Boing Boing

A group of Quaker investors called Friends Fiduciary have introduced a shareholder motion that was backed by the owners of more than a million Comcast shares, calling on the company to voluntarily disclose its state-level lobbying activities; the company strenuously objects to making such disclosures, calling the measure an "unnecessary burden."The company falsely stated that "much of this information is already publicly available either through our own filings or those of any trade associations of which we are members" -- some (but not all) of the information about federal lobbying is in the public record, but 22 states have no disclosure requirements and generally state disclosures are less comprehensive than federal ones.Comcast CEO Brian Roberts holds 33.3 percent of the voting shares, making it unlikely, but the Friends Fiduciary proposal has gained more support every year, rising from 16.7% in 2017 to 19.1% in 2018 (that's 32% of the outside shareholders).The Friends Fiduciary proposal argued that more lobbying disclosures are necessary in part because "Comcast's lobbying spending is perceived to go counter to its public statements, a sentiment which has only grown given recent debates over net neutrality." As evidence, the group pointed to a November 2017 Slate article titled "Comcast wants you to think it supports net neutrality while it pushes for net neutrality to be destroyed."Separately, Comcast should say how much it gives to Broadband for America, a "group which has been subpoenaed by the New York attorney general in the course of an investigation into the potential fraudulence of some of the 22 million comments submitted to the Federal Communication Commission" during the net neutrality repeal proceeding, Friends Fiduciary said. Read the rest

Remember when Russia was our friend? Read the rest

It is, as they say, a running joke. One meticulously catalogued here by Noah Spongy and Jasbre. Read the rest

The bookends ($79) are the clear winner here, but the robot hand tankard ($58) is pretty sweet too; they're made of painted resin (with a stainless steel insert in the tankard), pre-order now for July shipping. (via Geekologie) Read the rest

Despite 15 years of legal action, jailed founders, and countless takedown demands, The Pirate Bay still remains live on the 'net.This is the story of a plain-looking website that sprung from the most fertile period of the early internet, blatantly raised its middle fingers at intellectual property laws and copyright owners and lived for what is an eternity in the timeline of digital evolution. It’s thrived, growing from 25 million users to reportedly more than double that figure over the last 10 years, and shows little sign of slowing down. “It’s a testament to what an anonymous crew can do if they really believe in the cause of giving us access to these products that are so corporatized and endlessly monetized,” John says. Google is happy to list it: Read the rest

I spun til I was dizzy as fuck on that exact same Sit and Spin!Rockin' out. Read the rest

British Prime Minister Theresa May announced she would stand down as the leader of the Conservative Party on June 7, triggering a party leadership race. She will remain Prime Minister until a replacement is chosen, probably in July.The BBC:In an emotional statement, she said she had done her best to deliver Brexit and it was a matter of "deep regret" that she had been unable to do so. ... In her statement, Mrs May said she had done "everything I can" to convince MPs to support the withdrawal deal she had negotiated with the European Union but it was now in the "best interests of the country for a new prime minister to lead that effort".She added that, in order to deliver Brexit, her successor would have to build agreement in Parliament."Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise," she said.Under the UK's parliamentary system the majority party (or a coalition, if there is none) forms the government, meaning that the PM's job often changes hands without a new election.May succeeded David Cameron three years ago, called a general election in hopes of winning a beefy democratic mandate, failed to win the election, was nonetheless able to form a government with the help of an Irish cult, then was unable to pass a Brexit deal. Read the rest

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.Theresa May, yes, but also Steve Bannon.Steve Bannon is in Almaty, Kazakhstan, today, just a few of days before the long-planned handover of power from President Nursultan Äbishuly Nazarbayev to his hand-picked successor.Here is Bannon, fresh off the plane from stoking race war in Paris and advising Boris Johnson on what to do after Theresa May, in Kazakhstan, giving a consoling embrace to RT propaganda persona George Galloway.Where's old white nationalist Steve Bannon off to next? “Steve Bannon, Nick Griffin, and Jeff Monson headline the Novorossia Friendship Congress at Moscow’s President Hotel.”Caption this. Now. Steve Bannon and George Galloway congratulating each other after hearing news of @theresa_may’s expected resignation. pic.twitter.com/uX7iv50uej— Ghida Fakhry (@ghida_fakhry) May 24, 2019“Theresa May has resigned” announced George Galloway. “Let me give you a hug,” Steve Bannon replied. I pulled a camera out just as they let go of tight embrace but here is the far right and far left very much on the same page in Almaty #Kazakhstan pic.twitter.com/96YNBmhv0X— natalia antelava (@antelava) May 24, 2019Says everything about Steve Bannon’s fall from grace that he’s sunk to the level of hanging out with George Galloway in Kazakhstan. That is a Seagal-level grind https://t.co/HgUY2esCOa— max seddon (@maxseddon) May 24, 2019Steve Bannon's speaking in Kazakhstan this week, alongside RT stalwart George Galloway (lol): https://t.co/utZUhoKlnc ht @ReidStan pic.twitter.com/mYoDXJDdfr— Casey Michel 🇰🇿 (@cjcmichel) May 21, 2019Steve Bannon was supposed to be on the opening panel I was moderating on ‘de-globalization.’ He missed it because he arrived late from France where he was busy helping Marine Le Pen’s party in the European parliamentary elections. Read the rest

