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Where Is Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh?

The US Navy is developing a new formal process for its personnel to report "unexplained aerial phenomena" (UAPs) as they are called in the US military. According to former Pentagon intelligence official Chris Mellon quoted in Politico, "Right now, we have situation in which UFOs and UAPs are treated as anomalies to be ignored rather than anomalies to be explored,” he said. “We have systems that exclude that information and dump it.” From Politico:"There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years," the Navy said in a statement in response to questions from POLITICO. "For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report."As part of this effort," it added, "the Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft..."The development comes amid growing interest from members of Congress following revelations by Politico and the New York Times in late 2017 that the Pentagon established a dedicated office inside the Defense Intelligence Agency to study UAPs at the urging of several senators who secretly set aside appropriations for the effort."U.S. Navy drafting new guidelines for reporting UFOs" (Politico via The Anomalist) Read the rest

A 58 year old woman who worked as a sex worker and has been identified as someone who performed services for Robert Kraft has been arrested, and is currently in jail.She is charged with performing an illegal sex act on New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft at a Jupiter, Florida day spa that has been the subject of ongoing criminal investigations. “Police found $43,000 in her safe deposit box, which they’ll no doubt confiscate,” writes Molly Crabapple. “If she posts bond her passport will be confiscated.” 58-year-old Shen Mingbi was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on Monday.According to the Jupiter Police Department, a hidden surveillance camera recorded Mingbi performing a sex act on Kraft at Orchids of Asia Day spa on Jan. 19. Afterward, he paid her and another spa worker, 39-year-old Lei Wang, in cash, police said.Police said that hidden camera was installed two days prior, on Jan. 17, as part of a 'sneak-and-peek' search warrant.According to her arrest report, Mingbi was captured on video performing illegal sex acts on at least six other men.Police said Mingbi's safety deposit box at Bank of America contained approximately $43,800 in U.S. currency.Mingbi is facing several charges including offering to commit prostitution and deriving support from prostitution.In court Tuesday morning, Mingbi was visibly emotional as a judge set her bond at $5,000. If she posts bond, she can't have contact with anyone arrested in the case, and can't work in the spa or massage industry, and also must surrender her passport and any travel documents. Read the rest

"I had no money for the toilet when (Lola) ran underneath and we realised it opened on her way back out," said the woman who originally posted the video from Ayr, Scotland.(Newsflare) Read the rest

There was no nuclear war and 7-11 had its mass expansion stopped by Starbucks, Gleaming the Cube's Brian Kelly must be pretty happy with today. Read the rest

It's too late for this to be an April Fools joke, so I'm assuming this $5000 Caviar Vladimir Tsarphone, which runs a Nokia OS from 2008, is real.From the marketing copy:Flawless. If one characterizes this phone with one word, this very epithet should be definitely chosen. Concentrated masculinity dressed in a strict “smoking” of the most classic style. Confident and expressive tandem of shining gold and the ultimately black color attracts eyes and places a focus on the original shape – six charismatic tops give the dynamics and some belligerence to the phone’s silhouette, because it starts looking like a sword.Called with the name “Vladimir”, according to the creators’ idea, it refers to the image of Prince Vladimir Krasnoye Solnyshko (the Red Sun) and symbolizes fair power, union and wisdom.Strict, business but along with it festive in its superiority and majesty, this phone is created for the most important talks of the most high-powered people. Read the rest

Odd how the British tabloids are constantly saying that Meghan Markle is ruining the royal family, by doing awful inappropriate things such as closing her own car door, yet are so very quiet concerning Prince William's supposed affair with his wife's bestie. We’ll quickly introduce the Marchioness of Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley).She is the woman at the center of a very royal scandal that has it all: a future monarch with a wandering eye; an elite social circle in the idyllic English countryside; and a strange silence from the British tabloids, who usually leap on every royal misstep (as evidenced by their cruel treatment of Duchess Meghan every other day for the last year.)Her name is Rose Hanbury, a former model married to the Marquess of Cholmondeley, who is 23 years older than her. Rose already has her own well-established royal connections: her grandmother was bridesmaid at Queen Elizabeth II‘s wedding in 1947.British press: When you’re a royal and we pay your taxes, all parts of your life are up for grabs. How dare Harry and Meagan not share details about the birth of their child?!!Also British press: Prince William’s alleged infidelity w/ Kate’s best friend is a private matter. pic.twitter.com/OL3Nhpw5FE— April (@ReignOfApril) April 25, 2019Props must go to The Sun for hinting at it; but it's American media that make the hay today.That barely-hairline-having cretin Prince William was really out here smashing some other commoner’s crumpets & biscuits to smithereens while keeping Madam Kate perpetually pregnant with some colonizer infant that will likely inherit his unreliable hairline & I HAVE TO GUFFAW. Read the rest

