A team of scientists went to Peru's lowland tropical forest to document invertebrates and saw an uncommon sight: a large tarantula, the size of a "dinner plate" with "massive fangs" catching and eating a baby opossum. Although they didn't capture on video the part where the tarantula caught the animal, they were the first to ever record a tarantula feasting on an opossum.“When we do surveys at night, some of the spiders we see will have prey, typically other invertebrates like crickets and moths," said one of the scientists, Rudolf von May from the University of Michigan, according to National Geographic (click on the link to see a longer version of the video). Via NG:But one night [the survey revealed a sight none of the researchers had seen before: A tarantula the size of a dinner plate preying upon a small opossum."The opossum had already been grasped by the tarantula and was still struggling weakly at that point, but after about 30 seconds it stopped kicking,” co-author Michael Grundler, a Ph.D. student says in a statement."We were pretty ecstatic and shocked, and we couldn't really believe what we were seeing," Grundler says.Later, Robert Voss, a mammologist at the American Museum of Natural History, confirmed they had captured the first documentation of a large mygalomorph spider—commonly known as a tarantula—hunting and eating an opossum. Read the rest

In 2019 a single bluefin tuna, weighing 279 kilograms, sold at auction in Tokyo's famous Tsukiji fish market for $3.1 million dollars. That comes out to $315/ounce, making for a very expensive piece of sashimi.In this video from Abroad in Japan, we take a trip to the northern coast of Honshu, where Japan's prized tuna are caught.Image: YouTube/Abroad in Japan Read the rest

Facebook is said to be developing a 'stablecoin,' which is a kind of digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar.

Android should let users deny and revoke permissions; Apple should let people encrypt Icloud backups, Twitter should end-to-end encrypt DMs; all these and more appear on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's #FixItAlready page, which calls out Big Tech's biggest players for their biggest security and privacy fumbles, and explains in clear terms why these changes are needed. Read the rest

Science will open the floodgates on cheap, reliable high-volume production of THC and CBD. Yeast's rapid growth and ease of culturing will likely enable new stronger-better-faster variants of both.UC Berkeley College of Chemistry:UC Berkeley synthetic biologists have engineered brewer’s yeast to produce marijuana’s main ingredients—mind-altering THC and non-psychoactive CBD—as well as novel cannabinoids not found in the plant itself.Feeding only on sugar, the yeast are an easy and cheap way to produce pure cannabinoids that today are costly to extract from the buds of the marijuana plant, Cannabis sativa.“For the consumer, the benefits are high-quality, low-cost CBD and THC: you get exactly what you want from yeast,” said Jay Keasling, a UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of bioengineering and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “It is a safer, more environmentally friendly way to produce cannabinoids.” Read the rest

In Sweden, officers of the Swedish Security Service have arrested a person who worked “in a high-technology sector” and is believed by investigators to be a Russian agent."This individual is suspected of having been recruited as an agent by a Russian intelligence officer who was working under diplomatic cover in Sweden," Daniel Stenling, the Swedish Security Service Head of Counter-Intelligence, said in a statement.The Swedish tabloid Dagens Nyheter first reported the spy bust.From NPR:The individual, whose name has not been disclosed, was passing information to Russia since 2017, the Swedish Security Service says. He or she was working in a high-technology sector "on tasks known by our Service to be the type of intelligence sought after by foreign powers," the agency said.Swedish police officers working with security service agents arrested the suspect on Tuesday evening, in the midst of a meeting in central Stockholm.(...)Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov did not comment on the arrest and instead redirected an inquiry to Russia's Foreign Ministry. Its embassy in Sweden has not made public remarks.Still no comment from Russia, beyond those remarks by Peskov, at noon on Thursday in the United States.Video footage that appears to show the suspect led out of a restaurant by 'Säpo' (Sakerhetspolisen) officers is circulating on Swedish media, as the BBC reported. Excerpt from the BBC:A witness quoted by Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet said several officers of the Swedish security police, known as Sapo, stormed the restaurant and surrounded a table where two people were sitting having a meal. Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Rolling Stone interview with Alex Morris paints a portrait of a politician and activist whose brilliance as a tactician is matched by an unwavering, uncompromising commitment to principle.Whether talking about media strategy, theories of political change, the institutional structure of the two major US political parties, or the role demographics play in political consciousness, AOC reveals herself to be both entirely premeditated, working according to a well-developed internal playbook; and entirely motivated by a well-articulated principle.Plenty of politicians are good orators and good horse-traders, but AOC is playing a much bigger game here, not merely angling for power-for-its-own-sake, or carrying water for corporate paymasters, or showing off her debate skills: she's trying to change the entire political system, having recognized both the urgency and potential of our current political moment. She is keenly aware of the limitations of a freshman Member of Congress, but she's also aware that those limitations are grossly overestimated by the political establishment, who imagines that the freshman arrival in Congress is constrained by a need to forge alliances with the establishment as the opening act of a lucrative life in the political-industrial complex. AOC doesn't want to make friends, she's come to Congress to kick ass and chew bubble-gum, and she's fresh out of etc etc.If you doubt it for a moment, just compare her performance at yesterday's Michael Cohen hearing with those of her compatriots on both sides of the aisle -- while others merely politically grandstanded, AOC got new and devastating facts into the record, while still producing material perfectly tailored for sharing and repeating. Read the rest