There's no sound in this video, posted by KARK 4 News, depicting two barges slurped inexorably into a dam on the Arkansas River.According to locals, the unmanned barges were loaded with fertilier and broke free of their moorings.two runaway barges broke loose Thursday on the Arkansas River, crashed into a dam in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and sank.Police shut down major thoroughfares and ordered evacuations in the area after the barges came unmoored and threatened to crash through an Interstate 40 bridge and a dam on the bloated Arkansas River. Read the rest

Hackers have breached Perceptics, which sells border security technology and license plate reader systems and the like to governments and other entities. The U.S. government uses their readers, including along the US-Mexico border. “The hacker known as 'Boris Bullet-Dodger' has published what appears to be internal data belonging to Perceptics, which provides license plate reader technology for the Mexico border,” reports Motherboard.Perceptics has contracts with U.S. Customs, The government of Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Motherboard confirms the breach, and reports that hackers have dumped data online.Excerpt:“We are aware of the breach and have notified our customers. We can’t comment any further because it is an ongoing legal investigation,” Casey Self, director of marketing for Perceptics said in an online message. The Register first reported the news on Thursday.The data appears to include a variety of databases, company documents, and financial information, according to the file directory giving an overview of the stolen material. Boris Bullet-Dodger, the hacker who listed the data online, contacted Motherboard with a link to the stolen data on Thursday."perceptics.com hacked, dat[a] leak," the hacker wrote in an email.Perceptics, once a subsidiary of major government contractor Northrop Grumman, mainly distributes license plate readers, under-vehicle cameras, and driver cameras to the U.S., Canada, Mexico to place at border crossings. According to a company slide presentation from 2016, its readers and cameras are designed to be combined with federal “biographic/passport data” of the passengers.U.S. Customs Service has used Perceptics services since 1982, and the company has had licence plate readers at all U.S.-Mexico border crossings since 2002. Read the rest

Abuse happened at Snapchat a "few times," staff tells Motherboard

Author Naomi Wolf has a new book coming out titled "Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love". It's about the emergence of homosexuality as a concept and its criminalization in 19th-century England....the story, brilliantly told, of why this two-pronged State repression took hold—first in England and spreading quickly to America—and why it was attached so dramatically, for the first time, to homosexual men.Before 1857 it wasn’t “homosexuality” that was a crime, but simply the act of sodomy. But in a single stroke, not only was love between men illegal, but anything referring to this love became obscene, unprintable, unspeakable. In a BBC interview with Wolf, her host, historian Matthew Sweet, points out two serious problems with her work. First, she assumes "sodomy" refers to homosexuality, but a key example she uses was a child abuser and it often refers to other sexual offenses.Secondly, she assumes the 19th-century legal term "death recorded" (for example) means the convict was executed, when in fact it means the opposite: the sentence of death being merely recorded rather than carried out, because the prisoner was pardoned and freed. A term she thought signaled draconian punishment turns out to demonstrate leniency.A quick look at a newspaper report from the time might have sorted things out:Oops!Here's the tape. Sweet is polite and professional, and Wolf takes the news well, but it's very painful listening.Everyone listen to Naomi Wolf realize on live radio that the historical thesis of the book she's there to promote is based on her misunderstanding a legal term pic.twitter.com/a3tB77g3c1— Edmund Hochreiter (@thymetikon) May 23, 2019Fortunate that it isn't out yet (and perhaps not even printed, as the release date is months hence) so Wolf and publisher Virago can fix it. Read the rest

An Orlando homeowner owned a second lot next to the house. He added a pool that straddled the property lines. Then, following foreclosure, the two lots were sold to different owners, one of whom erected a fence. Over the pool. Through the garage. When you're just dipping your toe in the real estate marketIt's all so very "Florida"! Cities that don't enforce setback rules. Cities that tolerate structures spanning multiple residential lots. Sales that split combined lots into multiple lots without consideration of what is on the lots. Inspectors, appraisers and mortgage lenders saying "this is fine!". People building fences over pools and through garages. Read the rest

If you're into tools or gadgets, Memorial Day weekend is your Christmas. Take an extra 15% off the final price of these DIY accessories - all of which are already on sale - by entering the promo code WEEKEND15.LUXJET Universal 24-in-1 Magnetic Screwdriver Set & Repair KitThis small but sturdy kit won the 2019 IF Creative Design Award in Germany, and you can bet they know their engineering. Its magnetic storage kit keeps the aluminum alloy pieces from straying, so they're always there when you need them. The LUXJET Universal 24-in-1 Magnetic Screwdriver Set & Repair Kit is 25% off at $29.99. Save an additional 15% with coupon code WEEKEND15.Laser Distance MeasurerAnother IF Design award winner, this digital ruler does the job of the longest roll of measuring tape you have, and then some. It's accurate up to .08 of an inch, with a max range of 131 feet. Right now, you can get the Laser Distance Measurer for $29.99, a full 25% off the MSRP. Save an additional 15% with coupon code WEEKEND15.Multi-Function Folding Emergency ShovelWhether you're gardening or camping, this shovel will go where you need it. And thanks to its collapsible design, it can fit into even the smallest of trunks - or even a backpack. The Multi-Function Folding Emergency Shovel is currently more than 60% off at $22. Save an additional 15% with coupon code WEEKEND15.Mini Cinder Blocks With Pallet & Shipping CrateEmbrace your inner construction worker- no sweat or hard hat necessary. Read the rest

