Boing Boing

Last Saturday night both my 11-year old daughter and I really enjoyed DC's new Shazam!True to my memories of the Shazam/Captain Marvel of my youth, but much, much more fun, Shazam! delivered on the 2 or so hours of entertainment you expect from a movie.Unlike every other DC movie we've seen.I liked Wonder Woman, my kid fell asleep. The rest of the DC universe films have been such trash we shut them off after a few minutes. My kid would rather watch YouTube garbage. I would rather watch 1970s tv intos.NOT SO WITH THIS SHAZAM!Shazam! is a rollicking good time and the kid actors are wonderful. Faithe Herman as Darla, and Jack Dylan Glazer's Freddy were wonderful co-foster kids in the home with Billy Batson. Asher Angel's Billy Batson is significantly more mature than Zachary Levi's Captain Marvel, but they pull it off where it counts.They never use the name Captain Marvel even tho we all pretty much share a name with someone more well known. Read the rest

In a recent scientific study on overactive urinary bladder syndrome, researchers used the term "latchkey incontinence" to describe "the loss of urine that occurs when one arrives home and puts the key in the lock of one’s front door." From MEL Magazine:According to Jamin Brahmbhatt, a urologist in Florida, peeing is a much more complex dance between the mind and body than you might think. “The ability to control how you urinate requires a balance between the muscles and your nerves around your bladder and your urethra working in synch,” he explains. “Some of these functions happen automatically, and some require manual control by the muscles that you naturally control. So when urine is filling up inside your bladder, your bladder naturally expands. When you go to the bathroom, your sphincter around your urethra will relax and your bladder will start to squeeze. This process sounds simple, but it does require the muscles around your urethra, which we call your pelvic floor, to all work and synch.”He continues, “To keep your bladder healthy, I recommend my patients empty their bladder before they start having extreme ‘got-to-go’ feelings. There’s only so much the bladder can tolerate, and this process gets more complicated with the presence of a prostate, which naturally grows as men get older. All these processes can also be affected by diabetes, strokes, infections and many other medical problems.” Read the rest

Legendary singer Scott Walker, whose journey as a musician took him from blue-eyed soul to baroque pop to heady avant-garde experimentalism, has died at age 76. Walker counted the likes of Radiohead, Pulp, Julian Cope, and Sunn O))) as fans and collaborators. From an obituary released by Walker's record label 4AD:Noel Scott Engel (later known as Scott Walker) was born in 1943, the son of an Ohio geologist. He began his career as a session bassist, changing his name when he joined The Walker Brothers. The 1960s trio enjoyed a meteoric rise, especially in Britain, where hits like 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore’ attracted a following to rival that of The Beatles.But the superstar lifestyle and fame was not for Scott. As an only child, he had grown up in the kind of rich, slow solitude in which imagination could flourish, and he retreated from the limelight, returning as a solo artist to release a string of critically acclaimed albums, Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and Scott 4. He disappeared until the late 1970’s, when The Walker Brothers re-joined for their last album together and then a solo album in the 80’s.Another long silence and Scott then re-emerged in the 90’s and onwards with lyric-driven works that deconstructed music into elemental soundscapes. Drawing on politics, war, plague, torture, and industrial harshness, Scott’s apocalyptic epics used silence as well as real-world effects and pared-back vocals to articulate the void. Sometimes gothic and eerie, often sweepingly cinematic, always strikingly visual, his works reached for the inexpressible, emerging from space as yearnings in texture and dissonance. Read the rest

From TMeeks01:This bit of ancient animation history was programmed in GW-Basic on a Mindset Computer.The "live" sets included full size props, such as the typewriter and schoolroom desk, and doll house furniture, such as the paintings and the easel. Overlays were accomplished by partially drawing the figures, rather than chromakeying the live shot, cutting away part of the character around a prop that was to be in the foreground.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

A British Airways flight from London City Airport headed off to Dusseldorf, in Germany. Unfortunately for those aboard, it landed safely in Edinburgh, Scotland due to a "mix up". That's 350 miles in completely the wrong direction.Officials say the pilot followed the flight plan for Edinburgh, and that air traffic control officials also were following the same flight plan and saw nothing amiss.They refueled the plane. Then they flew it to Dusseldorf. Read the rest

Tuesday morning at 10am ET the House Communications and Technology subcommittee will meet and vote on the Save the Internet Act – the best bill we have to restore net neutrality. As soon as the hearing begins you’ll be able to watch the livestream here:CONTACT CONGRESSUnfortunately telecom lobbyists are working overtime to convince committee lawmakers to add dangerous amendments that could completely gut the bill and leave gaping loopholes for Internet providers to block, throttle, and charge users new fees for access.To pass a clean bill with no bad amendments we need everyone to call their members of Congress and make sure they know the whole Internet is watching.If we get the bill out of committee without any bad amendments, then we have a solid shot of winning the next big vote on the House floor in the week of April 8. But if the bill gets gutted, we’re back to square one.Call your lawmakers ASAP and demand they vote for a clean bill to restore net neutrality. Read the rest

UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol) is a venerable, non-hierarchical networking protocol that was used as transport for early email and Usenet message boards; its intrinsic decentralization and its cooperative nature (UUCP hosts store and forward messages for one another) make it a kind of symbol of the early, decentralized robustness that characterized the early net and inspired so much optimism about a fundamentally distributed arrangement of peers rising up to replace the top-down phone companies and other centralized systems.As part of the decentralized web movement, UUCP has been rebooted by Dataforge, a Fort Worth, Texas-based "hybrid shell provider/tilde server" whose proprietor Wesley "praetor" Banderia uses his decades of Unix systems administration to keep the system running on a cluster of lovingly maintained vintage SGI machines with a Google Cloud VPS for backup.Dataforge's UUCP is encrypted by default using ssh (you could also adapt it to run over TLS) with GPG signing for the content layer. Banderia is seeking other hosts to peer with his system (the system has four peers at present). From the UUCP manifesto: "We are a dedicated group of artists, system operators, nerds, geeks, nostalgics of every walk of life who desire a fully decentralized internet in the vein of the UUCP networks of yore. In this way, we have revived the network protocol adding modern essentials such encryption, permissions, better integration with dedicated links. While also keeping it's virtues of transparency, ease of implementation and resiliency. We also return to a place of mutual respect and understanding, freedom for all people who utilize it. Read the rest

Kim Zetter reports that Taiwan tech giant Asus unwittingly installed backdoors on half a million of its own customers' computers after hackers compromised its software update servers.The researchers estimate half a million Windows machines received the malicious backdoor through the ASUS update server, although the attackers appear to have been targeting only about 600 of those systems. The malware searched for targeted systems through their unique MAC addresses. Once on a system, if it found one of these targeted addresses, the malware reached out to a command-and-control server the attackers operated, which then installed additional malware on those machines. Why hack the consumer when you can hack the manufacturer and get all the consumers for free? Alt headline: "Republic of Gamers Publicly Owned" Read the rest

Hans Henrik Honnens de Lichtenberg writes, "Here is a fine selection of books by the extraordinary man, William James Sidis. A January morning in 1910 hundreds of students and professors gathered in the great lecture hall at Harvard University. On stage steps up William James Sidis to present his research about the mathematics of the fourth dimension. William was just eleven years old. William James Sidis was a genius and he still has the highest IQ ever recorded, somewhere between 250 and 300."Let's leave aside the nonsense that is "IQ" for a moment and recall instead that Sidis lived a remarkable life, wrote beautifully, and was jailed under the Sedition Act of 1918 for his 1919 participation in a socialist May Day parade, was a WWI conscientious objector, and was threatened by his family with involuntary committal to an "insane asylum" for his politics.He created a constructed language called "Vendergood," wrote books of mathematics and history and public transit and social theory, and called himself a "peridromophile" (someone who's really into trains!). He also patented a leap-year-friendly perpetual rotary calendar.The Internet Archive also has a selection of Sidis's works.Download the free PDF e-books William James Sidis here. [Holy Books](Thanks, Hans Henrik!) Read the rest

More than a thousand passengers are being evacuated from a Viking cruise ship hit by 26-ft waves between Norway and Britain, with terrifying footage posted to YouTube from inside the lurching vessel. At least 470 people were rescued from the decks by helicopter, hauled one by one to nearby Molde. No-one is reported dead, but one is said to be critically injured.The maritime rescue service said the Viking Sky, with 1,373 passengers and crew on board, had sent out a mayday signal as it had been drifting toward land in the Norwegian Sea.The ship was carrying 915 passengers, of which "a large number" were from the United States and Britain, the rescue service said, although it declined to be more specific.Passengers were hoisted one-by-one from the deck of the vessel and airlifted to a village just north of Molde on Norway.An investigation was opened into why it even set sail.We’re waiting for evacuation by helicopter #VikingSky #Mayday pic.twitter.com/rqSYaWGi0k— Alexus Sheppard 🏳️‍🌈 (@alexus309) March 23, 2019 Read the rest

I haven't seen Best Editing-winner Bohemian Rhapsody, but I have seen a certain viral scene about five times. Is it fair to characterize the whole movie by an insanely jump-cutted scene of some guys being offered a record deal at a relaxing cafe? Here's the Oscar winner's acceptance speech edited in much the same way as the film. [via Reddit]Ambient Film Tracks:I just thought that the Oscars weren't edited quite as well as they could have been so I took what I learned from the film editing in Oscar winner Bohemian Rhapsody and attempted to improve this speech. Read the rest

Enjoy Louie Zong's sweet song, just perfect to start the week with. Zong used a 2006 app called Virtual Singer. Read the rest