“YouTube is disabling all comments on videos featuring young children as it attempts to head off an organised ring of paedophiles who were using its site to trade clips of young girls in states of undress,” says the Guardian's Alex Hern. In a YouTube blog post addressing the issue to creators, the company wrote: “We recognize that comments are a core part of the YouTube experience and how you connect with and grow your audience. At the same time, the important steps we’re sharing today are critical for keeping young people safe. Thank you for your understanding and feedback as we continue our work to protect the YouTube community.”“The company also says it has launched a new machine learning system that it says will remove twice as many comments as the old one,” tweeted Alex Hern.Excerpt from his report:YouTube will turn off comments on all videos that contain young children, the company says, as well as a number of other enforcement actions designed to stave off an advertiser boycott sparked by the discovery of an organised paedophile ring operating in plain sight on the video sharing platform.The company will disable all comments on videos featuring younger children, and will also disable comments on those videos of older children that have some risk of attracting predatory behaviour, YouTube says.It has also prioritised the launch of an AI moderator that is “more sweeping in scope, and will detect and remove two times more individual comments” than its predecessor, in an attempt to identify and remove predatory comments before they can cause harm. Read the rest

Yet another idiot calling the cops on a black person for doing normal person things. In this case, a white woman is on the phone reporting to the police that a black man's dog humped her dog at a dog park. You can hear the woman's friend saying about his dog, "That's inappropriate for the dog park." I double checked to see if this was a satire on racist people who call police on black people for made up non-crime reasons, but as far as I can tell, this is real. Read the rest

The GOP-led U.S. Senate today confirmed ex-coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to run Environmental Protection Agency, in a 52-47 vote mostly along party lines.52-47 The #Senate CONFIRMED Andrew Wheeler to be Administrator of the EPA.Senator Collins voted no joining all Democrats. Senator Sinema did not vote.— Senate Press Gallery (@SenatePress) February 28, 2019Wheeler has been serving as “acting” administrator of Trump's EPA since Scott Pruitt resigned over alleged ethics violations in July, 2018. On the GOP side, only Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) opposed Wheeler, and voted against him. She described his policies as “not in the best interest of our environment and public health."Arizona Senator Kristen Sinema did not vote.Below, tweets from lawmakers who voted "no," and from journalists and environmental advocates around the time Wheeler's confirmation was completed today..@SenatorCollins just accidentally voted for EPA nom Andrew Wheeler and quickly corrected to a no. She kind of shook her head and laughed at her mistake. She was the only Republican to oppose the nominee.— Jennifer Haberkorn (@jenhab) February 28, 2019U.S. Senate in 52-47 vote confirmed Andrew Wheeler for EPA Administrator: pic.twitter.com/IDnvtZ8ok1— Greg Giroux (@greggiroux) February 28, 2019.@SenatorCollins just voted "no" on @EPAAWheeler's confirmation https://t.co/Li9ms6XVMF— Zahra Hirji (@Zhirji28) February 28, 2019Senate Republicans just overrode bipartisan opposition to confirm ex-coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to be Trump Administration's next EPA Administrator.As with Wheeler's predecessor Scott Pruitt, it will be vital that Congress exercise oversight. House Democrats will be vigilant. Read the rest

"We'll send him back to Kenya, or wherever it is," GOP Rep Mark Meadows said about President Obama, while laughing hard. This is the second video to surface today where Meadows promotes the racist birther conspiracy theory. Uncovered by @TheDemCoalition. pic.twitter.com/USxMc8U98F— Democratic Coalition (@TheDemCoalition) February 28, 2019North Carolina's Rep. Mark Meadows was aghast that Rep. Rashida Tlaib found his parading HUD official Lynne Patton, a black woman, before congress as prop, to be racist. He insisted he is not a racist.There is plenty of video of displaying Meadows smugly spreading racist "birther" theories about President Obama.TPM:Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) was very indignant Thursday when Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) accused him of using HUD official Lynne Patton, a black woman, as a prop to counter Michael Cohen’s accusations of racism.He retorted loudly, saying that her implication was racist and citing black people in his life.Unfortunately for the self-righteous congressman, videos have surfaced since the fracas that show him espousing the thoroughly debunked “birther” theory about President Barack Obama. Read the rest