[UPDATE 5/23/19. 2:44pm PT: a Google spokesperson contacted me with the following statement: "We have restored access to the Gmail accounts for the Baltimore city officials. Our automated security systems disabled the accounts due to the bulk creation of multiple consumer Gmail accounts from the same network." An anonymous source told me that the accounts were disabled when Google detected bulk account creation, which is "highly correlated to spammy and fraudulent behavior."]"Gmail accounts created by Baltimore officials as a workaround while the city recovers from the ransomware attack have been disabled because Google considers them business accounts that should be paid for," reports Ian Duncan of The Baltimore Sun. As my IFTF colleague Dylan Hendricks pointed out on Twitter, this is an "amazing signal about the massive security vulnerabilities of technology-based bureaucracies."From The Baltimore Sun:Mona Rock, a spokeswoman for the Health Department, said she logged in Thursday morning and can see old messages but not send or receive old or new ones. She said there was no notice showing why the account wasn’t working.The ransomware struck on May 7, locking up city records and shutting down baltimorecity.gov email addresses. The hackers behind the attack demanded payment in the digital currency bitcoin to turn over the keys to the files.The mayor’s office has said it could take months to recover. In the meantime, many officials have been using Gmail accounts along to communicate.Ransomware --> heroin overdoses. This is... such a good story for someone with the right expertise please get out of your bubbles and come cover it. Read the rest

Nothing good.

The U.S. Department of Justice today indicted Wikileaks' Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, the first time a publisher has been charged for revealing classified information.Kevin Poulsen and Betsy Woodruff:The indictment announced Thursday in Washington, D.C. charges Assange with 16 counts of variously receiving or disclosing material leaked by then-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, which WikiLeaks published as the Iraq and Afghanistan “War Logs” following Manning’s arrest. Assange is also charged with one count of conspiracy to receive the documents, and an 18th count carries over the previous charge against Assange accusing him of conspiring to violate computer hacking laws.Assange, recently extracted from London's Ecuadorian embassy after his hosts there tired of his presence, is already serving a yearlong sentence in Britain for jumping bail in a sexual assault case. He already faces extradition to the U.S. on computer-crime charges—and possibly to Sweden, where prosecutors revived the assault case after his arrest.Many U.S. media outlets were first to publish Wikileaks' material, working directly with Assange, and some won Pulitzer prizes for it. As University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck puts it:"The issue isn't whether Assange is a "journalist"; this will be a major test case because the text of the _Espionage Act_ doesn't distinguish between what Assange allegedly did and what mainstream outlets sometimes do, even if the underlying facts/motives are radically different."The actual whistleblower/leaker in the case, Chelsea Manning, served several years in jail for it. She is currently being held again, after rufusing to give further evidence to a grand jury in the Assange case. Read the rest

Enjoy. Read the rest

Edgeryders -- "a company living in symbiosis with an online community of thousands of hackers, activists, radical thinkers and doers, and others who want to make a difference" -- is offering up to EUR10,000 bursaries (along with travel subsidies) for fellows who are contributing to its work on an "Human-Centric Internet." The deadline to apply is May 30.As an Internet of Humans Fellow, you commit to :* Read what other participants are working on and share your own experiences/work. * Arranging and documenting a series of online calls to which you invite people from whom you wish to learn or collaborate. * Engage the people you invite to join us at activities for project matchmaking, partnership building and fundraising. * Articulate a burning question to move everyone’s work forward, and turn it into a proposal for a research theme and track of a distributed festival.We are looking for Fellows who are passionate, curious and driven, as well as willing to collaborate using online platforms and community building methodologies. If this is you, we want to hear from you!Fellowships with Bursaries for Human-Centric Internet builders! Deadline: May 30 [Edgeryders] Read the rest

A new study reported in Nature (Sci-Hub mirror) tracks down the origins of the mysterious rise in CFC-11, a banned ozone-depleting greenhouse gas whose rise was first reported a year ago, and blames the increase on manufacturing in eastern China.Chinese state authorities have tacitly validated the study's findings, promising a crackdown on "rogue manufacturers" in the region.CFC-11 is used as a cheap alternative to other chemicals during the production of polyurethane insulation. The researchers also believe that smaller-scale manufacturers may be using CFC-11 in India, Africa and South America. CFC-11 is a potent greenhouse gas, 5,000 times more deadly than CO2. It has been banned since 1987 under the Montreal accords.The Chinese say they have already started to clamp down on production by what they term "rogue manufacturers". Last November, several suspects were arrested in Henan province, in possession of 30 tonnes of CFC-11.Clare Perry from the Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA) said that the new findings re-affirmed the need to stamp out production."I think with this study, it is beyond doubt that China is the source of these unexpected emissions, and we would hope that China is leaving no stone unturned to discover the source of the CFC-11 production."Unless the production of the chemical is shut down it will be near impossible to end the use and emissions in the foam companies."Ozone layer: Banned CFCs traced to China say scientists [Matt McGrath/BBC]Increase in CFC-11 emissions from eastern China based on atmospheric observations (Sci-Hub mirror) [M Rigby et al/Nature] Read the rest

