Boing Boing

More than half of you think the best way to manage your passwords is to just keep ‘em safely stashed away in your own noggin. Meanwhile, there are also bunches of you that favor saving passwords in your browser, putting them in a spreadsheet or just writing them down on a piece of paper or a sticky note.These are all sucker bets. And you know it.Passwords protect all our computers and other devices and, more importantly, the most valuable information about us. Our emails, our social security numbers, our bank access information is all only as secure as the weak system we use to safeguard them. And to be clear, anything less than a dedicated app service like the Cyclonis Password Manager is a weak system.With Cyclonis, you only need to create one master password. With that protection, Cyclonis then automatically creates, encrypts and stores unique, long-tail passwords for every login, site, and other password-protected places you go to on the web. Or have Cyclonis analyze your passwords, and it’ll estimate your password strength and offer tips and tricks on how to immediately improve it.When you need to enter a password, Cyclonis will instantly fill in all the details and you log in to your account with a single click. It’ll even notify you when a website password is old and should be updated. Meanwhile, your Cyclonis protection can sync across all your devices so access is covered from your laptop, smartphone, tablet and anywhere else you try to get into one of your accounts. Read the rest

Police in Salerno, Italy made the largest drug seizure in history: 15.4 tons of amphetamines valued at US$1.12 billion. The Guardia di Finanza say that the pills—found inside three shipping containers at the port—were produced by ISIS in Syria. Scanners didn't detect the haul but police knew to expect them. From CNN:"We weren't able to see them but we knew it was arriving because of our ongoing investigations we have with the Camorra (Italian organized crime group)," [Commander Domenico Napolitano] said[...]The Camorra bring the drugs to Italy and take a cut for helping to distribute them, Napolitano added.The pills carried the "Captagon" logo, which "distinguishes the 'drug of Jihad,'" according to the statement.[...]"The hypothesis is that during the lockdown, due to the global epidemiological emergency, the production and distribution of synthetic drugs in Europe has practically stopped and therefore many traffickers with different organized crime groups have turned to Syria, where it does not seem to have slowed down," police said.[...]Captagon was originally the brand name for a medicinal product containing the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. It is no longer produced or used, but drugs carrying the Captagon name are regularly seized in the Middle East, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). Read the rest

The UK today promised citizenship to 3 million people in Hong Kong, a day after the city was effectively annexed by China. A former British colony established in the 1840s, Hong Kong was returned to Chinese administration in 1997 on the condition that it remain autonomous and democratic for fifty years. About 350,000 UK passport holders, and 2.6 million others eligible, will be able to come to the UK for five years.And after a further year, they will be able to apply for citizenship.British National Overseas Passport holders in Hong Kong were granted special status in the 1980s but currently have restricted rights and are only entitled to visa-free access to the UK for six months. Read the rest

"Have fun at home with my old rubber boots," the creator writes.Avant-garde performance art or fetish video? You decide.One commenter's rave review: "Nice boots. Rubber seems to be very soft."(via r/DeepIntoYouTube) Read the rest

Musician/activist Evan Greer has released a new single called "Emma Goldman Would Have Beat Your Ass," to mark what would have been the 151st birthday (June 27th) of noted anarchist and feminist activist Emma Goldman. Greer writes:This tranarcho-punk song is inspired by the time Emma Goldman literally whipped her former mentor in front of a crowd of people because he snitched out and condemned her lover after he tried to assassinate a fascist robber baron. Look it up.If you purchase the song via BandCamp, all proceeds go to the Marsha P. Johnson institute. If you're interested in learning more about Goldman's radical life and philosophy, check out this collection of her writing from the University of Chicago and Archive.org; or via Project Gutenberg, LibriVox, and Anarchy Archives. I can't even remember which specific Goldman essays I've read and which ones I haven't, but suffice to say, I recommend them all. She was sometimes referred to as "the most dangerous woman in America," for saying things like:Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. Read the rest

Monica Ion is a London-based concept artist who has designed a number of mobile games for companies like Space Ape Games. And in her spare time, she explores other high-concept designs, such as horror movies rendered in a Pixar-esque style. View this post on Instagram My series of 4 studies of "What if Pixar did Alien?" Had a lot fun taking the atmosphere of the original Nostromo and making it more colourful and stylized. #digitalpaintings #artstudy #alien #alienart #artistsoninstagram #digitalpaintings #visualdevelopment #visdevA post shared by Monica Ion (@monica_ion_art) on Apr 22, 2019 at 4:02am PDTYou can buy prints of these terrifyingly adorable images from her Inprnt Gallery. Read the rest

Back in the ancient times of the 1980s, if you wanted your thoughts quickly translated into text and didn’t want to spend all day transcribing all those meticulously archived notes yourself, you either needed to hire a secretary or a stenographer.Now, rather than spending thousands of dollars a year on an ultra-fast typist, technology and voice recognition has boiled that ability down to a trusty app. Dictanote (for the Chrome browser) lets you easily switch between using your keyboard and your voice to take any notes you want to keep.Dictanote brings together the versatility of a fully-featured notebook with AI-based speech recognition, making it easy for anyone to let notes spill out in their own words while magically appearing on their screen. Dictanote has built-in a Microsoft Word-type editor to help format notes, which are also downloadable as PDF or .docx files.While we can all think of some time-saving practical uses for Dictanote, it’s especially useful for those who conduct interviews or sift through loads of information, like journalists, lawyers, podcasters, students or professional transcriptionists.With Dictanote, it’s truly as simple as hitting the record button to dictate an email, meeting notes or even a to-do list. You can also just snap a picture of a sketch and then see that image translated to text with 90 percent accuracy. In fact, the makers of Dictanote claim their app outperforms most offline services, including the popular Dragon Naturally Speaking.Dictanote even has a few tricks up its sleeve, like a set of voice commands that allow you to put some form and structure to your notes, all with the use of your voice. Read the rest

