Adam Becker was invited to write for Inference, a "quarterly review of the sciences" backed by billionaire Peter Thiel. Inference covers all sorts of interesting subjects, but has an alarming tendency to make no distinction between pseudoscience and the real thing: think Omni but with the dry imprimatur of academic style instead of cool paintings. So Becker went down the rabbithole (instead of getting paid by it) and wrote up a profile of the publication for Undark.A declaration in italics on their masthead gave me pause: “We have no ideological, political, or religious agendas whatsoever.” This struck me as unusual over-emphasis, so I did a little digging and came across a 2014 blog post by the computer scientist Jeffrey Shallit, where he muses on the first issue of this new “science” publication, adding: “the weirdness is strong — very strong — with this one.” It sounds like the kind of thing I'd love—indulgent longreads about weird science—but the reality of such things in 2019 is climate denial and creationism and Noam Chomsky not responding to press inquiries about why he's on its board.(Pictured above is, in the lack of Inference having any screenshottable visual character whatsoever, my own devising of what a Boing Boing Journal of Junk Science might look like -- perhaps it is time!) Read the rest

In 1860 a party of explorers set out to traverse the Australian continent, but bad management and a series of misfortunes sent it spiraling toward tragedy. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Victorian Exploring Expedition and its dramatic climax at Cooper's Creek.We'll also try to validate Archimedes and puzzle over an unlucky thief.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

The Dude disappoints, watch this instead.Be disappointed. Read the rest

“We’re aware of this issue and we have identified a fix that will be released in a software update later this week.” — Apple.

“They are the pets of a friend of mine and he wanted to give them as a gift to someone who loved them but could not have their own budgies.”IMGURian pewdpie made these wonderful crocheted budgies and “improvised the faces with felting.” “These are the sweet little budgies I recreated” in crochet, Turnip and Poptart. Read the rest

The Beach Behemoth is a 12-foot beach ball. Perhaps you think that this is a mere toy, one of those ultimately trivial impulse buys of no permanence beyond momentary amusement. This is because you have not read the buyer reviews at Amazon. Reid Hamlin writes:We took this ball to the beach and after close to 2 hours to pump it up, we pushed it around for about 10 fun filled minutes. That was when the wind picked it up and sent it huddling down the beach at about 40 knots. It destroyed everything in its path. Children screamed in terror at the giant inflatable monster that crushed their sand castles. Grown men were knocked down trying to save their families. The faster we chased it, the faster it rolled. It was like it was mocking us. Eventually, we had to stop running after it because its path of injury and destruction was going to cost us a fortune in legal fees. Rumor has it that it can still be seen stalking innocent families on the Florida panhandle. We lost it in South Carolina, so there is something to be said about its durability.Troy Beaver:First of all, if you have your heart set on this, and want this GIGANTIC ball, there is technically nothing wrong with this product, but PLEASE take a minute to consider some things that I did not consider before imposing this monstrosity onto our son's graduation party. ...Once it was completely blown up, (about an hour and a half with a small air compressor), it bounced....EVERYWHERE....across people, picnic tables, horse fence, the neighbor's yard, and INTO A FOUR LANE HIGHWAY!!!!!!! Read the rest

“We have had several officers shot,” says Houston TX Police Chief Art Acevedo.“Please pray for officers on the way to the scene” Houston police union says 5 officers have been shot and have been transported to hospital. Houston mayor Sylvester Turner said via Twitter the suspect in the shooting is “down.” More tweets from the breaking news event follow.The latest from Houston Police Watch CommandA total of 3 suspects in a residence.One of them is dead. Two still inside.HPD was serving a warrant at the home.Five officers shot and transported to the hospital. pic.twitter.com/23QD1p0POX— KHOU 11 News Houston (@KHOU) January 28, 2019https://t.co/dCWJ4VxtBB— KHOU 11 News Houston (@KHOU) January 28, 2019Developing: @HoustonPolice Department now confirming 5 police officers were wounded and are being transported to the Texas Medical Center. Houston Mayor @SylvesterTurner indicates the suspect in the shooting is down. pic.twitter.com/fc6rkAvgIp— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) January 29, 2019Statement On Houston Police Shooting: https://t.co/PYc4qmVDeN pic.twitter.com/EC3jIrAxX3— Gov. Greg Abbott (@GovAbbott) January 29, 2019We have had several officers shot please pray for officers on the way to the scene now more information to follow.— Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) January 28, 2019#BREAKING: #Air11 over the scene in southeast Houston. Five @houstonpolice officers shot. @SylvesterTurner confirms suspect is down. #KHOU11 #HTownRush pic.twitter.com/pugMqKAqoR— Marcelino Benito (@MarcelinoKHOU) January 28, 2019Officers moving traffic outside of @memorialhermann awaiting arrival of ambulances carrying shot officers. #KHOU11 pic.twitter.com/L2PS81f0GU— Matt Dougherty (@MattKHOU) January 28, 2019Just been notified that three (3) of HPD officers have been shot. Read the rest

