Boing Boing

I'm not even a knowledgeable layperson when it comes to storage technology, but I enjoyed reading Chris Siebenmann's post about how m.2 solid-state drives became standard. Just three years ago, it seems, people in the know expected another standard, u.2, to replace the aging SATA hookups anyone who built a PC in the 21st century will know well. But m.2. won, at least with consumers. Pictured above is a photo of an m.2 SSD resting on top of a u.2. SSD, from PCPer.Technology change and failed standards are not exactly new to the PC world, but for me this is still an interesting and impressive example of it in action. U.2 was the obvious thing in the middle of 2015, and then two years later it had just disappeared completely. ... While U.2 theoretically makes it easier to have larger NVMe SSDs, my impression is that in the consumer market the largest limiting factor on SSD sizes is how much people have been willing to pay for them. This certainly is the case for me.He lays out some of the m.2 advantages, such as compatibility with SATA and laptop-friendliness, but the thing that strikes me is how incomprehensible it is to some that m.2 won out. Siebenman links to u.2.'s wikipedia article. The article includes a "comparison to m.2" section that sounds like it's about to burst into tears...... and yet to me it's obvious. Why would anyone prefer a bulky, case-bound SSD with thick double-decker connectors and annoying rubbery cables over one that looks just like a wee stick of RAM — and slots right into the motherboard in similarly convenient fashion? Read the rest

Facebook is asking new users to give it the passwords to their email accounts as the price of entry, reports The Daily Beast.Facebook users are being interrupted by an interstitial demanding they provide the password for the email account they gave to Facebook when signing up. “To continue using Facebook, you’ll need to confirm your email,” the message demands. “Since you signed up with [email address], you can do that automatically …”A form below the message asked for the users’ “email password.”“That’s beyond sketchy,” security consultant Jake Williams told the Daily Beast. “They should not be taking your password or handling your password in the background. If that’s what’s required to sign up with Facebook, you’re better off not being on Facebook.”At this point, the most unsettling thing about Facebook is that it keeps churning out the apologies and promises as it descends to abuses that would have seems impossible to get away with even a few years ago. It's a wolf with a tiny, creepy sheep mask balanced on its snout that far too many journalists feel bound to respect. One of the most nauseating things online is writers who are scathing about Facebook on social media but whose published journalism takes everything it says in steeple-fingered good faith. Twitter, the bar next to the public defenders' office. Read the rest

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Li'l William Barr issues his classroom book reports, and lawyers up his summaries

What's an outlaw comic? Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg attempt to answer that question as they examine this misunderstood comic book subgenre. Outlaws comics are a strain of offensive, ink-drenched, violence-soaked indie comics began to spread through the direct market in the 80s and 90s. These comics featured nightmarish visions of graphic torment far beyond the vanilla, Comics-Code-approved 4-color fantasies. Welcome to comic book hell!SUPPLEMENTAL LINKS:Ed and Jim highlight Bootleg Comics Tim VigilFaust 1Faust Love of the Damned movie trailerBenjamin MarraTerror AssaulterAmerican BloodTraditional Comics ad Lawrence HubbardReal Deal ComixJason KarnsFukitorHart D. Fisher Boneyard Press ad:Subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel.Cartoonist Kayfabe merchandise available at our Spreadshop Read the rest

Starting in 1974, illustrator Marilyn Church has spent her workdays in court. Church is a courtroom artist who masterfully captures the intensity, drama, and strangeness of high profile proceedings involving John Gotti, Martha Stewart, OJ Simpson, David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, and even Donald Trump. From an interview with Church in Topic:How and when did you begin working as a courtroom artist?It was 1974. I had been doing fashion illustration, which is really based on drawing gestures and being very quick to get everything down.I had a lawyer friend who was covering a big case, and he told me that there were these artists, hired by television channels, sitting there drawing in court. I was not really a television watcher, so this was a revelation to me. So I turned on a news program and it was the first time I saw a courtroom drawing on television. I was so thrilled to see it, because I can remember seeing drawings in Life magazine when I was young, courtroom drawings, and thinking, God, how exciting. An artist can sit in court, draw some life, and watch these amazing cases happen.So, right away I just thought, I can do that. I know I can do that. I showed up in court the next day. You were in the courtroom with Donald Trump a couple of times—for the 1986 USFL v. NFL case, and also his 1992 divorce from Ivana. Can you tell me a little bit about the experience of drawing Trump? Read the rest

Mitch Wagner attended an Intel press and analyst event today where he spotted these notices "posted discreetly in a couple of places on the walls": at first glance, they seem like your garden-variety abusive bullshit release ("Abandon hope all ye who enter here") but there's a decidedly Vessel-esque clause that seems to be saying that Intel claims the copyright in any photo or video in which any of the event appears, even "distorted in character or form, throughout the world, in all media now known or hereafter invented." This is some next-level bullshit. Read the rest

