Flyjumper crafted this magnificent Stratocaster-shaped guitar from 1,200 colored pencils and a lot of grit. He's posted many more photos and GIFs of the build here."I saw a lot of people online making bowls out of colored pencils and I wanted to take it up a notch and make something that I can actually utilize and enjoy more so than a bowl," he writes. Read the rest

In Patients' crowdfunding campaigns for alternative cancer treatments, published by researchers from Simon Fraser University in The Lancet Oncology (Sci-Hub mirror) we learn that thanks to Gofundme, 13,000 people have raised $1.4 million to help 200 desperate cancer patients pay for ineffective homeopathic "treatments."A third of these fundraisers were launched by people who explicitly rejected evidence-based medicine and were seeking money to commit an especially grisly form of suicide, while enriching scammers who sell water as medicine.“I have a huge amount of sympathy for these people. They’re very sick and desperate,” Snyder said. “But it’s concerning to see them be taken in by these claims.”That’s to say nothing of the kind people who are being roped into donating their money to medical charlatans. Other researchers studying the topic have argued these sites are essentially jumpstarting a new era of snake oil medicine, a sentiment Snyder agreed with. Yet despite repeated criticisms from scientists and other journalists, sites like GoFundMe have stayed mostly silent in the matter.“I’ve talked to them a little bit, and I know they’re aware of these studies,” Snyder said. “But I haven’t gotten very far with them personally.”Patients' crowdfunding campaigns for alternative cancer treatments [Jeremy Snyder and Timothy Caulfield/Lancet Oncology] (Sci-Hub mirror)GoFundMe Is Still Enabling 'Garbage' Cancer Treatment Scams, Study Finds [Ed Cara/Gizmodo](via /.) Read the rest

Documentarian Arlen Parsa had a key realization: slowing Trump down to half-speed "reveals how often times his logic is indistinguishable from that of a drunk person."my favorite way to listen to the president is slowed down to 1/2 speed because it reveals how often times his logic is indistinguishable from that of a drunk person: pic.twitter.com/EJPy3t6Axv— Arlen Parsa (@arlenparsa) January 4, 2019JWZ adds: "As a bar owner, I can corroborate this."(Image: Ad Meskens; Trump's Hair) Read the rest

For years, Disneyland annual passes, parking fees and single-day-tickets have seen above-inflation price-hikes, but this year's will take the cost of the no-blackout-day "Premier Pass" to $1,949, up 23.4% from last year, a firm push away from the idea of Disneyland as a "locals park" for casual visits and into the kind of place that most local families could only visit on very special occasions. It's not just Premier Passes, either: parking (which was recently segmented into a "premium" and "basic" service with additional fees for good parking spots) is going up 25%, to $25/day. Maxpass, which uses an app to reserve places in line, will go up 50%, from $10/day/person to $15/day/person.The cheapest one-day tickets will spike to over $100, and Disney will continue to use "surge pricing" to raise the cost of these tickets on some days.The Southern California pass -- which already excludes most days when a family could hope to visit the parks -- is going up 8.1%, to $400, with blocked days rising from 202 days/year to 211 days/year.This summer will see the largest expansion in Disney theme park history, when the $1B Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge opens.Disneyland is locked in a battle with congestion, and has tried (and failed) to manage crowds with higher prices, and the parks continue to weather a palpable capacity crisis. There are lots of causes here: winner-take-all (see also: Burning Man, SDCC, etc); inequality; and the boomerang effect of higher ticket-prices, which induce visitors to spend longer in the park "to get their money's worth."The increases, which took effect Sunday, come less than a year after the resort adopted price hikes of up to 18%. Read the rest

Last year saw a wave of teachers' strikes across America, but mostly in red states where public education has been starved of funds, putting teachers on starvation wages, subjecting kids to dangerous conditions, and stripping schools of resources and even putting schools on four-day weeks.But on January 10th, the teachers who educate the 694,000 students of the LA Unified School District (comparable to the entire student population of the state of Oklahoma) are heading on strike, in a deep blue city in a deep blue state. Their cause reveals the true, underlying issue of the national teachers' strikes: privatization.The project to use public funds to pay for private schools has been a darling of racists and religious cultists since Brown v Board of Education, when the idea of "charter schools" was floated as a way to legally exclude black children from publicly funded education. The racist project found allies in among the grifters of Christian fundamentalism, who perceived a way to merge state and church and receive public funding for parochial schools where evolution could be denied in favor of Bibilical superstition and the 5,000-year-old Earth (this force also drove the British "academy" school movement). It was the same devastating alliance that put Reagan in the White House: rich crooks exploiting the fears of religious fundamentalists to seize power and funnel millions in public funds into their own pockets.The Democratic Party establishment fucking loves Ronald Reagan and firmly embraces the doctrine that says that state functions should be shifted to for-profit private hands -- the main difference being that Democrats want a diverse oligarchy where the makeup of the 150 people who own the world is representative of the global population's genders, skin colors, and origins (Republicans want those 150 people to be white, Christian men). Read the rest

The single best demonstration of the difference in emotional tenor between minor and major-key dominated variations of a tune -- and a great topical joke to boot, when it comes time to show the Star Spangled Banner in a different light. Read the rest