Aukey has a good deal on its MFi-certified 6' braided Lightning cable. To get the deal, click the coupon check box on the product page and use Amazon promo code WKX3ZTCR at checkout. Read the rest

The Virginia Pirate Corporation is a startup that brokers sales of used textbooks at colleges; they're suing North Charleston, SC's Trident Technical College over its inclusion of textbook fees in tuition, meaning that students will have already paid for new textbooks when they pay their tuition. Trident's preferred textbook vendor is Pearson; other Big Textbook vendors (like McGraw-Hill, which is merging with its major competitor, Cengage) do the same, and defend the practice, saying that it ensures that students don't experience sticker shock when they buy their assigned texts.Textbook costs have been rising 12 percent per year, with mandatory subscription fees for access to online portals that some students never use. This squeeze by the publishers fed a thriving used textbook market, which the publishers have fought for decades -- first by creating "new editions" with unimportant revisions; then by creating "custom textbooks" and offering kickbacks to colleges that varied the readings slightly every year, to render last year's used books obsolete; now the publishers are directly bundling textbook fees with tuition and tying each year's instruction to access to publishers' online portals. The textbook market is worth $3.5B.Textbook publishers also resort to outright bribery, offering thousands of dollars in "reviewing" fees paid to profs who consider replacing their texts each year -- profs also get taken on expensive junkets and wooed by publishers.Goegan recently called out his school's provost for allegedly forcing students to buy access codes, sending an email last month to the entire economics department that subsequently went viral. Read the rest

Mountain View -- home to some of Silicon Valley's most profitable companies, including Google -- is one of the most expensive places in the world to live, thanks to the sky-high wages commanded by techies, who have gone on to bid up all the real-estate in the region.The problem is that these high-tech "campuses" rely on an army of low-waged, contracted out cleaners, gardeners, cooks, baristas, etc, and these people struggle to find housing within commuting distance of the city. Many of them have solved the problem by moving into RVs that they park overnight on Mountain View's streets.While the city once welcomed these "wheel-estate" participants, the mood of the electorate has grown increasingly toxic (notably, some Mountain Viewers chanted "Build a wall" at a city council meeting, in opposition of any measures to accommodate homeless people in the city).The city council has now voted to ban overnight parking by vehicles taller than 6 feet, which goes into effect in 2020. Google has pledged millions to build affordable housing and help local homelessness charities. Living expenses are so high in the region that some of the RV dwellers are earning combined incomes of more than $100,000/year. The city council has not approved many of the affordable housing efforts that have been proposed. That’s a risk to Silicon Valley itself, because tech companies may go elsewhere. In February, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced a plan to spend $13 billion on new and expanded offices and data centers. A lot of this is outside Silicon Valley, where it’s cheaper to hire talent—in part because housing is more plentiful. Read the rest

From 6PM-730PM tonight (Thursday, May 23), I'm presenting at the Exposition Park Library (Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Regional Library, 3900 S Western Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90062) on the problems of Big Tech and how the problems of monopolization (in tech and every other industry) is supercharged by the commercial surveillance industry -- and what we can do about it. It's part of the LA Public Library's "Book to Action" program and it's free to attend -- I hope to see you there! Read the rest

It took Canadian cartoonist Seth twenty years to complete his graphic novel Clyde Fans, and it was worth the wait. Seth is one of the greatest living cartoonists, and I've been a fan of his work since 1985, when he drew Mister X (after Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez stopped working on it).Clyde Fans appeared in serial form in Seth's comic Palookaville, published by Drawn & Quarterly. The entire anthology runs 488 pages, and each panel is gorgeous.From the book description:Twenty years in the making, Clyde Fans peels back the optimism of mid-twentieth century capitalism. Legendary Canadian cartoonist Seth lovingly shows the rituals, hopes, and delusions of a middle-class that has long ceased to exist in North America—garrulous men in wool suits extolling the virtues of the wares to taciturn shopkeepers with an eye on the door. Much like the myth of an ever-growing economy, the Clyde Fans family unit is a fraud—the patriarch has abandoned the business to mismatched sons, one who strives to keep the business afloat and the other who retreats into the arms of the remaining parent.Abe and Simon Matchcard are brothers, the second generation struggling to save their archaic family business of selling oscillating fans in a world switching to air conditioning. At Clyde Fans’ center is Simon, who flirts with becoming a salesman as a last-ditch effort to leave the protective walls of the family home, but is ultimately unable to escape Abe’s critical voice in his head. As the business crumbles so does any remaining relationship between the two men, both of whom choose very different life paths but still end up utterly unhappy. Read the rest

It comes in a squeeze bottle.Calgary Herald:The name seems pretty logical—though some would argue ketchonnaise would be better—but in certain Cree dialects it comes off as less than appealing.To some, Mayochup can translate to “shitfaced” or “shit is on my face”.Originally tweeted by CBC radio host Waubgeshig Rice, Grand Chief Jonathan Solomon of the Mushkegowuk council in Northern Ontario first pointed out the translation mishap.“We the Cree people are laughing about it because of what it means in our language,” he told the National Post in an email. “It’s kinda funny when you think about it. If I ate it and have some on my face, than I [am] Mayuchup/Shitface.” Read the rest

