomy museums, catacombs and charnel houses. With a peculiar mix of erudite poise and eerie playfulness, Cenzi's work articulates the words of JBS Haldane: "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine." Web seriesBizzarro Bazar's latest creative endeavor is an enjoyable and entertaining web series. Read the rest

You've got one week to vote in the Children's History Book Prize, whose nominees this year include Out of Left Field by Ellen Klages -- the third book in the Gordon Family Saga, which includes 2009's incomparable White Sands, Red Menace, a book that like a genderswapped, woke Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, with extra helpings of Cold War paranoia and terror, all wrapped up in poetic, Bradburian nostalgia.The other nominees are also promising:* Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, a Monumental American Man, by Tonya Bolden* Front Desk, by Kelly Yang* The Journey of Little Charlie, by Christopher Paul Curtis Read the rest

Since 1968, 77 East Third Street in Manhattan's East Village housed the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club's New York City clubhouse (and apartments for some of its members). But the building was recently sold and the Angels have purchased new digs, a former church on Long Island. The New Yorker's Sarah Larson stopped by on moving day:“The parties used to be great,” (neighbor) Nancy said. “Until the explosion.” In 1990, a garbage-can firecracker killed a fourteen-year-old boy. Over the years, the East Village Angels both caused and prevented mayhem. In 1994, the Times characterized this mayhem, part “lore and part police reports,” as “countless decibel-cranking parties, LSD-laced misadventures, drug deals, orgies and random acts of violence against passers-by.” In recent years, parking-space tussles resulted in beatings and a shooting; a woman who pounded on the door, screaming, was badly beaten. In 1978, the chapter president, Vincent (Big Vinny) Girolamo, of plaque fame, allegedly pushed his girlfriend off the roof, to her death. (He died, of stab wounds, before he could stand trial.) Innumerable bad vibes were doled out after unwanted bench-sitting, dog-peeing, and photography incidents. But, from the scuzz era to the N.Y.U.-and-condos era, club members also defended their neighbors; the Angels’ block was considered the safest around.“I haven’t heard anybody say ‘Good riddance,’” (neighbor) Janet said."Moving Day at the Hells Angels Clubhouse" (New Yorker)image: Beyond My Ken/CC BY-SA 4.0Delicious piece by @asarahlarson on the departure of the Hells Angels from my block https://t.co/oCuYPAMyHf— MarjorieIngall (@MarjorieIngall) April 8, 2019 Read the rest

I've been using a Wen variable speed rotary tool since early 2017. It works as well as a Dremel tool costing several times as much, and the accessories are interchangeable. Right now, Amazon is selling it at a lower-than-usual price. Read the rest

I don't know French, but that didn't prevent me from being able to play this web-based game. The goal is to get the ball from one pillar to the next by holding down your finger (or mouse cursor) for the right amount of time. If you don't hold down long enough the ball will fall short of its goal. If you hold down too long, the ball overshoots. My high score so far is 194. Read the rest

As a kid I set my friend's kitchen on fire melting potassium nitrate and sugar on the stove, so be careful when making these cool colored smoke bombs, which use oil pastels as pigment. Read the rest

At their own peril, the Swiss government has decided that coffee is "not essential" for human survival. After World War I, Switzerland built an emergency reserve of human necessities for use in the event of war, disease, or other catastrophic events. They've now declared that the emergency food supply doesn't need to include coffee. From BBC News:It currently has 15,300 tonnes saved up - that's enough to last the country three months."Coffee contains almost no calories and therefore does not contribute, from the physiological perspective, to safeguarding nutrition," the Federal Office for National Economic Supply said (in German).image: Julius Schorzman/CC BY-SA 2.0 Read the rest

Bon appetit. Read the rest

After earlier denying that it had considered dumping migrants in sanctuary cities to "punish" Trump's political enemies, the White House today confirmed that it is considering doing so."Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only," Trump posted on Twitter. Trump's tweet came a day after The Washington Post reported the White House tried to pressure immigration authorities into releasing captured immigrants into sanctuary cities, particularly targeting liberal strongholds in hopes of hurting Democrats.Straight from "immigration president" Stephen Miller's pen, I hazard. Read the rest