The Cesar Romero "Joker" is the best Joker of all Jokers. Read the rest

No matter where you go on the web these days, you're on somebody's radar. Advertisers, bots, or even hackers find it increasingly easy to pick up your trail and track your habits - unless you're using a virtual private network. And if you're using a VPN, the top-rated option of late has been NordVPN - even before its recent price drop.If you're not familiar with the service, take it from PC Mag, among others: This is airtight as browsing security gets. Like most VPNs, NordVPN runs your data through a remote server (one of 3,521 worldwide) to ensure anonymity and free you from local content restrictions. But here, you also get an added layer of double data SSL-based 2048-bit encryption. And most crucially, NordVPN still stands by its no-logging policy, which ensures that no one is recording your history - not even NordVPN.A two-year subscription was originally $268.80, and you could recently get it on sale for $134.40. But for the new year, a 2-year subscription to NordVPN is now $95.75 for the same top-flight protection. If safer surfing is one of your resolutions, this one's a no-brainer. Plus, save an additional 20% with code VPNSAVE20. Read the rest

I want fudgy brownies.I am using a box mix that I really like, but I couldn't remember what I do to make brownies more 'fudgy,' so I searched the internet. That was fucking useless.Her royal highness Martha Stewart's website claims more fat makes brownies fudgier, not changing the volume of eggs or the whites/yolks.Out of the Box Brownies, a site dedicated to Brownies, says less eggs equals more fudge.Folks at Fine Cooking might have some recipies that do what you want but offer only confusing, disconnected and less-than-useful info about WHAT MAKES THE FUDGINESS.Honestly, Martha's advice sounds more like science to me than the others. I still do not know what to try, but adding butter until someone calls a cardiologist is usually a good approach.(not sure what the brownies pictured are, but the images in our db.) **UPDATE** 5:05pmI used one egg and 3/4 cup of Kerrygold butter. They are delicious. Cripsy on the tops, but chewy tho not gooey on the inside. Read the rest

Uh, oh! Spaghetti-Os!Everyone loves canned pasta while riding on a carousel. Read the rest

I pity the fool that doubts his wisdom.Also, I want to know what happened in Mexico City. Read the rest

Faith Goldy is the white supremacist who failed in her bid for mayor of Toronto (despite an endorsement from US white supremacist Congressman Steve King); during her campaign, she unsuccessfully sued Canadian media monopolist Bell Media for refusing to run her ads, saddling her with an order to pay $43,117.90 in Bell's legal fees.Goldy's racism has gotten her kicked off of Paypal and Patreon, which rules out the easy options for crowdfunding, so she's turned to selling merchandise that bears an illegal reproduction of Canada's coat-of-arms, calling it the "Canadian Heritage line."Canada follows the British model of copyrighting works created by the government -- unlike in the USA, where works produced at public expense belong to the public and can be freely used by anyone for any purpose -- and the coat-of-arms comes with onerous licensing terms that prohibit commercial exploitation without a specific, paid permission. Goldy ran as a "law-and-order" candidate whose campaign intertwined the idea of whiteness and lawfulness, and condemned racialised people for their alleged failures to obey Canadian law.Goldy, who fashioned herself as a law-and-order candidate in Toronto’s most recent mayoral race, is likely doing something illegal. The Coat of Arms cannot be used for commercial purposes without the federal government’s permission. Here are 14 words from the Government of Canada’s website that might end Goldy’s retail empire:“No person shall adopt in connection with a business… the arms, crest or flag.”Faith Goldy Illegally Sells T-Shirts, Presumably to Pay Off Legal Debt [Jaren Kerr/Canadaland] Read the rest

When Ios launched, Apple's App Store took a 30% royalty on all apps sold. App vendors responded in large part by switching to free apps that charged in-app for annual subscriptions and other fees, prompting Apple (by then the dominant smartphone seller and critical to many companies' businesses) to ban in-app purchases except through Apple, which would charge a 30% commission on the lifetime revenues from each user.Competition from Android and hybrid models where users sign up (and pay) on the web and then login to their apps has driven Apple's lifetime tax on in-app transactions to 15%, but for Apple's top suppliers, this still adds up to hundreds of millions per year.This has prompted a slow, but growing exodus from in-app payments, from Amazon Video to Spotify, and now, Netfix. After an experiment in requiring users to pay via the web, Netflix has now discontinued the use of in-app payments for all new users; last year, Netflix paid Apple an estimated $256m in "Apple Tax" for users who paid through the app -- Netflix can afford to lose millions of users from this switch and still come out ahead.Netflix dropped in-app purchases from the Google Play store earlier in 2018, and found that even users who were still permitted to pay in-app gradually but steadily switched to making payments via the web, eroding Google's share of its business. For example, Amazon has historically restricted movie and TV rentals and purchases to its own website or other “compatible” apps, instead of allowing them to take place through its Prime Video app. Read the rest

At least three people are reported dead after a gunman opened fire in a California bowling alley late Friday night.The Torrance Police Department says in a tweet there were "reports of shots fired with multiple victims down" at Gable House Bowl.The police department later confirmed there are 3 dead and 4 injured following the shooting which reportedly sprung from an argument in the bowling alley. Police are urging people to "stay away from the area" near the bowling alley.CNN has more details.Police responded to the scene at 11:54 p.m. local time, the Torrance Police Department said."Upon arrival, officers discovered multiple subjects with gunshot wounds inside the location," it said. "Officers began life-saving measures which included CPR and the use of a defibrillator. The Torrance Fire Department also treated individuals at the scene."The identities of the victims have not been released pending notification of next-of-kin. Detectives are investigating the shooting and working to identify the suspects. Read the rest