In 1903, French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot decided he had discovered a new form of radiation. But the mysterious rays had some exceedingly odd properties, and scientists in other countries had trouble seeing them at all. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of N-rays, a cautionary tale of self-deception.We'll also recount another appalling marathon and puzzle over a worthless package.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Got a vision to put on film? The Film & Cinematography Mastery Bundle shows you how to put it there, with classes covering gear, lighting, production - even marketing.Even in this age of indie cinema, filmmaking can seem like an exclusive world for the chosen few. But with the right eye - and the right training - it can be more accessible than you think. In three courses spanning more than 7 hours of training and examples, you'll learn the basics of most aspects of the business, with a focus on that crucial time behind the camera. A class on production gives a primer on gear but also teaches techniques that will let you shoot great video with equipment you already have. The cinematography section brings expert-level tips about lighting and staging, and a comprehensive filmmaking course touches on how to write, cast, market and distribute your finished movie.Right now, you can pick up lifetime access to the Film & Cinematography Mastery Bundle for $29 - a 95% discount off the list price. Read the rest

Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg continue down the 1990s comic book speculation rabbit hole to discuss Wizard 17 from January 1993. In this issue:• Brutes and Babes: Bart Sears on Cover design including Hip Hop Family Tree, Street Angel, and X-Men: Grand Design• Valiant gets the spotlight• Fabian Nicieza writing and editing a lot of books• Tom Palmer's X-mas recommendations• Dave Sim passes the halfway point of Cerebus and reflects on Image, Wizard, self-publishing, the direct market, and Jack Kirby's revolutionary work at the dawn of the Marvel Universe• Roy Thomas adapts Francis Ford Copolla's Bram Stoker's Dracula for Topps and Mike Mignola• Batman is sad• Wizard puts out a call for homemade fanzines!!!Subscribe to the Cartoonist Kayfabe youtube page.Get your Cartoonist Kayfabe merchandise at our Spreadshop storefront. Read the rest

I've spent the last 11 years with a daughter who looks just like cartoon-Dora, relegating me to the role of Boots. Read the rest

If you're into tech at all, you should definitely consider unleashing your inner tinkerer on a Raspberry Pi board. If you're intimidated, don't be. It's a statistical probability that people half your age have created cooler things than you can imagine with the versatile kit. Not sure where to start? The Complete Raspberry Pi 3B+ Starter Kit & Course Bundle is a good bet.Put together with the curious newbie in mind, this package includes the essentials: A Raspberry Pi 3B+ board, plus TF card and 37 sensor modules. What you do with it from there is virtually limitless, but the three online courses give you some good jumping off points. The first lesson lets you build a retro gaming system from scratch, and from there you can explore how your kit can interact with Amazon Alexa to voice-control nearly anything in your house.It's a ton of hacks for STEM's new favorite resource, currently on sale for nearly 70% off the list price. Pick up the Complete Raspberry Pi 3B+ Starter Kit & Course Bundle for $139.99 today. Read the rest

I've had a fabulous weekend at Chicago's C2E2 festival as part of my Radicalized book-tour, and now I'm heading to San Francisco for an appearance on Monday night at Berkeley Arts & Letters at 7:30PM with Richard Kadrey. Then it's on to The Revolutionary Reads series at Ft Vancouver (outside of Portland, OR), and then the Seattle Public Library and finally a weekend of events at Wondercon in Anaheim. Come on out! (Image: Nikola Danaylov, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Chelsea Manning -- whistleblower, torture survivor, hero -- is back behind bars for refusing to testify before a grand jury about her whistleblowing activity; for 16 days, she has been held in solitary confinement in a cell for 22 hours/day, not able to speak to others, denied access to the law library, and prohibited from having reading materials.Here is a statement from Chelsea Resists!, Chelsea Manning’s Support Committee.“We condemn the solitary confinement that Chelsea Manning has been subjected to during her incarceration at William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center.“Since her arrival at Truesdale on March 8th, Chelsea has been placed in administrative segregation[1], or ‘adseg,’ a term designed to sound less cruel than “solitary confinement.” However, Chelsea has been kept in her cell for 22 hours a day. This treatment qualifies as Solitary Confinement[2].“Chelsea can’t be out of her cell while any other prisoners are out, so she cannot talk to other people, or visit the law library, and has no access to books or reading material. She has not been outside for 16 days. She is permitted to make phone calls and move about outside her cell between 1 and 3 a.m.. “As today is Day 16, Chelsea is now in “Prolonged Solitary,” as defined by Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture:[3] “I have defined prolonged solitary confinement as any period in excess of 15 days. This definition reflects the fact that most of the scientific literature shows that, after 15 days, certain changes in brain functions occur and the harmful psychological effects of isolation can become irreversible. Read the rest