Trump's government shutdown fiasco that ended last week without a penny for his primitive wall seems to be taking quite a toll on president – he's now lashing out at his friends at Fox – a rarity indeed. Sunday night he tweeted an insult at Fox reporters John Roberts and Gillian Turner:Never thought I’d say this but I think @johnrobertsFox and @GillianHTurner @FoxNews have even less understanding of the Wall negotiations than the folks at FAKE NEWS CNN & NBC! Look to final results! Don’t know how my poll numbers are so good, especially up 19% with Hispanics?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2019And almost as rare, another Fox reporter – Julie Banderas – hit back at Trump in a series of tweets that defends her colleagues and criticizes the president:@realDonaldTrump This is NOT right. I stand by my colleagues @johnrobertsFox and @GillianHTurner They don’t deserve this. No reporter does. They are doing their jobs and reporting the facts. They are not opinion journalists and deserve the respect from the @WhiteHouse they cover. https://t.co/ftRPauopjC— Julie Banderas (@JulieBanderas) January 28, 2019We can and do stand plenty of criticism every day which is fine coming from everyday viewers. Our jobs are not meant to please others. But the office of the @POTUS ought not to be the one lashing out. That’s not how this country works. That’s not how Freedom of the Press works. https://t.co/buakHRRwPO— Julie Banderas (@JulieBanderas) January 28, 2019By going on Twitter and insulting two of our journalists @realDonaldTrump is putting a target on their backs. Read the rest

Von Erickson Laboratories created this skull microphone, which the press release compares to the Shure 55. It's $375 and made in bright chrome, dark chrome, gunmetal, white and orange, but the chrome models are sold out. Read the rest

Knipex makes high-quality tools, and these 10-inch Universal Jaw-Locking Pliers are no exception. If you've never used jaw-locking pliers, they clamp on to things without you having to keep gripping the handles. I've used mine countless times to grip onto stubborn bolts, nuts, and pipes. The ones here are currently out-of-stock because they are on sale, but you can order them and they'll be shipped when more inventory arrives. Read the rest

The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida has reanimated Salvador Dalí as a deepfake video experience. The "Dalí Lives" video installation opens in April on screens throughout the galleries. As Dali once said, “[I] believe in general death but in the death of Dalí absolutely not. [I] believe in my death becoming almost impossible.”From a press release:The Museum began this immersive project by collecting and sharing hundreds of interviews, quotes, and existing archival footage from the prolific artist. GS&P used these extensive materials to train an AI algorithm to “learn” aspects of Dali’s face, then looked for an actor with the same general physical characteristics of Dali’s body. The AI then generates a version of Dali’s likeness to match the actor’s face and expressions. To educate visitors while engaging with “Dali Lives,” the Museum used authentic writings from Dali himself – coupled with dynamic present-day messages – reenacted by the actor. Read the rest

"It's like moving a refrigerator," says the woman to the man on the snow-covered roof of the Canyon General Store in Yellowstone National Park. He expertly divides the snow into 7-foot towers, weighing 700 pounds each, and nudges them down the roof's incline with two snow shovels. I'm guessing he has done this kind of work before.Image: Caters Clips/YouTube Read the rest

Last year saw a massive surge in the right to repair movement, which seeks to limit manufacturers' power to undermine repairs, by mandating certain design decisions to facilitate independent servicing of goods, as well as access to parts and manuals.More than a dozen states introduced right to repair legislation, which met with fierce opposition, led by Apple, whose recent shareholder disclosures revealed that the company views the longevity of its products as a serious threat to its profitability; in the EU, right to repair regulation took on epic proportions, with grassroots fighters taking on a massive, well-funded corporate lobby.The momentum for right to repair is only growing: independent repair is anti-oligarchic (allowing local businesses to benefit from fixing their neighbors' property), environmentally necessary, and it enables self-reliance and the ability to customize or modify your property to suit your needs.In an excellent roundup on Naked Capitalism, Jerri-Lynn Scofield enumerates the many Right to Repair fights being waged across the world, with notes on their progress.Moving farther eastward, the topic of the right to repair has emerged in Australia, as I discussed most extensively here.Last June, Apple was fined for failing to offer free fixes for iPhones and iPads previously serviced by non-Apple stores and that developed a glitch known as “Error 53.” As I noted (quoting from MarketWatch piece,Apple fined as Australian customers win right-to-repair court fight): Under Australian law, customers are entitled to a repair or replacement, and sometimes a refund, if a product is faulty, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which sued Apple. Read the rest

Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that a museum visitor walked out of Moscow's Tretyakov gallery with a painting worth $1 million tucked under his arm. As you can see in the video above, visitors in the crowded gallery watch the man as he removes the painting from the wall and walks out with it, but no one stops him. The suspect has since been apprehended and the painting, Ai Petri.Crimea by Arkhip Kuindzhi, recovered.Image: Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs/YouTube Read the rest

A woman in Manhattan got stuck in an elevator Friday evening – and wasn't rescued until Monday morning. According to HuffPost, the unidentified woman was cleaning a five-story townhouse in the Upper East Side of Manhattan when she became trapped in the elevator between the 2nd and 3rd floor. The homeowners were out of town for the entire weekend, the elevator didn't have a phone, and apparently she didn't have a cell phone on her. Finally, on Monday morning, one of the homeowners came home, realized what had happened and called 911. Firefighters broke into the elevator around 10am, rescued the woman, and sent her to the hospital. Miraculously, she's in good condition.Moral of the story for claustrophobic people like me: take the stairs. Read the rest

John Kapoor (75), the billionaire founder of Insys Therapeutics, ran a bribery scheme to get doctors to prescribe an addictive fentanyl spray, said Assistant U.S. Attorney David Lazarus in Boston federal court on the opening day of a trial against Kapoor and four other Insys executives.Reuters reports that Lazurus told jurors Insys set up sham conferences and paid doctors up to $275,000 to speak at the poorly-attend fora. Kapoor and his colleagues have pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy.Image: Iris Hanking/Shutterstock Read the rest

The Safe Face Pledge launched last month as a "pledge to mitigate abuse of facial analysis technology," with four themes: "Show Value for Human Life, Dignity, and Rights;" "Address Harmful Bias"; "Facilitate Transparency"; and "Embed Commitments into Business Practices" (SAFE).The full pledge is inspirational and comprehensive, covering bias, secret and discriminatory state surveillance, risking human life, law enforcement abuse, auditing customer compliance, communicating the systems' workings, and making your legal documents (from vendor contracts to terms of service) reflective of your values.The pledge's announcement describes how the UK's notoriously inaccurate police facial recognition systems are more likely to falsely accuse black people of being a match for a criminal than people of different ethnic or racial backgrounds.That reminded me of something that EFF executive director Cindy Cohn described on a panel last month: Cindy pointed out that there's a danger in centering the critique of facial recognition in racial bias, because this bias is the result of the systems not being trained with enough images of racialized people. When a Chinese state facial recognition system ran into this problem, the Chinese government simply bought the driver's license database from an African client state and used it as training data, eliminating bias in the algorithm's false positive rate, by massively invading the privacy of millions of African people, and now the system is even better at tracking black people. Commitment One: Show Value for Human Life, Dignity, and RightsSignatories of the Safe Face Pledge agree to:1Do not contribute to applications that risk human lifeBy acknowledging that decisions that foreseeably increase the risk to human life are too dangerous for artificial intelligence, and by refraining from selling or providing facial analysis technologies to locate or identify targets in operations where lethal force may be used or is contemplated. Read the rest

Honest Guide is a YouTube channel for people planning to visit Prague (and sometimes other places in Europe). In this video, you are warned to stay away from Euronet ATMs. Apparently, they are located only in tourist areas. They can detect when a foreign card is inserted and offers terrible exchange rates (15% less than the going rate), plus they tack on a 4 USD fee. Read the rest

When Cambridge, UK resident Eve Paterson got married, she insisted that her dress and those of her bridesmaids would include pockets and belts; her friend Nell Gordon's tweets about it raced around the world as women everywhere celebrated the virtues of pockets and condemned the fashion industry for its deplorable, longstanding practice of denying women pockets.The fashion industry's unwillingness to supply women with adequate pockets is self parodying in its shittiness, and it remains one of the sterling examples of markets' real-world indifference to customer demands.Paterson's dress pockets were made from the fabric of her mother's wedding dress, fulfilling the "something old" part of the traditional wedding tackle ("something [old,new,borrowed,blue]"). Paterson sung the praises of pockets after the event: "Thinking about adding pockets ahead of time means there’s ample space for snacks for your new husband, notes for speeches, tissues for mum, and all the other things we know will help the day run smoothly."Bride added pockets into her wedding dress and bridesmaids’ dresses [Laura Abernethy/Metro](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: thumbnail from larger picture by Toby Mitchell/oakandblossom.com) Read the rest