Towards the end of the Michael Cohen's Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) was highly insulted when Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) suggested he had committed a racist act by bringing in one of his black employees "as a prop." “And it is insensitive..." Tlaib said, "the fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself.”Meadows immediately reacted, insisting with high emotion that he was not a racist, and that somehow having nieces and nephews of color proved his point. He and Tlaib went back and forth in a heated exchange, with Meadows saying she called him a racist, and with Tlaib saying no, she only pointed out that he had committed a racist act. The scene was was pretty much smoothed over within about five minutes or so. However, just hours later, videos of Meadows resurfaced that show that yes, sir, you ARE a racist.The Washington Post put together the video above, where we can hear Meadows saying about President Barack Obama (while he was in office), "We don't have to worry about it. We'll send him back home to Kenya, or where it is. We'll send him back home." And, in another location on a different day, "2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is." Here's Mark Meadows, who just sidetracked the entire House Oversight Committee to assure him he's not racist, saying that "2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Read the rest

Back in 2016, a "reputation management" company called Profile Defenders was caught forging court orders in order to get complaints about its clients removed from the site Pissed Consumer. This was a monumentally stupid thing to do, as judges are consistently unamused with people who forge their signatures.The latest reputation management shenanigans involve a lower-stakes legal forgery. Pissed Consumer has found that the notarized documents from people who'd complained about New York's Luxsport Motor Group (a used car dealership) asking to have their complaints removed were fraudulent. Though they were apparently notarized by a real notary public, Stephanie Chrysten Lynch, the people whose signatures were supposedly on these documents denied ever having signed them.It's not clear who is behind the fraud, nor whether Lynch was duped by someone using fake ID to impersonate someone, whether her seal was forged, or whether she was in on the fraud. But the fraudulent letters were supposedly signed by people from across the USA and even overseas, and Lynch is located in the same state as Luxsport's head office.After Pissed Consumer restored the fraudulently removed review, it got another notarized letter, supposedly signed by the original author, this one vouched for by a notary in Washington state.And so we started digging and investigating further. We found out that:* 4 notarized letters according to which we removed the reviews about Luxsport Motor Group were notarized by one and the same notary public from New York – Stephanie Chrysten Lynch coincidentally, Luxsport Motor Group is headquartered in New York* interestingly, the posters whose letters were notarized by the same New York notary public, Stephanie Chrysten Lynch, posted their reviews not just from different parts of the US but from different continents* when we checked correspondence we received from, allegedly, the authors of the above-mentioned 4 notarized letters – it turns out that it was their 2nd notarized letter that was accepted in 3 cases; we did not accept the initial notarized letters and wrote them about it, they did not respond and then some time later the second “good” notarized letter came in. Read the rest

Last November, the Pentagon's Inspector General presented Congress with a "little-noticed" report on whistleblowing in the US military, revealing that those who come forward with claims of misconduct including sexual harassment and safety problems face a "culture of retaliation" including black marks on their service records, demotion, and suspension of security clearance; the IG also reported that in nearly every case, the officers who retaliated against whistleblowers faced no consequences for their actions.The report also finds that the vast majority of wrongdoers whose crimes were revealed by whistleblowers did not face consequences for their bad acts, even after these acts were confirmed by investigators.The IG also found that the military had previously been warned about these deficits and had been given recommendations for reforming its practices, and had consistently ignored these recommendations, despite promises from top officers to act on them. The story appears in Roll Call, parent company of the political dirty tricksters suspected of sabotaging the FCC's Net Neutrality process by stealing the identities of millions of Americans in order to submit millions of comments supporting the corporate objectives of the country's largest telcoms operators. Ironically, the Pentagon IG is increasingly effective at processing a surging number of complaints of wrongdoing at the Defense Department — about sexual harassment, procurement fraud and other unethical behavior.The office is also speedily processing more and more allegations of retaliation against those who blow the whistle. But it’s had little impact on the culture of retribution within the Defense Department. Read the rest

Fortnite Battle Royale Season 8 is here!Season 7 drew to a close with free Valentine's battle passes for everyone willing to brave holiday challenges. Season 8 lands with map changes, new weapons, and winter put in the vault.There be pirates and cannon balls!I haven't had a chance to check out Murder Island today, but after a short 11GB update I'll hop on the Battle Bus and see what madness Epic has achieved. Read the rest

