Author and science fiction fan Jared Gray needed a CPAP machine to treat his sleep apnea so he decided to have some maker fun with the machine. So he carved out a foam replica Aliens Facehugger to integrate his CPAP mask. "I’m happy with it as a prototype, but I think it would need additional refinement before I started making these things for other people," Gray says."Other than making it even less comfortable to lay on my side, it’s not all that much worse than just wearing the CPAP mask on its own. I could probably sleep with this thing on, at least for a couple hours. If nothing else, it helps keep the light out of my eyes."CPAP Facehugger (via Laughing Squid) Read the rest

American prisoners are being forced -- on pain of losing access to the prison phone system -- to provide training data for a voice-print recognition algorithm that private contractors are building for biometric surveillance system that listens in on prisoners' calls.Some prisoners are secretly "enrolled" in the program when their voices are recorded during phone calls; the people they speak to on the outside are also sometimes "enrolled" without their knowledge or consent.The software is being provided by Securus, a notoriously abusive private security firm with a track record for gross privacy violations, as well as gouging prisoners and their families. Securus's voice surveillance tool is called Investigator Pro, and it was developed through a $50,000,000 gift from the US Department of Defense, on the promise that it would be used to listen to millions of phone calls and identify the voices of terrorists. New York’s contract proposal with Securus states that outsiders’ voice samples can be used to “search for all other calls” in their recorded call database to find where those voices occur. In an email, New York prison officials confirmed that this program will give investigators the ability to extract a voice print from an outside caller and use it to “identify that a call recipient has participated in multiple phone calls.” They added that the program will not have names associated with outsiders’ voice prints.In a statement, Pinal County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Navideh Forghani also confirmed this outsider voice-tracking capability, noting that while their software does not identify non-incarcerated people by name, it can track “suspicious activities,” such as “multiple inmates speaking to one person on the outside on a reoccurring basis.”With this technology, a press release for Investigator Pro notes, an investigator can now answer questions like, “What other inmates are talking to this particular called party?” and “Are any of my current inmates talking to this released inmate?”Prisons Across the U.S. Read the rest

I spotted this charming 1.5"-wide unicorn pin at Amazon Handmade, crafted by Cynical Redhead in Illinois and sporting a delightful and timely message for the new year. Read the rest

Last month, Matt Crull, 29, of Martin County, Florida, was sleeping in his van when police came to investigate what they described as a “suspicious van." Martin County Sheriff’s deputy Steven O’Leary found a plastic bag of white powder, claimed to run a field test on it, and arrested Crull for possession of 92 grams of heroin. Crull went to jail where he sat for over a month. Thing is, the heroin was actually laundry detergent. From the Miami Herald:“(It’s) very surreal when you’re sitting in jail with a half a million dollars bond,” Crull told WPBF25, “and you can’t go anywhere knowing that you didn’t do wrong..."Sheriff William Snyder says (O'Leary) has been fired after an investigation uncovered that at least 11 people he put in jail for drug charges were found innocent, the TV station reported.“No matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, just based on the law of possibilities there’s always a possibility that one bad apple will slip through,” Snyder said, according to WPTV. The TV station reported that Crull may sue for damages.Image: Laundry powder / Uncy at Slovenian Wikipedia Read the rest

James Verdesoto is the movie poster designer responsible for some of the more memorable posters of recent decades, including Pulp Fiction, Girl, Interrupted, and Training Day. In this short video, he gives a terrific presentation about the design aesthetics of movie posters from the 1930s to present day. I learned a lot from this; it was 10 minutes well-spent.Image: Movie Poster Remakes vs. Originals, Explained | Vanity Fair YouTube video Read the rest

A magazine named after something kids shouldn't eat REALLY hates on a sandwich.Paste:And then you see something like KFC’s new Cheeto Sandwich, and you remember how it feels to take one look at a promotional image and feel the tiniest bit of vomit rising in the back of your throat.Good god, KFC. What hath science wrought on this one? Read the rest

Warren Craghead writes, "I wanted to let you know about my TRUMPTRUMP drawing project and the new collection that Retrofit Comics that was just published. Since Trump got the nomination for president in July 2016 I’ve been drawing a grotesque portrait of him and his minions every day - you can see them at here. Retrofit Comics published a collection of the first six months of drawings last year, and the new collection is out now - 200+ pages of drawings. Read the rest

(UPDATE: The embed is disabled outside of YouTube; you can watch it there.)It's been a while, Hubert Cumberdale. The year two thousand and thirteen marked our last adventure. Before the war. (Previously)Animator David Firth:Salad Fingers is back for the first time in 5 years in this nightmarish new episode. Salad Fingers decides it’s time for Hubert Cumberdale to become a real boy. Read the rest