Let's face it. Binge-watching nothing but sitcoms and melodramas is like a stereotypical Chinese food buffet: You'll feel empty an hour later. Finally, there's a streaming service out there for those who like to come out of a show with something more than water cooler gossip. With over 2,000 documentary features and series, CuriosityStream might just be the channel to turn couch potatoes into something other than a vegetable.Like most streaming services, sign up and you're free to watch on any device: Browser, app, TV or tablet. But there's a lot more depth to CuriosityStream's programming, in more ways than one. It's the brainchild of Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks, and as you might expect, the shows here are all geared toward learning. You'll find documentary series and features on everything from cuisine ("The History of Food") to history ("Pearl Harbor: Into the Arizona") to science ("Particle Fever"), including offerings by top minds like David Attenborough and Stephen Hawking.Great taste, more filling, and it's currently on sale: A two-year subscription to CuriosityStream is 25% off at $29.99. Read the rest

Last week, incoming Senator Kyrsten Sinema [D-AZ] was sworn in by Mike Pence, in his aspect as President of the Senate, choosing to take her oath on a book containing both the Constitutions of the United States of America and Arizona, a tome repeating the framers' prohibition on the US government's establishment a state religion or discrimination on the basis of faith or lack thereof.Sinema is the first openly bisexual person elected to the Senate. Pence is a notorious homophobe, bigot and Dominionist who has espoused the traitorous idea that America should have a state religion in the form of a puritanical, heretical Christianity that denies the message of Christ: a refugee and illegal immigrant who believed that the rich should have their wealth forcibly expropriated and given to the poor. Pence is also notorious for refusing to socialize with women.Throughout her campaign, Sinema teased the idea that she might be an atheist, and is the only member of either US legislature to list herself as "religiously unaffiliated.".@SenatorSinema sworn in by @VP. https://t.co/uIBiIhqqXF pic.twitter.com/TYWVHujtHm— The Hill (@thehill) January 3, 2019Vice President Mike Pence ended Sinema's oath with the usual words, "so help you God?" Sinema responded, "I do." Afterward, he noted that he looked forward to working with her in the Senate.Officially, Sinema identifies herself as religiously unaffiliated, and is the only member of the House or Senate to do so, according to the Pew Research Center for Religion and Public Life. Read the rest

Fannie Mae predicts a "coming exodus of older homeowners" as Boomers die, downsize or enter retirement homes, which will dump a ton of housing stock on the market and crash prices, finally making homes affordable for millenials.But British millennials don't fare as well, because old Britons don't want to downsize, meaning they have to wait for death and/or infirmity to drive a sell-off.One missing factor here is the potential cascade effect driven by declining property prices: as we saw in 2008, when a substantial part of the market is occupied by speculators -- who don't value homes as a place to live, but rather as an asset -- who are counting on prices continuing to rise, they can be stampeded into a spiral of sell-offs by declines in the market. The most skittish/exposed get out first, increasing the inventory and depressing prices, and these declining prices scare a new group of investors into selling, which pushes prices down further. Lather, rinse, repeat!All this means that it may be only when baby-boomers start to check out in a more permanent way that lots of houses begin to change hands. The most common year of birth for the baby-boomer generation is 1947. Since their most common lifespan is around 87 years, Peak Death could occur in 2034, when Britain will see around 15% more fatalities than in 2018. It will be very sad. But for house-hunters it will be a help. By that time baby-boomer deaths will be pushing down on house prices by around 0.7% a year. Read the rest

Step one: write a bot that hits the "play this captcha as audio for me" on a Google Re:captcha; step two: record that as an MP3; step three: feed the MP3 into the Google's Speech2Text API; step four: feed that text back into the Re:captcha. Automate the process with François-Guillaume Ribreau's Uncaptcha.This projet defeat ReCaptcha with 91% accuracy 🤩. How? You might ask. They ask for the audio challenge, dl the mp3, forward it to Google Speech2Text API and submit the answer back... and it works 🤦🏻‍♂️ https://t.co/VRIs5L8zSM pic.twitter.com/2wbksku9OK— 𝑭𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒐𝒊𝒔-𝑮𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒖𝒎𝒆 𝑹𝒊𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒖 (@FGRibreau) January 3, 2019(Thanks, Blaine!) Read the rest

Mark Marino is following up on his previous course on "how to write and read fake news" with an unaccredited Masters Class in Dad Jokes: "In this classy class, we’ll explore the ins and outs of jokes only dads would tell. Patronize the patriarchy with us as we explore a form of humor so painful to hear they’re endEARing. You don’t have to be a dad, have a dad, or have bagged a dad (ahem) to be in this course. All it takes is a shameless love a puns and a sense that no joke is too corny. Learn to make young people groan or maybe just to appreciate the punning paters in your life!" (apply here) Read the rest

Machinist/sculptor Chris Bathgate (previously) has revealed his latest piece: the OTFB (out the front/out the back), a spring-loaded, switchblade-inspired piece that substitutes rotation for a sliding switch, "creating a small amount of mechanical advantage, lessening the effort on the part of the user needed to load the spring in the assembly." The piece is a prototype for a small planned run of 6-12 objects.Well, I consider this first piece to be just the working prototype. There is still much more refinement ahead of me in terms of tightening up the mechanics and tweaking the looks. I think the best way to facilitate this is to do a series.I have in mind a very small edition of these, maybe 6-12 total objects. For a project as mechanically complicated as this, I think it is the right way to go. I want to be able to take my time improving and experimenting with each one, but I also want to be able to move on to something new in a reasonable amount of time (you know me, always moving forward). I made this first one in raw unfinished aluminum to keep it as kind of a blank slate, as I envision doing each consecutive one in a different finish and color scheme in addition to making many compositional modifications and changes along the way. Incorporated knife tech into the world of Machined Metal Sculpture. [Chris Bathgate] Read the rest