For his next trick, he should put sharks into the pool and then... Oh, never mind. Read the rest

A few weeks ago at Appleton, Wisconsin's Lawrence University, a group of experimental musicians, dancers, and performance artists staged "Breathe," a "multidisicplinary water opera" in the college's swimming pool. (The video above is from a previous performance at Middlebury College's Natatorium). From Fox Cities Magazine:Lawrence University’s Margaret Sunghe Paek, professor of dance and curator of Dance Series, will work with music director Loren Dempster and director/choreographer Gabriel Forestieri to bring (the performance) to life...“I wanted to see if I could make sound underwater,” Dempster says. “I experimented with microphones underwater, I bought a hydrophone, I [even] played the cello underwater.”Dempster will be the only underwater musician in the entire opera as he will be in the shallow end, playing his cello while underwater microphones transmit the sounds above the surface.Forestieri choreographed the opera, combining the practice of dance and free diving, called dancing in apnea, to create the water visuals.“[I’m] taking cues from the space and the people in the space and how they relate to each other,” Forestieri says. “The choreography is a mix of [dancing] on deck, sometimes in the pool, partner dancing in the shallow end, and dancers floating with float belt.”(via Weird Universe) Read the rest

The Pinkertons rose to notoriety as a vicious army of mercenary strikebreakers who beat and murdered working people who stood up to robber barons like Andrew Carnegie; now they are a division of Securitas, a global private security giant at the forefront of profiting from human misery.The Pinkertons have a detailed plan for climate change: as climate chaos displaces people, wipes out their food, infects them with diseases and subjects them to extreme weather, the Pinkertons plan to sell their services to the ultra-rich as personal bodyguards and as mercenaries to guard their homes and supplies of luxury goods, which they will eat and chortle over while the rest of us drown, starve and burn.They're already at it, providing high-priced services to executives and big companies during "crises" like Hurricane Maria, during which Donald Trump left millions of Americans to live or die without aid from their government.Whatever the exact costs of climate change, it is Pinkerton’s job to read between the numbers looking for the potential for violence. If you’re suffering only one hurricane every 20 years or so, shelling out $1 million to Pinkerton isn’t such a big deal, Paz Larach explained; you bake it into your risk. “But if there’s a disaster every year, which is happening more and more, it makes more sense to have dedicated staff on standby.” A Pinkerton on standby doesn’t mean protection for just your insurable risks but also for the uninsurable risks — business interruptions, theft of trade secrets, pandemics. Read the rest

Tesla500 rigged an array of 48 high-speed cameras "capable of recording 68 gigapixels per second - 720p at 72000fps!"Bullet Time meets Moore's Law. Read the rest

Vasile Savu is accused of walking into a Western Union in Hollywood, Florida and asking the clerk to print out his flight itinerary, a pretense he used to get the clerk to insert a thumb-drive loaded with malicious software into his computers, which allegedly allowed Savu to steal $32k from the business.Savu then went into another Western Union, in nearby Opa-locka, and allegedly tried to do it again. The clerk recognized him and called the cops. Savu is now under house arrest pending trial.Florida man hacks into Western Union computers and steals $32K [NBC2](Image: Usien, CC-BY-SA)(Thanks, @dontbenebby!) Read the rest

Montreal designer Sofia Zakia created her Medusa veil ring in 2018, and she sells it in yellow or rose gold (also available with ruby eye). They're gorgeous and pricey: $1430-$1510.(via Super Punch) Read the rest