The Rose Kuli 7" multi-tool looks like an Acme Product of cartoon provenance.It's a hammer! It's got pliers! Is that an ax blade? Small size wrenches?! A nail file? This multi-tool even has a phillips head screwdriver.What is a bung puller?Made of stainless steel this awesome multi-tool weighs less than a pound and comes with a belt-attachable carrying case. I will put one in my camper's glove box, currently a full-size multi-tool ax is sliding around the cargo bay.Rose Kuli 7'' Portable Multipurpose Multitool via Amazon Read the rest

They're semi-rebooting The Terminator, marking the first two (three?) movies as canon and relegating all the others to the franchise's timey-wimey parallel universes. Linda Hamilton is back, and so, of course, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, with Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna as new characters. Here's the first trailer. Read the rest

The incredible human misery on display at the workhouse attached to central London's Middlesex Hospital inspired Charles Dickens to write "Oliver Twist"; now, Camden council has granted a developer permission to develop the site into luxury flats (just in time for the luxury flat crash!), in exchange for a commitment to build some below-market-rent social housing flats, which will be accessible through "poor doors."Poor doors were the inspiration for my novella "Unauthorized Bread", the lead story in my new book Radicalized: these are separate entrances that developers build for luxury properties that have attained planning permission due to a promise to build below-market units. These separate entrances -- a cross between Jim Crow segregation and a Victorian servant's entrance -- ensure that the full-rate people don't have to ever encounter the subsidy people, but more importantly, they serve as a constant reminder to the subsidy people that they don't really belong there, they are mere charity cases. As I write in Unauthorized Bread: "even the pettiest amenity would be spitefully denied to the subsidy apartments unless the landlord was forced by law to provide it," or as John Siman paraphrases, "Free markets is a euphemism for fuck you."I've been writing about poor doors for years, and this isn't even the most vile, guillotine-inspiring example of the genre (that would be this one). But the irony of turning a site that inspired a social revolution over performative cruelty to poor people into a place where such performative cruelty happens again? Read the rest

It's not just pitch correction: with modern music-making software, it's as easy to snap analog recordings of instruments to a time signature as it is to program EDM. When everything is quantized, says Rick Beato, it loses its humanity—and becomes boring.People actually do this. This is why everything sounds like it's on a computer now. Because it is. ... A live drummer turned into a drum machineBeato's a master of the software and he shows you how to do it, so his critique is technically instructive instead of just a YouTube rant about something he doesn't like. The tracks he uses really do sound uncannily "off" after being quantized. But I can't help but point out that now I want to get Beat Detective.A good terrible project would be to quantize hits by The Beatles and other artists where isolated tracks are readily available, then reupload them to YouTube without disclosing what's been done, and watching as the quantized versions displace the originals in online media embeds, and TV and radio play, because so many people just get everything from YouTube.For years I subtly photoshopped famous photos and paintings, posted them at inflated dimensions to fool Google Images into thinking they were the highest-quality versions, and waited for them to turn up elsewhere. I've spotted "my" versions in news stories, TV segments, even a handful of books and magazines. I have no plans to disclose them, but if you ever see, say, Henry Kissinger with mouths for eyes in a school textbook, you know who to blame. Read the rest

If you can build a cloud infrastructure, you can build a business. Companies are overwhelmingly turning to cloud computing to set up or bolster their network, and it's easy to see why. It allows on-demand access to processing power, a la carte services, and nearly unlimited storage, all without adding extra systems and the maintenance that comes along with them.When it comes to cloud infrastructure, the usual tech giants have the lion's share of the market. Amazon's AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud all have their strengths, but they share key principles. Right now, one of the quickest ways to get a handle on all of them is the Cloud Computing Architect Certification Bundle.In the introductory courses, you'll learn the fundamentals before tackling the particulars of the Big Three providers. You'll get a breakdown of the three main models: SAAS (Software as a Service), PAAS (Platform as a Service) and IAAS (Infrastructure as a Service), allowing you to better decide which platform is best for what model.Later courses will zoom in on what makes each provider unique. By the time you're done with the dedicated course on AWS, you'll understand what makes it ideal for developing web applications and be able to navigate its messaging services.In the Google Cloud courses, you'll explore the platform's many strengths as a foundation for data analytics and machine learning. That includes a mastery of key software like Hadoop and TensorFlow, along with a fundamental understanding of how neural networks operate. Read the rest

"That's incredible, I mean, I've felt these bricks, these are real bri—", says TV host Steve Uyehara as the brick turns to dust at his lightest touch. [via Reddit] "Oh! Whoa! Whaaaaaa! Check it out, baby! Guns!" P.S. Glass is an irresponsible material for the board breaking trick! Read the rest

George Best, a soccer legend from Northern Ireland, was immortalized in bronze, but it more closely resembles Pazuzu, the hideous demon infesting the Exorcist series of movies. Sure, it's not as bad as the Ronaldo statue...... Or the Lucille Ball statue...But still...The BBC's Amy Stewart:A new statue of George Best - the Northern Ireland and Manchester United football great - has provoked strong reactions from fans and critics alike. ... The often cruel social media sphere has not held back. Read the rest