This Instagram user seems to prefer videos of people holding apes over videos of snakes and who can blame them?an ape figuring out how to use a smartphone is the beginning of the end for us idiots pic.twitter.com/ElDrsbkrZz— J.D. Durkin (@jiveDurkey) April 24, 2019Image: Twitter Read the rest

I haven't paid much attention to Swamp Thing since the days of Bernie Wrightson, but this teaser trailer for the upcoming TV series looks promising.From Ars Technica:The DC Universe series stars Crystal Reed as Abby Arcane who, in the comics, is niece to arch-villain Anton. According to the official synopsis, she's now a doctor with the CDC who comes back to her hometown of Houma, Louisiana, because of "a deadly swamp-borne virus" ravaging the area. She teams up with fellow scientist Alec Holland to investigate—and just like in the comics, Holland is killed. Except he might not really be dead, as Abby learns more about the mysterious, likely supernatural nature of the local swamp.We don't learn much more from the first teaser about just how Swamp Thing will be reimagined this time around, but the writers are clearly emphasizing the horror aspects. There's no dialogue apart from horrified screams of various folks who encounter something terrible—probably Swamp Thing, but there could be other monsters in the mix. Read the rest

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says that it will refuse to contract with any vendor or consultant that offers services to primary challengers for the Democratic nomination: it's a rule that ensure that candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who won a primary challenge against Joe Crowley, a right-wing finance industry creep who'd sat as a Democratic Congressman since 1999) will not be able to depose other establishment Dems.In response, 31 colleges' Young Democrats clubs have called for a boycott of the DCCC, urging Democratic supporters to donate to individual candidates (including progressive primary challengers) rather than the national organization.“The rule would financially deter and greatly disadvantage vital new voices in our party, who are often younger and come from underrepresented and historically marginalized communities and identities,” the students’ letter reads. “Primary challengers are essential to ensure that the Democratic Party is continually held accountable to the needs of our constituents. This blacklist policy is undemocratic and antithetical to our values of inclusion and diversity.”The students also call out the DCCC for releasing the vendor rule alongside a statement affirming its commitment to diversity. They cite Pressley, who said that Democrats “cannot credibly lay claim to prioritizing diversity & inclusion when institutions like the DCCC implement policies that threaten to silence new voices and historically marginalized communities.”College Democrats Announce National Coalition to Boycott DCCC [Harvard College Democrats]Young Democrats at 31 College Campuses Call for Boycott of the DCCC [Akela Lacy/The Intercept] Read the rest

This would have been a perfect inclusion in someone's (oversized) Easter basket. The Jeff Koons stainless steel "Rabbit" (41" x 19" x 12", 1986) will be on the auction block at Christie's on May 15 during their Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale. The current owner purchased it from the Gagosian Gallery in 1992. It is expected to sell for between $50 million and $70 million.According to Christie's, "this work is number two from an edition of three plus one artist's proof and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist."If you can't afford this Rabbit for yourself, you can always visit one of the others for free at the truly fantastic Broad museum in Los Angeles. From The Broad's description of Rabbit:In 1979 Jeff Koons made Inflatable Flower and Bunny (Tall White, Pink Bunny), the seed for so much of his future work. This sculpture, also in The Broad’s collection, features two vinyl inflatable toys — a flower and a pink bunny — that sit on top and in front of four square mirrors. Seven years later, Koons ditched the flower, combined the mirror and the bunny, and created Rabbit. The switch from the word “bunny” to “rabbit” is intriguing. Bunny is cute and floppy; rabbit is quick and sharp. The carrot in the rabbit’s paw is wielded like a weapon, and the once soft, leaky, and cheap vinyl shell of the bunny has been replaced by armorlike, costly stainless steel, which reflects everything surrounding Rabbit and deflects any allusions to the sculpture’s interior. Read the rest