This week, Keep Internet Devices Safe Act was gutted by the Illinois senate: it would have allowed people sue manufacturers if they determined that a device had engaged in remote recording without notifying its owner.The Senate was heavily lobbied by trade groups led by the Internet Association, groups that represented Microsoft, Google and Amazon (all of whom make creepy, surveillance "smart speakers" that sport networked, always-on microphones that the manufacturers claim are under user control), and senators amended the bill to render it effectively useless. Under the stripped-down bill that passed the senate, Illinoisians who have been nonconsenually recorded by their devices can notify the state Attorney General, who then decides whether to investigate.It's at the Illinois House of Reps now, and is unlikely to have its original, strong language restored. In the bill’s original form, users could file a complaint with the Illinois Attorney General’s office that could lead to penalties of up to $50,000. But after technology trade associations, led by the Internet Association objected, claimed that the state’s definition of a “digital device” was too broad, and that the Act would lead to “private litigation which can lead to frivolous class action litigation,” the bill was scaled back.In its current, neutered form, the bill provides exclusive authority to the Attorney General to enforce the Act, which means regular citizens won’t be able to bring forward a case regarding tech giants recording them in their homes. Big Tech Lobbying Gutted a Bill That Would Ban Recording You Without Consent [Rob Dozier/Motherboard] Read the rest

Ben Snell's sculpture Dio was created by training a machine learning system on a corpus of 1,000+ sculptures, tweaked in some unspecified way by Snell, who then 3D printed a mold based on the final shape: he filled the mold with a resin impregnated with the computer that ran the algorithm, which Snell had ground to powder.“I consider myself, not the computer, to be the artist,” he says. But he also talks enthusiastically about the agency of his algorithms, saying that “Dio began by trying to recreate from memory every sculpture it saw” and that he asked the computer “to close its eyes and dream of a new form.” He says he choose to use this figurative language because it makes these digital processes more relatable to humans. Artist Ben Snell says he wanted give his sculpture control over the systems that created it [James Vincent/The Verge] Read the rest

Tonight, I'll be one of the participants at LA Cryptoparty and README's After Disruption event at UCLA from 7-930PM; it's a panel and workshop on "Big Tech, the future of labor, and how systems have successfully been co-opted in the past."Then on Sunday I'll be at the LA Times Festival of Books for a signing at 1PM at the Mysterious Galaxy booth (#368) and then a 3-4PM "in conversation" with John Scalzi, moderated by Maryelizabeth Yturralde from Mysterious Galaxy.Looking forward to seeing you! Read the rest

From her clubbing-a-home-invader form to the way she glares off the bovine golf fans encroaching onto her fairway, after nailing them twice, this golfer knows exactly what she's doing. Read the rest

I always find there's a surreal quality to footage of SpaceX's self-landing rockets. It's the "living in the future" moment for my reptile brain, irrespective of what it really means for mankind or where it truly sits in the spectrum of discovery and progress.Three at once:SpaceX launched the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket on its inaugural commercial mission on Thursday evening. This was the second flight for Falcon Heavy, which became the most powerful rocket in use in the world after SpaceX’s successful test flight in February 2018. That launch was purely demonstration — Thursday represents the first revenue-generating flight of Falcon Heavy. Falcon Heavy launched from SpaceX’s launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Built out of three of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets, Falcon Heavy’s three cores stand side by side to create a 27-engine colossus. Together, those engines create about 5.1 million pounds of thrust. Read the rest

In 1871, while the Great Chicago Fire was riveting the nation's attention, a blaze six times as deadly was ravaging a desperate town in northeastern Wisconsin. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Peshtigo fire, the deadliest wildfire in American history.We'll also watch an automated western and puzzle over some discounted food.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

When it comes to website development, JavaScript is the language that underlies it all. If you want to learn that language well enough for a career, you'll need more than just a handbook to cover all the essential frameworks that work with it. That's where the Full Stack JavaScript Developer E-Degree Bundle comes in.This online course package includes more than 55 hours of videos, lessons, and projects that cover the full scope of what JavaScript can do. For beginners, there are courses on HTML, HTML5, and CSS that give a firm foundation for the underpinnings of Java. From there, you'll get complete walkthroughs on JavaScript and it's latest syntax update, ES6. You'll learn how to build progressive web apps and take a deep dive into popular JavaScript frameworks like NodeJS, ExpressJS, React, Redux and more. You'll even get a bird's eye view on developing any web project with a primer on open source collaboration.All 11 courses of the Full Stack JavaScript Developer E-Degree Bundle are on sale for $35 in the Boing Boing Store. Read the rest