Last week, Evaldas Rimasauskas of Lithuania plead guilty to US wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering charges, admitting that he had stolen $99m from Facebook and $23m from Google between 2013 and 2015.Rimasauskas's grift was pretty bold. He merely sent Google and Facebook invoices for items they hadn't purchased and that he hadn't provided, which the companies paid anyway. The invoices were accompanied by "forged invoices, contracts, and letters that falsely appeared to have been executed and signed by executives and agents of the Victim Companies, and which bore false corporate stamps embossed with the Victim Companies’ names, to be submitted to banks in support of the large volume of funds that were fraudulently transmitted via wire transfer." He also spoofed emails that appeared to come from corporate execs.Apparently, no one checked first to see if these corresponded to invoices/POs that had been issued within the companies.Rimasauskas was pretending to be the giant Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc, and had registered a company in Latvia with the same name.He's agreed to forfeit about $50m. It's not clear what's happened to the other $73m, but Rimasauskas was a prolific and baroque money-launderer who squirreled cash away in Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Latvia. Google has said that "We detected this fraud and promptly alerted the authorities. We recouped the funds and we're pleased this matter is resolved."Rimasauskas will be sentenced on July 29. He faces up to 30 years."As Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today, he devised a blatant scheme to fleece U.S. Read the rest

"Just a pair of hands -- and a whole lot of clever imagination."(via Juxtapoz on Instagram) Read the rest

Last week's NYC book launch for Radicalized took the form of a fantastic conversation with the journalist Julia Angwin; the Strand folks were kind enough to video it and they've posted it to Youtube. Julia is incredibly smart and a wonderful interviewer, and we had some great Q&A as well. Read the rest

Today marksed the largest street protests ever in the history of internet freedom struggles, with more than 100,000 Europeans participating in mass demonstrations across the region -- more than 50 cities participated in Germany alone! From Netpolitik's early summary (English robotranslation): "In Berlin, the demonstration was about half an hour, if you waited along the way from the beginning to the end. We have experienced many network protests in Berlin. That was bigger today than any before, even counting the big data retention protests or ACTA."There has never been a better time to pledge to vote against MEPs who support the Directive and then contact your MEP to let them know. The final debate is Monday at 0900h CET, with the vote scheduled for 1200h CET. Read the rest

This morning, CBC's flagship weekend programme Day Six aired its latest episode (MP3), a conversation between host Brent Bambury, me, and Tim Maughan, the author of an outstanding debut novel called Infinite Detail. (Image: Jason Vermes/CBC)It's often said that sci-fi's role is to project the future, but Doctorow is skeptical of that perspective."What we're doing is kidding ourselves that we're projecting a future; I think that at best, we're reflecting the present," he told Bambury."As an activist, I have to think that the future is not predictable. Otherwise, there'd be no reason to get out of bed. The future changes based on what we do." Read the rest

Just in time for a continent-wide day of street demonstrations against Article 13 and the new Copyright Directive, British rapper Dan Bull (previously) has released a furious, amazing new song about the regulation: Robocopyright. More than a 100 MEPs have pledged to vote against the measure on Monday, and it's not too late for you to contact your MEP and tell them that you expect them to vote to defeat it. Read the rest

Are you super organized? You're going to love the Genius Pack G4 and its seemingly limitless, well-placed compartments. Not that organized? You're still going to love this piece of luggage because it's so well thought out that it practically does the packing for you.We've all tried to stuff a piece of carry-on so full that it practically becomes a black hole. That practice becomes almost effortless with the Genius Pack, which not only boasts a separate compartment for dirty clothes but an air valve to vacuum-seal the contents. And that's only for starters: This thing has labeled, tidy spaces for chargers, socks, toiletries - even an umbrella. If you still need more room, an accordion-like zipper space expands it by 25%, and you can tote your jacket or personal bag outside with a handy strap. Made of high-strength nylon, it's sturdy enough to handle whatever you stuff into it, and the 360-degree spinning wheels are a nice touch.Right now, you can pick up the Genius Pack G4 Carry-On Spinner Case for $179 - a full 39% off the MSRP. Read the rest

Sure, CVS receipts are farcically long, but they're not infinitely long: they could be, though, as Garrett Armstrong's CVS Receipt generator demonstrates, using nothing more than HTML, CSS and Javascript (Armstrong: "I even made a crappy web-scraper to get real product names from their site"). (via Kottke) Read the rest

Between 73 and 100 students (as well as at least 17 teachers and administrators) from St Augustine’s Catholic High School in Redditch, England received chemical burns to their foreheads from "toxic ash" used to mark them as part of a Catholic ritual on Ash Wednesday.The toxic substance was "sourced from a priest from the Diocese of Birmingham, which sourced it from a company in Aldridge." The burns are quite disfiguring and may result in lifelong scarring, according to doctors who treated some of the affected pupils at a nearby hospital.A spokesperson for the school said: ‘During the Ash Wednesday service for Year 9 and Year 11 students, it came to our attention that discomfort was experienced by some students that had received the ashes on the forehead. ‘As a result, all students were requested to wash the ashes off immediately to ensure no further discomfort was felt. Any further distribution of ashes immediately ceased. ‘The school is dismayed by this event. In total, 73 students, 16 staff and the Chair of the Governors have been affected to date. Those impacted were administered on site by trained First Aiders and then advised to seek further medical attention. ‘An investigation has started and the ashes are being analysed by external experts. A subsequent report will be made available to all stakeholders and any recommendations will be actioned accordingly. ‘Saint Augustine’s Catholic High School treats students’ health and safety as paramount.’Children end up in hospital with burns on their heads from ‘toxic’ Ash Wednesday ash [Jimmy Nsubuga/Metro](via JWZ) Read the rest