Yuri Kartyzhev (34) of Novgorod, Russia, was fined for hurting President Putin's feelings after he referred to the country's leader as a "fantastical fuckhead." He was the first person to be charged under a new law that forbids people from saying anything "disrespectful" about government officials.From The Independent:By Wednesday afternoon, a tweet introducing the #Putinisafantasticalf***head hashtag was trending, with over 5,000 engagements. As some pointed out, its 2,400 retweets amounted to a potential £870,000 in fines. The collective Russian internet’s quicker wits said they were interested to know where Kartyzhev had gone wrong: perhaps Putin was not a fantastical f***head, but a real one? Leonid Volkov, a prominent aide to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, led the charge on Twitter: “If the phrase fantastical f***head is offensive, how can we say it without offending government?,” he wrote. Image: Kremlin Read the rest

Is it LSD o'clock yet? This far out Timothy Leary vintage wristwatch is up for auction on eBay. In more than 20 years of looking at Leary memorabilia on eBay, this is only the third time I've seen one of these. I bought the first that came up for myself and only wear it at, er, the right times.The starting bid is $600, which is hundreds of dollars more than the selling price of previous examples. Read the rest

Price gouging has skyrocketed the price of insulin, forcing folks to ration this lifesaving biologic.CBS News:"Nobody cared or nobody understood that without this next vial of insulin, I wouldn't live to see another week," said 28-year-old Kristen Whitney Daniels.She started rationing her insulin after she was kicked off her parents' insurance plan two years ago."I can't really explain how isolating and how terrifying it is," she said.She's now a patient at the Yale Diabetes Center, where a recent Journal of American Medical Association study found one in four patients reported "cost-related underuse." Dr. Kasia Lipska treats patients at the clinic, and was the study's lead author. She testified on Capitol Hill last week."This vial of insulin cost just $21 when it first came on the market in 1996. It now costs $275," she said.Some drug makers are already reacting to the outrage. On Wednesday, Sanofi announced it will cut the price of insulin for uninsured patients and those who pay cash to $99 per month. But that doesn't eliminate advocate concerns."People are dying from lack of access to a drug that has been around for almost a century. I think it's unconscionable," Lipska said. Read the rest

Anita Hill was trending, so I knew he's finally made it official! May he never speak without others saying her name. But today, here's his speech advocating for his 1994 crime bill, which shows that its outcome—the imprisonment of millions of black men—was clear to him from the outset. "They are beyond the pale, those people. We have no choice but to take them out of society"Here he is in 2016 boasting of his involvement in the bill and claiming that, actually, it helped "them."Here is someone who, in 1994, knew exactly what was going on and denounced the bill in no uncertain terms: Read the rest

Every year, the Mozilla Foundation releases a massive "Internet Health Report" summarizing the ways in which the internet is being used to both support and subvert human thriving; though these reports cover a wide range of topics, every year the foundation chooses a small number of themes to focus on. This year, they are Let's Ask More of AI; The Power of Cities and Rethinking Digital Ads.I was fascinated by a piece on platform cooperativism:Often people are trying to solve deep problems and realize that handing something over to investors just isn’t going to cut it. One example is Jen Horonjeff, the founder of Savvy. It’s a health insights platform for patients and their families. She has a chronic illness and she was obsessed with patients having more control over their illness. She knew that whenever you hand medical processes over to investors, patients get exploited. So she turned to a coop model as a last resort to protect people, and at the same time run a business.The economy needs variety. There may always be a need for the classic high risk and high return model of venture capitalism, but at the same time we can create more options.(via /.) Read the rest

How do the tabloids have so many “Exclusive!” stories?

Amazon has been plagued by counterfeiters, fraudsters and crooks who use tactics like fake reviews to goose sales of their products; the company keeps cracking down on these activities, but despite using measures so broad that they destroy the livelihoods of legitimate sellers, Amazon is losing the war on crooked sellers.Indeed, Amazon's aggressive zero-tolerance policies have created a thriving market in specialized "black hat" Amazon consultants who use a combination of bribes to Amazon employees and exploits against vulnerabilities in Amazon's ranking and security services to help sellers get their products re-listed, upranked and featured. Some sellers are reportedly paying $10,000/month to maintain their dominance.Buzzfeed's in-depth investigation found several of these black hat "consultants" and exposed their tactics, from creating "brushed accounts" that have product-free pages but high customer satisfaction ratings (based on previous items sold by these dummy accounts, possibly to confederates) that new sellers can put their products on; to paying bribes to Amazon employees to pierce the company's notorious bureaucratic secrecy after products or accounts are delisted.Other services include removing bad reviews, placing bad reviews on competitors' products, getting good reviews, dominating search terms, etc. Most of these black hats appear to be based in China.For their part, sellers say that they have to cheat, or they lose ground to other cheaters.Some sellers who employ black hat tactics say they’re reluctant to do so, but don’t know how else to keep up with their competitors. A seller who uses Howard Thai’s suite of services on SellerMafia.com and asked to remain anonymous told BuzzFeed News that he’s been using different versions of black hat techniques since 2014, when Amazon’s marketplace became inundated with dirty selling tactics. Read the rest