When GOP darling Scott Walker offered to hand billions in subsidies to Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn, he was warned: the Foxconn MO is to suck up billions in public money for ambitious megafactories, then scale them back into small, largely irrelevant facilities (or cancel them altogether).But that didn't convince Walker: instead, he got right to business, seizing and bulldozing Wisconsinites' homes to make way for the "factory," and allowing the price-tag to rise by more than a billion dollars without blinking, even as the company started to hedge about the scale of the factory it would build in exchange for Walker's huge welfare handout. Now the other shoe has dropped: Louis Woo (special assistant to Foxconn chairman Terry Gou), who negotiated the Wisconsin deal, has told Reuters that "In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory. You can’t use a factory to view our Wisconsin investment."Instead of the planned megafactory with its 5,200 blue-collar jobs by 2020, now the company proposes to hire 1,000 skilled R&D researchers -- who will likely come from out of state.But they still get more than $4 billion: so if the 1,000 jobs ever materialize, each one will have cost the state $4.1 million. See folks, that's why you want to elect businessmen to run your governments: they know how to get real value for money!Earlier this month, Foxconn admitted that hiring for the plant was going slowly. The company originally promised to create some 13,000 jobs in the state, but it has already fallen short of modest targets. Read the rest

We have a president who has a hard time understanding the difference between weather and climate. Science is a tough subject for the man. On Monday he proved once again just how ignorant he is with this tweet:In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2019So Jimmy Kimmel kindly invited a couple of grade school children to try to help Trump out with this basic climate change tutorial. Mr. Trump, please listen and learn. Read the rest

Yesterday, Techcruch published a deeply reported account of Facebook's "Project Atlas,", a "research" app whose users were paid up to $20/month (plus affiliate fees) to install on Ios devices, which exploited third parties with access to Apple's developer program to install a man-in-the-middle certificate that allowed Facebook to harvest every conceivable kind of data from its users' Iphones and other Ios devices.The reaction was swift: Apple has terminated Facebook's developer certificate, meaning it can no longer sideload apps into Ios devices by signing them as "experimental" or "beta" apps. In its statement, Apple confirmed Techcrunch's accusations that Facebook had abused the developer certificate, saying that the Enterprise Developer Program was "solely for the internal distribution of apps," and that Facebook had violated its agreement with Apple by "using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers."Apple previously removed Facebook's Onavo app, another fake VPN that was designed to gather data on its users, and Techcrunch speculated that the "Facebook Research"/Project Atlas app was intended as a replacement for Onavo's data.However, Facebook disputes this. In an announcement that it is cancelling the "Facebook Research" program, the company says it has been unfairly maligned, that the 13-25-year-olds it recruited for the program were duly informed of the app's surveillance activities, and that the project was unrelated to Onavo.“Key facts about this market research program are being ignored,” the company said. “Despite early reports, there was nothing ‘secret’ about this; it was literally called the Facebook Research App. Read the rest

"We find that LEGO investments outperform large stocks, bonds, gold and other alternative investments, yielding the average return of at least 11% (8% in real terms) in the sample period 1987-2015," write the authors of a study titled LEGO - The Toy of Smart Investors. "Small and huge sets, as well as seasonal, architectural and movie-based sets, deliver higher returns. LEGO returns are not exposed to market, value, momentum and volatility risk factors, but have an almost unit exposure to the size factor. A positive multifactor alpha of 4-5%, a Sharpe ratio of 0.4, a positive return skewness and a low exposure to standard risk factors make the LEGO toy an attractive alternative investment with a good diversification potential."[via Bonnie Burton's article, "Lego bricks outshine gold bars as investments, study finds" from CNet, January 28, 2019]Image: 299 Warm Gold, Drum Lacquered/Gold Metalized/Gold Laquered / Metallic Gold, by Ryan H./Twitter. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) Read the rest

Youtube's ContentID system allows rightsholders to upload video and audio and block videos that contain their works (or put ads on those videos and take the revenue they generate), and to have the accounts of repeat copyright offenders permanently deleted, along with all their videos. ContentID is badly flawed. On the one hand, it routinely catches things that aren't copyright infringements (like birdsong, white noise, or home-recorded performances of classical music).On the other hand, the system has few checks and balances. While Youtube requires that people who want to make ContentID claims go through a vetting process, the process is very lightweight and allows all kinds of bad actors in, who can then steal creators' revenues by falsely claiming copyright over their videos.No one expects Youtube to be perfect, but it also fails with a remarkable lack of grace. The small number of humans available to review contested claims means that people who fall afoul of machine error, sloppiness and criminal mischief are often unable to get a fair hearing or justice. This phenomenon is familiar to anyone who's had a complaint against one of the big platforms: unless your story makes the news, you're likely to get stuck in an email loop where your complaint keeps getting sent back with irrelevant, semi-automated responses that make it seem like no one has even paid enough attention to understand what's going on.That lack of human oversight creates the perfect conditions for all kinds of fraud and malice, and criminals have noticed. Read the rest