Previously:Already regretting assigning J.G. Ballard to cover the Fyre FestivalAlready regretting assigning the new MacBook Pro review to BorgesAlready regretting assigning the Chelsea Clinton story to Frank Herbert Read the rest

I have a new piece on Better Humans exploring some of the main considerations when planning, designing, and outfitting your own home shop or personal makerspace. In the piece, I talk about the benefits of a public makerspace/hackerspace, namely high-end and cutting edge tools that many consumers still can't afford (3D printers, CNC machines, laser cutters, electronics equipment) and the learning and community aspects of joining such a space. But for those who would rather work alone, many of these technologies are now reaching price-points for more widespread adoption. For this reason, I use the term "personal makerspace" to refer to this type of high-tech home workshop. And I talk about setting up home workshops in general. I cover planning and design, basic tools, specialty tools, "maker tech" (3DP, CNC, etc.), storage, workbenches and carts, lighting and power, workshop as sanctuary, and more. Here is a brief excerpt:Don’t Hate on the Harbor FreightIn the maker community, it is something of a sport to make fun of the cheap tools found at Harbor Freight. While it is true that a lot of Harbor Freight products are on the cheaply-made side, if you’re careful, discriminating, and do your homework, you can get perfectly fine workbenches, storage tech, hand tools, and even some respectable shop machinery and equipment for hundreds less than higher-end brands.For starters, Harbor Freight workbenches, work carts, and storage systems are perfectly fine, especially for a home makerspace on a budget. I just bought their multipurpose sheet-steel workbench for $99. Read the rest

For two years, researchers from USA Today, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity have been ingesting the bills introduced in all 50 state legislatures, yielding a corpus of more than 1,000,000 bills, and then consumed months of computer time on a large cluster, comparing these bills to "model legislation" promoted by lobbyists, using a text-mining engine that could identify paraphrases, synonyms, and other techniques used to file the serial numbers off of these bills.They found that more than 10,000 bills that were notionally authored by elected lawmakers drawing a salary at public expenses were actually authored by lobbyists; more than 2,100 of these bills became law. These bills are a wishlist of special-interest legislative favors: limits on your ability to sue a company that injures you, limits on your right to protest, limits on your right to abortion.Many of the lawmakers who signed onto these bills as cosponsors say they had no idea they were supporting "copycat" legislation. Though copycat bills are sometimes right wing, sometimes left wing, and sometimes about enriching a specific industry, the most common political valence of the bills is right wing, and familiar names like ALEC (previously) lead the charge. These bills are given deceptive names ("The Asbestos Transparency Act didn’t help people exposed to asbestos. It was written by corporations who wanted to make it harder for victims"); and they are supported by an ensemble cast of "experts" who rove from hearing to hearing, testifying on the bills; they are often used to overturn local legislation (such as state laws that overturn city ordinances on Airbnb, higher minimum wages, limits on plastic bags, etc); and are a source of enormous profits for the companies that support them ("One that passed in Wisconsin limited pain-and-suffering compensation for injured nursing-home residents, restricting payouts to lost wages, which the elderly residents don’t have."). Read the rest

Named the Can Opener due to its ravenous appetite for tall trucks, the 11' 8" bridge in Durham, N.C. has cameras trained on to capture incidents. This week, however, it captured something else: the sound (and blast wave) of a nearby industrial explosion.It is operated by Jürgen Henn who runs 11foot8.com -- a website that compiles videos of trucks getting stuck under the bridge. The website is called 11foot8.com because the clearance of the bridge is 11 feet, 8 inches.In Wednesday's video, you can hear the sound of the explosion and see the camera shake. The explosion killed 1 and injured several more.[h/t Justin Runyon] Read the rest