Itrack and Protrack are commercial devices for tracking fleets of commercial vehicles; they can be configured to allow for remote killswitching of the cars' engines, presumably as a theft-prevention measure.A hacker going by L&M used the fact that the Android apps for interacting with Itrack and Protrack have the same default password ("123456") that users are not forced to change to take control of thousands of cars equipped with the devices. L&M used a credential stuffing attack: using email addresses gleaned from massive breaches to gain access by repeatedly trying different email/password combinations.Once penetrated, the apps yield up great quantities of information on the compromised users and their vehicles: "name and model of the GPS tracking devices they use, the devices’ unique ID numbers (technically known as an IMEI number); usernames, real names, phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses."L&M was able to track the compromised vehicles in realtime, and they say they can also immobilize many of them ("I can absolutely make a big traffic problem all over the world. I have fully [sic] control hundred of thousands of vehicles, and by one touch, I can stop these vehicles engines.")The vulnerabilities reflect a lackadasical approach to security that we see across multiple industries: not only do the companies allow users to initialize their products without changing the default password, they compound this error by not detecting and preventing credential stuffing attacks. This negligence puts their users' property -- and lives -- at risk.Both Itrack and Protrack are now asking their users to change their default passwords. Read the rest

Back in 2017, Andrea wrote about Plane Industries gorgeous chairs made from the cowling of the (now notorious) Boeing 737's jets; now, the company has followed up with a smaller, more practical chair, this one fashioned from a BAe-146's jet cowling, still featuring the company's "high gloss shell and dark Alcantara interior." (Thanks, Benjamin!) Read the rest

If you're an American 65 or older, there's a 20% chance that you're working or looking for work (the chance jumps to 53% if you attained an undergrad or more advanced degree): that's double the rate in 1985. The last time it was this high was 57 years ago, in 1962.Americans are staying in work longer because the market-based 401(k) pensions that replaced defined-benefit pensions, combined with skyrocketing rents and healthcare costs, on top of higher level of debts to support your kids' education, rents, etc, have left older people with insufficient savings to survive their retirement.To make matters worse, the older Americans who most need additional income beyond retirement age are the least likely to be in work, because they lack the postsecondary degrees that would let them compete with their better-educated peers for jobs.The retirement math is ugly, even for those who are seemingly well-off. Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at the New School for Social Research, has estimated that Social Security replaces about 40% to 50% of one's pre-retirement income. The general thinking is that people need around 80% of pre-retirement income to get by after they stop working. (Online retirement calculators can give a rough sense for what you need to save, and earn on savings, to get there.)The typical worker in the bottom 50% of the income distribution, earning less than $40,000 a year, has no retirement savings. Those in the middle 40% of income distribution, earning from $40,000 to $115,000, have a median amount of $60,000 saved, according to Ms. Read the rest

Mercedes has asked a court to verify that a commercial photo of one of its cars driving down a street in Detroit does not violate the copyright of the artists who painted a public mural visible in the background.The case comes after the mural artists -- Daniel Bombardier, James “Dabls” Lewis, Jeff Soto, and Maxx Gramajo -- made public statements accusing Mercedes of violating their copyrights a year after the photo's initial publication. Mercedes is seeking to affirm that photos that capture incidental images of public artworks are fair use (but Mercedes is not asking the court to rule on more traditional copyright infringement theories, such as whether commercial reproductions of a public artwork that feature the artwork are fair use).They say "hard cases make bad laws" and this is one of those cases. My natural inclination is to side with the Davids (the mural artists), not the Goliath (Mercedes), but if Mercedes is found to be infringing, that sets a precedent that can be wielded against everyone, not just giant corporations (who will always be able to afford lawyers to argue their case). I used to live on a street that backed onto a graffiti alley in San Francisco: should I be allowed to create an author photo of me standing on my fire-escape with the murals in the background without tracking down the street artists who made them? How about a news photographer who captures an image of a cop beating up a protester in a park that features a copyrighted sculpture? Read the rest