Patagonia's iconic "power vest" is a favorite for co-branded company swag, but the company has quietly enacted a new policy that shuts out h oil, drilling, dam construction, etc. companies" as well as some "financial institutions" on the grounds that they are "environmentally damaging."Instead, the company is partnering with mission-oriented B-corps, and companies engaged in "outdoor sports that are relevant to the gear we design, regenerative organic farming, and environmental activism."Patagonia has become explicitly political in the years since the Trump election, backing an organization whose mission is to defend public lands with the fervor of the NRA. The company has always advocated for democratic fundamentals, giving employees the day off on election days.Kim, president of the communications agency Vested (the reference is to the finance term, not the sleeveless layer), attempted to place an order for a client, something her firm had done in the past through a reseller for Patagonia’s corporate sales.But she got back a rejection email from the reseller saying, “Patagonia has nothing against your client or the finance industry, it’s just not an area they are currently marketing through our co-brand division. While they have co-branded here in the past, the brand is really focused right now on only co-branding with a small collection of like-minded and brand aligned areas; outdoor sports that are relevant to the gear we design, regenerative organic farming, and environmental activism.” Patagonia, the person said, is “reluctant to co-brand with oil, drilling, dam construction, etc. Read the rest

Wholesome content to brighten up your internet right here.Get a load of this adorable dog having a happy dream.What's he dreaming about?My dogs do this, too. I love it so much.Happy dreams Read the rest

Just as pretty much everyone predicted, one week after Facebook made a big deal of banning white nationalist and white separatist content on its platform.... Facebook now says a viral video on its site which is obviously and explicitly white supremacist and toxic does not break Facebook's new policy. It's explicitly white supremacist content. No, this does not make any sense. Welcome to 2019.“HuffPost showed the company a racist, fear-mongering video by Faith Goldy. Not a problem, a spokesperson said.”From Huffington Post's Andy Campbell [Twitter]:Now it’s unclear what that new policy actually means, if anything. On Tuesday, HuffPost showed a Facebook spokesperson a video on Facebook in which prominent Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy laments white “replacement” and demands that Jews and people of color repay the white European countries they’ve “invaded.” The spokesperson said that no policy had been broken, not even the social media giant’s new policy banning the promotion or praise of white nationalism.In a much-discussed move last week, Facebook had issued a statement declaring that its policies banning white supremacist ideology and hate groups weren’t enough. The company said it would add “praise or support for white nationalism and white separatism” to the list of things that violate its terms of service, and noted that those rules would extend to Instagram, which it owns.“We didn’t originally apply the same rationale to expressions of white nationalism and white separatism because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism — things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people’s identity,” the company wrote in its March 27 press release. Read the rest

The action was brought in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, against DNI Dan Coats, CIA Director Gina Haspel, NSA Director Paul Nakasone, and Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

“I cut people. I got a knife right in that pocketbook,” Carpenter said, gesturing toward her seat.

Joe Hughes found this long forgotten treasure of an old VHS video. It was filmed by his grandfather.This has been sitting in my Grandfathers VHS collection for decades, and I don't believe it has ever been shown to the publicWhen filming the "Jock! Start the Engine!" scene, the production of Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark rented a plane from my Grandfathers neighbor (who was a good piloting friend as well). His family was there filming during the trip to Hawaii, and captured a lot of behind the scenes footage of the creation of the small moment. This upload is for educational purposes. It is amazing the ups and downs the whole process took, and it must have taken a very large budget for such a small moment. I will soon have a commentary track with my grandfather to provide more details. I mean really, they wrecked the plane and had to repair it. It's quite the story.Converted from original VHS by doily0 on Reddit if that works for proof. Read the rest

"The Comedian" is the first episode of Jordan Peele's long awaited, hotly anticipated reboot of "The Twilight Zone." Peele's reboot is perfect, absolutely faithful to Rod Serling's love of complexity, comeuppance, and ambiguity. Love this. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

Following director Joseph Berlinger's Netflix docu-series "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes," he brings us "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile," a Ted Bundy biopic starring Zac Efron as the alluring and horrible serial killer. The story is apparently told from the viewpoint of Bundy's girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer, played by Lily Collins.Coming to Netflix on May 3. Read the rest