Remember when drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, aka El Chapo, escaped from prison through a tunnel below his cell that was outfitted with lighting, rails, and a motorcycle? In fact, El Chapo built his crime career on top of his tunnels, secret doors, and underground escape routes. Read the rest

Ancient Roman texts and sculptures describe a Celtic practice of severing your defeated enemies' heads, embalming them with resin and plant oils, and displaying them as war trophies: now, archaeologists have unearthed evidence of the practice at Le Cailar, the 2,500 year old walled city near the Rhone.The archaeologists have identified fragments of 100 or more skulls dating from 300 to 320BCE, bearing markings indicative of decapitation and embalming. The bones were found alongside coins, pottery fragments and other relics.The resin traces were confirmed with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry testing; Réjane Roure, an archaeologist from the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier hopes to do further research to confirm that the practice was not confined to Le Cailar; University of Chicago archaeologist Martin Doppelt hopes that isotopes in the remains will pinpoint the origins of the dead.It may be that some of the skulls come from revered ancestors as well as enemies. They were displayed within the city walls, for benefit of the townspeople -- not outside, as an intimidation tactic aimed at enemies.The 1st-century BCE Greek historians Diodorus and Strabo both recorded the account of a Greek traveler to southern France around 100 BCE. He described Celtic fighters claiming the heads of the bravest and most renowned of their defeated enemies after a battle, then carrying them home to be embalmed and displayed. The heads of especially famous foes became prized items for the community.“They never gave back the head belonging to the most famous and brave person, even for an equal weight of gold,” both historians wrote. Read the rest

Aberdeenshire Council said that a stone circle thought to be of ancient vintage was in fact built in the 1990s. Neil Ackerman, Historic Environment Record Assistant at Aberdeenshire Council, said: “It is obviously disappointing to learn of this development, but it also adds an interesting element to its story.“That it so closely copies a regional monument type shows the local knowledge, appreciation and engagement with the archaeology of the region by the local community.“I hope the stones continue to be used and enjoyed – while not ancient it is still in a fantastic location and makes for a great feature in the landscape.“These types of monument are notoriously difficult to date. For this reason we include any modern replicas of ancient monuments in our records in case they are later misidentified.Sounds like a great place for events that would not normally be acceptable at a neolithic monument. Read the rest

Tyson Foods has recalled 36,000 pounds of chicken nuggets due to the presence of "rubber" in them.The Food Safety and Inspection Service was alerted to the issue Tuesday after Tyson received consumer complaints about "extraneous material, specifically rubber" in the product, the agency said in a statement. There haven't been any confirmed reports of illness or adverse reactions from eating the chicken nuggets, but federal health officials say some products may be in consumers' freezers. People are warned against consuming them.Here's a guide to finding Tyson's nutricious rubber nuggets. PREVIOUSLY: Enjoy delicious Perdue wood nuggets while you can Read the rest

The “three wishes” part is where I lost it. This is an extremely well done GIF that remixes “Love, Actually” with Donald Trump's racist wet dream of a Wall.The Wall[via] Read the rest

Go get a developer account and send us a formal bug report, Apple reportedly told them.

Chicago Police spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi tweeted a case update tonight on the attack reported against 'EMPIRE' actor Jussie Smollett. “Tonight Chicago Police detectives expanded the search area for cameras to be able to provide photos of the alleged assailants in this attack,” said Guglielmi. “Thus far, no video of the alleged assailants or a vehicle has been discovered but we are continuing to broaden our search.”PREVIOUSLY: 'Empire' star Jussie Smollett attacked by 2 white men who put rope around neck, poured chemical on him, yelled slursUPDATE: We continue to seek any available evidence/video to identify possible offenders in this case. Anyone who may hv been in area of 300 E North Water St btwn 1-3a should send info to https://t.co/g9Q1Srtgmc. Thus far we have not found anything to be able put out a description pic.twitter.com/wxdA0OOjZz— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) January 29, 2019Statement on #ChicagoPolice hate crime investigation. We are taking these allegations very seriously and encourage anyone with information to report anonymously to https://t.co/yYAqzcVIfu pic.twitter.com/DxipALHXaz— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) January 29, 2019#Empire is reeling from the violent & bigoted assault on Jussie Smollett this morning; @leedanielsent & @Dannystrong @FOXTV drama shutting down for at least 1 day as arctic cold freezes #Chicago https://t.co/mILZMzi9aH— Dominic Patten (@DeadlineDominic) January 30, 2019I fucking love Jussie Smollett & working on Empire w him was some of the best times he is the epitome of charisma, kindness, humility & unadulterated talent. He will rebound soon & we’ll continue living PROUDLY & BOLDLY against the illness that’s woven into our country. Read the rest