With the public domain re-opening for the first time in a generation (thanks, Sonny Bono), artists are once again getting a fresh installment of raw material with which to make new art, in the grand traditions of such driven weirdo/remix enthusiasts as Walt Disney and Brahms.In an article celebrating the revitalized public domain, SF Weekly's Joe Kukura quotes me and other artists on the new artistic freedoms that we gained this week -- and the way that these primarily benefit creators, at the expense of corporations who non-negotiable acquire the copyrights to our work.If this kind of thing excites you as much as it does me, come on down to the Internet Archive in San Francisco on January 25 to celebrate!Mickey Mouse’s 1928 debut Steamboat Willie was about to go into the public domain when Congress passed the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act — named for the singer and husband of Cher who was eventually elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican representing Palm Springs. Bono’s law extended copyright protections for an additional 20 years, after extensive lobbying from the Walt Disney Company to prolong its grip on Mickey’s exclusive rights.That’s ironic, considering how many major Disney cartoons are borrowed works. Classics like Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, and Bambi were all reinterpretations of other writers’ stories, as are modern-day notables like Frozen and Tangled.“People say, ‘How can you be such a giant fan of Disney and its products when they’re so instrumental in extending copyright?’ ” Doctorow tells SF Weekly. Read the rest

Bruce Sterling says the future consists of old people, in big cities, afraid of the sky, and, as we all know, China is the future.Generations of brutally imposed limitations on fertility has created a looming demographic crisis in China, as the aging population means fewer and fewer productive workers supporting more and more elderly people.Japan suffered -- and never fully recovered from -- an economic crisis in the 1990s, triggered by "voluntary" low fertility rates that were much higher than China's globally low 1.18/woman. China is now rapidly approaching a ratio of working-age people to pensioners to rival Japan's worst days.Even if China abandons all fertility controls, the "natural" fertility rates in closely linked countries and territories (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, etc) are so low that it's all but impossible to imagine a scenario in which fertility expands to head off the looming crisis (after all, young workers who are burdened by financially supporting elderly relations find it harder to support kids of their own).U Wisconsin public health scientist Yi Fuxian -- a longtime critic of China's One Child policy -- makes a compelling case for a Chinese demographic-economic crisis in the South China Morning Post. The size of China’s labour force is rapidly declining, while its elderly population numbers are increasing dramatically. In 2015, China had 6.9 workers aged 20-64 supporting one senior citizen aged 65 or above (most women retire in their 50s) and there is already a social security shortfall. The ratio will continue to decline, to 3.6 workers in 2030 and 1.7 in 2050. Read the rest

Late last year, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson sued Comcast for lying and lying and lying and lying and lying to the people of Minnesota, all the time, because Comcast is a garbage company, universally loathed by every person who has ever come into contact with them, with the sole exception of FCC Chairman, noted coward, and former telcoms exec Ajit "Fucking" Pai.In an article that delves into eye-watering detail, Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin delivers a selection of lowlights from the AG's brief in the suit, describing these filthy, shameless lies that reps from America's most hated company told to the good people of Minnesota.Swanson says that Comcast told Minnesotans lies long after it had settled a class action suit over its filthy, shameless lies in 2016. In its defense, Comcast threw its low-level phone staffers (who have a well-deserved rep as the most vicious and unpleasant phone staffers in the world, thanks to the company's policy of firing employees who don't deceive and abuse their customers) under the bus. In 2016, Comcast/Xfinity promised a consumer on his Service Order that it would charge him $109, plus tax, for two years. Despite his Service Order stating: "HD/DVR $0" and "Addl. Monthly Fees $ ---" Comcast/Xfinity increased his bill by $19.95 per month by adding an equipment (DVR) fee as well as Broadcast TV, Regional Sports, and HD Technology fees. Similarly, in August 2016, Comcast/Xfinity promised a consumer that it would charge him the same price for two years and wrote that he would pay $139.99 per month on his Service Order. Read the rest

The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled that Uber can't use binding arbitration "agreements" to stop its drivers from joining a class action suit against the company; the court held that the arbitration clause was "illegally outsourcing an employment standard."Under Uber's non-negotiable driver "agreement," drivers who wanted to sue the company had to pay up to US$14,500 to a Dutch arbitration company to seek any kind of redress.Uber plans on appealing.In California, Uber succeeded in killing a driver class-action by invoking its arbitration clause, but then when the drivers engaged in mass-arbitration, the company refused to actually arbitrate.Arbitration is a private system of law that corporations have expanded in the neoliberal era to strip customers and employees of their legal rights.``I believe that it can be safely concluded that Uber chose this arbitration clause in order to favour itself and thus take advantage of its drivers, who are clearly vulnerable to the market strength of Uber,'' the appeal court said. ``It is a reasonable inference that Uber did so knowingly and intentionally.''The lawsuit, which claims Uber drivers are employees rather than contractors and thus subject to Ontario's labour legislation, had been stayed earlier this year by a motion judge who found Uber drivers were bound by the arbitration clause.The three-judge appeal panel says the motion judge erred on several points, including in considering the arbitration clause like the kind seen in ``normal commercial contracts'' where the parties are relatively equal in power and sophistication. Read the rest