“We are conducting a thorough review and will remove any campaigns currently on the platform.” — GoFundMe

One day in the early 1970s, while looking for Dennis the Menace paperbacks at a used bookstore in Boulder, Colorado, I discovered a copy of a book of "droodles," which were simple yet mysterious line drawings that became clear when you read the caption. Droodles where the creation of an American humorist named Roger Price, who wrote for MAD and Playboy, had his own TV shows, and worked with folks like Bob Hope and Carl Reiner. He was also the co-creator of the wildly popular Mad-Libs books. I became a huge fan and tracked down as many of his humor books as I could find.Years later, when I started going out with Carla while we were attending Colorado State University, she showed me a letter that her mother's friend had mailed her. It was typed and had funny, simple line drawings on it. I looked at the return address. The name of the sender was Roger Price. I was astonished. She opened her desk drawer and showed me a stack of letters he'd written her, all with funny Droodlesque drawings in them.When we moved to Los Angeles she introduced me to Roger. He was in his late '60s at the time, and was very interested and supportive of the fact that Carla and I were launching a zine (bOING bOING). Roger had done the same with a magazine called Grump. We saw Roger often, and he was always funny and curious about what we were working on, and gave us a lot of useful advice about writing. Read the rest “Can you guess the meaning of these Droodles?”

There is a monster in the bed. Wazzat?!? Wazzis?!? ImmaGEDDIT!When there's a monster in the bed, we do a danger dance.He Do A Danger Dance! Read the rest “Cat does a danger dance”

York's Wild Kingdom Zoo & Fun Park in York, Maine is up for sale. For just $14.2 million, you could be the proprietor of this beachside attraction complete with the likes of lions, monkeys, lemurs, camels, pigs, deer, kangaroos, a butterfly kingdom, paddle boats, miniature golf, bumper cars, and a haunted house. No lowball offers though.According to owner Joe Barberi, a realtor called and “asked if we would consider selling the park. Not getting any younger and everything having to do with its price, I told him he was free to pursue the idea.he could find someone who would like to buy it and would be willing to pay the price without any negotiations then, fine, it’s a deal,” he said.Barberi's a patient man.“For now, it’s business as usual,” he said last week. “71 days until opening.”(Seacoast Online) Read the rest “You could own this zoo complete with menagerie”

Meet “Kika my opossum,” says IMGURian overlordzelli.“I am a huge sucker for yawning animals. She's very excited for outside cuddles”“For years I thought my spirit animal was a cat but now I'm realizing I'm basically just a trash cat like Kika.”“I love her so much.”I agree with what this one commenter points out: “Opossums can’t contract rabies and they eat ticks. My favorite trash cat.”OverlordZelli:She's actually a rescue. We found her mom dead after falling out of a tree during a big storm. And yes dead dead. Punctured from the fall and everything. There were nine babies we took in while we tried to find a rehabilitator. Apparently they all moved away but after calling them they instructed us what to do. Eight died. Kika is all that's left. They had metabolic bone disease. We had received local farm fresh eggs and gave them their first egg. Seven died from salmonella because apparently local farm gave us bad eggs. And by bad I mean the next egg we cracked for breakfast had a fully developed dead baby chicken. I can't trust local farms after that. Zuka was caught by a coyote we think one night. She liked using the cat door. Kika has really bad arthritis so she can't be released. She has zero chance of survival. Opossums don't live all that long so I make it my motto to give her all sorts of foods to try while she has the luxury. Read the rest “Human and opossum are best friends”

Security researcher Cian Heasley discovered an unprotected online storage folder accessible via the web that contains all the data that stalkers and snoops took from their victims' devices via a commercial program that steals photos and recordings from their devices.Included in the leak are 3.7GB of MP3 recordings (25,000 in total) of personal phone calls and 16GB of images (95,000 in total), including very sensitive and personal images.Both Heasley and Motherboard have repeatedly contacted the stalkerware company to alert them to the breach, but they have not received a response, despite multiple attempts. Out of an abundance of caution, Motherboard has not named the company while its customers' victims' date is exposed.Stalkerware companies (previously) market their products to jealous spouses, employers, parents, and even law enforcement. As you might expect from companies engaged in such unethical conduct, these firms are notorious for their bad security, and frequently breach all their customers' victims' data. Motherboard has covered 12 different vendors' breaches in just the past two years: "Retina-X (twice), FlexiSpy, Mobistealth, Spy Master Pro, SpyHuman, Spyfone, TheTruthSpy, Family Orbit, mSpy, Copy9, and Xnore." The exposed database was found by security researcher Cian Heasley, who contacted us when he found it earlier this year. The database is still online, and has been online for at least six weeks. Pictures and audio recordings are still being uploaded to it nearly every day. We won’t name the company to protect the victims who may be getting spied on without their consent or knowledge, and—on top of that—are having their pictures and calls uploaded to a server open to anyone with an internet connection. Read the rest “Unnamed stalkerware company has left gigabytes of sensitive personal info unprotected on the web and can't be reached to fix it”