This bodes well for WhatsApp users.Attorney Nate Cardozo of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (for the last 6 years!) and Robyn Greene from the Open Technology Institute are among new privacy team hires at social networking company WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook. Cardozo announced the move on a Facebook post, Greene announced her news in a tweet. Cardozo announced the move in a post to Facebook on Tuesday:Personal news! After six and a half years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), I’ll be leaving at the end of next week. I’m incredibly sad to be leaving such a great organization and I’ll miss my colleagues with all my heart.Where to? Starting 2/19, I’ll be the Privacy Policy Manager for WhatsApp!! I could NOT be more excited.If you know me at all, you’ll know this isn’t a move I’d make lightly. After the privacy beating Facebook’s taken over the last year, I was skeptical too. But the privacy team I’ll be joining knows me well, and knows exactly how I feel about tech policy, privacy, and encrypted messaging. And that’s who they want at managing privacy at WhatsApp. I couldn’t pass up that opportunity.It’s going to be an enormous challenge professionally but I’m ready for it.Taylor Hatmaker at TechCrunch:In an effort to bolster its public credibility in the wake of a very rough year, Facebook is bringing a fierce former critic into the fold.Next month, longtime Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) counsel Nate Cardozo will join WhatsApp, Facebook’s encrypted chat app. Read the rest

Your internet-of-shit smart lightbulb is probably storing your wifi password in the clear, ready to be recovered by wily dumpster-divers; Limited Results discovered the security worst-practice during a teardown of a Lifx bulb; and that's just for starters: the bulbs also store their RSA private key and root passwords in the clear and have no security measures to prevent malicious reflashings of their ROMs with exploits, network probes and other nasties. (Thanks, John!) Read the rest

The "Facebook Research" VPN is an app that circumvents Apple's ban on certain kinds of surveillance by cloaking itself as a beta app and distributing through the Applause, Betabound and Utest services, rather than Apple's App Store: users get up to $20/month, plus referral fees, to run the app, which comes with a man-in-the-middle certificate that lets Facebook intercept "private messages in social media apps, chats from in instant messaging apps – including photos/videos sent to others, emails, web searches, web browsing activity, and even ongoing location information by tapping into the feeds of any location tracking apps you may have installed."It's not clear which of these data-types Facebook is harvesting from users of the app, which is codenamed "Project Atlas."The program recruits users aged 13 to 35, and has been running since 2016. Facebook confirmed that it uses the app to "gather data on usage habits."Facebook previously faced disgrace and crisis when it was revealed that Onavo, a so-called VPN app that was actually grabbing a huge tranche of data from users; Apple subsequently removed Onavo from its app store. Facebook does not distribute the "Research" app through Apple's own beta-test program, choosing instead to launder it through third parties. Facebook is pretty clearly violating Apple's policies in doing this.Once installed, users just had to keep the VPN running and sending data to Facebook to get paid. The Applause-administered program requested that users screenshot their Amazon orders page. This data could potentially help Facebook tie browsing habits and usage of other apps with purchase preferences and behavior. Read the rest

Unauthorized Bread is the first of four audiobooks that make up my forthcoming book Radicalized, read by the talented actor Lameece Issaq. The book, published by Macmillan Audio, is a Google Play exclusive, as part of a deal I made to celebrate the launch of a major DRM-free audiobook store that challenges Audible's monopoly on the store. But the Google Play folks have graciously permitted me to sell it with my other DRM-free audiobooks, so you can buy it direct if you prefer. There's three more audiobooks to come in the series (they're launching with Radicalized on March 19), and they'll all be sold on Google Play and on my site for three months, then they'll be available in all DRM-free audiobook stores (which probably means that they won't be for sale on Audible, unless the company makes good on its promise to drop DRM, which dates back to Amazon's acquisition of the company in 2008.Here's a little summary of the story: "Unauthorized Bread is a tale of immigration, the toxicity of economic and technological stratification, and the young and downtrodden fighting against all odds to survive and prosper."Unauthorized Bread is being developed for television by Topic Studios (a sister company to The Intercept).Unauthorized Bread (Google Play)Unauthorized Bread (Direct from me!) Read the rest