The city attorney for Los Angeles is suing the company behind The Weather Channel and its mobile app, and says the app covertly mined user data.The Weather Channel app is hugely popular, and the the lawsuit is a big deal. You can read the lawsuit here [PDF via NYT]. “If the price of getting a weather report is going to be the sacrifice of your most personal information about where you spend your time day and night,” said Michael Feuer, the Los Angeles city attorney, “you sure as heck ought to be told clearly in advance.”Excerpt from The New York Times:The Weather Channel app deceptively collected, shared and profited from the location information of millions of American consumers, the city attorney of Los Angeles said in a lawsuit filed on Thursday.One of the most popular online weather services in the United States, the Weather Channel app has been downloaded more than 100 million times and has 45 million active users monthly.The government said the Weather Company, the business behind the app, unfairly manipulated users into turning on location tracking by implying that the information would be used only to localize weather reports. Yet the company, which is owned by IBM, also used the data for unrelated commercial purposes, like targeted marketing and analysis for hedge funds, according to the lawsuit. Read the rest

Last month, an Australian Fortnite player who streamed himself attacking his wife off-screen while his screaming children watched was charged with assault and banned from Amazon-owned Twitch. But after only two weeks, the service has restored Luke Munday's account and is profiting from his newfound notoriety.Twitch and Munday and Munday’s attorney didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast. Munday, who goes by “MrDeadMoth” on Twitch, was a small-time streamer until the night of Dec. 9. That’s when his pregnant girlfriend, unhappy that he had missed dinner with his family, asked him to stop playing Fortnite and chatting with his Twitch fans.Angered, Munday went off-screen, but kept the camera running. After Munday left the stream, a slapping sound could be heard on the video, while his girlfriend cried and their two children, both toddlers, were heard screaming.There are three stages to how tech platforms keep their racist, sexist, criminal celebrities afloat in the face of criticism.1. Smiling and promising to do better.2. Smiling, teeth clenched, silently, like the creepy Fassbender robot from the new Alien movies.3. Mask-off distinterest in criticism, trending toward open hostility.Welcome to 2, Twitch! (YouTube's been at 3 since the Pewd N-bomb.)UPDATE: He's been rebanned, reports The Verge. Read the rest

In the year 1987, at the John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA launched the last of America's deep space probes. The payload, perched on the nose cone of the massive rocket, was a one-man exploration vessel - Ranger 3. Aboard this compact starship, a lone astronaut - Captain William "Buck" Rogers - was to experience cosmic forces beyond all comprehension. An awesome brush with death: in the blink of an eye, his life support systems were frozen by temperatures beyond imagination. Ranger 3 was blown out of its planned trajectory into an orbit a thousand times more vast, an orbit which was to return the ship full circle to his point of origin - its mother Earth - not in 5 months, but in 500 years.I highly recommend you read Philip Francis Nolan's Armageddon 2419 A.D. Read the rest

Blessed with an abundance of National Park attractions right in the midst of their metropolis, San Francisco leaders have decided not to let garbage pile up.SF Examiner shares:Trash has been piling up at San Francisco landmarks run by the National Park Service during the federal government shutdown, but city officials are now stepping in to pick up some of the slack.Public Works started trash collection Wednesday at Lands End, which is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, picking up piles of refuse that had built up near garbage cans since the shutdown started Dec. 22.Now, Public Works officials told the San Francisco Examiner, they’ll also pick up trash at Aquatic Park.The focus will be on servicing public garbage cans and the areas immediately around them “that we can immediately access,” said Rachel Gordon, a spokesperson for Public Works.That means city staff won’t be making any long hikes through Lands End for pickups any time soon, but the department is asking people to remember to “pack it in, and pack it out,” to help play a part in keeping the parks safe and clean.“We’re stepping in because it’s still part of San Francisco,” Gordon said. “We want a good experience for our visitors and residents there.”Pictured is Muir Beach, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Volunteers have been picking up garbage in the GGNRA, but traffic in and out becomes a nightmare due to the lack of signage, narrow roads, locked parking lots, and lack of space for the many, many disappointed visitors to turn around. Read the rest

The Marriott hotel chain today said that a smaller number of customers were affected by a recent hack than initially estimated, but admitted that the hackers got customer passport numbers. The hotel chain said in a statement early Friday that the number of guests involved in the data breach is lower than the original estimate of 500 million, but declined to say how many were in fact affected.Security analysts are warning those affected that the passport data could be used to perpetrate more sophisticated forms of attack, including foreign intelligence surveillance, and could enable perpetrators to mine deeper information about each of the breach victims. From the Wall Street Journal: Marriott International Inc. said fewer customers were affected in a massive data breach than initially feared but confirmed that hackers had compromised the passport numbers of millions of people in what security analysts have described as a potential foreign-intelligence gold mine.Marriott, the world’s largest hotel company, disclosed in November that a hack in the reservation database for its Starwood properties may have exposed the personal information of up to 500 million guests.Marriott said a total of about 383 million records was “the upper limit” for the number potentially compromised in the incident. That figure includes passport numbers, email addresses and payment-card data of some guests, the company said. Marriott said that in many instances, there appear to be multiple records for the same guest, meaning that it is unlikely 383 million people were affected.PHOTO: courtesy MARRIOTT HOTELS. Read the rest