Ziya Tong is a veteran science reporter who spent years hosting Discovery's flagship science program, Daily Planet: it's the sort of job that gives you a very broad, interdisciplinary view of the sciences, and it shows in her debut book, The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths, and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our World, a tour of ten ways in which our senses, our society, and our political system leads us to systematically misunderstand the world, to our deadly detriment.Tong's thesis is that we are prisoners of our context and our senses (as the old science fiction maxim goes: "All laws are local and no law knows how local it is"), and that our biological shortcomings cause us to misapprehend the universe, while our politics and economics systematically blind us to the world around us (for example, the web will deliver many realtime views of eagles nesting, but few to none of chickens being slaughtered). Tong opens with our sensory apparatus and its misleading precision. It takes an effort of will to see the world as it is, occupied by living things that are mostly much smaller than we are, and far, far more numerous; and also set in a universe that is much larger than we can hold in our imaginations for more than an instant. The intuitions we get from our senses -- that humans are of average size, and that the universe is mostly arrayed around us -- confound and confuse us. Then, as we get smaller still, we have to confront the idea that matter itself is mostly an illusion, the things we think of as "solid" really mostly made of empty space, and our collisons with "reality" (like stubbing your toe) are actually mysterious fields being repelled by one another, while neutrinos stream through "solid matter" as though it wasn't there at all (it's not). Read the rest

Every year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation presents its Pioneer Awards (previously); now renamed the Barlow Award in honor of EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, who died last year.Nominations for this year's Barlow are open until June 5: if you know someone who has "contributed substantially to the health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based communications" then you can put them up for this year's award.The nomination form is here. I'm a previous Pioneer honoree and I consider it one of the highest honors I've ever received.What does it take to be a Barlow winner? The nominees must have contributed substantially to the health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based communications. The contribution may be technical, social, economic, or cultural.Who can submit a nomination? Anyone may nominate a potential Barlow recipient, and you may nominate more than one recipient. You may also nominate yourself or your organization. Please submit separate forms for each nominee.Nominations are Now Open for the 2019 Barlows [EFF] Read the rest

[Kathe Koja is one of my favorite writers (actually, she's two of my favorite writers!) and her latest project, am immersive, mixed-reality dance club, is so unbelievably cool that I jumped at the chance to give her a platform to tell you about it. Don't miss her Patreon! -Cory]Stories need an audience to be fully alive. I write novels (Christopher Wild, The Cipher, Under the Poppy, Buddha Boy, among others) and write and produce immersive events and readings (The Art of Darkness, Glitter King, Night School, ALI<E, among others), and when I work I’m always considering that audience, its shared energy and engagement with the story I’m working to tell: otherwise it’s just words in a row, props in a room. So when I started putting together my newest project, DARK FACTORY, wanted to invite that audience inside the story from the very start.Dark Factory is a mixed-reality dance club where each patron’s experience can be fully customized—they can dance, drink, have sex, tag the walls, revel in whatever manufactured sights and scents they choose from the menu—until the night ends and the doors open again on real life. But what if real life starts changing, responding, to something that happens in the club? What if it doesn’t stop? Would we even want it to stop?And the doors open, the patrons start to enter, the night truly begins: the constant shift and self-perpetuating level of detail, the maze of it, the haze of it, the fog of scents like floating flowers, the sudden mirrored sheen of a wall, so the self seems to walk into itself, the hundreds of wax candles whose flickering flames are indistinguishable from true fire except they burn nothing, exist as nothing but light that itself does not truly exist—and everyone in this warehouse, show, environment, all these human moving parts, seem to have invested themselves so completely in Dark Factory that every dance step, every splash of booze, every flashed ass and fake fuck not only continually redefines reality, it simply shrugs off the definition altogether. Read the rest

There's a long list of chemicals you can't put in cosmetics in Europe that are found widely on American store shelves—often from the same companies. Oliver Milman reports on "enfeebled" U.S. regulators' inability to do anything about ingredients considered potentially harmful.The disparity in standards between the EU and US has grown to the extent it touches almost every element of most Americans’ lives. In cosmetics alone, the EU has banned or restricted more than 1,300 chemicals while the US has outlawed or curbed just 11.It’s possible to find formaldehyde, a known carcinogen banned in EU-sold cosmetics, in US hair-straightening treatments and nail polish. Parabens, linked to reproductive problems, are ruled out in the EU but not the US, where they lurk in skin and hair products. Coal tar dyes can be found in Americans’ eyeshadow, years after they were banned in the EU and Canada.“In the US it’s really a buyer beware situation,” said Janet Nudelman, director of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. “Cosmetics companies can use any raw material that they like and there’s no way to know if they are safe before they reach the shelves. The contrast with the EU is stark and troubling.”One thing that recently shocked me was how recently lead paint was banned in the U.S.-- anything slapped on the walls before the 1980s is suspect. America, land of the free and asbestos makeup for children. Read the rest