Researchers from KU Leuven have published a paper showing how they can create a 40cm x 40cm "patch" that fools a convoluted neural network classifier that is otherwise a good tool for identifying humans into thinking that a person is not a person -- something that could be used to defeat AI-based security camera systems. They theorize that the could just print the patch on a t-shirt and get the same result.The researchers' key point is that the training data for classifiers consists of humans who aren't trying to fool it -- that is, the training is non-adversarial -- while the applications for these systems are often adversarial (such as being used to evaluate security camera footage whose subjects might be trying to defeat the algorithm). It's like designing a lock always unlocks when you use the key -- but not testing to see if it unlocks if you don't have the key, too.The attack can reliably defeat YOLOv2, a popular machine-learning classifier, and they hypothesize that it could be applied to other classifiers as well.I've been writing about these adversarial examples for years, and universally, they represent devastating attacks on otherwise extremely effective classifiers. It's an important lesson about the difference between adversarial and non-adversarial design: the efficacy of a non-adversarial system is no guarantee of adversarial efficacy. In this paper, we presented a system to generate adversarial patches for person detectors that can be printed out andused in the real-world. We did this by optimising an image to minimise different probabilities related to the appearance of a person in the output of the detector. Read the rest

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control report today that the number of measles cases nationwide stands at 695. This is the highest total since the year 2000.Measles are a vaccine-preventable disease.Today, the U.S. secretary of Health and Human services spoke out for the first time on the U.S. measles outbreak, and said in a statement, “Vaccines are a safe, highly effective public health solution that can prevent this disease." In the CDC’s statement on measles outbreaks and the importance of vaccines, released today by HHS Secretary Alex Azar:“The United States is seeing a resurgence of measles, a disease that had once been effectively eliminated from our country. And today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed that ongoing measles outbreaks in 22 states has led to the highest number of cases reported nationwide since the disease was declared eliminated in this country in 2000. Measles is not a harmless childhood illness, but a highly contagious, potentially life-threatening disease. We have the ability to safely protect our children and our communities. Vaccines are a safe, highly effective public health solution that can prevent this disease. The measles vaccines are among the most extensively studied medical products we have, and their safety has been firmly established over many years in some of the largest vaccine studies ever undertaken."With a safe and effective vaccine that protects against measles, the suffering we are seeing is avoidable. The CDC is ready to support public health departments in monitoring and responding to outbreaks, and will continue to receive, review, and compile the latest reports of measles cases. Read the rest

$5 billion is about one month's revenue for Facebook.

Rudy Giuliani: “nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.”

Elon Musk's electric car company Tesla lost $700 million in 2019's first quarter, and said on an earnings call today it will become profitable in the third quarter as it cut costs and improves delivery “after facing issues ramping up shipments outside the United States.”Elon Musk said on today's Tesla's earnings conference call, 'I would prefer we were private, but that ship has sailed.' TESLA ELON MUSK SAYS "I WOULD PREFER WE WERE PRIVATE, BUT THAT SHIP HAS SAILED"- CONF CALL— Ben Klayman (@benklayman) April 24, 2019From Reuters: Read the rest

Police report finding 7 cigarette butts in the charred ashes.

Spread The Vote is a non-profit that works to help educate and empower voters on the voting and political process. Boing Boing invited the group to help everyone understand how primary elections work, and how you can participate in them if you are an eligible U.S. voter. Sign up for their state-specific voter education packages, which are really an amazing educational resource. —Xeni JardinUNDERSTANDING PRIMARY ELECTIONS,from SPREAD THE VOTE.When most voters think of election day, they likely imagine a general election where they vote to determine which candidate on the ballot will win the position of elected office. However, voters may be less familiar with primary elections. This may explain, in part, why voter turnout is so different for general and primary elections. That’s where Spread The Vote comes in. We want every eligible voter to understand and participate in primary elections because they are such an important element of our democracy. DID YOU KNOW...1. Turnout in primaries is notoriously low: in the 2016 presidential race, just over 28% of eligible voters voted in a Republican and Democratic presidential primary election.This number is shocking compared to the nearly 60% of Americans who were eligible to vote that turned out for the general election. Even though general elections get a lot of attention, primary elections are just as important and are a significant opportunity to make your voice heard.2. Primary elections, or primaries, are elections where voters choose who will be on the ballot for each specific office in the general election. Read the rest