Seattle's immensely popular business tax was designed to do something about the city's epidemic of desperate homelessness, but then Amazon threw its muscle around to get the tax canceled, mostly by threatening not to occupy its new offices in Ranier Square, a 30-story building currently under construction that Amazon was to be sole tenant of, with 3,500-5,000 employees working out of the building.Now, Ranier Square is advertising for new tenants to fill its 722,000 square feet, because Amazon has canceled its plans (though not the lease - the new tenants will sublease from Amazon, likely for 10-15 years). Unconfirmed reports have it that Amazon will instead expand its rentals in neighboring Bellevue. Seattle has upcoming municipal elections and some city councillors are signalling that they'll campaign on reinstating the tax and raising money to help fix the city's housing crisis. When Mayor Jenny Durkan and a council majority sought to compromise with business leaders in May by passing a smaller version of the tax, Amazon announced it would move ahead with Block 18, one of several new buildings going up in the Denny Triangle. But the company never recommitted to the Rainier Square space, even after an effort to nix the measure through a referendum, backed by Amazon and other local businesses, pressured the council into repealing the tax less than a month later.The annual tax of $275 per employee on companies grossing at least $20 million per year would have raised about $47 million in 2019 for low-income housing and homeless services. Read the rest

Researchers from Dojo/Bullguard investigated the security model of the Ring smart doorbell -- made by Amazon -- and discovered that the video was sent "in the clear" (without encryption) meaning that people on the same network as the doorbell, or on the same network as one of its owners, can easily tap into its feeds.Additionally, the researchers found that it would be easy to alter the feed coming from the doorbell (for example, you could insert a feed of an empty porch while you were breaking down the door).The security risks arose because Ring's designers chose not to encrypt their Realtime Protocol (RTP) packets. This means that an attacker who joins a network that is carrying the video feed (for example, the wifi at a conference center or coffee shop that Ring owner is using to monitor the feed from their home) can view or hijack the video streams.The latest version of the Ring app (version 3.4.7) corrects this error, but the release notes do not mention this fact, so some users may not have upgraded.This report is part of a growing pattern of serious security problems with Ring's products, which is particularly troubling, given that they are intended as security measures themselves.The main takeaway from this research is that security is only as strong as its weakest link. Encrypting the upstream RTP traffic will not make forgery any harder if the downstream traffic is not secure, and encrypting the downstream SIP transmission does not thwart stream interception. Read the rest

The Tiny Type Museum is a limited-edition handmade box set of traditional printing tech, including hot metal and wooden type, custom-made linotype slugs, plate molds, phototypes, plates, Monotype matrixes, other stuff besides, and a book about six centuries of reprographic technology that fits nice and kentucky in a slot.Glenn Fleishman:I realize the museum’s price isn’t low, but the intent is for it to be comprehensive, authentic, and long-lasting. Sourcing and commissioning material, building a custom case designed to last centuries (and likely longer), and having the book printed in a historically accurate and archival method adds up quickly. I wanted to do this right, have it be meaningful, and produce a treasure that will last the ages, and you’ll be proud to own, examine, and share. Read the rest

London's estate agents were notorious profiteers of the property bubble, listing on the stock exchanges and rewarding investors with soaring share-prices that reflected the human misery of a city where life got harder and more expensive every day, where communities were shattered, and where subprime lending and other sleazy financial practices helped to destroy the global economy in 2007-8, triggering more than a decade of crisis from which we have yet to recover.The princes of London's property-market hell were, undoubtably, Foxtons (previously), the most prominent and vicious and profiteering of all the estate-agents (I named the villain in my novel Pirate Cinema after them), and today, Foxtons announced that it would suffer a loss of £17.2 million in fiscal 2018, partly because it was forced to shutter six of its offices last year.Foxtons blames the losses on a "prolonged downturn" in London's housing market, exacerbated by Brexit. It's not just Foxtons, either: the Nationwide, a lender, confirms that housing prices are sinking.London is one of the most leveraged housing markets in the world, with many "owners" holding virtually no stake in their homes, having relied on capital appreciation to offset mortgage interests and low- or no-deposit purchases. Even a small dip in housing prices could put many of these homes "under water," with their owners owing more to the bank than the notional value of the property that secures their loans, and this could trigger forced sales. The flood of new inventory on the market will further reduce property values by adding to the supply of available properties, lowering prices, triggering more forced sales and panic selling -- lather, rinse, repeat. Read the rest

What happens when a stoppable force hits an immovable object? The stoppable force stops. The Korea Herald reports:The Korea Coast Guard (KCG) said the 5,998-ton Seagrand sailed into the side of the Gwangan Bridge at around 4:20 p.m. before turning back to head in the opposite direction. ... The KCG nabbed the vessel and questioned the crew aboard. It said the ship's Russian captain, whose identity is being withheld, had a blood alcohol content of 0.086 percent. The legal limit is 0.03 percent.I feel there must be more to the story, as 0.08 isn't very drunk—it's the legal limit for driving in most U.S. states and basically the tare weight of a merchant sailor.You may recognize the bridge, in Busan, from Black Panther. Read the rest