In a new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a team from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business found that people look more favorably on exploiting workers (making do "extra, unpaid, demeaning work") if the workers are "passionate" about their jobs.Likewise, people exploited in their jobs are more likely to be perceived as "passionate" by others.The team found passion exploitation consistently across eight studies with more than 2,400 total participants. The studies varied in design, in the participants (students, managers, random online samples) and in the kinds of jobs they considered.In one study, participants who read that an artist was strongly passionate about his job said it was more legitimate for the boss to exploit the artist than those who read the artist wasn’t as passionate. This finding extended to asking for work far beyond the job description, including leaving a day at the park with family and cleaning the office bathroom.[?In another study, participants rated it more legitimate to exploit workers in jobs more traditionally associated with passion, such as an artist or social worker, than in jobs not generally seen as a labor of love, such as a store clerk or bill collector.Understanding contemporary forms of exploitation: Attributions of passion serve to legitimize the poor treatment of workers. [Jae Yun Kim, Troy Campbell, Steven Shepherd,Aaron C. Kay/Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]Love Your Job? Someone May be Taking Advantage of You [Duke Fuqua](via Four Short Links)(Image: Michael Schwern, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

The Procedurally-Generated Dog Simulator is a fun illustration of pathfinding and cellular automata. All you do is walk around a cave, being followed by a single-pixel pup who is liable to get distracted by treats or scared off by skateboarders. Once I'm bored with it, I'll be checking out Mudeford, a free dog-walking simulator in glorious full 3D. If games aren't your thing, check out dog names generated by a neural network.Shadoopy. Dango. Ray-Bella. Figgie. Read the rest

Polygamy cult known for ritualized child rape believed to have bought property, begun construction of underground compound in Northern Minnesota. Polygamist and convicted felon Seth Jeffs, brother of convicted pedophile Warren Jeffs who's serving life plus 20 for child sexual assault, has permit to build 6,000-sq ft compound. Construction equipment has arrived.SETH STEED JEFFS is “a known polygamist, a convicted felon and a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS).”One of Seth's brothers is Warren Jeffs, the convicted pedophile and former FLDS boss who is in prison. Seth Jeffs is currently being sued over claims he participated in that same ritual sex abuse orchestrated by Warren Jeffs in the FLDS. Seth is reported to be in hiding from the child rape lawsuit, and has faced related legal troubles around a food stamp abuse scheme the authorities say funded the FLDS. In 2011 Warren was convicted of two felony counts of child sexual assault,for which he is currently serving a sentence of life plus 20 years.Media attention faded after Warren went to prison. The people who still live in the communities along the Utah-Arizona where men like Warren and Seth were once kings are still trying to recover. The former FLDS buildings in the Utah towns of Hildale and Colorado City no longer host FLDS worship services. But the FLDS didn't stop. And Seth Jeffs didn't stop. Seth is believed to have first moved to South Dakota and founded a new FLDS community there. Read the rest

Tiffany Cabán is a 31 year old, Democratic Socialist, queer, Latinx public defender in New York City, who is running a grassroots campaign for the District Attorney's office in Queens; she's secured backing from the Democratic Socialists of America and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.The DA's office is a safe seat for Democrats, meaning whomever wins the Democratic nomination is virtually guaranteed a victory in the election (this is also the case with the Congressional seat that AOC won in a primary challenge against the right-wing, banker-friendly "Democratic" incumbent Joe Crowley).Cabán is a longshot, with the favored odds going to Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, an establishment figure with backing from Crowley and other members of the New York Democratic Machine.You can donate to Cabán's campaign here. I gave her $27. Since the race’s petitioning period ended April 4, Cabán has been endorsed by the National DSA, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Our Revolution, People for Bernie, the sex workers group Red Canary, the New Visions Democratic Club, the National Association of Social Workers, the 504 Democratic Club, No IDC NY, the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, Rockaway Revolution, and the New Queens Democrats.She’s also got backing from former New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon; New York State Sens. Jessica Ramos, Luis Sepúlveda, and Gustavo Rivera; New York City Councilmembers Brad Lander and Jimmy Van Bramer; and activists and attorneys such as Zephyr Teachout, Marc Fliedner, Linda Sarsour, Akeem Browder, and Allen Roskoff.Cabán’s campaign has also attracted top-tier political staff, including campaign manager Luke Hayes, who worked on State Sen. Read the rest

Trump was elected by old white people who are certain they'll be dead before climate change renders the planet uninhabitable, but who are also seriously invested in continuing to receive Social Security benefits, which is why Trump repeatedly promised to protect Social Security during the 2016 presidential race.Trump always lies about everything, so of course he recently proposed a budget with billions in Social Security cuts, which the Democratic Congress will almost certainly block.But that doesn't mean Social Security is safe; although Trump himself is a low-attention-span bungler, he has surrounded himself with villains who've actually paid attention and devised a myriad of ways of transferring wealth from poor people to rich people.One such measure is redefining the inflation metric used for adjusting the federal definition of poverty. The Trump regime has proposed a unilateral switch to the "Chained Consumer Price Index," which will make it much harder to be officially recognized as poor (though it will have no effect whatsoever on the actual number of poor people). Not only will this deprive many people of access to food, shelter, health care and other benefits, it will also profoundly redefine the Social Security benefit.Social Security benefits are adjusted for inflation (nominally -- in reality, Social Security loses ground to inflation every year); and under the new inflation index, Social Security benefits will begin an endless real-terms slide, until the already modest benefit that Americans have paid for all their working lives is eroded to a useless nubbin. Read the rest

A woman allegedly stole a recreational vehicle in Los Angeles County and caused at least six accidents and three hospitalizations while police chased after her.The driver, Julie Ann Rainbird (52) of Winnetka was arrested and has been charged with "evading a police officer causing injury or death" and is being held on $100,000 bail.Image: Skyfox/YouTube Read the rest