Our friends at Futility Closet came upon this cruel form of punishment, called the finger pillory:Here’s a forgotten punishment. In the 17th century, in return for a minor offense such as not attending to a sermon, a wrongdoer might be required to place his finger into an L-shaped hole over which a block was fastened to keep the knuckle bent. “[T]he finger was confined, and it will easily be seen that it could not be withdrawn until the pillory was opened,” writes William Andrews in Medieval Punishments (1898). “If the offender were held long in this posture, the punishment must have been extremely painful.”In his 1686 history of Staffordshire, Robert Plot recalls a “finger-Stocks” “made for punishment of the disorders, that sometimes attend feasting at Christmas time.” Into this “the Lord of misrule, used formerly to put the fingers of all such persons as committed misdemeanors, or broke such rules, as by consent were agreed on for the time of keeping Christmas, among servants and others of promiscuous quality.” Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the Great and Powerful Special Counsel of OZ is revealed as... a man behind a curtain.

In a pioneering study, scientists have demonstrated that an implanted brain-computer interface (above) coupled with deep-learning algorithms can translate thought into computerized speech. From Scientific American:(University of California, San Francisco neurosurgeon Edward Chang) emphasized that his approach cannot be used to read someone’s mind—only to translate words the person wants to say into audible sounds....Chang and his colleagues devised a two-step method for translating thoughts into speech. First, in tests with epilepsy patients whose neural activity was being measured with electrodes on the surface of their brain, the researchers recorded signals from brain areas that control the tongue, lips and throat muscles. Later, using deep-learning computer algorithms trained on naturally spoken words, they translated those movements into audible sentences....The researchers asked native English speakers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing marketplace to transcribe the sentences they heard. The listeners accurately heard the sentences 43 percent of the time when given a set of 25 possible words to choose from, and 21 percent of the time when given 50 words, the study found.Although the accuracy rate remains low, it would be good enough to make a meaningful difference to a “locked-in” person, who is almost completely paralyzed and unable to speak, the researchers say."Scientists Take a Step Toward Decoding Thoughts" (SciAm)"Speech synthesis from neural decoding of spoken sentences" (Nature) Read the rest

The Word of the Day is a daily guessing game in Slack. It's easy enough to play. Just go there and enter words. If you are the first to match the secret word of the day, you win $1,000. The most recent winner was Erika Y. who correctly guessed "inscrutable."FAQHow and when will I get paid?We will DM you on Slack for your Venmo handle, and you’ll get paid within 24 hours of winning.How do you know who said the first correct word?We built a slack bot to monitor the channel and notify everyone when someone wins.What happens if no one gets the word right?The slackbot will announce what the word was at 11:59PM EST. No one will get paid, and the $1000 will not roll over to the next day.How many guesses do I get?You can guess as many times as you want, but only in one word increments. Read the rest

Politico shares an investigation into why the GDPR's lead regulator Ireland has failed to bring a single enforcement action against the big tech companies it is supposed to watchdog.Politico:Last May, Europe imposed new data privacy guidelines that carry the hopes of hundreds of millions of people around the world — including in the United States — to rein in abuses by big tech companies.Almost a year later, it’s apparent that the new rules have a significant loophole: The designated lead regulator — the tiny nation of Ireland — has yet to bring an enforcement action against a big tech firm.That’s not entirely surprising. Despite its vows to beef up its threadbare regulatory apparatus, Ireland has a long history of catering to the very companies it is supposed to oversee, having wooed top Silicon Valley firms to the Emerald Isle with promises of low taxes, open access to top officials, and help securing funds to build glittering new headquarters.Now, data-privacy experts and regulators in other countries alike are questioning Ireland’s commitment to policing imminent privacy concerns like Facebook’s reintroduction of facial recognition software and data sharing with its recently purchased subsidiary WhatsApp, and Google’s sharing of information across its burgeoning number of platforms.(Thanks, Antoin!) Read the rest

Here's a woman who explained how she obtained a second citizenship. She already has a US citizenship and purchased a second citizenship to St. Kitts and Nevis. She hired a lawyer who lives in St. Kitts, took a physical exam, supplied college transcripts, her Social Security number, and a lot of other information. The fee was $150,000 not including legal fees and other fees. It took about 8 months for the citizenship, and another 4 months to get a passport for St. Kitts and Nevis. Read the rest