It's been 20 years since Napster burst on the scene, and after decades of lawsuits, draconian criminal penalties, even no-knock gunpoint search warrants, there remains no evidence that "copyright enforcement" has a measurable impact on copyright infringement -- and at the same time, there's persistent, credible evidence that infringement goes down when product offerings get better and prices get more reasonable.The latest example comes from New Zealand, where a survey of 1,000 people found that copyright infringement is in freefall, and that the biggest predictor of whether someone pays for something is whether it is available at a good price and in a timely manner (AKA "Netflix is killing content piracy").A couple important caveats: the study was paid for by telcoms company Vocus, and I can't find the survey's raw data or sampling methodology online.But the headline findings are pretty compelling: 75% of respondents use free-to-air TV as their preferred video service, 58% pay for movie tickets, and 55% subscribe to Netflix or one of its competitors; while only 11% use illegal streams and only 10% download infringing torrents.The findings replicate earlier research, and more importantly, they come at a critical juncture, when NZ is contemplating internet censorship orders inspired by the catastrophic Australian law that was recently rammed through Parliament. NZ has been a hotbed of copyright activism, with the country experiencing an uprising a decade ago that killed a proposal to have households disconnected from the internet if a single member was accused (without proof) of copyright infringement -- and then the law was revived by an MP who threatened to hold up aid to earthquake-stricken Christchurch if the disconnection orders were not attached to the emergency bill as a rider. Read the rest

"Found a bit of a crackin' one" Read the rest

If you love to travel, you love reminiscing about the places you've been. Aside from the photos, you might turn maps into keepsakes, putting pins or stickers onto each country you've visited. World Travel Tracker Scratch Off Maps® take that pastime and ramp up the fun, making it easy to keep tabs on your adventures by literally scratching each country off your list.Like all good ideas, this one is pretty simple. What you've got is essentially a 17" by 24" scratch-off ticket version of the entire world. Every country is covered in gold foil that rubs off to reveal a different color, highlighting your visit. Stateside road trippers can also keep a tally of their itinerary, with the US, Canada, and Australia broken down into different sections for their own states and provinces. There's also a gallery of scratch-off flags below the map - one for each of 210 countries.The World Travel Tracker Scratch Off Map® is available in gift-ready packaging for $22.99, 48% off the MSRP. Read the rest

Fox has been ordered to pay $179m to profit participants on the longrunning TV show Bones; the judgment includes $128m in punitive damages because the aribitrator that heard the case found that Fox had concealed the show's true earnings and its execs had lied under oath to keep the profit participants from getting their share of the take.The arbitrator singled out Fox execs Dana Walden, Gary Newman and Peter Rice for "giving false testimony to conceal their wrongful acts."The suit turned on Fox's "self-dealing," whereby one division would make a program and sell it to another division at well below market rates, then claim that the show hadn't earned very much money, thus denying payouts to those with a share of the profits: the show's stars, the author of the novels the show was adapted from, and the show's exec producer.Fox has vowed to appeal.Two of the Fox execs singled out by the arbitrator are set to move into executive roles at Disney after the Disney acquisition of Fox is complete. Disney CEO Bob Iger gave a statement in their defense.Liguori headed Fox at the time the series debuted in 2005. In 2009, he wrote a memo that may have outlined Fox’s efforts to avoid self-dealing liability as Fox considered giving “Bones” a three-season renewal in 2009. Quotations from what is described as the “Legal Action Plan” memo are heavily redacted in the arbitration filing. Liguori left his post as chairman of Fox Broadcasting in 2009, amid a shakeup in the TV division. Read the rest

After a raid in Miami, police Sgt. Manuel Regueiro approached and punched an 18-year-old cuffed suspect in the face. The victim warned the officers they were being filmed by the home security system. So officer Alex Gonzalez stole the evidence. But he had in fact taken the system's battery, and now both officers are being charged with crimes.Regueiro for misdemeanor battery ... Gonzalez with tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony, and misdemeanor petty theft.“Shameful we have to take these actions,” the department’s director, Juan Perez, said in a Tuesday tweet. “However, any officer violating the law will face the consequences, including arrest and prosecution.” Consider in silence how ignorant of modern technology you'd have to be to think that a modern surveillance camera's battery was a tape. Read the rest

A man who took radioactive medication in his final days was cremated in 2017, a mistake that released potentially dangerous Lutetium 177 into the environment.This alarming case, reported in a new research letter this week, illustrates the collateral risks potentially posed by on average 18.6 million nuclear medicine procedures involving radiopharmaceuticals performed in the US every year.While rules regulate how these drugs are administered to living patients, the picture can become less clear when those patients die, thanks to a patchwork of different laws and standards in each state – not to mention situations like the 69-year-old man, whose radioactive status simply slipped through the cracks."Radiopharmaceuticals present a unique and often overlooked postmortem safety challenge," researchers from the Mayo Clinic explain in a case note. Read the rest

The company says 190 employees in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, CA will lose their jobs.