A man working in an Aalen, Germany slaughterhouse was hospitalized with serious injuries last month after being kicked in the face by a cow. The curious thing is that the cow had already been "“killed according to regulations." It was hanging from a meathook when the attack occurred.According to the Associated Press, police reported that the kick was "due to a nerve impulse that experts say isn’t uncommon."(Weird Universe)(glitched image of: "Cow (Swiss Braunvieh breed)" by Daniel Schwen) Read the rest “Revenge of the dead cow”

With only days to go before the final EU debate and vote on the new Copyright Directive (we're told the debate will be at 0900h CET on Tuesday, 27 March, and the vote will happen at 1200h CET), things could not be more urgent and fraught. That's why today's announcement by Poland's Platformy Obywatelska—the second-largest party in the European People's Party (EPP) bloc—is so important.Platformy Obywatelska has said that it will vote to block the entire Copyright Directive unless Article 13—a ground-breakingly terrible Internet law that will lead to widespread filtering of all Europeans' Internet speech, images, and videos—is stricken from the final draft.EPP, a coalition of European national political parties, is the key backer of Article 13 and the largest party in the European Parliament. Without its support, Article 13 is very unlikely to make it through the final vote.The EPP is deeply split on the issue. EPP parties from Luxembourg, Sweden and the Czech Republic all oppose the measure, so Poland is in good company.The other blocs that strongly back Article 13 are the S&D (socialist) and ALDE (liberal) MEPs.126 members of the Parliament have expressly pledged to vote against Article 13, and more than 5,000,000 Europeans have signed a petition against it. This is the largest petition in European history!It's vital that Europeans contact their MEPs as soon as possible to urge them to vote against Articles 11 and 13.On Sunday, the streets of Europe will be flooded with demonstrators marching against the Directive. Read the rest “This Could Be It: Key Polish Political Party Comes Out Against Article 13”

The Innuendo Studios YouTube channel has been producing a video series on the culture of the alt-right. The latest video is called "Always a Bigger Fish" and it's about the way conservatives believe in a social hierarchy, and how liberals' efforts to achieve a more equitable society is a threat to the natural order of things.It's also worth reading the research list used to produce the videos.Below, the entire series in chronological order: Read the rest “New video from the Alt-Right playbook explainer series: "Always a Bigger Fish"”

The singer is María Olvido Gara Jova, aka Alaska, performing with her band Dinarama. Along with singing in another electro-pop-goth band Fangoria, Alaska has hosted a children's TV series, appeared on a comedy sketch show, and starred in an MTV Spain reality show. This number is titled "Mi novio es un zombi" ("My Boyfriend Is a Zombie").(r/ObscureMedia, thanks UPSO!) Read the rest “Spanish pop-goth performance featuring Freddy Krueger in high-waisted jeans”

The Stranger Things 3 trailer with a delightful original score by Michael Hearst of "Songs for Ice Cream Trucks" fame."Survive, pack up your synths! Hearst, crank up the calliope!" Read the rest “Stranger Things 3 trailer improved with cheery old-timey music”

Devon Cade -- a former bureaucrat who now describes himself as a "philanthropist" -- has asked a court to disqualify 30 out of the 33 other Democrats standing in the primary for the city's council elections on the grounds that the signatures on their nominating petitions were forged.Cade claims that he detected the forgeries using a machine learning system that he will allow anyone to inspect, provided that they post a $1,000,000 insurance bond first ("due to the sensitivity of the software no person(s) will be allowed to physically touch the software/hardware without a one million dollar insurance bond").Cade has made public assurances that his challenge will stand, posting a Facebook video in which he averred that "I don’t think anyone can refudiate intelligence software."The judge who reviews Cade's claims has discretion to force him to pay the legal costs of the 30 other candidates he has challenged if his claim is found to be lacking in merit.“People were very, very upset with me,” he said later. “But I don’t understand why. I didn’t file the paperwork to file their candidacy.”Cade on Thursday posted a Facebook video defending his challenges, declaring, “I don’t think anyone can refudiate intelligence software.” If that rings a bell, it’s because former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was so roundly mocked for using refudiate in 2010 that the Oxford American Dictionary made it the word of the year.Did ‘artificial intelligence’ spot petition fakes in City Council races? A judge will make the call. Read the rest “Philadelphia city council candidate says his secret AI has discovered disqualifying fraud in the nominations of 30 out of 33 candidates”