At least six empty houses owned by the estates of Philadelphians ended up in the hands of William Ernest Johnson III, a violent felon currently on parole; the houses were then sold on to developers who renovated and flipped them.The houses were stolen by providing Philadelphia's city deeds office with forged deed transfers, either bearing the stamps of notaries who say they were tricked, or forged notary stamps (either from nonexistent notaries, or from notaries who say the stamps were forged -- including the wife of a former state senator).Pennsylvania does not require that notaries capture a thumbprint when notarizing a document.There have been other waves of house thefts in the past, but those were sophisticated identity-theft crimes that involved merging multiple data-sets from online breaches to impersonate the house's owner and secure a duplicate deed. However, in this case, it seems that a combination of poor checking at the Philadelphia city deeds office and lax standards for Pennsylvania notaries meant that even a dumdum could simply rip off houses wholesale.Johnson denies being that dumdum. However, at least one of the flipped houses was laundered through his wife, who was convincingly angry and surprised when the Philadelphia Inquirer asked her about it, implying that she'd been scammed by him. Then Johnson called the reporter and said, "I wanted to know if I could offer you something. What is it going to take for you not to mention my wife’s name?"The stolen houses had been owned by longtime residents who died without clear estates, or whose distant relations had not moved quickly to sell them on. Read the rest

Bruce Sterling's All Things Facebook is a massive linkdump of the latest-and-greatest reasons to delete Facebook (and possibly put Zuck and Sandberg on trial for crimes against humanity). This morning's post on Facebook's tracking of non-Facebook users on Android came from here.Some highlights:* Facebook is the new crapware [Natasha Lomas/Techcrunch]: "Crapware is named crapware for a reason. Having paid to own hardware, why should people be forever saddled with unwanted software, stub or otherwise?"* Technological Sovereignty, Vol. 2: " This book deals with its psychological, social, political, ecological and economic costs while it relates experiences to create Technological Sovereignty."* What 284 Days Without Facebook Feels Like (Pure. F*cking. Joy) [Jonathan Greene/Uncalendared] "What I Miss About Facebook? Nothing. Even on the rare occasion when I saw an update that made me happy, that joy was continually outweighed by the deluge of trash sent my way."* The fall of Facebook has only begun. [13D Research/Medium]: "The market is drastically underestimating the peril the company is in."* Walt Mossberg, Veteran Technology Journalist, Quits Facebook [Daniel Victor/New York Times] "I am doing this — after being on Facebook for nearly 12 years — because my own values and the policies and actions of Facebook have diverged to the point where I’m no longer comfortable here."There's so much more, though.All Things Facebook [Bruce Sterling/Tumblr] Read the rest

People stuck in a 75-car pileup about 20km east of Montreal decided to get creative in passing the time 🏒 pic.twitter.com/JInUxB9ed7— CBC (@CBC) January 28, 2019Oh, Canada! Thank you for the example you set. Just a few miles south of our mutual border, we have a Measles epidemic brewing! Read the rest

Facebook provides a suite of turnkey app-building tools for Android that are widely used among the most popular Google Play apps, with billions of combined installs; naturally, these tools create incredibly data-hungry defaults in the apps that incorporate them, so that even before you do anything with an app, it has already snaffled up a titanic amount of data, tied it into your Google Ad ID (which is recycled by Facebook to join up data from different sources) and sent it to Facebook.Needless to say, the GDPR made these practices radioactively illegal, but despite two years' warning that the GDPR was coming into effect last spring, Facebook dragged another six months out before updating its tools, and these updates still have propagated to all the apps in Google Play. The data harvested from phones -- including, for example, which Bible verses you read using a King James Bible app, and which searches you made on Kayak -- is added to your "shadow profile", and no one (outside of Facebook) knows for sure how that's used.You can practice a little self-defense, but it's cumbersome: root your phone and you can block all network traffic to *.facebook.com; you can also reset your Ad ID and disaggregate the data coming off your phone. I've had a poke around but can't find a tool that resets the Ad ID every 10 seconds -- please leave a comment if you know of one.Frederike Kaltheuner and Christopher Weatherhead from Privacy International gave an outstanding talk on the subject at the Chaos Communications Congress in Leipzig last month; an accompanying paper gives more detail, including methods. Read the rest