If you’re invested in learning a new craft or even just elevating your abilities in a current skill, you likely want access to as much information as possible to help expand your talents. Different learning courses can definitely aid that pursuit, but it’s often tough to know exactly what’s included in any coursework and whether it adequately covers the topics you want to know. Because if you don’t know it, how do you know you’ll get to know exactly what you need to know, you know?The answer is...volume. In The Pro Photography and Photoshop 20 Course Bundle, we’ll get access to a virtual avalanche of photography training that’s truly exhaustive and ready to help address any of their picture-taking questions.Not three, not five, not even a dozen courses, this bundle packages together 20 separate courses housing a colossal 120 hours of photography training that should set you up to learn all the steps and methods to take great pictures with every click.Of course, it all starts with the basics, which is why the Photography Master Class is the perfect introduction. First-time students grasp concepts like exposures, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and more so that by the end of the course, the Auto mode is off forever and they’re making the minute adjustments in Manual mode from now on that make all the difference.Meanwhile, Photoshop, its Adobe companion app Lightroom, and open-source editor GIMP are industry-standard image editing software and these courses dig into every facet of how to navigate these feature-rich apps like a pro. Read the rest

Look, nobody wants to be talking about unclogging a toilet. There are few tasks more unsavory anywhere on a homeowner’s to-do list.Unfortunately, everything that ends up swirling its way down your porcelain throne doesn’t always find its final destination in the sewage system below. If a child decides to flush half the contents of a bathroom counter, you’re likely looking at a call to a plumber and a bill that could end up topping $300. Or it could just be an incident so vile you don’t even want to get too close. Possibly ever again. We get it. So instead of dropping a huge chunk of change on a plumbing repair, the Toiletsaber lets you attack the problem yourself.The Toiletsaber is a revolutionary new unclogging tool with a unique J-shaped, flexible head that makes maximum contact with tough visible clogs and swiftly and neatly clears the problem. And just like other sabers, the one is well over two feet long, assuring that you and your hands never need to get anywhere close to the scene of the crime.The Toiletsaber head is designed to first rake any excess waste away from the waste trap, while the other side of the Toiletsaber can then snake through any remaining clog to clear the obstruction.And as opposed to that disgusting plunger, the Toiletsaber wipes clean in seconds and its shatterproof, chemical resistant frame doesn’t become a breeding ground for gross bacteria.The Toiletsaber is also lightweight and safe to use with any toilet without ever scraping or leaving any scratches behind. Read the rest

The critters at the Atlanta Botanical Garden look oddly … metallic?From the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering:Their newly developed SlothBot is built to study animals, plants and the overall environment below them by moving as little as possible. It inches along overhead cables only when necessary, charging itself with solar panels to monitor factors like carbon dioxide levels and weather for as long as possible — possibly for years. It even crawls toward the sunlight to ensure it stays charged.The 3D-printed shell helps SlothBot blend in (at least in areas where sloths live) while sheltering its equipment from the rain.The robot will start by watching over the Atlanta Botanical Garden for several months, hanging from a lone 100-foot cable.The adorableness appears to be an incidental bonus.‘SlothBot in the Garden’ Demonstrates Hyper-Efficient Conservation Robot [Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering:] Read the rest

Note-taking is more than just cribbing information so it’s easier to study for a test later. Notes are taken by active learners engaging with the information. In fact, the act of taking notes is actually internalizing that information with the learner. Students who take notes are actually seven times more likely to remember those facts a week later than those who didn’t take notes. So all that information you want to make sure you don’t forget actually stands a much better chance of being remembered without notes -- simply because you took notes. Of course, notations and stray thoughts are part of virtually any workflow. So Notebag is a note-taking app that seeks to make taking notes as easy and, most importantly, as unobtrusive as possible. A no. 1 Product of the Day on ProductHunt, Notebag creator Richard Blechinger built the app for modern note-taking with a sharp focus on making all your notation steps accessible directly from your keyboard. There’s no more opening up browsers or other apps to jot down information with Notebag. The app lets users access quick global keyboard shortcuts to automatically search for facts, drop links, categorize note topics, see instant previews, and several other features. Meanwhile, Notebag also brings a ton of other valuable tricks to the note taker’s arsenal, all without slowing down the creative flow. Markdowns can happen with their own instant previews (so no need for a preview pane to type) and all formatting is automatic, though editable.Since notes often come about during a stream of consciousness diversion, they can also be easy to forget within a short time. Read the rest

Back in March, when we were all being asked to stay in our homes for God knows how long, you probably thought about a whole host of tasks you’d love to accomplish with all this new-found downtime in your house.Like many, maybe you thought this would be a good opportunity to plow through that stack of unread books that have been building up on your bedside table for the past few years now. So...how did that go for you?If you got through even one, you can count that a success. But you can also consider it a missed opportunity because with the right training, you probably could have ripped through the entire batch.Speed reading isn’t a superpower. It’s actually a process for onboarding information that anyone can learn. The courses in The Speed Reading and Memory Mastery Bundle can help you sharpen up those skills so you can read exponentially faster, retain more of what you read and even hone your memory to lock more of that information in your brain for longer.The collection includes five courses that present sound strategies for boosting your reading speed, increasing your comprehension and retention, and improve cognitive function to recall and recite your new-found information even years after learning it.First, The Ultimate Speed Reading Course is your introduction, breaking down your bad reading habits and teaching you new methods that can, in many cases, boost your current reading speed by at least two to three times. Guided by speed reading experts, the course lays out the five causes of slow reading, the four techniques you can use to reach your maximum reading potential, and even the secret to understanding everything you read the first time. Read the rest

I've had the pleasure of attending several Ignite events. They consist of a bunch of five-minute lightning talks on a wide variety of topics. You can watch previous talks here.There is a live-streamed Ignite event happening tonight at 6 PM Pacific Time and the lineup looks intriguing.The topics include historical tales of fancy pigeon feather theft, how to micro-dose, and how to get safely arrested while protesting the hegemony. Plus, we'll be joined by an epidemiologist from UNC and the woman who's been adding art to SF's boarded-up storefronts.Find out more here.Our speakers:Hope Williams - Coordinated Acts of Civil DisobedienceMonica Guzman - 7 words to keep your world from shrinkingCecily Mak - C L E A R L I F EKelly Jensen - Fancy Pigeons Are a ThingChris Taylor - The how, what and why of microdosingJeremy Conrad - The History of CocktailPaula Chowles - The Art of Documentary Filmmaking in a Streaming WorldMya Roberson - When COVID-19 and racism collideInga Bard - Birthing a RenaissanceRobert Strong - Learn How the Brain is Tricked While Learning a TrickConnie Yang - Modern matriarchal societiesKevin Kelly - Journey in a Time MachineMellina White Cusack - Attention White People: Your #BLM memes are not enough Read the rest

John Park used a 3D printer, some Sugru moldable glue, and a variety of Adafruit electronics components to build this nifty robot companion based on Pathfinder from the game Apex Legends. I also entered Sugru's drawing for a free 3D printer. Read the rest

Starkey Spring Water, made by Whole Foods, has "at least three times the level of every other brand tested," Consumer Reports found. In fact, many of the other 45 brands tested contained undetectable amounts of arsenic, while the Whole Foods brand butted up against the maximum amount permitted by Federal regulations (10 parts per billion). The water, sold mainly in Whole Foods markets and on Amazon, has "concerning levels of arsenic," the watchdog group says, and is "potentially harmful."From Consumer Reports:CR recently tested dozens of bottled water brands and found that Starkey Spring Water, introduced by Whole Foods in 2015, had concerning levels of arsenic, ranging from 9.49 to 9.56 parts per billion (ppb), at least three times the level of every other brand tested. Federal regulations require manufacturers to limit the amount of arsenic, a potentially dangerous heavy metal, in bottled water to 10 ppb.Consumer Reports’ experts believe that level does not adequately protect public health.CR also tested samples of Starkey Spring Water in 2019, finding levels of arsenic that approached or exceeded the federal limit: Three samples ranged from 9.48 to 9.86 ppb of arsenic; a fourth registered 10.1 ppb. Those results are cited in two pending consumer lawsuits over Starkey’s arsenic content.Although one bottle shouldn't do any harm, “regular consumption of even small amounts of the heavy metal over extended periods increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and lower IQ scores in children, and poses other health issues as well,” says James Dickerson, chief scientific officer at Consumer Reports. Read the rest

Legendary guitarist, producer, and composer Nile Rodgers—co-founder of Chic—tells the story of transforming David Bowie's "Let's Dance" from its original "folky" vibe into the post-funk masterpiece we know and love.And for more, dig the below demo of "Let's Dance" that Rodgers shared in 2018 on what would have been Bowie's 71st birthday:(via Kottke) Read the rest

Exploding Topics is a newsletter that presents terms and words that are trending in Google Search. The latest newsletter looks at Dermaplaning (using a "scalpel to shave layers of dead skin cells from your face), SaaS SEO ("part of the 'extreme marketing specialization' metatrend"), Podcast Microphone, Back Market ("a marketplace for buying and selling refurbished electronics, like tablets and MacBooks)" and OMAD: Topic #3OMADOMAD stands for “One Meal a Day”.In other words, this diet is an extreme version of intermittent fasting. But instead of eating your first meal at noon, with OMAD you fast for 23 hours. And you spend the remaining hour eating a gigantic meal.OMAD proponents claim that the approach is easier to stick to long-term (because you can eat anything you want for your one meal).What’s interesting about OMAD is that it grew largely on Reddit. Then, radiated out into the mainstream. In fact, the r/OMAD subreddit has 138k members.What's next:OMAD is a spinoff of the massively popular intermittent fasting trend. Until recently, businesses struggled to capitalize on the trend. After all, how do you monetize not eating? But we’re starting to see a number of intermittent fasting products hit the market, like the Zero App and fasting tea.Whenever I see OMAD, I can't help but think of the Jack Kirby comic book OMAC: Read the rest

An MSNBC reporter asked Trump cultists at a rally in Phoenix why they wouldn't wear a mask. The answers they gave him didn't make a lot of sense. “It’s not about the mask,” said a woman. “It’s about the hypocrisy that it’s okay for tens of thousands of people to go and riot, to go and protest, but you cannot have a group of a thousand people -- I don’t know how many people are here, this is not okay.”Another fellow chimed in, "You talkin’ about that Covid-1984 bullshit?”Endangering seniors and people with compromised immune systems by becoming a virus vector is a weird way to own the libs.(Via Crooks and Liars) Read the rest

On Tabletop Witchcraft, John builds an amazing gladiatorial coliseum that is one of the most impressive tabletop builds I've seen in a while.It's also a surprisingly approachable build, if you have a world of patience and time (and ideally a Proxxon hot wire table). Most of it is just foam, toothpicks and skewers, and epoxy putty. He goes through the build step-by-step and even has plans available (US$7).Image: YouTube Read the rest

Netflix is rebooting Unsolved Mysteries, a true crime and paranormal event series that originally aired on various networks from 1987 to 2010."The original creators of Unsolved Mysteries and the producers of Stranger Things invite you to solve new mysteries." It premieres on July 1, 2020. I just wish the late Robert Stack could host it. Read the rest

Even with the laugh track added to Goodfellas, Joe Pesci is still as scary as hell. Read the rest

Porn star Ron Jeremy was charged today with rape and sexual assault, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office announced today. According to the charges, Jeremy, 67, raped three women and assaulted another in incidents dating back to 2014.Prosecutors allege Jeremy forcibly raped a 25-year-old woman at a home in West Hollywood in May 2014. Jeremy allegedly sexually assaulted two women, ages 33 and 46, on separate occasions at a West Hollywood bar in 2017. He is also accused of forcibly raping a 30-year-old woman at the same bar in July 2019. The D.A.’s office noted it investigated another incident involving Jeremy from 2016 but declined the case due to insufficient evidence.Jeremy was named in a 2017 Rolling Stone article about similar allegations dating back much further, ending his reputation as a "goofy, almost family-friendly totem of an industry." Read the rest

I'm almost finished reading Maria Konnikova's new book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win. It's an enthralling and funny first-hand account of her transition from a person who didn't know how many cards were in a deck into a professional, tournament-winning poker player.Maria is one of my favorite nonfiction authors.I've interviewed her about her other two books, The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It...Every Time and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, both of which I recommend highly.The Atlantic has an excerpt from The Biggest Bluff:I enter a $60 daily tournament at Bally’s. It’s small, only two tables’ worth of players, but I feel a certain pride in watching the numbers dwindle to a single table, then eight, seven, six, until finally, I find myself in the final four. And it’s hard for me to contain my excitement when I flop a set (three of a kind) of nines, an excellent hand if ever there were. There’s a bet before me, and I joyously shove all my chips into the middle. This is it. All my learning is paying off. I will finally have my first tournament cash. I get called by a player who is hoping the dealer completes his flush, and to my horror, the flush hits. I’m out, and devastated.I almost leave it all right then and there. This game is so damn unfair. But there’s the knowledge, somewhere deep down, that it’s to confront that very seeming unfairness that I turned to poker in the first place; I resolve to play on. Read the rest

The UK's Royal Mail is issuing a series of 13 stamps honoring the band Queen. This issue follows prior rock stamps celebrating The Beatles and Pink Floyd. From Spin:“It’s hard to put into words what I feel when looking at these beautiful stamps,” Queen guitarist Brian May said in a release. “Since we four precocious boys started out on our quest 50 years ago, our lives have been devoted to making our impossible dream come true. Sometimes it’s strange to wake up and realize the position in which we are now held – we have become a national institution! And nothing brings this home more than this incredible tribute from Royal Mail. It’s particularly poignant to look at this collection of images now – now that we are all in a world dominated by a coronavirus, in which none of this could have happened. I just know that I [have] an overwhelming desire to own one of these sets! Somehow it will be a way of persuading myself that it really DID all happen!”The album-cover stamps include Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night at the Opera, News of the World, The Game, Greatest Hits, The Works, and Innuendo. The live shots include Freddie Mercury from London’s Wembley Stadium in 1986; drummer Roger Taylor from London’s Hyde Park, 1976; bassist John Deacon at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1975; and May in Budapest in 1986. And the iconic centerpiece of the set comes from the group’s first-ever studio photoshoot at a Primrose Hill studio, which shot by Johnny Dewe Mathews. Read the rest

The Republicans behind The Lincoln Project are churning out anti-Trump ads on a daily basis, and their latest centers on the one scary truth that Trump shouted out at his failed Tulsa rally on Saturday: “When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, 'slow the testing down, please.'” After his handlers tried to say he was just kidding, he corrected them today outside the White House: “I don’t kid," he told reporters when they asked if what he said had been a joke. "Slow the testing down?" the narrator in the Lincoln Project ad asks. "Slow down our chance to save tens of thousands of lives. Slow down our understanding of where Covid is and how it's spreading. Slow down our steps to reopen our economy. Every single expert told him to test more and test faster. And now we know his response." Read the rest