In a new paper for IEEE Security, a trio of researchers (two from Cambridge, one from private industry) identify a de-anonymizing attack on Iphones that exploits minute differences in sensor calibration: an Iphone user who visits a webpage running the attack code can have their phone uniquely identified in less than a second, through queries to the sensors made through automated background processes running on the page.The researchers reported their attack to Apple in advance of their disclosure and Apple has patched the vulnerability.The researchers were subsequently able to run this attack successfully against Google's flagship Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 phones (Google is "investigating the issue").The researchers advise that manufacturers could prevent this class of attacks by rounding off sensor measurements, or by injecting random noise into their reported values.Sensors are an essential component of many computer systems today. Mobile devices are a good example, containing a vast array of sensors from accelerometers and GPS units, to cameras and microphones. Data from these sensors are accessible to application programmers who can use this data to build context-aware applications. Good sensor accuracy is often crucial, and therefore manufacturers often use per-device factory calibration to compensate for systematic errors introduced during manufacture. In this paper we explore anew type of fingerprinting attack on sensor data: calibration fingerprinting. A calibration fingerprinting attack infers the per-device factory calibration data from a device by careful analysisof the sensor output alone. Such an attack does not require direct access to any calibration parameters since these are often embedded inside the firmware of the device and are not directly accessible by application developers. Read the rest

Thangrycat is a newly disclosed vulnerability in Cisco routers that allows attackers to subvert the router's trusted computing module, which allows malicious software to run undetectably and makes it virtually impossible to eliminate malware once it has been installed.Thangrycat relies on attackers being able to run processes as the system's administrator, and Red Balloon, the security firm that disclosed the vulnerability, also revealed a defect that allows attackers to run code as admin.It's tempting to dismiss the attack on the trusted computing module as a ho-hum flourish: after all, once an attacker has root on your system, all bets are off. But the promise of trusted computing is that computers will be able to detect and undo this kind of compromise, by using a separate, isolated computer to investigate and report on the state of the main system (Huang and Snowden call this an introspection engine). Once this system is compromised, it can be forced to give false reports on the state of the system: for example, it might report that its OS has been successfully updated to patch a vulnerability when really the update has just been thrown away.As Charlie Warzel and Sarah Jeong discuss in the New York Times, this is an attack that can be executed remotely, but can only be detected by someone physically in the presence of the affected system (and only then after a very careful inspection, and there may still be no way to do anything about it apart from replacing the system or at least the compromised component). Read the rest

Modern metropolises are teeming with police and national guards at the ready. They are well-equipped for dealing with riots, hostage situations, and the like. But they can't do much against people who wage asymmetric warfare. One person (or maybe a few people) were able to shut down London Gatwick Airport during the busy holiday season last year by flying drones near the runway. "The reports caused major disruption," says Wikipedia, "affecting approximately 140,000 passengers and 1,000 flights."Now Jalopnik reports that someone is pulling the emergency brakes on subway cars, which is "destroying subway commutes."This person has an established M.O., the source said, and Jalopnik confirmed this by reviewing internal incident reports. There are at least three so far.The suspect disrupts service primarily on the 2 and 5 lines from Flatbush Avenue in central Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan. He climbs aboard the rear of the train as it departs a station, unlocks the safety chains, somehow gets into the rear cab, and triggers the emergency brakes. Then, he disappears, most likely through the subway tunnels and out an emergency exit.Despite striking on average once a week for several months, the person has not been caught.We suspect someone has intentionally disrupted thousands of commutes on the 2/3 lines today by activating multiple trains’ emergency brakes. If you see any suspicious behavior, please @ or DM us details ASAP, including car #, so we can get trains back on schedule.— NYCT Subway (@NYCTSubway) May 21, 2019Image: Allen.G/Shutterstock Read the rest

Your car is basically a smartphone with wheels, and it gathers up to 25gb/hour worth of data on you and your driving habits -- everything from where you're going to how much you weigh. Cars gather your financial data, data on the number of kids in the back seat, and, once they're connected to your phone, data on who you call and text.To the extent that Americans know this is going on, they believe that the data their cars generate rightly belongs to them, and if someone else is accessing it, that it should be with their explicit consent and for their benefit (for example, you might want to let your mechanic access trip data to understand your car's performance and to give you tips on how to improve it).But that's not how the automotive sector sees it. They have arrogated to themselves the right to suck all of this telemetry out of your car on a continuous basis, and what's more, they have used laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to stop rivals from producing tools that would let you access the data you generate by driving your own car, or to block them from accessing it.This is the home version of what John Deere has done to farmers: using terms of service and copyright licensing to deprive you of the benefit of your own property, to their own benefit. Farmers can't access the telemetry about soil condition they generate by driving their own tractors around their own fields (they can only get it piecemeal as part of an app that comes with Monsanto seed), while Deere can aggregate that data to predict crop yields and sell intelligence to the futures market. Read the rest

Amami ÅŒshima is a small Japanese island a little north of Okinawa. A plant called cycad grows in abundance there. It's poisonous unless it is properly prepared by drying and fermenting it. This video shows you the process and has interviews with people who explain why they revere the cycad plant.Image: YouTube Read the rest