In this spectacular example of road rage, a Massachusetts senior clings to the hood of a vehicle as it accelerates to 70 MPH on the state turnpike.The man, Richard Kamrowski, and the driver of the SUV, 37-year-old Mark Fitzgerald, were involved in a minor sideswipe on Saturday and had pulled over to exchange information, Fox News reported. When the men got into an argument, Fitzgerald began to drive away. That’s when Kamrowski jumped on the hood of Fitzgerald’s SUV.Both driver and "passenger" were arrested and charged with being completely bonkers.BONUS ROAD RAGE VIDEO: In Anaheim, Calif., this weekend, a gentleman leapt onto the hood of a woman's car and punched her windshield with such force it cracked. He got arrested too. Read the rest

This video shows remote-controlled miniature diggers being used to escavate basement. It's taken quite a while, according to one source, though it seems more like a growing hobby than an explicit construction project.You'll be struck by how incredible the "toys" are. Find out more at rctruckandconstruction.com.On our forum you will find many gifted builders of both trucks and construction equip of all levels of skill and everyone is friendly, outgoing & enjoys helping out newcomers wanting to get involved with the hobby. There's a Vendor's Section of private hobbyists who are willing to put up their skills for hire at a fee that is driven moreso to help others in the hobby, rather than lining their pockets for maxium profit..don't get me wrong, they don't give away their time, but they are priced very reasonably and the quality of their work is carefully monitored by myself & others who are leaders of the forum.The detailed perfection of the custom-built mini-diggers makes screenshots and some of the videos disorienting, as if we had discovered and begun unearthing vast mysterious monuments that perfectly resembled dingy basements.Here's another: Read the rest

Stephen Hiltner trudges miles through beautiful moors and mountains to get to the next bothy [New York Times].But bothy culture, some longtime proponents fear, is imperiled by a generation unaccustomed to shrewdly guarded secrets. Map coordinates for the often hard-to-find dwellings, once dispersed only among hiking insiders, are now available openly on the internet. Popular hashtags have helped create something of a buzz on Instagram, where bothies are sometimes presented, misguidedly, as an alternative to Airbnb rentals. (The bothy code unequivocally prohibits the use of bothies for commercial purposes, and discourages their use by large groups.) A hugely popular and impressively researched guide, “The Scottish Bothy Bible,” published in 2017, lines shelves in stores throughout the U.K., the first of many bothy guides to achieve a kind of mainstream success. It, too, has increased foot traffic.Some you could walk right by without noticing. (Photo crop: Stephen Hiltner/The New York Times) Read the rest

Late-evening Twitter poetry from Tom Brokaw after blurting out his opinions concerning hispanic immigrants' "failure" to "assimilate". There's speculation that he's been hacked – "This cannot be real," writes Soledad O'Brien – but a look at his timeline suggests that Brokaw is just at the perihelion of boomer twitter. The light and heat of social media's burning sun blasts each generation's neurons a different way. Read the rest

There is an abandoned McDonnell Douglas MD87 jetliner parked on the tarmac of Adolfo Suárez-Madrid Barajas airport in Spain. If this is your jetliner, the airport asks that you please move it immediately. Apparently, the plane has been illegally parked for some years. From CNN:Airport director Elena Mayoral submitted an official notice to the Boletín Oficial del Estado, the official gazette of the Kingdom of Spain, informing the nation of a plane in an "obvious state of abandonment" at the airport...Under Spanish law, authorities must publish official notices about the plane for three consecutive months and then wait a year to see if the owner comes forward to claim it.If they do not, the plane will be considered legally abandoned and will be sold off by the state at a public auction.From El País:In 1990, the airplane flew for the first time for Iberia, according to online magazine Preferente.com. Eighteen years later it was acquired by Pronair, a charter airline headquartered in Albacete in Castilla-La Mancha. But the airline, which at one point was flying regularly to China, closed down in just a year due to the increase in fuel prices and the 2008 financial crisis.Two years later, the plane was acquired by Saicus Air, a Spanish airline based in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. The airline operated two airplanes from Madrid and up until that point, had been dedicated to transporting cargo. The plane was meant to fly passengers between Spain and the Republic of Guinea Bissau in west Africa. Read the rest

A man using a magnet to fish for salvageable items in Ocala, Florida was surprised to reel in a hand grenade. So he tossed it into his trunk and made a run for the border. As one does. Upon arriving at the nearest Taco Bell, the fellow called the police who were quick to evacuate the restaurant. Fortunately, the bomb squad safely removed the explosive device. They later determined it to be an unexploded World War II grenade.(CNN)Taco Bell on E. Silver Springs Blvd. has been evacuated. A man found a hand grenade while magnet fishing in Ocklawaha, put it in his trunk, and drove to Taco Bell prior to calling 911. MCSO bomb squad is currently on scene to ensure everyone’s safety. pic.twitter.com/sgGmXDkAXB— Ocala Police Dept (@ocalapd) January 26, 2019 Read the rest