John Cog writes, "Inventor extraordinaire Simone Giertz (YouTube's 'Queen of Shitty Robots') (previously) is already planning funny new experiments for that 'weird radiation mask' that 'looks like something from like a low-budget sci-fi' that she'll be wearing for her next six weeks of new radiation therapy for a non-cancerous (but scary) brain tumor (previously). 'And fortunately, I get to keep it!' she adds cheerfully. 'So I'm just trying to think of -- that's like the one thing. I'm like, 'Ooh, what projects could I do with this...?'It's inspiring to watch her bravely facing a major medical procedure with a healthy mix of courage, candor, and wit -- and the heartwarming outpouring of online encouragement that she's been receiving. Simone's now even posting funny updates on Twitter as she counts down the 30 radiation treatments, one by one. (Wednesday she noted that they'd played Bob Marley's 'Don't Worry About A Thing' in her treatment room, ' but I still worried about a lot of things.')Best of luck, Simone!How YouTube’s Queen of Robots Will Fight a Brain Tumor [David Cassel/The New Stack] Read the rest

[Editor's note: I'm a volunteer advisor to Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination, and Joey Eschrich is a colleague of mine there; I invited him to write up his latest project, an anthology of science fiction about climate change.]Joey Eschrich:Today, the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative at Arizona State University published Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction, Volume II. The anthology features 10 short stories from ASU’s 2018 global climate fiction contest, plus a foreword by renowned science fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson, author of New York 2140, Green Earth, and other seminal climate fiction novels. The book is free to download in a variety of digital formats.The stories, written by authors from six different countries, explore climate chaos and its aftermath through a variety of genres and styles, from science fiction and fantasy to literary fiction and prose poetry. In his foreword, Robinson writes that the stories, which unfold in far-flung locales around the world, are linked together by grief in the face of imminent loss:The mood of these stories, repeated again and again, is grief at the damage climate change is doing to some particular place and culture. The specificity in these stories, the deep knowledge they display as they describe the places and cultures being lost, make them acts of love. The love is expressed as a kind of paying attention, as the detailed articulation of 10 beloved places and cultures in imminent danger of being lost. Read the rest

Stingrays (AKA IMSI catchers) are a widespread class of surveillance devices that target cellular phones by impersonating cellular towers to them (they're also called "cell-site simulators").IMSI catchers are so easy to build and operate that they have leapt from police agencies to criminals, and foreign and corporate spies, exposing us all to potential surveillance from all quarters.That's why it was so important that the new 5G mobile protocol be designed to foil IMSI catchers, and why the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP (the body standardizing 5G) updated the Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) to resist IMSI catching techniques.But new research from ETH Zurich and Technische Universität Berlin has revealed a critical flaw in AKA, a defect that not only allows attackers to track the number of calls and texts being sent while a user is connected to the fake tower, but also a count of calls and texts from before the device was compromised. More importantly, the attack allows for fine-grained location tracking.It’s important to keep in mind here that, for cases of lawful intervention from law enforcement agencies, there are better ways than this attack technique to get location information, such as getting a warrant and getting the information directly from the phone companies. People working outside the legal system, such as spies and criminals, cannot get warrants and cannot typically work directly with the phone companies. Law enforcement does not need the location-finding capabilities of an IMSI catcher unless they are trying to circumvent the legal system. Read the rest

Bangkok, Thailand is now considered one of the top 10 polluted cities in the world, according to Global News. And to combat the problem, Bangkok is attacking the smog with water cannons. Thai authorities used water cannons on Monday in an effort to combat Bangkok’s air pollution. Masks were also provided after hazardous dust particles reportedly reached an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 180.Any level above 150 is considered unhealthy and Bangkok ranked in the top 10 of polluted cities worldwide on Monday.The particles, known as PM 2.5, are a mixture of liquid droplets and solid particles that can include dust, soot and smoke.Diesel fumes contributed up to 60 per cent of the pollution while burning rubbish and crops attributed about 35 per cent.And it appears they've even begun to add sugar-infused water, hoping the added sugar will trap the more dangerous pollutants, even though the sweet water could end up causing mold. Via Oddity Central:Thai media reported that in a desperate attempt to bring down critical air pollution levels in Bangkok, local authorities started experimenting with sweetened water, instead of regular one. The idea behind the bizarre pollution-fighting strategy is that by increasing the viscosity of the water using sugar will allow it to trap more dangerous particles when sprayed into the air. However, some experts believe that the unconventional approach could do more harm than good.Dr. Weerachai Putthawong, a professor of organic chemistry at Kasetsart University, told Workingpoint News that he has serious doubts that the sweetened water will yield better results than regular water. Read the rest