Hackers have published a big dump of private data related to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and hundreds of other of the country's politicians, in what is said to be the biggest data dump of its kind ever in Germany. Only politicians from the far-right Alternative for Germany were spared.First German MPs receive Twitter messages, asking them to admit their real sexual preferences.The hackers obtained pornographic material of them ...#BTleaks— Julian Röpcke (@JulianRoepcke) January 4, 2019The news was first reported by German broadcaster RBB (translated here, by Politico Europe) later confirmed by the BBC.The stolen private information leaked online includes credit card info, scans of official identification cards, email addresses, mobile phone numbers, physical addresses, banking transactions, and chat transcripts. The hackers even “very personal data” such as conversations with family members, RBB reported.The leak happened over the course of the last few weeks via an account on Twitter that identiies itself as based in Hamburg, and describes itself with the words “security researching,” “artist” and “satire & irony.”The news was first reported by German broadcaster RBB (translated here, by Politico Europe) later confirmed by the BBC.Said German Justice Minister Katarina Barley to BBC News, “The people behind this want to damage confidence in our democracy and institutions.”From Bloomberg:It looks like the hackers got the passwords to Facebook accounts and Twitter profiles and worked their way up from there, said Simon Hegelich, a political scientist at Munich’s Technical University who has studied the manipulation of social networks. Read the rest

NBC News reports that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and other top executives are super pissed at the New York Times over what they say are weeks of antagonistic coverage and an anti-Facebook bias. Dylan Byers reports that NYT ed-in-chief Dean Baquet's response is that Facebook is "a big company with unusual power.” Facebook can handle it. And Facebook deserves it.From NBC News:• The frustration was rekindled this week after the Times bought a sponsored post on Facebook to promote "a step-by-step guide to breaking up with" Facebook and Instagram — a move sources likened to Facebook taking out an ad in the Times encouraging readers to cancel their subscriptions.• The sponsored ad came after weeks of Times articles that cast Facebook as a reckless, data-hungry behemoth with little regard for user privacy or the integrity of American politics. These articles were aggressively promoted across the Times' social media accounts and in push notifications.• Facebook sources believe some of the paper's reporters willfully ignored nuances about how the internet works in order to cast Facebook in the worst-possible light, either because the paper is hell-bent on crippling the social media network or because it is gunning for a Pulitzer Prize.• Facebook spokesperson: "No comment."The View from the Times: Asked to respond to the criticism, Times executive editor Dean Baquet told me Facebook was "a big company with unusual power that finds itself in the middle of some of the largest issues of the day — privacy and political meddling."• As for the sponsored ad, Baquet said: "There is no connection between our coverage of Facebook and the company's business dealings with Facebook." Read the rest

Below is New Year's Eve video of Michael Minnillo, general manager of Yountville, California's legendary French Laundry restaurant attempting a dramatic saber opening of a $2,000 bottle of Billecart-Salmon brut. French Laundry disinfecting their kitchen floors for the new year with some questionable technique from r/wine(r/wine) Read the rest

This deck of 56 'Rider Back' Bicycle playing cards has blank faces.These come in handy for a number of magic tricks. The cards are printed on US Playing Card stock, and excepting the missing printed faces are identical to your regular deck of Bicycle 808 cards.Magic Makers Bicycle Blank Face Red Back Card Deck via Amazon Read the rest

I don't drink wine, but living in Northern California I still end up visiting wineries in Napa and Sonoma with friends and visitors. Next time we're headed on a wine tasting trip, I'm going to suggest we hit the spooky spots described in this Mysterious Universe guide to haunted California wineries, starting with this one:Sitting within the wine country of Sonoma, California is a winery called Bartholomew Park Winery, and it is imbued with quite a colorful past that perhaps makes it unsurprising that it should be haunted. In its days before putting out fine wines, Bartholomew Park Winery underwent several metamorphoses, being used at one time or another as a women’s prison, a hospital, and a morgue, before becoming a vineyard and winery in the 1830s, after which it was acquired by European immigrant Agoston Haraszthy, who also happens to have been the owner of the equally haunted Buena Vista Winery, which we’ll get to later. It then became the Hacienda Cellars winery, with the wine cellars being right there in the old hospital, going on to become the Sonoma Valley Wine Museum and then the Bartholomew Park Winery in 1992...This rather grim past came back to haunt the winery in the 1970s, perhaps literally, when the body of a former prisoner at the old prison was supposedly found buried within one of the walls of the establishment, and the main building and its basement are situated right atop what was once the morgue. Since the beginnings of the winery there have been tales of employees hearing disembodied voices singing or whispering, as well as moving objects, roving cold spots, footsteps when no one else is around, and the eerie sound of a piano playing. Read the rest

Released in 1998 by Tiger Electronics, more than 40 million Furbies were sold in its first three years of life. What made this bizarre animatronic toy so damn popular? At IEEE Spectrum, Allison Marsh looks at the engineering behind this pioneering social robot:The Furby’s source code was written by David Hampton and Wayne Schulz to run on a variation of the 6502 microprocessor, the 8-bit chip that powered the Apple II, Commodore 64, and BBC Micro. The source code is well documented, making it easy to follow regardless of your knowledge of assembly. After a computer programmer posted the source code online last August, one commenter on Hacker News praised it for being “surprisingly sophisticated.”But reading lines of code doesn’t equal the lived experience. In Hampton and Schulz’s comments on how the Furby’s voice pitch was controlled, for instance, they noted that the maximum range was “very squeeeeeke....”Fresh out of the box, a Furby speaks its native tongue of Furbish, an invented language that incorporates aspects of Thai, Mandarin, and Hebrew. It might say “Dah-ay-loh u-tye,” when it wakes up, which literally translates as “big light up,” but it is simply saying good morning. The vocabulary of the early Furbys included 42 words. Over time, as children played with their toy, its language ability seemingly evolved. In time, the Furby might start speaking English or 23 other languages, but this function was preprogrammed."Coded for Cuteness: How the Furby Conquered Hearts and Minds"Photo: Mark Richards/Computer History Museum Read the rest