This weekend, thieves stole the Banksy mural painted on the emergency exit door of the Bataclan concert venue in Paris. The Bataclan is where on November 13, 2015 Islamic State militants launched a terrorist attack by killing 90 people during an Eagles of Death Metal concert before continuing with shootings and suicide bombings that resulted in 130 deaths total and more than 400 injuries. From the BBC News:The theft, which occurred overnight on Friday, involved "a group of hooded individuals armed with angle grinders", AFP news agency reports, citing a source close to the investigation.The suspects then reportedly drove away with the artwork in a truck."Banksy Mural Is Stolen From Bataclan, Site of Paris Attacks" (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)L’œuvre de @originaIbanksy hommage aux victimes du 13/11 a été volée. pic.twitter.com/FMHoobzRXm— Bataclan (@bataclan_) January 26, 2019 Read the rest

On Friday, hundreds of us gathered at the Internet Archive, at the invitation of Creative Commons, to celebrate the Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain, just weeks after the first works entered the American public domain in twenty years.I had the honor of delivering the closing keynote, after a roster of astounding speakers. It was a big challenge and I was pretty nervous, but on reviewing the saved livestream, I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.Proud enough that I've ripped the audio and posted it to my podcast feed; the video for the keynote is on the Archive and mirrored to Youtube.The whole event's livestream is also online, and boy do I recommend it. Read the rest

Scooter companies like Bird and Lime do not currently provide helmets for their riders. A recent UCLA study shows riders without helmets suffer the worst injuries.LAist:During a year of study, doctors identified 249 people who were admitted for scooter-related injuries. They did this by looking through medical records and identifying any that contained notes with the word "scooter," or that mentioned Bird or Lime — the top two operators in the market.The study found "helmet use was low and a significant subset of injuries" were documented in patients under 18, which is the legal age required by scooter operators to ride.Researchers also studied scooter riders' habits by observing a pair of "busy intersections" in Sept. 2018 — one in downtown Santa Monica, the other near UCLA's campus.The vast majority of riders (94 percent) didn't wear helmets, which were required under California law during the period of study, though they no longer are. Nearly 8 percent were riding with a passenger, which is a violation of the vehicles terms of use (and local law). More than a quarter of the observed riders were seen zipping along on the sidewalk, which is also prohibited. Read the rest

Deepmind presented an AI that could beat human champions at Starcraft II. It claimed the AI was limited to what human players can physically do, putting its achievement in the realm of strategic analysis rather than finger twitchery. But there's a problem: it was often tracked clicking with superhuman speed and efficiency. Aleksi Pietikäinen: 1. AlphaStar played with superhuman speed and precision.2. Deepmind claimed to have restricted the AI from performing actions that would be physically impossible to a human. They have not succeeded in this and most likely are aware of it.3. The reason why AlphaStar is performing at superhuman speeds is most likely due to it’s inability to unlearn the human players tendency to spam click. I suspect Deepmind wanted to restrict it to a more human like performance but they are simply not able to.Pietikäinen suggests that because Deepmind would have depended on recorded human games to train the AI, it picked up a peculiar human behavior: idle or unnecessary "spam clicking". As a result Deepmind would have been forced to lift the AI's clickspeed limits to escape this behavior, at which point it develops strategies that irreducibly depend on bursts of superhuman speed. In brief:"It is deeply unsatisfying to have prominent members of this research project make claims of human-like mechanical limitations when the agent is very obviously breaking them and winning it’s games specifically because it is demonstrating superhuman execution."It looks rather like Deepmind bungled an interesting AI's announcement by making claims about it that it didn't realize were wrong. Read the rest