Last week, Citizen Lab and the AP published a blockbuster story revealing that Citizen Lab had been targeted by undercover operatives who pumped Lab employees for information on the group's work uncovering illegal surveillance operations undertaken by authoritarian governments using tools made by the notorious Israeli cyber-arms dealer NSO Group.The AP published a still and video of one of the undercovers, who'd posed as "Michel Lambert." Now, The New York Times has identified him as Aharon Almog-Assoulin, whose CV includes work for Israeli spy agencies and who is now affiliated with Black Cube, a black ops private security firm whose greatest hits include digging up kompromat for Harvey Weinstein to use against the women he sexually assaulted; smearing George Soros to help authoritarian dictator Viktor Orban win the Hungarian election; and sending spies to dig up dirt on Obama officials in a bid to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal.The NYT identified Almog-Assoulin with help from Israeli investigative TV show Uvda. Contacted by the Times, Almog-Assoulin said, "I do not have any interest in continuing with this conversation."Black Cube denies that Almog-Assoulin was working for them when he attempted to defraud Citizen Lab. They threatened to sue the Times.NSO denies engaging Black Cube or Almog-Assoulin. The operatives, whoever they were working for, did not seem especially smooth. Mr. Almog-Assoulin, posing as “Michel Lambert,” claimed to be intrigued by Mr. Scott-Railton’s doctoral research on using kites to lift cameras aloft, though drones have made that work a bit out of date. Read the rest

This clipper was designed to cleanly cut off a hangnail. The angled blades make it easy to see what you're doing. It gets right to the nub of the hangnail, preventing it from spontaneously regenerating. I keep one in my desk drawer and another in my travel kit. The tip is sharp, so I think I'm going to make a 3D printed cap for it. Read the rest

Washington Governor Jay Inslee has declared an emergency as measles spreads to Seattle's King County.CNN:As of Monday, there are 36 confirmed cases of measles in the state of Washington -- an outbreak that has already prompted Gov. Jay Inslee to declare a state of emergency."Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease that can be fatal in small children," Inslee said in his proclamation on Friday, adding that these cases create "an extreme public health risk that may quickly spread to other counties."There were 35 cases of the measles in Clark County, which sits on the state's southern border, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. Officials said 31 of the cases involved people who have not had a measles immunization; the other four are not verified. Of the 35 cases, 25 are children between age 1 and 10. There are also 11 suspected cases in Clark County.There is also one case in King County, which includes Seattle. While the King County website says the patient, a man in his 50s, is a "suspected case," the governor said in a news release it is a confirmed case of measles.In a health alert from King County, it was said the man had recently traveled to Clark County.Inslee's proclamation allows agencies and departments to use state resources and "do everything reasonably possible to assist affected areas." Read the rest

You can make your own perfectly adorable chibi crocheted AT-AT Walker with this $5.90 pattern from Polish textile artist Kamila Krawczyk, AKA Krawka. (via The Stars My Destination) Read the rest

Tomorrow evening (Wednesday 1/30) at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club, I'll be interviewing longtime BB pal Douglas Rushkoff about his inspiring and (as usual) provocative new book Team Human! I expect a freewheeling conversation about the optimism of the cyberdelic early 1990s, why we looked to digital media as a democratizing tool to empower the individual, and how we ended up in today's (anti)social media mess. I'm hoping that the way in is the way out.Douglas Rushkoff: Team Human at the Commonwealth Club San FranciscoAnd if you can't make tomorrow, Doug will be at the legendary City Lights Booksellers tonight (Tuesday 1/29) at 7pm! Read the rest

Propublica is one of many organizations, mainly nonprofits, whose "ad transparency" tools scrape Facebook ads and catalog them, along with the targeting data that exposes who is paying for which messages to be shown to whom.Facebook previously warned these watchdogs that their tools violated Facebook's terms of service and that their days were numbered and now Facebook has made technical changes to its site that locks out ad transparency tools operated by Propublica, Mozilla, and Who Targets Me.The tools worked by asking interested Facebook subscribers to download and install them; then they worked from within users' browsers to capture the ads that were shown to them. Facebook says that its limited database of political ads makes the independent tools redundant, but Facebook's own database contains important omissions, including ads from the NRA, ads targeting Bernie Sanders supporters, and more. Moreover, this database is only available in three of the dozens of countries where Facebook is a significant political player.Facebook also claimed that allowing these third-party scrapers could open the door to "bad actors" who'd trick users into installing plugins that exposed their information to malicious uses.It's a really good example of the difference between a democratic approach to technical regulation, and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. The democratic approach encourages the growth of independent, pluralistic oversight systems that work without the cooperation or permission of the tech giants, owing them nothing and not depending on them for their existence. In a constitutional monarchy, we declare Facebook and the other giants to be sovereigns of their service, and in return, we ask them to perform some public duties, like blocking undesirable ads. Read the rest