In China, technology firms are working with the government to push voice and facial recognition to help pigs, many of which have been dying from a swine disease that's sweeping the country.African swine fever has spread quickly through China in recent weeks, affecting the world’s top pork producer and the reliability of supply for other nations.Today, the government announced plans to divide its hog industry into five zones in an attempt to halt the swine fever's spread. More on facial and voice recognition technology in the China swine story, from Sui-Lee Wee and Elsie Chen in the New York Times:Chinese companies are pushing facial and voice recognition and other advanced technologies as ways to protect the country’s pigs. In this Year of the Pig, many Chinese hogs are dying from a deadly swine disease, threatening the country’s supply of pork, a staple of Chinese dinner tables.So China’s ebullient technology sector is applying the same techniques it has used to transform Chinese life — and, more darkly, that the Chinese government increasingly uses to spy on its own people — to make sure its pigs are in the pink of health.“If they are not happy, and not eating well, in some cases you can predict whether the pig is sick,” said Jackson He, chief executive officer of Yingzi Technology, a small firm based in the southern city of Guangzhou that has introduced its vision of a “future pig farm” with facial and voice recognition technologies.China’s biggest tech firms want to pamper pigs, too. Read the rest

Witness tampering conviction? Lose your bar license? Why not both!

About 20% of the total posts were found to have been generated by seven anti-vax Pages.

Today's FTC ruling impacts how the TikTok app works for users under the age of 13.

I've written about melamine foam (sold as Magic Erasers) before. They're great for quickly removing mars, scuffs, and stains from almost any surface. I recommend buying 100 at a time.Latest use case: Some old stickers on my laptop that I wanted to remove. After peeling them off, the sticky, tough, adhesive remained on the laptop. Magic eraser knockoff to the rescue! It took about 90 seconds of gentle rubbing with a damp magic eraser to remove all traces.Before:After:Watch the video below to see different ways to use this wonder material. Read the rest

On Sunday in Bensheim, Germany, two children spotted a rat stuck in the vent of a manhole cover. Animal welfare organization Berufstierrettung Rhein-Neckar sent out two rescue workers who were unable to free the rodent. From Smithsonian:That’s when things get surreal. The 8-member Auerbach volunteer fire brigade soon arrived on the scene wearing their firefighting gear and began a 25-minute rescue operation posted on YouTube. First they subdued the rat around the neck using a pole with a restraining loop at the end. Then, using large, black professional-looking wedges they popped up the heavy manhole cover and animal rescuer Michael Sehr was able to wiggle and work the portly little nibbler loose before releasing him back into the sewer...The children who first found the rat also thanked the firefighters with a handmade, rat-themed thank you card.Here's video of the operation: Read the rest

In the first ever case of its kind, the Federal Trade Commission just reached a settlement that includes a $12.8 million fine against an herbal supplement company that paid for fake five-star reviews to boost its Amazon sales.The fraudulent company, Cure Encapsulations, contacted a site that churns out fake reviews — amazonverifiedreviews.com (now taken down) — and told them, "“Please make my product … stay a five star." They then paid the sleazy site "$1,000 for 30 reviews in order to bump the product’s ratings," according to Mashable.Along with the falsified reviews purporting to be from actual customers, the FTC also alleged that the company made “false and unsubstantiated claims” for the pills known as Quality Encapsulations Garcinia Cambogia. Garcinia cambogia is a tropical fruit found in Indonesia that has been used as a natural aid for weight loss. As The Verge points out, use of the herbal supplement has associated with acute liver failure.“People rely on reviews when they’re shopping online,” said director of the commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection Andrew Smith in a statement. “When a company buys fake reviews to inflate its Amazon ratings, it hurts both shoppers and companies that play by the rules.”Along with the hefty fine, Cure Encapsulations is also banned "from making weight-loss, appetite-suppression, fat-blocking, or disease-treatment claims for any dietary supplement, food, or drug unless they have competent and reliable scientific evidence in the form of human clinical testing supporting the claims," according to the FTC. You mean they're still allowed to run a business? Read the rest

Blue Marble 3 is Kaplamino's latest marble chain reaction video. I like the way that many parts of the track are formed as needed by the energy of rubber bands, deflating balloons, magnets, and even a firecracker.From the YouTube description:I present you my most ambitious project so far, blue marble 3 ! I'm out of my comfort zone this time because the chain reaction is taking place on two tables, and with 0 fidget spinners. It is the longest in terms of duration and the one that takes up the most space in my room. I tried to use a little bit of everything like rubber bands, magnets, and elements. I had so many failures that I stopped counting, as always only a few tricks were responsible for the majority of failures, can you guess which ones?Image: YouTube Read the rest