The epic battle inside YouTube over content moderation and recommendation algorithms is detailed brilliantly in a damning new report from Mark Bergen at Bloomberg News.New story: I spent weeks talking to folks who've worked at YouTube (and Google) about how the company has wrestled with recommendations, conspiracy theories and radicalism. https://t.co/FHmpHPyaz3— Mark Bergen (@mhbergen) April 2, 2019Bottom line: YouTube failed to moderate extremely harmful content on its platform, and we are all paying the price. "Scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the world’s largest video site surfaced and spread... Each time they got the same basic response: Don’t rock the boat."Executives sacrificed everything for engagement, allowing conspiracies and disinfo campaigns to spread, and killing proposals from workers that would have changed the technology that recommends these toxic videos, staff say.Excerpt:The conundrum isn’t just that videos questioning the moon landing or the efficacy of vaccines are on YouTube. The massive “library,” generated by users with little editorial oversight, is bound to have untrue nonsense. Instead, YouTube’s problem is that it allows the nonsense to flourish. And, in some cases, through its powerful artificial intelligence system, it even provides the fuel that lets it spread.Wojcicki and her deputies know this. In recent years, scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the world’s largest video site surfaced and spread. Read the rest

A collection of comics all-stars (including Scott Snyder, Kelly Thompson, David Lafuente, Ariela Kristiantina, Jamal Igle, Devin Grayson, Joe Keatinge, Doselle Young, Marguerite Sauvage, Ron Marz, Stuart Moore, Shannon Wheeler, Steven Grant, Roger Langridge, Matt Miner, Ray Fawkes, CW Cooke, Alex de Campi, Carla Speed McNeil, Kelly Williams, Emma Beeby and more) come together for Every Day: An Anti-Gun Violence Comics Anthology to benefit The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Community Justice Reform Coalition; $10 gets you a digital download, $20 gets you a paperback, and if you're a retailer, there are bulk-buy packages so you can stock it in your store. (Thanks, Doselle!) Read the rest

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh is now being investigated by the state prosecutor over questions of corruption surrounding sales of her self-published children’s book series, 'Healthy Holly.'JUST IN: Health insurer Kaiser Permanente paid Baltimore Mayor Pugh more than $100,000 for “Healthy Holly” books during a time when it sought a lucrative city contract. https://t.co/eziPrQrSkA— The Baltimore Sun (@baltimoresun) April 1, 2019"Kaiser Permanente paid Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh more than $100,000 to buy about 20,000 copies of her 'Healthy Holly' children’s books...when the company was seeking a lucrative contract to provide health benefits to city employees," according to The Baltimore Sun.UPDATED: Kaiser Permanente, Associated Black Charities paid Baltimore Mayor Pugh almost $200K for 'Healthy Holly' books In addition to the Kaiser payments, ABC solicited nearly $90K from multiple groups for books, most of which went to Pugh’s company:https://t.co/amUpah4WUW— Kevin Rector (@RectorSun) April 1, 2019Mayor Pugh “will be cooperating with that investigation to the fullest extent possible,” her attorney told The Baltimore Sun just now, in response to a query from a reporter about sales of Pugh's 'Healthy Holly' books to health insurer Kaiser Permanente and the nonprofit organization Associated Black Charities.“As this matter is now being investigated by the state prosecutor’s office, I am not in a position to comment,” her attorney replied.Excerpt:Republican Gov. Larry Hogan asked the state prosecutor, who investigates public corruption, on Monday to start an investigation of books the University of Maryland Medical System bought from Pugh while she was on its board. Read the rest

Vonda N McIntyre, author of the Hugo/Nebula/Locus-winning 1979 novel Dreamsnake, founder of the Clarion West Workshop, and icon of science fiction, has died of pancreatic cancer. She was 70. Vonda and I never really met, but we were on BBSes together in the 1980s and I later taught the Clarion West workshop she founded, and she has always been a significant presence in the field.Vonda was a stalwart of both the Seattle science fiction scene and the world of feminist science fiction and was a dear friend to people I really care about in both worlds; I want to extend my most sincere condolences to all of them, and to her family.There will be a memorial in Seattle with details to come. Vonda requested that "in lieu of flowers, people make memorial donations to one of their favorite charities."Here's some of her File 770 obit, by Tom Whitmore:McIntyre wrote novels, short stories and media tie-in books, edited a groundbreaking anthology of feminist SF, and founded the Clarion West Writing Workshop. She won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for her 1979 novel Dreamsnake, and won the Nebula again for her 1996 novel The Moon and the Sun. Her short stories were also nominated for awards. In media fiction, she will probably be most remembered as the author who gave Ensign Sulu a first name (Hikaru) in her Star Trek novel The Entropy Effect: that name was later written into one of the Star Trek films. With Susan Janice Anderson, McIntyre edited one of the first feminist science fiction anthologies (Aurora: Beyond Equality, 1976). Read the rest

Democrat Bill McLeod became a civil court judge in Harris County, TX less than three months ago. Then yesterday he accidentally resigned, thanks to a stupid online post he made, in which he announced his intention of running for state supreme court. The new judge apparently wasn't aware that the Texas constitution doesn't allow for such announcements from a judge and leads to automatic resignation.According to Reuters:Article 16, Section 65, of the state’s constitution says that a judge’s announcement of candidacy for another office “shall constitute an automatic resignation of the office then held.”The county attorney’s office will present the matter to county commissioners next Tuesday, First Assistant County Attorney Robert Soard said in a phone interview on Tuesday. County commissioners, who can appoint replacements, may decide to keep McLeod in office until there is a special election, KHOU 11 reported. Read the rest