Stanford folklorist and science historian Adrienne Mayor has a fascinating-sounding new book out, titled "Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology." It's a survey of how ancient Greeks, Romans, Indian, and Chinese myths imagined and grappled with visions of synthetic life, artificial intelligence, and autonomous robots. From Mayor's interview at Princeton University Press:Who first imagined the concept of robots? Most historians of science trace the first automatons to the Middle Ages. But I wondered, was it possible that ideas about creating artificial life were thinkable long before technology made such enterprises possible? Remarkably, as early as the time of Homer, ancient Greek myths were envisioning how to imitate, augment, and surpass nature, by means of biotechne, “life through craft”—what we now call biotechnology. Beings described as fabricated, “made, not born,” appeared in myths about Jason and the Argonauts, the sorceress Medea, the bronze robot Talos, the ingenious craftsman Daedalus, the fire-bringer Prometheus, and Pandora, the female android created by Hephaestus, god of invention. These vivid stories were ancient thought experiments set in an alternate world where technology was marvelously advanced.Modern sci-fi movies pop up in several chapters. How do they relate to ancient myths?Some 2,500 years before movies were invented, ancient Greek vase painters illustrated popular stories of the bronze robot warrior Talos, the techno-wizard Medea, and the fembot Pandora dispatched to earth on an evil mission, in ways that seem very “cinematic...” Movies and myths about imagined technology are cultural dreams. Like contemporary science fiction tales, the myths show how the power of imagination allows humans to ponder how artificial life might be created—if only one possessed sublime technology and genius. Read the rest

Jackie Gartner-Schmidt is a speech-language pathologist at the University of Pittsburgh. She studied why people's voices tremble or even squeak when they get nervous. It's because our vocal cords close up as a protective response to stressful situations, so we don't accidentally inhale water. In the video above, filmed at a TEDx event, Gartner-Schmidt shows an exercise to open your vocal cords if you are nervous about having to speak in public.From TED:Hold up your index finger a few inches in front of your mouth. As you exhale steadily, make a “Wooooooo” noise (think: little kid pretending to be a ghost) for 5 to 10 seconds. Do this 5 to 10 times. (Watch her demonstrate it here.)“This … essentially relaxes the vocal folds,” says Gartner-Schmidt. “It establishes breath and air flow and voice stability, which is the cornerstone of any strong, clear voice.”Right before the next important occasion in which you have to speak — for work, for the toast you’re giving at a wedding, for a speech to a community board — take Gartner-Schmidt’s advice and “spend some time finding your best voice.” Read the rest

Extraweg (AKA Oliver Latta: Twitter, Youtube) is a superb and surreal animator whose computer rendered grotesques of human faces and forms writhing, merging, and doing the impossible are spellbindingly weird.(via JWZ) Read the rest

Why is airplane food so mediocre? The obvious but wrong answer: because it's cheap. Pringles and French fries and Snickers are cheap, and they are delicious. So what gives?According to Patrick Jones in this explainer video, it boils down to two scientific facts: 1) low humidity, which affects our ability to taste, and 2) loud noises, which also dulls our sense of taste (backed by a 2014 study).This video is fascinating not only for exploring the affects of traveling on our taste buds, but also because it gives us a brief history of flying and food, starting on October 11, 1919, when the first meal – a lunchbox – was served on a flight from London to Paris. In 1936, United Airlines launched its first onboard kitchen. And then there were the glory days of in-air dining, when, back in the 50s and 60s, they offered several courses that included entrees such as lobster, caviar, cornish game hens and ham, and took a leisurely two hours to serve. This had to taste better than such fare as United's microwaveable chorizo breakfast sandwiches, pepperoni pizzas, and cold croissant sandwiches (that are no longer complimentary by the bye). Is there a way to enhance the flavor of food on planes? Perhaps. Just pack your cinnamon and curry, or order a tomato juice – some of the spices and foods mentioned that give us more bang for your bite. Read the rest

Just as the purpose of a tobacco is not to pay for cancer treatment, the purpose of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's wildly popular proposal to tax income over $10m at 70% is to correct inequality and reduce the corrosive power of extreme wealth to distort political decisionmaking, not to fund programs.As Vanessa Williamson writes on Common Dreams, a 70% wealth tax "blunt[s] the incentives for wealthy people to overpay one another and exploit the less privileged."A hypothetical example explains the mechanism. Imagine if you are a CEO, already making enough to be in the top income tax bracket. If the marginal tax rate in that bracket is 70 percent, any increase you get in pay is going to cost your company a little over three times what you’ll actually take home. The rest will go to Uncle Sam. No wonder company boards become more discerning in approving executive pay increases. High tax rates make it a lot more costly for wealthy people to fling money at one another for no reason.This has an implication for public budgets; to the extent that individuals’ fortunes are reduced from the obscene to the merely very large, top marginal tax rates collect less revenue.MoAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 70 Percent Tax on the Rich Isn't About Revenue, It's About Decreasing Inequality [Vanessa Williamson/Common Dreams](via Late Stage Capitalism) Read the rest