South Asia is a hotbed of brilliant science fiction writing, as well as writings in all the related genres capture by the Bengali word "kalpabigyan (encompassing literature that is "science-dependent," "science-based," "science mystery" and "science"), and there have been many brilliant anthologies of science fiction from the region; the latest entry to the field is Gollancz's new Book of South Asian Science Fiction, edited by Tarun K. Saint, the subject of a fascinating review by Gautham Shenoy in Factor Daily.The anthology includes "Planet of Terror," written by Adrish Bardhan, who is credited with coining "kalpabigyan," as well as 27 other stories and poems (and by all accounts the poetry is outstanding). Shenoy finds fault with one element of the book though: it only features writers from the "partitioned three" (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh), with no contributors from "Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives or the Tibetan Community in exile." Shenoy calls on Gollancz to revisit the book as a series with contributions from these other nations and literatures.Meanwhile, elsewhere in the anthology, Sami Ahmad Khan returns to his fictional universe featuring the antagonistic reptilian aliens, the Qa’haQ, with his standalone story, 15004, with a tale with a very high body count brought about by an invading species which seeks to eliminate heterogeneity in India, for starters. The people of Karachi grapple with the sea stolen from them and its consequences in Asif Aslam Farrukhi’s Stealing the Sea (Samandar Ki Chori; Translated from by Syed Saeed Naqvi), while a family comes to grip with their past, their expectations and their heritage in unexpected fashion and with unintended consequences as enter an immersive VR theme park called Partition World 2047 in the story by this collection’s editor and partition scholar, Tarun K. Read the rest “Gollancz has published its first anthology of South Asian Science Fiction”

The Boeing 737 Max is out of service around the world, following a fatal crash of an Ethiopian Airlines and an Indonesian Lion Air flight and there is intense investigation and speculation as to the cause of the crash.Some suggest that pilots in poorer countries may have been inadequately trained to fly the new aircraft, but there also been a string of accusations that a key safety feature was not enabled on the plane that crashed, because Boeing had disabled it and sold access to it separately as an upgrade that poorer airlines might not have been able to afford.The disabled system was used to resolve conflicting information from two different sensors, one that measured airspeed and another that measured the "angle of attack" (the direction the plane's nose was pointing in). John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the Ethiopian Airlines pilots clearly struggled to control the plane and might have been too preoccupied to realize whether the anti-stall system was malfunctioning.“All you know is the airplane is not flying correctly. You’re trying to figure it out at the same time you’re trying to fly an airplane, which is difficult,” Hansman said. He believes the crashes show the need for more pilot training, whether it is done on a simulator, a computer or an iPad, which is becoming more common at airlines.Boeing to make safety feature standard on troubled Max jets [David Koenig and Tom Krisher/AP](via /.) Read the rest “After fatal crash, Boeing reverses sales policy that made locked out some safety features unless airlines paid for an upgrade”

Good morning, Happy Mutants.Previously: 10 minutes of Elizabeth Holmes' creepy unblinking stare with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Read the rest “Elon Musk but with Elizabeth Holmes' eyes”

Level two, "Amateur", sounded so good that I suspected a joke was afoot. It was, but only the sort of joke a virtuoso like Rob Landes could pull off. Read the rest “Mario theme performed on violin at four levels of expertise”

Willie Cade's grandfather Theo Cade was one of John Deere's most storied engineers, with 158 patents to his name; he invented the manure spreader and traveled the country investigating stories of how farmers were using, fixing, modifying and upgrading their equipment; today, Willie Cade is the founder of the Electronics Reuse Conference, having spent a quarter-century repairing electronics, diverting e-waste from landfills and rehabilitating it for use by low-income schools and individuals.In a stirring op-ed for Security Ledger, Cade the Younger takes aim at John Deere and the other businesses that have lobbied against Right-to-Repair legislation that would force them to end practices ranging from the use of software locks to prevent activation of new parts to withholding parts, documentation and service codes from the independent repair sector.Though Willie Cade works in electronics, he uses his grandfather's work with farmers to explain why this is wrong, saying that "Thrift and efficiency were the values my grandfather and the John Deere of his generation embraced. It’s time John Deere returned to those core values."An avid diarist, Theo’s journals detail his travels all over the country as he visited his inventions in the field to better understand how people used John Deere products. He wanted to design products that would facilitate safer and easier operations, not impose costly delays or contribute to more farming accidents. That closeness to the customer and his dedication inspired many additional patents.My grandfather had 158 patents — 31 of which are on the manure spreader. Read the rest “Grandson of legendary John Deere engineer defends right-to-repair and condemns Big Ag for "taxing customers"”

Last spring, a coalition of young European political activists adopted this motion opposing the upload filters and link taxes in the new Copyright Directive, which the EU Parliament is about to vote on. With only days to go before that vote -- it'll probably happen on Tuesday the 26th at 12:30 PM, after a debate that starts at 9AM CET, following a day of mass, EU-wide street demonstrations -- -- the youth coalition have reminded their adult colleagues in the Socialist, Conservative, Green and Liberal Blocs that "A free and open internet is crucial for who we are and will define the generations coming after us."Furthermore, the protection of creators has not been substantially strengthened and even worsened in some regards. “Fair remuneration” has been watered down to include unfair payment schemes between publishers and collecting societies on the one hand and authors on the other.As a result, thousands of young people have turned up at protests in Germany and beyond, demanding that policy-makers protect our internet. A record-breaking petition has been signed by over 5 million Europeans. An international mobilisation is planned around Europe for Saturday 23 March.The European Parliament will vote on the directive during its plenary on 25-28 March. This text can still be amended and MEPs from different groups have already declared that they will try to do so, with a particular focus on removing the provisions that are paving the way for upload filters and a link tax.We demand that policy-makers take the concerns of young people around Europe seriously and remove the provisions establishing upload filters and a link tax from the draft copyright directive. Read the rest “The General Assembly of European Youth adopts anti-#CopyrightDirective motion backed by socialists, conservatives, liberals and green youth organisations”

Despite government legislation and improving caller ID technology, robocalls and scam artists are rampant on the phone lines - up to 35 billion a year in the US alone. They can be annoying at best and a financial threat at worst, but there's a way to take security into your own hands. One good example of the recent rise in call-filtering apps is Call Control, which has been racking up kudos from NBC News and Fox Business - as well as consumers on the App Store and Google Play.Not only does this app feature a list of automatically blocked numbers from a CommunityIQ database, but the enhanced caller ID detailed information so you can distinguish between genuine government entities and the scammers that pose as them. Easily block numbers, look up unknown numbers with reverse lookup, even set "quiet hours" that silence your phone from all calls during a designated time. It's a simple and reliable way to take back your number.Right now, a one-year subscription to Call Control Premium is 33% off at $19.99. Read the rest “Stop robocalls and phone scams with this top-rated app”

Last night's book tour event in Toronto was a smashing success! Thanks to everyone who came! I just checked in for my flight to Chicago for a weekend's worth of appearances at C2E2, and then on Monday I'll be at Berkeley Arts & Letters at 7:30PM with Richard Kadrey, then The Revolutionary Reads series at Ft Vancouver (outside of Portland, OR), and then the Seattle Public Library and finally a weekend of events at Wondercon in Anaheim. Come on out! (Image: @codepoet127) Read the rest “Chicago! I'm at C2E2 this weekend with my new book RADICALIZED! Next up: San Francisco, Portland/Ft Vancouver, Seattle & Anaheim!”

Star Trek's original series and TNG were shot on film, allowing them to be rescanned for high-definition broadcast. Star Trek: Deep Space 9, however, was shot on video at standard definition: there's no further detail to recover for HD broadcasts. Machine learning to the rescue! CaptRobau writes:I will go into greater detail about my process in a future blog post, but it took me about two days to get everything extracted, upscaled and put it back together in a way that was pleasing. This resulted only in the first five minutes of the episode being done (the episode recap, the opening scene, and the intro). Still pretty good time for a mid-to-high end PC with software that isn't just available to professionals.The result left me pretty awestruck. It looked better than I had hoped. No weird issues or anything. It looked pretty much like an HD version of DS9. Since (moving) pictures are worth more than a thousand words, here are two comparison videos that show off the improvement I was able to get with this machine learning based upscaling technique.Below, the intro at 4K. CBS, hire this man! (Or license his code!) "Imagine what a real team could do, with more powerful equipment, custom trained neural networks ... and access to the original SD files instead of a DVDRip like me." Read the rest “Deep Space 9 remastered with deep learning”

Security services firm FireEye says two hacker groups known to be sponsored by the Russian government of Vladimir Putin are waging cyber-attacks currently against European government systems.FireEye says these internet-based digital attacks are focused on the member states of NATO, the European security alliance that both Putin and Trump disparage. The two hacking groups are believed to be coordinating their efforts, but they're using different tools, FireEye reports, adding it noticed a “significant increase” in activity from both groups in mid-2018. The cyber-espionage campaign is said to be ongoing.“The groups could be trying to gain access to the targeted networks in order to gather information that will allow Russia to make more informed political decisions, or it could be gearing up to leak data that would be damaging for a particular political party or candidate ahead of the European elections,” Benjamin Read, FireEye's senior manager of cyberespionage analysis said Thursday.NBC News's Ryan Browne reports that the firm's findings “are likely to fuel worries over the possibility that Russia may influence upcoming EU elections.”The company found that two state-sponsored hacking groups, APT28 and Sandworm, used spear phishing — the practice of sending out emails designed to look like they’re from a trusted party — in an attempt to obtain government information.FireEye said European government institutions were sent emails with links to websites that appeared to be authentic, luring a person into changing their password and thus sharing their credentials with hackers.APT28, more popularly known as Fancy Bear, is believed to be linked to Russian military intelligence agency GRU and has been labeled as one of the malicious actors behind the 2016 Democratic National Convention hack. Read the rest “Two Russia-backed hacker groups target Europe ahead of elections, FireEye reports”