Numberphile takes a look at three interesting infinite series. The first is 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... which equals 2. The second is 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 ... which equals infinity. The third is 1 + (1/2) + (1/3) + (1/4)... which π/6 Read the rest

The host of a popular American television tabloid show will undergo surgery to remove thyroid cancer, spotted for the first time not by a doctor but by one of her regular viewers. "Inside Edition” anchor Deborah Norville says in the video above that she will soon have surgery to remove a cancerous nodule on her neck first noticed by a fan.“You know we live in a world of see something, say something. And I’m really glad we do," Norville says in the video, posted yesterday to the “Inside Edition” YouTube channel. “When you work on television, viewers comment on everything: your hair, your makeup, the dress you’re wearing. And a long time ago, an ‘Inside Edition’ viewer reached out to say she’d seen something on my neck. It was a lump."“The doctor says it’s a very localized form of cancer.” “Which tomorrow I’ll have surgery to have removed.”Norville says her oncologist has not recommended chemotherapy or radiation, “But I will have surgery and I’ll be away for a bit, so Diane [McInerney] will be holding down the fort.”Some 50,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with thyroid cancer each year. More at USA Today and New York Daily News. Read the rest

If you have an old PC or Mac machine, you can use CloudReady to run Chrome OS on it through a USB stick. It's basically like having a ChromeBook You can run thousands of Google Chrome apps on it, and watch all the streaming services. This video shows you how to do it. Read the rest

The inimitable Robert Smith on the red carpet following The Cure's induction last week into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.Here's their performance: Read the rest

One lucky fellow flying from Lithuania to Italy had a Boeing 737-800 all to himself. A travel agency had bought up all the seats in the plane, thinking it would charter the plane for a group that was headed back to Italy. But only one man – Skirmantas Strimaitis – bought a ticket, according to Huffington Post.He had five crew members doting on him throughout the two hour flight, and all the room he wanted. As he told the Associated Press, it was “a once in the lifetime experience." He looks mighty happy in the Twitter pic below.Lithuanian Man Discovers He’s Lone Passenger On Huge Plane - VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — A Lithuanian man flying to Italy got a pleasant surprise when he boarded the plane: He was the only passenger on the Boeing 737-800.Skirmantas Strimaitis, who was flying from capital Vilnius... pic.twitter.com/4sC6bH7Try— effinfun (@effinfun) April 2, 2019Image: pxhere/CC0 Public Domain Read the rest

Indonesia government officials are shutting down tourist visits to Komodo Island for 2020 because smugglers are stealing the fantastic Komodo dragons and selling them on the black market. All next year, conservationists will focus on boosting the dragon population and habitat preservation. From CNN:Though plans to limit the number of Komodo visitors have been under discussion for months, Tempo reports the closure comes in response to the March bust of an alleged smuggling ring in which 41 Komodo lizards were taken from the island and sold abroad for 500 million rupiah each (about $35,000)...Part of the UNESCO-listed Komodo National Park, Komodo Island has grown increasingly popular in recent years thanks to the addition of new flights and hotels in the nearby town of Labuan Bajo on the island of Flores. The park currently receives an average of 10,000 visitors per month.According to UNESCO figures, there are more than 5,000 dragons spread across the national park's islands of Komodo, Rinca, Gili Motong and some coastal regions of western and northern Flores.(image: UNESCO) Read the rest

In 1979, the USS Enterprise flew onto the big screen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Without giving away too much of the plot, NASA's Voyager probes, launched in 1977, featured prominently in the film. Of course, the Voyager probes carry the Voyager Golden Record, the iconic message for extraterrestrials that my friends Timothy Daly, Lawrence Azerrad, and I released on vinyl for the first time as a lavish box set.While the Voyager Record isn't mentioned in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I was still delighted when my old pal Ariel Waldman invited me on to her wonderful talk show Offworld, on Adam Savage's Tested channel, to talk about Voyager, the Golden Record, and the heady, awkward, and pretty great Star Trek: The Motion Picture! Even more exciting is that the other guest was Frank Drake, father of the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the technical director of the original Voyager Golden Record! Far out.The Voyager Golden Record 3xLP Vinyl Box Set and 2xCD-Book edition is available from Ozma Records.Below: Frank and I scrying with his original copy of the Voyager Record cover. Read the rest