Matt Baker, who designs and publishes the posters at UsefulCharts, created this beautiful poster that traces the evolution of the alphabet from 1750 BCE to today's modern Latin script. In some cases, the Phoenician characters (1000 BCE) look a lot like their modern counterparts.[via My Modern Met] Read the rest

Steganography is the art of hiding things in plain sight: for example, secretly encoding a message in an image by flipping the least-significant bit in each pixel to create a binary string that can be decoded as text.0xRick Owned Root's /.Steganography is an open, git-hosted catalog of useful resources aimed at Capture the Flag players who are trying to puzzle out steganographic clues.Stegsolve:Sometimes there is a message or a text hidden in the image itself and in order to view it you need to apply some color filters or play with the color levels. You can do it with GIMP or Photoshop or any other image editing software but stegsolve made it easier. it’s a small java tool that applies many color filters on images. Personally i find it very usefulSteganography - A list of useful tools and resources [0xRick Owned Root/Github](via Four Short Links)(Image: Hustvedt, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.

Drumming along as Siri recites 1 trillion to the tenth power isn't new, but this particular variation below really reminds me of a minimalist composition by Laurie Anderson or Steve Reich. The toothbrush in the background also adds a bit of dada weirdness to the performance. Read the rest

Oh, sure, the Democratic leadership says it takes climate change seriously, but that same leadership has sidelined the Green New Deal and gutted the climate committee, replacing it with a lame-duck committee led and staffed by beneficiaries of big energy sector dollars.In a new Jacobin editorial Branko Marcetic continues his razor-edged critique of the Democratic establishment, whose words set them apart from the GOP, but whose deeds are incredibly similar to the Republic establishment's own legislative agenda.Marcetic likens climate change to an impending, planet-destroying comet-strike. The Republicans deny that the comet is coming, while the Democrats say that it is, and it's really urgent, and then do nothing, while privately rolling their eyes at comet activists.Sure, House speaker Nancy Pelosi will refer to climate change as “the existential threat of our time.” But even once activists pushed her to put it on the post-midterm agenda, Pelosi declined to establish a select committee with the kind of broad powers activists want, such as the authority to issue subpoenas (something the previous House select climate committee could do, when the crisis was less urgent) or even, flabbergastingly, to draft legislation.The politician tasked with heading this committee has some of her wealth invested in the fossil-fuel industry, and balked at the idea of barring politicians who have taken fossil-fuel donations from sitting on it, arguing it would violate the First Amendment. After New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez floated the idea of a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the rich to pay for climate policies (which, considering the scale of what must be done, is a moderate position), the House’s number two Democrat, Steny Hoyer, literally laughed at the idea before saying he didn’t support it. Read the rest

Siri provides the backing vocals for this catchy tune.Image: YouTube/World Viral Videos Read the rest

Ingo Dwelling designed a Braille D20 die and uploaded the model to Thingiverse. Here's a time-lapse of it being 3D printed by the folks at Adafruit. Read the rest

aeh5040's kinetic Lego sculpture is a gorgeous and hypnotic piece; you can build one yourself from the plans provided. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

After the last-minute collapse of negotiations over the new EU Copyright Directive, things have only gone from bad to worse for the beleaguered (but deadly and far-reaching) internet regulation.Under the proposal, online platforms would have to spend hundreds of millions of euros on algorithmic copyright filters that would compare everything users tried to post with a database of supposedly copyrighted works, which anyone could add anything to, and block any suspected matches. This would snuff out all the small EU competitors to America's Big Tech giants, and put all Europeans' communications under threat of arbitrary censorship by balky, unaccountable, easily abused algorithms.The proposal also lets newspapers decide who can link to their sites, and charge for the right to do so, in order to transfer some trifling sums from Big Tech to giant news conglomerates, while crushing smaller tech companies and marginalising smaller news providers.With EU elections looming, every day that passes without resumed negotiations puts the Directive further and further away from any hope of being voted on in this Parliament (and the next Parliament is likely to have a very different composition, making things even more uncertain). Already, it would take heroic measures to take any finalised agreement into legislation: just the deadlines for translation, expert review, etc, make it a near impossibility. Within a couple of weeks, there will be no conceivable way to get the Directive voted on before the elections.That's why it's so important that opposition is continuing to mount for the Directive, and it certainly is. Read the rest