The University of Cincinnati happily took a $2 million donation from the Marge and Charles J. Schott Foundation to build a stadium and name it Marge Schott Stadium, even though it was aware that Schott repeatedly praised Hitler and admitted to having a swastika armband at home. But suddenly, the university decided it wasn't such a good idea to have a stadium named after her, after all, and said it will rename it.From ESPN:Schott's foundation has encouraged discussions about naming rights. "While we cannot make excuses for the rhetoric made by Mrs. Schott decades ago, we can ask you to learn from Mrs. Schott's mistakes as well as her great love for Cincinnati," the foundation said in a statement this month. "We appreciate what these great organizations bring to Cincinnati and we fully support the decisions made by the organizations who have received grants from the Foundation."Image: YouTube Read the rest

In 2017, 50-year-old Mark Clark from Michigan scratched an instant lottery ticket with a special coin his father had given him and won $4,000,000. Using the same coin this week, he won another $4,000,000! “You don’t think you’ll win millions once, and you definitely never think it would happen twice,” he said to the Michigan Lottery. “It’s hard to put into words exactly what I am feeling. ...I can’t help but think maybe that lucky coin helped me win this.”Where can I get me one of them coins?Via APImage: Michigan Lottery Read the rest

In ten years, scientists hope to have mapped the entire ocean floor in high resolution. This week, the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project announced that they've completed 20 percent of the map. A full mapping to "modern standards" is useful for conservation and also to support scientific understanding of ocean systems, weather, tsunami wave propagation, tides, and, of course, the impact of climate change. From the BBC News:The map at the top of this page illustrates the challenge faced by GEBCO in the coming years.Black represents those areas where we have yet to get direct echosounding measurements of the shape of the ocean floor. Blues correspond to water depth (deeper is purple, shallower is lighter blue)[...]This is information required to improve the models that forecast future climate change - because it is the oceans that play a critical role in moving heat around the planet. And if you want to understand precisely how sea-levels will rise in different parts of the world, good ocean-floor maps are a must.Much of the data that's been imported into the GEBCO grid recently has been in existence for some time but was "sitting on a shelf" out of the public domain. The companies, institutions and governments that were holding this information have now handed it over - and there is probably a lot more of this hidden resource still to be released.But new acquisitions will also be required. Some of these will come from a great crowdsourcing effort - from ships, big and small, routinely operating their echo-sounding equipment as they transit the globe. Read the rest

A copy of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables was restored magnificently by a "furniture restorer" in Spain, whose work challenges the illustrious heights of 2012's Beast Jesus of Zaragoza.The restorer made a second attempt, reports Europa Press, which lacks the Beast Jesus je ne sais quoi of his first effort but brings its own horror-movie corpse lady vibe to the table.When asking the author of the 'restoration' for explanations , he tried to 'solve' the problem, but the result of the work has been an image that has nothing to do with the original. Now, the collector has contacted another specialist, this one trained for this work, who will try to rehabilitate the work, says the owner, speaking to Europa Press. The vice president of Internal Relations and coordinator in the Valencian Community of the Professional Association of Conservative Restorations explains that aberrations like this are "unfortunately much more frequent than you think."Restorers warn of irreversible errors due to non-professional interventions [Machine translation, Google] Read the rest

Apple is to phase out Intel CPUs in favor of its own ARM-based chips, it announced yesterday at the WWDC trade show in California. ARM designs are more energy-efficient and Apple has shown they can deliver performance with recent models of the iPad Pro, which already uses the company's silicon. The big challenge will be software, reports the BBC. Apple demonstrated popular apps and a new version of its MacOS operating system at the event, but apps made for current hardware will not run natively.Apple said it had already developed native versions of several of its own apps, including Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro. iPhone and iPad apps will also be able to be run on the computers.Apple said that Microsoft was working on an optimised version of Office, and Adobe was developing a version of Photoshop.Other developers should be able to recompile their apps to get a version running "in just a matter of days," said the company's software chief Craig Federighi. He added that old apps would automatically be translated at point of installation to run, although they would not work as well.I'm eager to see one of these new models. I love how fast, responsive and straightforward my iPad Pro feels, but iPadOS's sandboxed apps make it so difficult to establish a functional file management workflow that I've never been able to use it as a workhorse. On the other hand, MacOS on new hardware will still be MacOS, won't it? Read the rest

If you create content for the web, you already know it takes time to build websites, write blog posts, create videos, produce graphics, and all the other steps that go into keeping a site healthy and flourishing.But even once all that work is done, there’s a second job that needs doing — and it’s arguably just as important as the creation itself. Now, you have to play the search engine optimization (SEO) game to promote your content. You have to identify keywords, build relevant links, and trick out every page to attract users and search engine traffic alike.Ranking high in Google searches can often be the only true route to getting your content the exposure it needs. Since SEO mastery is a skill not many of us possess, a service like Long Tail Pro can go a long way toward taking the headaches of SEO research off your hands.Long Tail Pro is one of the original online keyword research tools — and after 15 years of perfecting their craft, they’ve assembled a full suite of analysis features and a step-by-step system for discovering thousands of profitable keywords while calculating how much work it’ll take to make you competitive for each of those keywords in your given industry or topic niche.With Long Tail Pro, users can track their web ranking, analyze backlinks, and find the exact keywords that’ll resonate with their target audience. Users can search for the specific keywords they think will be effective, or get hundreds of keyword suggestions. Read the rest

I bought a USB microscope a few years ago because I wanted to examine kitchen knife edges after I sharpen them using different sharpeners. I'm still having fun with it. The tiny millipede in the video above is in a cup the size of a penny. Here are some images I've captured so far:Groovy Squirmy millipede.A Trader Joe's roasted and salted peanut. (See image full size)A playing card.My arm hair.A leaf, with what looks to be some kind of parasite.Smaller than a prescription pill bottle, the microscope has a USB cord that can be plugged into any computer. Download the software here and start looking up close at money, leaves, circuit boards, bugs, skin, hair, and anything else.The scope has a built-in, adjustable-brightness LED for illumination. The brightest setting is not always the best --- try different levels of illumination and let the software auto-adjust the contrast. I also learned that in order to see things at the maximum 250X magnification you need to follow the instructions in the FAQ.It comes with a suction-cup gooseneck mount that is very stable, and a plastic board with a grid pattern, which helps you align and locate the thing you are looking at. You can also simply hold the scope against things. The software takes still photos and videos, and hasn't crashed on me yet (the earlier version was buggy).For the price, the microscope is an amazingly entertaining device and I find myself grabbing it to check out all sorts of things, including splinters, skin cuts, bugs, and playing card designs. Read the rest

Among Apple’s idiosyncratic quirks is a general discouragement when it comes to attaching peripheral devices. Sure, they aren’t vocally opposed, but through compatibility and other means, they don’t exactly make it easy to sync up your MacBook or iPad with all the various extra devices and formats you may need to access.A MacBook itself may only come with ports for one or two USB-C devices...and that’s it. Instead, you can pick up this USB 8-port Type-C valet hub to get all your devices plugged in at the same time, while also keeping all your desk clutter to a minimum.The first thing you notice about this hub is the full array of ports lining both sides of this powerhouse device. There are two USB-C connectors plus a third power delivery port; 2 USB-A 3.0 ports, plus ports for SD, Micro SD, and even 3.5mm audio devices to plugin safely.With the nearly foot-long cable, the device plugs neatly into your MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, Surface Book, Galaxy Tab Pro, or other USB-C compatible devices for easy access, cleaning up your deskspace and eliminating that waterfall of cords and dongles dangling from your device.Meanwhile, the entire setup is completely plug and play, requiring absolutely no software, drivers or installation of any kind to operate.In addition to all of its connectivity goodness, Apple users will be pleased to see the valet bin on the top of the hub can hold all kinds of small accessories like pens, paper clips, earphones, and more. Read the rest

It turns out that police unions and benevolent associations lied and exaggerated about police officers being poisoned by Shake Shack milkshakes.From the New York Post:Police sources explained it was clear that the workers couldn’t have known cops had placed the orders “since it wasn’t done in person” — and they couldn’t have dosed the drinks after the officers arrived, because they were packaged and waiting for pickup when the trio walked in.Soon after sipping the shakes, however, the cops realized they didn’t taste or smell right, so they threw the drinks in the trash and alerted a manager, who apologized and issued them vouchers for free food or drink, which they accepted, according to sources.But when the cops told their sergeant about the incident, the supervisor called in the Emergency Service Unit to set up a crime scene.Photo by Brenda Godinez on Unsplash Read the rest

Since Trump's standout flub during his Tulsa rally debacle, in which he said, “When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, 'slow the testing down, please,'” his handlers have been trying to cover it up by saying he was "obviously kidding."But today, when Trump was interviewed by Scripps reporter Joe St. George, he did not confirm he was kidding. In fact, he did the opposite and reiterated the same nonsense comments in all seriousness.Scripps White House reporter Joe St. George asked Trump if he actually ordered testing to be slowed down. He said in his Saturday speech he did. He didn't answer the direct question.https://t.co/4yRwsx22qN— Brody Levesque (@BrodyLevesque) June 22, 2020 Read the rest

I forgot about Standard Ebooks until this morning, and when I checked it out I discovered they have a bunch of new novels available, including Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, PG Wodehouse's School Stories, and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, among others. Lots of good reading ahead! Read the rest

Studio Ghibli is releasing its first CGI movie, called Aya and the Witch. It's an adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' children's book Earwig and the Witch. (The late Jones was also the author of Howl's Moving Castle, which was released as a Studio Ghibli movie in 2004.) Aya and the Witch is the first Studio Ghibli film in 6 years and will be directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son, Goro.Here are some stills from the upcoming film, provided by Studio Ghibli. Read the rest

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Sixty-nine cents a month gets you a subscription to a bye.fyi email address. You will never see any email sent to the address, but anyone who sends you email gets an automated insult as a reply. "Enterprise features: Automatically CC a congressperson on every email. Send follow-ups by SMS and Voicemail to touch base." Read the rest

Spoken Word with Electronics is an audio series delivering to you a two side recording of unusual stories paired with vintage modular electronic soundsHi, everyone. Welcome back to the show. This week we sing the praises of portable headphone amplifiers, specifically The SPAMP and the ROCKMAN — This leads to a discussion on the good work of Tom Scholz, who designed and built the entire sound of the band Boston in a home studio in the basement of his apartment in Watertown MA, and the likelihood that many of you were conceived to More Than A Feeling. With grief, the sad ending of Brad Delp's life is also briefly discussed .Tom Scholz went to MIT and was offered a good job at Polaroid right out of school. This earned him a salary that funded much of Boston's burgeoning sound. So this episode also discusses how to spend money. Lots of people are very boring about how they spend their money, and the chance that you might not be born if Tom Scholz had opted to cash out and not build a home studio is explored. Good guy, that Tom. But why did Scholz need money in the first place to pursue this great dream? Money is a problem.Track two for this week solves money entirely. Presenting SPIT-COIN, A new economic platform based on points and saliva. You can opt to transfer your money to a shared resource for every human, or you can have your cash liquidated into saliva that you carry in your mouth perpetually, your choice. Read the rest

This curious rock fell from the sky above Sanchore, Rajasthan, northern India on Friday, alarming residents with a huge explosive sound and leaving a one-foot crater where it fell. The object is palm-sized and weighs 2.7kg. According to police, it was very hot. They've since turned it over to the Geographical Survey of India. From The Tribune:"We have inspected the site where the object had fallen from the sky with a loud sound. Prime facie, it appears to be a piece of meteorite, which has been seized and kept safe as it shall be sent to the lab for further examination."The officials concerned also got it tested in a private lab located at the jeweller's shop in Sanchore who confirmed that the piece had metallic properties of Germanium, Platinium, Nickel and Iron (10.23 per cent of nickel, 85.86 per cent of iron, platinum 0.5 per cent, cobbit 0.78 per cent, geranium 0.02 per cent, antimony 0.01 per cent niobium 0.01 and other 3.02 per cent). Read the rest

The English language is full of weird, unofficial rules that dictate certain grammatical changes for seemingly arbitrary reasons other than "it just feels right."Consider: inserting the word "fuck" into another word for emphasis.The Language Nerds have a great new blog post, where they look into this phenomenon that they call "expletive infixation."One of these precise and fine-tuned rules is one called expletive infixation. How often do you hear people say un-fucking-believable, or abso-bloody-lutely? How about Phila-fucking-delphia? As you can see, this is a process whereby a profane word, such as fucking, bloody, freaking, etc, is shoved into another word for intensification. You'd think at first glance that this is probably random; you just go ahead and insert the word somewhere. Well, no! It turns out that this process is not random and is incredibly rule-governed, systematic, and precise.Take a look at the following examples:Fantastic: *fanta-fucking-stick.Absolutely: *Ab-fucking-solutelyIndependent: *Indep-fucking-endent.Something sounds horribly wrong about the examples above, right?It's a short post, with a succinct explanation, but it is also sufficiently de-fucking-lightful.F***ing Insertion is Systematic, And This Is How It Works. [The Language Nerds]Image: Loozer Boy / Flickr Read the rest

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 2.6 billion people were under a mandate to stay at home. According to psychologist Elke Van Hoof of Free University of Brussels-VUB, [the lockdown] "is arguably the largest psychological experiment ever conducted." What impact will COVID-19 have on the planet's mental health? The scientific study of psychological resilience is not a new field. But COVID-19 is fairly unique in the range of stressors it triggers, from the death of loved ones to isolation, devastating financial loss, and uncertainty about what comes next. Meanwhile, we actually aren't all "in the same boat." In Scientific American, Lydia Denworth surveys the real-time research on what we can learn from all this about resilience and how to increase it for the next time. From Scientific American:Individual resilience is further complicated by the fact that this pandemic has not affected each person in the same way. For all that is shared--the coronavirus has struck every level of society and left few lives unchanged--there has been tremendous variation in the disruption and devastation experienced. Consider Brooklyn, just one borough in hard-hit New York City. Residents who started the year living or working within a few miles of one another have very different stories of illness, loss and navigating the challenges of social distancing. How quickly and how well individuals, businesses and organizations recover will depend on the jobs, insurance and health they had when this started, on whether they have endured hassle or heartbreak, and on whether they can tap financial resources and social support. Read the rest

If HBO's upcoming Lovecraft Country is even 20% as great as its source material—Matt Ruff's novel bearing the same name—We're in for a fun, terrifying treat. I suppose we'll know, soon enough: the series is set to debut on HBO, this August Read the rest

I have been frequently awed by Ta-Nehisi Coates's thoughtful observations on politics and race in America. But I'll be honest: I was somewhat disappointed by his first run of Black Panther comics. It felt, to me, more like a Coates essay accompanied by some action sequences. The ideas were there, and the art by Brian Stelfreeze was spectacular, but it just didn't grip me as a dramatic narrative. (His Captain America, illustrated by Leinil Francis Yu and others, has left me similarly cold.)Fortunately, Coates is a certified MacArthur genius, and a deft enough writer that he learned on the job with an impressive swiftness. I read the first eighteen issues of Coates and Daniel Acuña's epic Black Panther space opera The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda in just two days, and am eager to devour the rest once it's available (I read most of my comics on Marvel Unlimited).So to tide myself over, I decided to check out Coates's brief run on Black Panther and the Crew with illustrator Butch Guice. A nod to or revival of Christopher Priest's similarly Panther-inspired 2003 series, The Crew, the comic brings T'Challa to Harlem, in a loose team-up with some other Harlem-affiliated superheroes, including Luke Cage, Misty Knight, and Storm from the X-Men. It's an intergenerational story about Black liberation and revolution, that begins with the death of an elderly Black activist in police custody during a series of ongoing protests against racist police brutality. The conspiracy at the heart of the murder mystery organically weaves in gentrification, astroturfed agitators undermining protests, and algorithmic policing that's never as unbiased as it claims. Read the rest

• A 1.2 mile (2km) wide circle of large shafts was found, measuring over 10 meters wide and 5 meters deep.• The holes surround the ancient settlement of Durrington Walls, 2 miles (3km) from Stonehenge.• Tests suggest the earthworks are Neolithic, excavated over 4,500 years ago.In England, archaeologists working near Stonehenge have discovered a wide circle of deep pits surrounding an ancient human settlement. The shafts form a circle, and date back some 4,500 years..Scientists made the discovery without excavating earth, instead using remote sensing technology and sampling, reports Reuters: The new discovery, by a team of archaeologists from several universities, shows a 2-km (1.2-mile) wide circle of shafts surrounding a settlement at Durrington Walls, which also included a henge, or circular structure, made of timber posts.The site is located about 3.2 km northeast of Stonehenge and evidence suggests the pits date back to the same period, some 4,500 years ago.“As the place where the builders of Stonehenge lived and feasted, Durrington Walls is key to unlocking the story of the wider Stonehenge landscape,” said archaeologist Nick Snashall of the National Trust, the body that runs the Stonehenge site.“This astonishing discovery offers us new insights into the lives and beliefs of our Neolithic ancestors,” he said.The circle of pits is significantly larger than any comparable prehistoric monument in Britain. Researchers have found 20 shafts, but estimate there may have been more than 30 originally. Each one is about 5 metres deep and 10 metres across. Read the rest

Tired, dejected, his collar smeared with orange makeup, Trump at least suffered no physical problems getting off Marine One and ambling home after this weekend's flop rally in Tulsa. Only 6,200 people turned up to the event, touted by the president as a million-reservation spectacular that would pack the 19,000-seat stadium and spill over in to the streets beyond, where an overflow stage was set up to please the faithful. On the night, though, the overflow stage was hurriedly broken down to avoid the stark humiliation of a huge video screen relating Trump's meandering speech to no-one at all. And in the BOK Center, the man himself faced a stadium one-third full.Lefty teens took great pleasure in having accomplished a spectacular feat of online activism: they registered for tickets in huge numbers and doubtless led the Trump campaign to its inflated expectations for the rally. But that effort didn't stop true fans turning out—and they didn't.He is furious, reports NBC News. Read the rest

Womp womp. Someone knows he's gonna lose, and lose bad.Tweeted Donald Trump on Monday, June 22:RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!Some analysis from election-watchers below.Competition for THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES is fierce. https://t.co/OY9bbYZXxN— David Gura (@davidgura) June 22, 2020Regarding foreign countries...1) Trump asked for and received Russian help to win in 2016.2) Trump tried to extort Ukraine into helping him win in 2020. (And got impeached for it.)3) Trump begged China's dictator to help him win in 2020. https://t.co/np4f1gYgyH— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) June 22, 2020Trump's laying the groundwork for an election challenge. Barr's corrupt enough to help him do it. That's why the House must impeach Barr. Even if the Senate won't convict it puts down a historical marker that this is not OK and creates a factual record exposing Barr's corruption. https://t.co/tj5bU7gyrr— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) June 22, 2020He was either watching a reair live or the DVR of the earlier airing.Left, Fox's The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton, 9:04 p.m./12:04 a.m.(quote)Right, Trump, 12:07 a.m. pic.twitter.com/6U9f4Nh8Mn— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) June 22, 2020 Read the rest

This video was made a group of security researchers based at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. The Lamphone, as they call it, is intended as an alternative method of eavesdropping on private conversations without having to compromise a device with malware. In their tests, the researchers were able to accurately monitor audio, including speech and music, from about 80 feet away; they think they could amplify that range with some better hardware, too.And all it takes is a few simple tools:Telescope - This piece of equipment is used to focus the field of view on the hanging bulb from a distance.Electro-optical sensor - This sensor is mounted on the telescope and consists of a photodiode (a semiconductor device) that converts light into an electrical current. The current is generated when photons are absorbed in the photodiode. Photodiodes are used in many consumer electronic devices (e.g., smoke detectors, medical devices).Sound recovery system - This system receives an optical signal as input and outputs the recovered acoustic signal. The eavesdropper can implement such a system with dedicated hardware (e.g., using capacitors, resistors, etc.). Alternatively, the attacker can use an ADC to sample the electro-optical sensor and process the data using a sound recovery algorithm running on a laptop.So basically, a laser; something to point it at (like a light bulb); and something to convert the sound. It works with LEDs as well as incandescent bulbs, too.Here's how Davey Winder at Forbes describes the process:Fluctuations in air pressure on the surface of the hanging bulb are created by the sound of conversation, or music, and make a hanging bulb vibrate. Read the rest

Public Enemy has released a new track and video, "State of the Union (STFU)." Produced by legendary DJ Premier, the track is described in the press release as “a fiery return to the frontlines as they take on Donald Trump and his fascist regime.”The press released included the lyric sheet for the track.Image: YouTube screengrab Read the rest