Microsoft has a DRM-locked ebook store that isn't making enough money, so they're shutting it down and taking away every book that every one of its customers acquired effective July 1.Customers will receive refunds.This puts the difference between DRM-locked media and unencumbered media into sharp contrast. I have bought a lot of MP3s over the years, thousands of them, and many of the retailers I purchased from are long gone, but I still have the MP3s. Likewise, I have bought many books from long-defunct booksellers and even defunct publishers, but I still own those books.When I was a bookseller, nothing I could do would result in your losing the book that I sold you. If I regretted selling you a book, I didn't get to break into your house and steal it, even if I left you a cash refund for the price you paid. People sometimes treat me like my decision not to sell my books through Amazon's Audible is irrational (Audible will not let writers or publisher opt to sell their books without DRM), but if you think Amazon is immune to this kind of shenanigans, you are sadly mistaken. My books matter a lot to me. I just paid $8,000 to have a container full of books shipped from a storage locker in the UK to our home in LA so I can be closer to them. The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I can imagine: if the publishing industry deliberately set out to destroy any sense of intrinsic, civilization-supporting value in literary works, they could not have done a better job. Read the rest

At the end of 2019 first quarter fundraising for his campaign, would-be Democratic Party 2020 Presidential nominee Bernie Sanders has raised $18.2 million from 525,000 small-money donors (I'm one of them; I also gave to the Elizabeth Warren campaign).The average donation was $20.Sanders is the fundraising frontrunner, beating out Kamala Harris ($12m) and Pete Buttigieg ($7m) (Beto O'Rourke's campaign has not released its totals yet).Sanders' campaign said the makeup of their donors puts the Vermont independent in a good position to continue raking in contributions as the campaign heats up and they begin to set down stakes in new states. Shakir reported that 88% of the total came from donations of $200 or less and that 99.5% of donations were for $100 or less. The majority of donors were young, he said, and that the occupation most likely to give were teachers.Bernie Sanders raises $18.2 million during first 41 days of his 2020 campaign [Gregory Krieg and Fredreka Schouten/CNN](Image: Gage Skidmore) Read the rest

LEGO has released a wonderful diorama of the San Francisco skyline!Sadly, the San Francisco skyline is now dominated by the giant Salesforce tower, atleast until the Millenium tower falls into it.LEGO Architecture Skyline Collection 21043 San Francisco Building Kit , New 2019 (565 Piece) via Amazon Read the rest

The 2019 Hugo Award nominees have been announced; the Hugos will be presented this summer at the 2019 World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland.Normally, I find that I've read and reviewed a huge slice of the year's finalists, but this year is different; I've done a lot less reading lately, partly because I wrote two books in 2018 and partly because the new EU Copyright Directive ate my life for about 10 months in the past year.I was a little sad to be so far behind the curve when I saw the new list, but then I realized that this meant that I had a bunch of really exciting books to add to my to-be-read pile!One notable inclusion: the Archive of Our Own fanfic archive -- a project of the Organization for Transformative Works (for whose advisory board I volunteer) -- is up for "Best Related Work."Congrats to all the nominees!Best Novel* The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)* Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager)* Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)* Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente (Saga)* Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey / Macmillan)* Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga)Best Novella* Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)* Beneath the Sugar Sky, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)* Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com Publishing)* The Black God’s Drums, by P. Read the rest

The Soviet Synthpop Alliance is jam-packed with music that sounds familiar but isn't.The video is just too awesome.(Thanks, Charlie!) Read the rest

When you've got somewhere to go, but someone's in your way waiting for a parking spot to clear, what can you do about it? If you're a traffic cop with the NYPD and answerable to no-one, this is what you do: ram them.An NYPD spokesperson said the traffic supervisor appeared disoriented and was taken to a hospital for evaluation. Police sources say he was not intoxicated.The owner of the parked truck said he doesn't believe the incident was the result of a medical episode.The incident remains under internal review. So far no charges have been filed. Read the rest

Color Splash is an "automated AI enabled room painting technology" — which is to say, they gave a bot a bucket of paint and arms to throw it. I want one! Read the rest

Martin Shkreli, infamous for hiking the prices of life-saving drugs and jailed on unrelated fraud charges, is in solitary confinement. The Wall Street Journal reported that he was running businessess from inside using a contraband phone.One source close to Shkreli’s legal team said the fraudster was in the special housing unit (SHU) a week and a half after the article was published on March 7, but the source had not received an update on his status. But according to Justin Liverman, a fellow inmate and ex-member of notorious hacker crew Crackas With Attitude, Shkreli was indeed put in solitary and was still there as of Sunday. “Martin is in the SHU,” Liverman told Forbes.According to the Journal, Shkreli was operating his business, Phoenixus AG, via a cellphone. The company appears to be a reincarnation of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, which jacked up the prices of rare drugs to the fury of patients, doctors and insurers. In one of the worst examples, Turing increased the cost of a pill for patients with HIV/AIDS from $13.50 to $750. Read the rest