No one but the pure at heart may find the Golden Grail.Oh, Flash! Read the rest

Mark Corbett has settled with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- founded by Elizabeth Warren and then gutted by Trump appointee and awful person Mick Mulvaney, now the White House Chief of Staff -- over the complaints that he ran an illegal loan-sharking operation that swindled veterans out of their pensions for a decade. He has been fined $1.Corbett was the agent for websites that offered to trade veterans' pensions and disability benefits for cash advances; veterans would redirect their pension direct-deposits to the companies' bank accounts and get a lump-sum in return. This is illegal. What's more, the companies insisted that they didn't have comply with the legal obligation on lenders to inform borrowers of the effective interest rates, because this wasn't a loan, "you are selling a product for a set price." This is also illegal. Not only that, but the companies often stiffed the veterans, not paying them, or not paying them on time, and still kept their pensions.Corbett claimed he couldn't afford to pay a fine, so the CFPB reduced his penalty to $1.In a darkly hilarious denouement, CFPB left in all the boilerplate language included with larger fines. So the consent order intones that $1 dollar must be paid within 10 days of the effective date, and thereafter distributed to the Civil Penalty Fund to compensate victims of financial crimes. Mark Corbett is prohibited from taking a fat tax deduction for paying out that 100-cent penalty, and “to preserve the deterrent effect of the civil money penalty,” he cannot use this greenback as an offset toward any future federal fines. Read the rest

Regional languages of the British Isles for the win. In Morpheshire we called it Glitchtongue.Previously: Read the rest

The wheel. The light bulb. Throughout history, the best technology has always been simple and elegant. That's especially true for a good pair of earbuds, which should sound like they're packing an orchestra and feel like they're not even there. Hitting that sweet spot especially hard are the Cresuer Touchwave True Wireless Bluetooth Earbuds, which deliver maximum sound in a minimal package.Under the scratch-and-sweat resistant casing, you'll find a lot of bells and whistles: Bluetooth 4.1 capability, CVC Noise Cancellation technology, and carbon nanotube diaphragms that make for a crisp, clear sound. Outwardly, there's a refreshing lack of buttons to fiddle with. Answer calls or switch between songs with a simple, light tap. And thanks to the 3-hour battery life (up to 12 hours with the accompanying charge box), you'd better queue up a lot of songs.The set comes with 3 different sizes of earbuds to fit any ear, and it's currently on sale for 60% off. Grab your Cresuer Touchwave True Wireless Bluetooth Earbuds for $39.99. Read the rest

Tim Wu (previously) is best known for coining the term "Net Neutrality" but the way he got there was through antitrust and competition scholarship: in his latest book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, Wu takes a sprightly-yet-maddening tour through the history of competition policy in the USA, which has its origins in curbing the near-limitless power of the robber barons in the name of creating a pluralistic, open society where anyone could participate, only to have this vision perverted by extremists from the Chicago School, who sold (with the help of wealthy backers) a wholly fictional version of what Congress intended with its antitrust rules. According to Chicago's version of things, the only thing antitrust should concern itself with is the highly technical and speculative question of "consumer harm" (in the form of higher prices) and not competition itself.Wu comprehensively demolishes this revisionist history, tracing the American ideal back to the era of smallholder farmers, each working a small plot, mildly suspicious of authority, believing in a nearly limitless land that could never be dominated by a single player (there are eerie similarities to the early days of the internet here!), and then through the era of the trusts and the robber barons, and their self-serving ideology of "efficiencies of scale" that were proved to be a lie, and whose grotesque failures and abuses gave rise to the trustbusters and the breakup of the monopolies.In Wu's account, trustbusting became a temptation to mischief, with grandstanders and petty martinets using it to frustrate all sorts of legitimate ends, which created fertile soil for the Chicago School's storytellers to grow their wholly fictional account of the legislative intent of the antitrust laws. Read the rest

Chunk was HANDS DOWN the coolest Goonie of them all! Read the rest

Watch the video below. As a wise man once said, "God bless America!"Fixed it: Wilbur Ross dubbed over Mr. Burns pic.twitter.com/UQn8Hq6WrR— ElElegante101 (@skolanach) January 24, 2019(Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!) Read the rest

“Deliberate, coordinated effort by top Trump campaign officials to subvert the will of the American people”

ICYMI. Read the rest

Whether legit or not, plenty of people have reported finding at least a piece of a human finger in their food (from thumb skin in an Arby's sandwich to a finger in Kohl's Frozen Custard, according to NPR). But I don't recall a human body part ever found in newly purchased clothes, until now. Allegedly, someone bought a pair of socks at a Primark store in Colchester, England, and found the added bonus of a human bone tucked inside one of them.From The Guardian:“Detectives are continuing to investigate following the discovery of what is believed to be part of a human bone in a pair of Primark socks,” said a police spokesman.“The bone does not appear to be a result of recent trauma and had no skin or other particles surrounding it. We are liaising with the store who, in turn, are speaking to their suppliers for more information on this incident. Inquiries are ongoing.”In the cases of food, it's usually part of a severed finger after an unfortunate accident in the kitchen. In this case, however, although the bone is real, police suspect it is was placed in the sock as a hoax. “No evidence of any kind exists to suggest that any incident has occurred in the factory, so it is highly probable that this object was placed in the socks by an individual for unknown reasons...Primark sincerely apologises to the customer who found the item for any distress caused," says a Primark spokesperson. Read the rest

Lawrence Lessig (previously) has spent years articulating the case against corruption of the political sphere (and has written a superb book on the subject); now he's helping to design the political framework for Seed, a multiplayer game "in which players must collaborate (or compete) to rebuild society on a new, untamed planet."In this interview with the project's creators, Lessig articulates the strange and amazing challenge:Lessig is also interested in possibly implementing an in-game process in which democracy doesn’t depend on voting: “I’m eager to experiment or enable the experimentation of systems that don’t need to be tied so much to election.” He’s thinking of a system described in the book Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, which argues that government officials might be randomly chosen, similar to the jury selection process, through a mix of volunteering and lottery. “I would like to see in games, at least, a wider opportunity to experiment with that system of election. I’d love to see people playing with that.”And a system like this might be a good way to address the larger problem of democratic parties making choices based on vastly different news sources: “There’s a real question about how to make sure people are living with a common set of facts so they’re not living in epistemologically isolating universes,” as Lessig puts it. “You got people who are living in radically different worlds, and they don’t even understand the same facts, so they can’t even come to the same understanding.”This last point would be intriguing to model. Read the rest

I've had nothing but good experiences with Tacklife tools, so I didn't hesitate to order this Cordless Rotary Tool, chargeable via USB. I will review it once I get it, but the reason I'm posting it now is that you can use a promo code today and get it at a great discount: B2SRZE34.It comes with a number of different bits. Read the rest

Man buns, mullets, duckfaces, and spray tans. Enjoy 70 years of douchebag style. Read the rest

There's plenty of research that provides evidence to support the idea that multitasking is a fool's bargain: instead of getting two things done at once, you go slower on both, and do worse. But there's more than one kind of multitasking: texting while driving is a terrible idea, but what about juggling multiple projects at once?Tim Harford ( Read the rest

Despite Trump's order to to call 26,000 unpaid IRS workers back to work (still without pay, of course), at least 14,000 of them did not show up at the office as of Tuesday, according to The Washington Post. Two House aides, speaking anonymously, say that 9,000 IRS employees "could not be reached" and 5,000 more "claimed a hardship exemption."This, in the same week that La Guardia airport shuttered its flights and other airports are experiencing major delays is just the beginning of the destruction Trump's shutdown is taking on Americans and the United States.But back to the IRS. Via The Washington Post:The shutdown appears to be affecting the IRS. In the call centers, which answer taxpayer questions over the phone, about 35 percent of calls are being answered, IRS officials told congressional staff, according to one of the aides. The initial plan for filing season was for 80 percent of calls to be answered. The average call time, of 7 to 10 minutes last filing season, has jumped to 25 to 40 minutes.The IRS is also losing 25 IT staffers every week since the shutdown began, with many finding other jobs, one House aide said, citing the IRS officials' briefing. IRS employees have said they cannot afford to get to work or pay for child care as they struggle to go more than 30 days without pay. Shannon Ellis, President of the National Treasury Employees Union in Kansas City sums it up when she tells The Washington Post: “People are panicking. Read the rest

The practice of clothing small adults in velcro and tossing them at velcro targets will be banned in bars and strip clubs, if Senate Bill 5486 passes the Washington State legislature."No holder of a retail license to sell liquor may allow or permit any contest or promotion or other form of recreational activity involving exploitation that endangers the health, safety and welfare of any person with dwarfism," states the bill. "Any code city may suspend or revoke the business license and impose a fine of up to one thousand dollars per contest or event, for any business that violates this section."From a press release issued by the office of Sen. Mike Padden and reposted on Washington State Wire:Dwarf-tossing originated in Australia as a pub promotion and spread to America in the late 1980s. People with dwarfism, wearing special padded clothing or Velcro costumes, are thrown onto mattresses or at Velcro-covered targets. Contestants compete to throw the dwarf the farthest. In 1989, Florida enacted a ban on dwarf-tossing at establishments where liquor is served, and New York followed with a similar ban in 1990.Advocates for “little people” note that persons with dwarfism are particularly susceptible to spine and neck injuries. While generally opposed to disparate treatment for their community, they say the concern is outweighed by the possibility of injury, the demeaning nature of the activity, and the chance that it might inspire attacks on others. In 2012, a man celebrating his birthday at a pub in England was severely injured when a pubgoer picked him up and threw him – an incident likely inspired by news coverage of dwarf-tossing contests. Read the rest