This is only missing Max, the Bionic dog. Read the rest

The Washington Post reports that without legislation to continue a pay-cap it appears senior Trump officials including Vice-President Pence will receive pay raises.The raises appear to be an intended consequence of the shutdown: When lawmakers failed to pass bills on Dec. 21 to fund multiple federal agencies, they allowed an existing pay freeze to lapse. Congress enacted a law capping pay for top federal executives in 2013 and renewed it each year. The raises will occur because that cap will expire without legislative action by Saturday, allowing raises that have accumulated over those years but never took effect to kick in, starting with paychecks that will be issued next week.Cabinet secretaries, for example, would be entitled to a jump in annual salary from $199,700 to $210,700. Deputy secretaries would be entitled to a raise from $179,700 to $189,600. Others affected are under secretaries, deputy directors and other top administrators.The pay of Pence is scheduled to rise from $230,700 to $243,500.There was no immediate comment Friday by the White House. A spokesperson for Pence also did not immediately provide comment. Read the rest

A gentleman in Charlotte, North Carolina tried to push a woman into his car, but she got away and ran into a nearby karate studio. The would-be kidnapper chased her inside the dojo, and that's where he met his match. Or, rather, got his ass kicked.The head sensei, Randall Ephraim, said he was cleaning up at 9pm Thursday night when a woman rushed in, begging for help.He told CNN: "There were still some kids in the dojo being picked up by parents and a couple of adult students cleaning up when a young lady came through our doors and stated that someone was trying to harm her. Shortly afterward, a big male entered the building. Not knowing what he wanted, I assumed he was inquiring about classes. I asked how I could assist him and he stated that he was there for the lady. She insisted that she did not know him and tried to kidnap her."That's when Sensei Ephraim asked the man to leave. When the man became more aggressive, Ephraim did what head senseis do best – he made some moves and got the guy outside. "Once outside he attempted to attack again and was dealt with accordingly," Ephraim told CNN.The man was arrested and taken away on a stretcher to a hospital for injuries. View this post on Instagram #bushikenwarriors #thanksgivingclapback 2018A post shared by Sensei (@ephraimdojo_charlottenc) on Nov 24, 2018 at 10:39am PST Image: by Jjskarate. - Own work; Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.., CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Read the rest

I bought a six=pack of Gildan crew T-shirts to replace my ratty old ones. They're very inexpensive and comfortable. They're on sale right now, so I bought another six-pack of whites and a six-pack of blacks. Read the rest

The unrepeatability of the Fleischmann–Pons experiment in the 1980s soured the world on cold fusion as a possible energy source for decades, but recent fusion reactor breakthroughs seem to indicate that the world will soon have an abundant supply of cheap, clean energy.From Brian Bergstein's article on Medium Science:An Italian oil company and private investors — including a firm funded by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos — put at least $75 million into the company, known as Commonwealth Fusion Systems [CFS]. The startup intends to demonstrate the workings of fusion power by 2025.Real, live, economically viable power plants could then follow in the 2030s. No joke. When I ask Whyte, who is 54, to compare his level of optimism now to any other point in his career, he says, simply: “It is at the maximum.”But it’s not just MIT. At least 10 other startups also are trying new approaches to fusion power. All of them contend that it’s no longer a tantalizingly tricky science experiment, and is becoming a matter of engineering. If even just one of these ventures can pull it off, the energy source of the future is closer than it seems.“It’s remarkable,” says David Kingham, executive vice chairman of Tokamak Energy, a British company whose goal is to put fusion power on the grid by 2030. “The world has been waiting for fusion for a long time.”Image: By Robert Mumgaard - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Read the rest

Neil Green made a useful chart of the 42 types of difficult people you are likely to encounter on a software development team. Each type is represented by an animal, and by clicking on the animal you can learn more about that type of person and how to deal with them. The Professor: A Designer so committed to the science and theory of user interface design, that they ignore the UI requirements coming from the stakeholders.The Hostage Taker: A Developer who has written a piece of mission-critical software, and refuses to let any other developer work on it so that they may remain indispensable.The Alarmist: A QA who has declared that the entire product is of an unacceptable level of quality based only on their first impressions.I think you can find many of these people on projects that don't involve software.[via Evil Mad Scientist] Read the rest

A graph from Credit Suisse/Forbes reveals that 0.7% of people on the planet own 46% of the world's wealth. That tiny percentage controls $128.7 trillion and they've done a good job convincing the 70% who own less than $10,000 that rich people deserve tax cuts.[via Visual Capitalist] Read the rest

Italian knife dealer Giacomo Giovannitti shows his skills using a Japanese chef's knife to cut transparent slices of tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, apples, and radishes.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Forbes publishes 300 stories a day, and is developing AI software that writes first drafts of articles. From Digiday:With Bertie, a contributor who writes regularly about the automobile industry might open up the tool to find the makings of an article about Tesla, complete with links to relevant, related articles published both on Forbes and elsewhere. The tool will surface images that might improve the story as well....Bertie adds Forbes to the list of publishers using artificial intelligence products to help drive editorial output. The Washington Post’s Heliograf tool, which generates short stories based on structured data about things like election results or Olympics events, has generated thousands of stories since it was introduced two years ago; Reuters’ Lynx Insights tool has been helping the business publisher crank out stories since March 2018, and the Associated Press is years into using AI to write stories on topics including company earnings and minor league sports.Hopefully Forbes will also develop AI to read these stories and click on the tooth implant adverts that accompany them. Read the rest

St. Petersburg, Florida. Facebook user TJ Biandudi posted a video he says was filmed by his mother and sister when they patronized a McDonald’s in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Monday. The footage shows a white man, whom the St. Petersburg Police Department identified as 40-year-old Daniel Willis Taylor, allegedly upset because he wanted a straw, grabbing a young black woman named Yasmine James, yanking her over the counter that separated the two, according to the police report obtained by The Root.If you want an idea of how these men think, note that the attacker thinks that she is going to get arrested: “I couldn’t control you,” he says. He was charged on two counts of battery, having also lashed out at another worker while leaving the restaurant. Read the rest

The threats to established networks are coming from all directions these days, which means any big company that can't invest in security isn't going stay that way long. Know a thing or two about covert code? Looking to put those skills to good use - both ethically and financially? The 2019 Ethical Hacker Master Class Bundle is a comprehensive course in cybersecurity.With over 180 hours of instruction and resources, this is a training program geared to get you on the staff of any network's defensive team. You'll get all you need for certification in CompTIA's A+ and Network+ programs, but the bundle goes beyond those IT infrastructure basics. You'll learn to analyze security threats both long and short-term, and if hackers do get in, you'll have the cyber-sleuthing tools you need to determine the source of the threat. From the attack and defense possibilities of Python to carrying out "white hat" test hacks, you'll be armed for the front lines of cyber-warfare in no time.The 2019 Ethical Hacker Master Class Bundle is now available for $39, a deep discount off the cost of the individual courses. Read the rest

I regret to inform you that Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is back on his inappropriate for a CEO tweets again.The two weird tweets were sandwiched between two other seemingly normal tweets about favorable coverage of Tesla, the electric car maker under earnings scrutiny in the new year.Why.Why, Elon.Here's what Elon's Thursday afternoon on Twitter looked like.• 2:31 PM - 3 Jan 2019: “Model 3 mid-range EPA rating is actually 264 miles, slightly higher than prior estimate of 260.”• 3:04 PM - 3 Jan 2019: “There are no coincidences.” Attached, a conspiracy meme about Neil Armstrong and aliens.• 3:06 PM - 3 Jan 2019: “Evian, the first bottled water, is naive spelled backwards.”• 3:23 PM - 3 Jan 2019: This day-old Forbes article, titled “Tesla Is Now America's Number One Premium Automotive Company, Outsells BMW, Lexus In Q4.”DO NOT BLAME WEED FOR ELON. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) January 4, 2019 Read the rest

Is 911 service down in your area? Got a complaint about your mobile provider? Just invented a new iphone-killer, and need safety approval before your product goes to market? Well, too bad, you'll have to wait. The Federal Communications Commission just went dark. All but the agency's most essential operations abruptly halted late Thursday because of Trump's government shutdown.Also today, Ajit Pai canceled his trip to CES, as Politico first reported. This will be the second year in a row FCC Chairman Pai hasn't appeared at the annual electronics event in Las Vegas.FCC posted advance warning about the pending closure. Most of the agency's activities will stop, and most staff furloughed, a notice on FCC.gov Wednesday explained.Also shut down for now: The FCC's review of that T-Mobile/Sprint merger, device testing (this affects startups and tech companies developing new tech gadgets), and FCC enforcement of consumer protection law. Consumer complaint/safety lines will also be down. From Wired's recap:The FCC will continue to auction off rights to use the wireless spectrum during the shutdown because those auctions are funded by the auctions themselves. That's good news for carriers eager to license new chunks of spectrum for 5G. But, depending on how long the shutdown lasts, mergers could be significantly delayed.A few extra days off won't meaningfully delay the agency's major decisions, says former FCC lawyer Gigi Sohn. But if the shutdown stretches into weeks, it will likely disrupt much of the agency’s work. FCC staff won't be allowed to read email or take meetings unless they're related to continuing activities like spectrum auctions, so staff will have a lot of catching up to do when they return to work. Read the rest

The censorship industry in China is big business.“My office is next to the big training room,” Mr. Yang said. “I often hear the surprised sounds of ‘Ah, ah, ah.’” China's censorship machine is so well oiled that young censors have to be taught what they were missing.This incredible New York Times feature by reporter Li Yuan offers an intimate peek inside a Chinese censorship factory, and shows how they train their young human censors -- and how technology supports their work.Snip:China has built the world’s most extensive and sophisticated online censorship system. It grew even stronger under President Xi Jinping, who wants the internet to play a greater role in strengthening the Communist Party’s hold on society. More content is considered sensitive. Punishments are getting more severe.Once circumspect about its controls, China now preaches a vision of a government-supervised internet that has surprising resonance in other countries. Even traditional bastions of free expression like Western Europe and the United States are considering their own digital limits. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube have said that they would hire thousands more people to better keep a handle on their content.Workers like Mr. Li show the extremes of that approach — one that controls what more than 800 million internet users in China see every day. Beyondsoft employs over 4,000 workers like Mr. Li at its content reviewing factories. That is up from about 200 in 2016. They review and censor content day and night.“We’re the Foxconn in the data industry,” said Mr. Read the rest