Mike Solomon, creative director at Hearst Digital Media, created Judge Fake People. Here's what he wrote about it on his website, The Cleverest:Like many internet addicts, I was blown away by NVIDEO’s demo using style-based Generative Adversarial Networks to generate faces. They seem to have crossed a threshold for generating artificial images that can genuinely fool our brains.Flash forward to last week when I saw Philip Wang’s amazing single-serving website thispersondoesosxist.com.It was fascinating to see a photo-realistic face of someone that doesn’t exist. Philip’s writeup does a great job explaining his motivations and this implications behind this groundbreaking technology.But I just wanted to turn it into hot or not.So I wrote a script to download an image from thispersondoesnotexist.com every 5 seconds and built up a collection of around two thousand fake people. Then I made a voting system with php/MySQL and some filters to show the highest and lowest rated faces. And I enabled comments just for fun. Read the rest

Recent rains have put this 'Glory Hole' into use for the first time since 2017.California's Lake Berryessa has an awesome overflow spillway built to relive the Monticello Dam known as a 'Glory Hole' -- essentially a drain that high water levels will activate. Read the rest

A 76-year-old-man was carrying an original Picasso in a large shopping bag while traveling by train in Germany. He tucked it under his seat, but when he changed trains he forgot all about it, leaving it behind. The 10-inch-high piece was a ceramic vase that was part of Picasso's "Owl" series made in the South of France in 1953. It's worth at least $11,000. According to CNN:Carrying his precious cargo in a large shopping bag, the 76-year-old man was traveling from Kassel in central Germany to the western city of Dusseldorf on February 15...According to German police, the owner contacted the crew immediately after departing the train. But despite a search, the vase was nowhere to be seen.Police described the incident as a case of "monumental forgetfulness" and said the vase had been pinched by an "unknown culprit." They called on witnesses to come forward. #bpol https://t.co/9MV1W5T9tF BPOL NRW: Teure VergesslichkeitPablo Picassos "Le Hibou" im Zug von unbekannten Täter unterschlagen— Bundespolizei NRW (@bpol_nrw) February 26, 2019 Read the rest

From the latest issue of Ali Griswold's Oversharing, a newsletter about the sharing economy: scooters have an average lifetime of a month or less, and the startups are losing money on every scooter they buy. Griswold used publicly available data sets from Louisville, KY to calculate how long scooters last before they stop generating revenue.At the rates calculated above, that company only recoups $65 to $75 on the cost of each scooter—in other words, it loses $295 to $285 per scooter. That doesn’t even include the $50 annual fee per dockless vehicle, the $3,000 in combined licensing fees, or the $100 fee for each designated parking area. Plug in the $551 sticker price for a scooter, and the losses are even greater.Image: bakdc/Shutterstock Read the rest

I can not wait to give this small LEGO Star Wars set to my daughter.The kit includes some great minifigs: R2, C3P0, and a really nice Stormtrooper, however I'm most excited about the escape pod.At 177 pieces this set will be a short activity for her, but for less than $20 delivered I can't pass it up.LEGO Star Wars: A New Hope Escape Pod vs. Dewback Microfighters 75228 Building Kit via Amazon Read the rest

Césares de Roma is a project to make hyperrealist sculptures of Roman emperors using existing portraits and sculptures as referencesThe latest creation is a silicone bust of Nerón Claudio César Augusto Germanicus, aka Nero, who wreaked havoc from 54 to 68 AD.and Nero:https://t.co/NgLIGISrze pic.twitter.com/aIzp79L9eW— Tom Harwood (@tomhfh) February 27, 2019Image: YouTube Read the rest

A Chinese high schooler purchased a handwriting robot to draw Chinese characters for her homework. When her mother discovered the machine, she destroyed it. These devices are available online for about $100.From Inquisitr:In China, students are often burdened with the task of writing complex characters over and over in order to learn them. It appears that the girl digitized her handwriting and had the robot complete her work for her. Predictably, the girl finished her homework in record time. All seemed to go well for the girl. That is, until her mom found the machine while cleaning her room and promptly destroyed it.The exact model of the robot is unnamed, but known robots that can “write” look like a square box with a black arm that holds a pen or pencil. For example, there’s a U.S. company called Bond that uses robots that can write in what looks like human handwriting. Some of these machines come with handwriting that’s already loaded onto the hardware, while others allow you to customize the handwriting.Image: Yoycart Read the rest

After a winter dump that left an area of Durango, Colorado with 80" of snow, one small dog got stuck. No matter what he did (including high jumps) he couldn't move forward. But that's what buddies are for. His bigger canine friend clears a trail for him, leading him back to his human. Read the rest