The Drug Policy Alliance's Anthony Papa celebrates the reforms of the terrible Rockefeller drug laws of 2009.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Bärí A. Williams, Medium's head of trust and safety, conducted a long, wide-ranging interview with senior content moderation staffers with experience at Dropbox, Google, Facebook, Reddit, Pintrest, and many unnamed platforms; the interview is very frank and reveals a group of people with a deep, real-world commitment to protecting users as well as defending free speech.This raises an important question: why are the platforms so terrible at moderation? How is it that they get so much wrong, allowing so much harassment and also blocking so much legitimate speech?The answer is there, if you read between the lines. On the one hand, the platforms are so big that even small error rates affect lots of people: a 1% error rate in blocking 500m tweets/day is 5m tweets/day. On the other hand, the platforms give preference to product teams ("product people want to live in optimism, in an idealized vision of how people will use the product, not the ways that people will predictably break it") over the moderation and safety teams. Y.X. Yang: Sometimes other people in the company ask, “Did you know this was going to happen?” Yes, and we told the product team a year ago that if they did X, Y would happen, and because of the priorities at the time, the product manager went and did the thing anyway. It’s like, “But that’s okay, we’ll help you through this mess.”Adam: “Six months ago we told you, ‘Don’t pave the city with banana peels.’ You decided, ‘Let’s see what happens if we pave the city with banana peels.’ We are now here to clean up the injuries.”Vanessa: As with many roles focused on the larger good, it’s important to catch yourself when you’re walking around the company self-righteously and being like, “You’re welcome for being your conscience and heart and soul and working hard on the things that you’re not paying attention to.”Your Speech, Their Rules: Meet the People Who Guard the Internet [Bärí A. Read the rest

Enjoy Sverker Löding, Stefan Helin and William Forsberg make good use of an abandoned (but conscpicuously well-kept) wool factory before it gets turned into condos or turned into an Investigation Discovery Channel host's segue lair.This is one of my favourite indoor places I've ever filmed. A big old wool factory in the middle of nowhere. Just wanted to keep this edit very simple and real. Just pure skateboarding, sound and a very nice looking location.Filmed with BMPCC 4K in BRAW, Milvus 21mm on Ronin-S.Kristoffer Davidsson used the new 4k Blackmagic "Pocket" Cinema Camera, which is amazingly inexpensive for a credible production camera and produces great footage—but has some of the same practical shortcomings as its predecessor: tough to use without a rig, poor battery life, etc. They can't produce enough to meet demand, unfortunately, so they're selling far over MSRP on eBay and craigslist. Read the rest

Are you in Chicago? Do you want 70, washed, empty Popeye Spinach cans? Craigslist has you covered: "Stacked in a pyramid, they look like a modern art masterpiece one might find at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I ate a bunch of spinach years ago and never threw the cans away, if you’re wondering WTF." (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

Martin Shkreli's poor impulse control continues to land him in terrible trouble: his price-gouging on lifesaving drugs didn't land him in prison, but his profligate boasting about it did (to say nothing of the revocation of his bail after he put a bounty on Hillary Clinton's hair follicles).After Shrekli went to prison, his company started to hemorrhage money, alarming the grifter so severely that he acquired an illicit cellular phone and used it to run his business from prison, and then boasted about it, which led to a report in the Wall Street Journal that included a claim that he had fired his company's CEO from behind bars.This prompted a Federal Bureau of Prisons investigation that has resulted in Shkreli being sent to solitary confinement. He is one year into a seven-year prison sentence.Solitary confinement is classed as a form of torture by the United Nations.A source close to Shkreli’s legal team told the magazine that Shkreli was taken to Fort Dix’s special housing unit (SHU) about a week and a half after the Wall Street Journal reported that Shkreli fired Phoenixus AG’s interim CEO from behind bars.Martin Shkreli Placed in Solitary Confinement After Allegedly Running Company Behind Bars: Report [ Read the rest

The Property of the People transparency group (previously) has published another damning US intelligence file, this one a report circulated by the Regional Organized Crime Information Center (RICOC, a joint state/federal intelligence body), revealing how the US intelligence bodies advised local law enforcement after the Charlottesville white supremacist march.RICOC appears to have taken Trump's "very good people on both sides" doctrine to heart, from the report's title ("Antifa/Anti-antifa: Violence in the Streets") and through its conclusions, which claims that white supremacists are animated by an opposition to antifa, ignoring the movement's actual genocidal ambition to use ethnic cleansing to establish a "white homeland."The framing paints antifa as the antagonists, and the white supremacist terrorists -- one of whom committed a brutal murder that day -- as beset by the antifa activists. It quotes a newspaper editorial that branded the antifa protesters as terrorists. In the ROCIC report there is also no discussion of the specific groups actively organizing the Unite the Right rally not long after the report’s publication date. Neo-confederate groups such as the League of the South; neo-Nazi and Identitarian groups such as Vanguard America, the National Socialist Movement, the Rise Above Movement and Identity Evropa; and street-fighting groups such as the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights and the Proud Boys are not mentioned.All of these groups were involved in the demonstration in Charlottesville, which culminated in the killing of Heather Heyer by James Alex Fields, who marched with Vanguard America.The report also extensively sources information from conservative media and rightwing advocacy groups. Read the rest