From the Muppet Wiki:Bernie und Ert was a recurring sketch on the show created by Attik Kargar, who performed the puppets and supplied the voice of Bernie. Bernie and Ert are an obscene parody of Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street, and especially as re-dubbed on Sesamstrasse. The pair are a same-sex couple, with no nose and one eye each. Each sketch focused on such topics as crime, drug abuse (Bernie is a cocaine addict), and S&M practices. In February 2003, Bernie and Ert were dropped from the series because of legal concerns; however, older episodes circulate on the Internet. The characters lived on and appeared in another recurring sketch called Popo Club in where they wear S&M gear and go by the names Unknown No. 1 and Unknown No. 2. These versions of the characters later appeared in the German adult puppet series Eye TV – Der durchgeknallte Puppensender and two spin-off web series.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

William Zabka and Ralph Macchio are back in season two of Youtube's Cobra Kai.I adore this wonderful buffet of Gen-X nostalgia. As a former Angeleno who grew up in the same era Danny and Johnny inhabit everything about this show makes me happy.I watched the first 6 episodes last night and am sure I'll have finished the season by dinner tonight. Read the rest

The Ramones promoting "Ramones Mania (The Best Of 1976-1988)" on "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee" in 1988. "Who writes these songs, 'I Wanna Be Sedated' and 'Teenage Lobotomy?' Do you guys write them? Can you give me the lyrics to 'Teenage Lobotomy?" Just talk them..." Read the rest

Republican Congressman Steve King was removed from committees and publicly rebuked by his own party after his history of racist remarks flowered into open white supremacy. The experience gave him insight into Jesus's crucifixion."For all that I've been through -- and it seems even strange for me to say it -- but I am at a certain peace, and it is because of a lot of prayers for me. And when I have to step down to the floor of the House of Representatives, and look up at those 400-and-some accusers, you know we just passed through Easter and Christ's passion, and I have better insight into what He went through for us partly because of that experience."He knows who the true believers are; they believe in him.Update: Christopher Matias points out that some outlets are falsely suggesting King was censured by congress; it did not go that far.Washington Post and NY Mag saying Steve King was censured. He was never censured. pic.twitter.com/NtttWMDcWd— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) April 24, 2019 Read the rest

In spring 2016, barely weeks before GamerGate, 4chan trolls began masquerading as feminist women of color online. The targets were not fooled, obviously, and Shafiqah Hudson and others launched an education campaign against it. But conservative pundits were eager to play along, out of stupidity or malice, laundering the lies into their version of reality and engaging a supply chain of far-right bullshit that would soon be exploited at scale.Shafiqah Hudson remembers the moment she realized something was off. She saw a tweet from an account she had never seen before: “#EndFathersDay because I’m tired of all these white women stealing our good black mens.” Something about the grammar—not to mention the idea that black women wanted to abolish Father’s Day because of interracial dating—just felt too cartoonish to be real.... Hudson found herself horrified by how easily people on social media could be lured into believing a stereotype of black women. While she watched a credulous rage build online, not just against these fake Twitter accounts but against the black feminists she called friends, her own anger grew as well: “No one is going to come into my house and start breaking shit,” she said.The mockery #EndFathersDay made of an increasingly influential online feminist movement became predictable catnip to conservatives. Tucker Carlson devoted a segment to it. Ashe Schow in the Washington Examiner called it the latest “drivel” “from the feminist outrage machine.” Dan McLaughlin tweeted that the hashtag was “a neat illustration of the cultural trajectory of progressivism.” “#EndFathersDay Because it’s really just Second Caregiver of Unspecified Gender Identity Day, you cisnormative a**holes,” mocked Ben Shapiro. Read the rest

Dillon Cassidy and Kelly Kraft redubbed the classic Don Bluth animated feature "The Land Before Time" with "Scottish" voices. The whole movie! Enjoy it while it lasts. [via]Narrator - Trumane AlstonBryce - Spencer HawkCera - Michelle DaveyOld Rooter - Denver CollinsMother - Chris HanleyDucky - Liz AndersonPetri - Taylor JonesProduced by Dillon CassidyEdited by Kelly Kraft Read the rest

40 years ago, antitrust law put strict limits on mergers and acquisitions, but since the Reagan era, these firewalls have been dismantled, and now the biggest companies grow primarily by snapping up nascent competitors and merging with rivals; Google is a poster-child for this, having only ever created two successful products in-house (search and Gmail), with all other growth coming from acquisitions and mergers.When companies grow this way, they experience "diseconomies of scale" -- dysfunctions brought on by their inability to integrate the acquired companies into their culture and technology. Yahoo (more than Google) is the obvious poster-child for these diseconomies, a company that will go down in history as a voracious acquirer and murderer of the best technology startups of a generation (Flickr, Delicious, etc etc etc).One Google's most prominent acquisitions is the Internet of Things company Nest, whose "smart thermostats" were a beachhead for the company's "ecosystem" -- a group of surveillance devices and controllers that were bound to the Nest by DRM, meaning that independent security researchers who audited these actuators and sensors faced potential criminal and civil liability.This limited scrutiny, plus Nest's inability to integrate with Google's security systems, has proven to be a uniquely toxic mix. Today, for as little as $20, you can buy "credential stuffing" software that will take the massive dumps of billions of passwords that have accumulated over the years and try them on Nest devices that are discoverable on the internet. Once a working username/password combo is hit, the system is yours: you can listen in and watch the owner, and play audio through the devices' speakers (terrorizing toddlers with pornography on their baby monitors is an intruder's favorite), etc. Read the rest

Fran Blanche explains "the greatest effect ever created" in the recording studio: plate echo. Get out your good headphones and prepare to experience the awesome sound of plate echo through this 1980 vintage Ecoplate II! Thanks for watching and enjoy! Read the rest

For musicians, clubgoers or anyone in the thick of a loud environment, earplugs aren't just an option. If you plan on keeping your hearing through sustained exposure to levels over 85 decibels (roughly the sound of a blender), they're a must.The good news is, most earplugs will muffle the sound. The bad news is, that's exactly how it sounds: muffled. If you love music as much as you love your ears, Vibes Hi-Fidelity Earplugs are a high-tech alternative.Thanks to specially designed tubes in the casing, Vibes can filter sound selectively, lowering the volume by 22 dB across frequencies while keeping (and in some cases enhancing) clarity. They're made to be discreet, with a nearly invisible profile and three interchangeable, washable tips to fit any ear size. And they've got staying power in any environment too, thanks to a detachable cord that clips onto each earplug.Right now, you can pick up a pair of Vibes Hi-Fidelity Earplugs with Attachable Cord for $19.99 - a full 25% off the list price. Read the rest

It could happen to you.A new report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) says online theft, fraud, and exploitation caused losses of $2.7 billion dollars worldwide in 2018. This is up from $1.4 billion in 2017.[ Here's the full FBI report in PDF. ]“The 2018 report shows how prevalent these crimes are. It also shows that the financial toll is substantial and a victim can be anyone who uses a connected device.” said IC3 chief Donna Gregory in today's announcement.The FBI's advice to any unlucky person who realizes they have been scammed online?To improve the chances of a successful recovery, it is imperative that victims contact their bank immediately upon discovering a fraudulent transaction as well as report the crime to the IC3.From the FBI's report:In its annual Internet Crime Report, the FBI reports the IC3 received 351,936 complaints in 2018—an average of more than 900 every day. The most frequently reported complaints were for non-payment/non-delivery scams, extortion, and personal data breaches. The most financially costly complaints involved business email compromise, romance or confidence fraud, and investment scams, which can include Ponzi and pyramid schemes.Reports came in from every U.S. state and territory and involved victims of every age. There was a concentration of victims and financial losses, however, among individuals over the age of 50.“The 2018 report shows how prevalent these crimes are,” said Donna Gregory, chief of the IC3. “It also shows that the financial toll is substantial and a victim can be anyone who uses a connected device. Read the rest

The bot network repeatedly denounced the Mueller report as a 'RussiaGate hoax.'

“Big friendly potato boy thoroughly examining my canoe.”Another gem from the wonderful IMGURian SeeThroughCanoe, who sells these personal watercraft.“This overly friendly manatee spent a really long time thoroughly checking out the canoe and the camera attached to the bottom of it,” he says.Big friendly potato boy thoroughly examining my canoe Read the rest

I have a small collection of How and Why Wonder Books that were published in the 1960s and 1970s. The interior and cover art is great. According to Wikipedia, there were 74 titles in this series of illustrated kids science and nature books. Flickr user X Ray Delta One uploaded 10 covers from the series. Read the rest

Health officials say potential sites include UCLA, LAX