Last week, residents of a Sammamish, Washington neighborhood woke up to racist graffiti, including swastikas and the n-word, on their homes and garages. (Video report below.) Now, it seems the perpetrators returned to spray-paint an apology. From KIRO 7:“More graffiti was found at Klahanie Park. It was a couple different things,” King County Sheriff’s Sergeant Ryan Abbott told KIRO Radio. “First it was the word spray-painted ‘Sorry’, and then next to that there was another spray-paint — it was hard to read — that read, ‘Not hate, just’ something, and then another ‘Sorry.'”It’s in the same red spray paint as before,” Sergeant Abbott said, “and they were just trying to say that they didn’t mean any hate by their tags, which of course were offensive as you had read, but now they’re updating it to say this..."Police are continuing to investigate. They’re hoping that surveillance video will provide additional information. Read the rest

MGM and Mattel are developing a live-action movie based on the iconic View-Master stereo viewer. This news comes on the heels of the two companies' announcement of an American Girl film based on the insanely popular doll brand. From Hollywood Reporter:“Since the 1940s, View-Master has inspired wonder and joy in children of all ages, creating huge opportunities for storytelling,” said Brenner in a statement. “MGM Pictures has tremendous expertise and a proven track record in capturing audiences’ imagination through film, and we’re proud to be partnering with them to bring another Mattel franchise to theaters. This marks another important milestone as we transform Mattel into an IP-driven, high-performing toy company.”Stated Jonathan Glickman, MGM's motion picture group president: “View-Master was the first device that allowed families all over the world to escape their reality and take them places they never thought they could go. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Mattel to create a family adventure integrating the old school turn and click stereotypic device with the modern world of virtual reality.”(Thanks, Jason Tester!) Read the rest

Intruders crept into a crypt at Dublin, Ireland's St. Michan's Church, decapitated an 800-year-old mummy and ran off with the head. The Garda Síochána (Irish police) ask that anyone with information about the missing head or those who did the decapitating, please contact them. From CNN:The mummy is thought to be a soldier who fought in the Crusades, a series of eight expeditions sanctioned by the Church between the 11th and 13th centuries, which resulted in a religious war between Christians and Muslims.Intruders turned the body over while removing its head, and also desecrated the 400-year-old remains of a nun, according to the Church.The vandalism, which is being investigated by police, was discovered on Monday as a guide was preparing to open the church.From the New York Times:St. Michan’s attracts around 28,000 paying visitors a year, who come to tour its small but historically significant interior, which includes the organ on which George Frideric Handel wrote his “Messiah” oratorio, and view the mummified bodies in their open coffins.In the last century, visitors were even allowed to shake the Crusader’s leathery hand “for good luck..."Another section of the crypt was sealed after being vandalized in 1996 by three teenagers who broke in, dragged corpses into the churchyard and played football with the head of a little girl.image at top: "mummies in the St Michan’s Church crypt" by Jennifer Boyer Read the rest

Raf Grassetti, the Sony Art Director behind God of War's look, is painting realistic portraits of characters from Smash Bros. Ultimate. Some are charming, such as Princess Peach. One the other hand, there's always Sonic...Via Metafilter. Read the rest

Sandy Allen on how Marie Kondo helped them shed feminine things.I donated it all. I hung and folded the items that remained: flannel shirts, baggy jeans, t-shirts. I had kept a few dresses and heels and feminine winter coats, ones that had seemed really special when I’d bought them. I knew Marie Kondo wouldn’t have approved of my choice to keep them. Each day I passed them and they stared right back at me.During the months that followed, I steadily shed feminine things. One day, all my makeup: gone. Another day, all my earrings: gone. (My ears had been pierced when I was two!) I tried to do as Marie Kondo said and thanked these items for what they’d given me. I guiltily threw them out, and then felt wonderful. Read the rest

Virtually everyone who's ever had the credit-rating system explained to them immediately understood that this was a complete scam: these companies that most of us have never heard of nonconsensually ingest gigantic mountains of data about you and your life and produce a numeric score that is nearly impossible to explain and extremely frustrating to alter, and that number is used to determine your access to work, rental accommodations, loans, mortgages and more. And that's before you factor in the history of these companies, rooted in the idea of compiling secret dossiers to destroy the lives of political dissidents, activists, queer people, and other downtrodden people. And it's also before you factor in Equifax's monumental security blunder that leaked the most sensitive and personal data of virtually every adult American, as well as millions in other countries around the world. Enter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made an art out of using her committee time to ask the kinds of pointed questions that reveal the extent to which the system is rigged and corrupt, and has been for a very long time (it's no wonder that corporate lobbyists dread approaching her). At a Tuesday meeting of the House Financial Services Committee, AOC grilled Equifax CEO Mark Begor over the business's practices, laying out the case against the credit reporting industry with just a few simple questions: first setting the scene by establishing that there is no way for Americans to opt out of having their data amassed by the bureaux, and then firebombing it by pointing out that 20% of Americans -- millions and millions of people -- have had substantial errors in those dossiers, with potentially life-ruining consequences. Read the rest

Blessed are the water main bursts, and the heavy rains. Reportedly taken at the Culinary Institute of Aerica in St Helena, California. [via] Read the rest