I've got a couple of hometown appearances coming up, including a rare west-side event: on Sunday, April 7 at 4PM, I'll be at Burbank's Dark Delicacies for a final signing in their old store before they occupy their new digs around the corner, and then I'm taking off my writer hat and putting on my activist hat to do two more events in the area.On Thursday, April 11, I'm helping the San Diego Public Library celebrate its 40th anniversary with a keynote speech from 7-9PM at the Central Library's Neil Morgan Auditorium (330 Park Blvd., San Diego 92101): my theme will be " libraries as one of the few remnants of a world where people were valued because of their humanity,not their money, and how that works in the current moment of extreme inequality, epistemological incoherence, and fear of imminent collapse" (the event is free, but seating is limited; the Friends of the San Diego Public Library will hold you a seat if you pre-order a copy of my new book Radicalized from their bookstore).On Friday, April 12, I'll be at UCLA from 7-930PM for a two-part event called After Disruption, alongside Britt Paris from Data & Society, Sarah T. Roberts from the Department of Information Studies, and Saba Waheed from the UCLA Labor Center. It's sponsored by README and the LA Cryptoparty and will include "A conversation on Big Tech, the future of labor, and how systems have successfully been co-opted in the past" and "A collaborative, participatory workshop led by README and LA Cryptoparty where audience and speakers join together to re-imagine how platforms function." It's also free to attend but the organizers would like you to RSVP. Read the rest

I like these albino turtles.“What kind of pasta is this? Turtloni?”Albino turtles[via] Read the rest

Oh, he loves to be an Oscar Mayer weiner.Dexty the dachshund was enjoying a day outdoors with other weiner dogs in Southern California, at the So Cal Weinerfest.Check out the full video below, and a few other clips of Dexty enjoying the beach. View this post on Instagram This hat became a part of me guys... this is my trademark now ™️ #dadhatdexA post shared by Dexter (Dexty) 💖✨✨ (@dextythedachshund) on May 21, 2018 at 12:30pm PDT View this post on Instagram Me showing off my fit beach bod 😏🧢🏖🌊 #beachdayA post shared by Dexter (Dexty) 💖✨✨ (@dextythedachshund) on Jul 3, 2018 at 3:36pm PDT View this post on Instagram Me in the @oscarmayer Wiener Mobile at the @socalwienerfest 🌭🌭🌭 #hotdoginahotdog #wienerinceptionA post shared by Dexter (Dexty) 💖✨✨ (@dextythedachshund) on May 15, 2017 at 4:08pm PDT [videos originally published 2018] Read the rest

Making the viral rounds again this week is this extremely funny and cute video of young women who've had a few to drink, and are suddenly surprised with --- a puppy!Maybe more than one puppy at a time! What is even going on! Oh my heck!They did a dude version, too.Buzzfeed just let go of a bunch of staff, and I wonder if the folks who made this funny video still have a job. Not funny.[via IMGUR] Read the rest

Wells Fargo is America's largest bank and it also leads the nation's banks for scandals, having stolen from rich people, poor people, veterans, active-service military personnel, homeowners, small businesses, etc, as well as 2,000,000 ordinary customers who had fraudulent accounts opened in their names in order to bleed them of transaction fees, sometimes at the expense of their good credit and even their financial solvency.After handing John Stumpf (the CEO who presided over the first wave of scandals) a massive, multi-million-dollar payment to punish him for his wrongdoing, the company elevated CFO Timothy J Sloan to the CEO's chair, in the hopes that the public would believe that the former CFO could be sold as a change agent if he was enough of a bland nonentity. Unfortunately for the board, Sloan bumbled through a series of ever-more-grotesque scandals until it became evident that the board's only choice would be to make an example of him by giving him millions of dollars, too. Now he is out and the board is on the hunt for his replacement.On CNN, Matt Egan ruminates on how a criminal enterprise of the scale and notoriety of Wells Fargo can hire a leader that will allow it to continue to commit crimes without getting punished or being hated by the public. In particular, investors are anxious to find a CEO who can convince the Federal Researve to lift the company's sole meaningful punishment for its consistent wrongdoing: a cap on how big it can grow. Read the rest

Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg continue down the 1990s comic book speculation bubble:• ANIA - the Association of Black Publishers is born!• Image and Malibu breakup• Palmer's Picks: Ted McKeever, Eddy Current, Metropol, and more!• Elfquest's influence on a young Eddie P• Spawn 9 and its legacy: Todd McFarlane v Neil GaimanSupplemental Links:Neil Gaiman's 2002 depositionTodd McFarlane 2002 depositionANIA - Unsung Heroes of the Black Comics Movement,1992 CBS Evening News Feature on Omega 7 ComicsSubscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel.Cartoonist Kayfabe merchandise available at our Spreadshop Read the rest

I was just informed that it is National Sourdough Day, no fooling.I baked more sourdough this weekend. I wanted to see if my starter would come back to the reliable cycle I am used to if I treated it nice for a few days. This no-knead loaf rose very nicely for about 20 hrs.I folded the dough and put it into a linen lined banneton. I wanted to see if this would make my bread any different. For years I have been using floured banneton and getting really rustic, crusty, artisnal looking loaves. Cutting into one sends out an explosion of crumbs. I thought the linen liner might 'smooth things out.' Ha. Ha.The linen liner would, later in the weekend, nearly prove my undoing.I floured the linen pretty heavily and the loaf came out quite easily. As I would later deliver this bread into the eager hands of my daughter, spending the weekend at her moms house, I scored it with an "A" for Anarchy.The exterior looks beautiful, and the crumb was perfect for the sandwiches my child ate for dinner. The linen liner works wonders to develop a thin, even crispy and wonderful crust. You can cut this bread without leaving a small avalanche of crust behind.Later in the weekend, baking bread for a soon to arrive dinner guest I under floured the linen and had a fairly sticky loaf of bread. The loaf stuck to the liner and tore a little as I transferred from banneton to parchement paper for scoring. Read the rest

In 2007, a group of players in Runescape -- once billed as the world's most-played massively multiplayer game -- declared a Communist republic on Gielinor's Server 32, amid a revolution that saw 5,000 characters killed off in the fighting. The Gielinor republic established town councils who sent deputies to a people's parliament who advised a cabinet of 20 ministers who governed under party leader SireZaros. In 2008, a counterrevolution led by junior party member Redsteel136 deposed much of the leadership and executed them, instituting a program of market reforms. The new regime fell after the Runescape management revalued in-game items against real-world currency, leading to economic collapse.I am aware that today is April 1, and that the wiki that is thesource for this story does not appear in earlier versions on the Wayback Machine; however, based on the page's long edit history, I'm prepared to believe that this actually happened, as weird as that is.In October, the economy bottomed out at its historical low. Nevertheless, the communist party continued to hold out, hoping that the tradeable price of high-level items would eventually grow high enough to allow for an eventual economic recovery. Sadly, this was not to be. In the grip of total market collapse, the communists were incapable of extracting enough tax revenue from players to meet the clan fees necessary for them to maintain power. As the sun set on the final few days of December 2008, after almost a year of working class rule, General Secretary Redsteel136 dissolved the party and returned power to the bourgeoisie. Read the rest

OpenEmu is a free multi-platform retro video game emulator for OS X. It has emulators for Atari, Nintendo, Sega, PC, and Sony consoles. Setup is brainless Once you install it, you can drag and drop your ROM files (making sure, of course, you legally own them) into the app and start playing them. You can play the games from your keyboard, but I recommend getting a USB controller. The one I use is this Buffalo Classic USB Gamepad: To configure it, go to Preferences in OpenEmu, click Controllers, select the controller you want to emulate, then follow the prompts for which buttons to push. You'll be playing your favorite old games in no time. Check out the large library of great homebrew games that you can download directly from the app, too. Read the rest

Zuzana Caputova has just been elected to the presidency of Slovakia with 58% of the vote; the political novice rose to prominence with her campaign against a toxic waste dump in her hometown of Pezinok, which earned her the nickname "Slovakia's Erin Brockovoch."Caputova takes office amid widespread popular discontent with a corrupt national establishment that has been blamed for the murder of Jan Kucia, a journalist investigating state corruption. Tens of thousands of Slovaks demonstrated in the wake of the assassination under the banner of "Enough with Smer" (Smer is the incumbent leadership party).Caputova fought the election on corruption behind the slogan "Stand up to evil." She is now the country's fifth president since independence, and her first official act after her election was announced was to visit a shrine to Kucia and her fiance and light a candle for them. Her inaugural speech condemned the xenophobic ultra-nationalism in the region.Ján Orlovský, who heads Slovakia's Open Society Foundations, told NPR at the time, "We have lots of these skeletons in the closet, which we need to address and one of the skeletons is corruption."Caputova, a vocal participant in the protests that rocked the country, has promised to tackle corruption head-on. Casting herself as the anti-corruption candidate with the campaign slogan "stand up to evil," she vowed to shake-up the political establishment, which she says is currently run "by people pulling strings from behind." The 'Erin Brockovich of Slovakia' Is Elected The Country's First Female President [Rebecca Ellis/KGOU](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Ivodo, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest