The best part of this marvelous guide is the "draw the rest of the owl" moment halfway in where you must perform an act of origami with a single hand that must simultaneously hold a corner down—and then are told you must next do two corners simultaneously. That said, I'm going to practice it until I get it, because I hate tape. Frankly, I don't know why we've created a world so dependent in so many ways on thin, easily split sticky tape that desperately wants to coil in on itself. Read the rest

They say to create solutions for the problems you have and that's just what graphic designer Christian Boer did. He has dyslexia and, for his graduation project a few years back, he created a font that makes reading easier for people with dyslexia. According to his site, people with dyslexia often have difficulties reading because of certain "common reading errors" including "swapping, mirroring, changing, turning and melting letters together." Boer's Dyslexie Font is a typeface with uniquely-shaped letters that remove these common reading errors. GOOD:...research suggests that it’s effective (though some disagree) and also because Boer has made the font available for free. Many educators and businesses already make use of Dyslexie. For instance, Project Literacy integrated the typeface into its logo.Recalling an anecdote from one of his design clients, Boer notes, “They were creating an animated commercial and hired a dyslexic voice-over artist to narrate it. He wanted to be able to read the script fast enough to match the video’s pace, so he asked them to lay it out in Dyslexie first.”For many... individuals and families who have used Dyslexie, the results are transformative. One mom emailed Boer to say that being able to read this font has encouraged her son to dream big.“He is looking forward to the possibility to become an engineer, now that this is available for him,” she wrote.Dyslexie can be downloaded to use in programs and documents. It is also available as a browser extension for Chrome. Read the rest

Back in 2007, Adam "Apelad" Koford created a marvellous, funny, weird alternate history for the then-viral phenomenon of LOLcats, running-gag memes of cats whose superimposed dialog had many odd grammatical quirks: the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats," a pair of comic-strip hobo cats straight out of the 1930s, who found obscure and clever ways to riff on our contemporary LOLcats.What could have been a one-off joke became a beloved franchise. Koford has found a kind of weird magic with Pip and Kitteh, a lineal descendant of the floppy Peanuts and Beetle Bailey collections of my boyhood, complete with nostalgic jokes about half-understood things that are nevertheless so humorous that they have you, uh, laughing out loud.The latest Laugh-Out-Loud Cats collection is One More For the Road, and it is the first Laugh-Out-Loud Cats I've read with my daughter Poesy, who is nearly now 11 years old (!). Poesy gave this book her ultimate stamp of approval: after we read the first 30 or so pages at bedtime, she picked it up the next morning and read it straight through, before school, and still let me read her more of it the next night.In some ways, the latest collection is gloriously more of the same: more of everything I loved about the earlier collections like Down With the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats Sell Out. But in an important way, the experience of reading the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats in late 2019 is different: it's been 15 years since LOLcats came into vogue, and they are largely forgotten, though the narrative, aesthetic, and linguistic conventions they spawned linger, or rather, their descendants do. Read the rest

If you're not familiar with Don Moyer's Calamityware, you should be. His series of blue-and-white porcelain pieces look like ordinary dinnerware at first glance but look closer and you'll spot the fantasy disaster scenes he's cleverly included (like UFO attacks and active volcanoes). You can get Calamityware as plates, mugs, bowls, platters and now, ornaments. Yup, he's essentially shrunk down the dinner plates and made ornaments that can be hung on the Christmas tree (or wherever).There are 12 designs in all (see the rest at his site). A set of four ornaments is $52 or get all 12 for $144.Previously: Calamityware: horrifying blue-china plates(The Awesomer) Read the rest

Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s plans to build a Trump Tower Moscow has led the Special Counsel to question the role Ivanka and Don Jr played in trying to secure a Russian real estate deal, reports Hunter Walker at Yahoo News. That same deal involved a $50 Million penthouse for Putin. Michael Cohen flipped, this is a big thing, and it may end up being the President's undoing.From the Yahoo News exclusive:Mueller’s interest in the Trump family real estate company’s Russia skyscraper plans was confirmed on Thursday when Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney and fixer, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the proposed deal. In charging documents, Mueller said Cohen falsely claimed the effort to build a Trump Tower Moscow “ended in January 2016” in an attempt to “minimize” links between Trump and the project and to “give the false impression” the effort ended prior to the Republican primaries in 2016. Yahoo News first reported in May that congressional investigators had obtained text messages and emails showing Cohen’s work on Trump Tower Moscow went on for longer than he admitted under oath.But Cohen wasn’t the only person at the Trump Organization who was pursuing deals to build a skyscraper in the Russian capital. Multiple sources have confirmed to Yahoo News that the president’s oldest daughter, Ivanka, who is now a top White House adviser, and his oldest son, Don Jr. were also working to make Trump Tower Moscow a reality. The sources said those efforts were independent of Cohen’s work on a project. Read the rest

The 2016 plans for Trump Tower Moscow 2016 included giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse.Donald Trump’s failed 2016 scheme to open a Trump Tower in Moscow is at the center of a charge unveiled Thursday against the president's former personal attorney Michael Cohen. In court this morning, Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress in 2017. He said negotiations over a Moscow Trump Tower project ended in January 2016. We now know that these talks, which included Trump himself, went on until June 2016. That's just one month before the RNC convention nominated Trump as the Republican presidential candidate.There's a whole lot of crazy in today's court filings. One of the craziest new things we know: The Trump Organization planned to present as a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow. Trump's real estate firm negotiated the deal concurrent with Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.From the Wall Street Journal:.Mr. Trump said Thursday that Mr. Cohen is lying. And he noted that no deal ever happened, but if it had, it would not have been an issue because he was still operating as a private businessman. The White House declined to comment.The Moscow project marked the culmination of 30 years of interest by Mr. Trump in establishing a foothold in Russia and nearby Ukraine. The push involved more than 20 separate developments. Though ultimately none came to fruition, one advanced far enough to leave a giant hole, eight stories down in the ground before being abandoned. Read the rest

Wikileaks, furious about a report in The Guardian claiming that founder Julian Assange met with Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, said that it plans to sue it for libel. Moreover, it expects to create a "business model" from such lawsuits.NEW RULES: WikiLeaks is going make suing fake news producers like the Guardian a central part of its business model. Since libels are the most predictable response to the power and accuracy of a WikiLeaks' publication, our analysis is that this is a stable, scalable income streamHey, at least someone gets to see him in court. Read the rest

Liz Fong-Jones is a Site Reliability Engineer for Google's cloud division; she took to Twitter after reading today's story in The Intercept in which ex-Google security engineer Yonatan Zunger and three current, unnamed Google Security and Privacy staff describe how they were sidelined and deceived in the rush to ship Project Dragonfly, Google's secret, censored, surveilling Chinese search engine.Fong-Jones was aghast that Google management was bypassing the Security and Privacy team and called for a walkout if Project Dragonfly shipped without signoff from Security and Privacy. She offered to match the first $100,000 in donations towards a strike-fund to support Googlers who walked off should the day come; hours later, her Google colleagues had put up another $100K.Fong-Jones works for a Google division whose CEO had to resign in disgrace after an employee uprising over a contract to supply AI tools for the Pentagon's drone program.Fong-Jones called on the Tech Workers Coalition to form a special-purpose 501(c)5 nonprofit to receive and administer the strike fund.As usual, I do not speak for my employer, nor do I vouch for the authenticity of any of this.However, I do want to say that @yonatanzunger has been my counterpart on the other side of the negotiating table dozens of times, and I believe his ethical backbone is ironclad. https://t.co/YiFOpqncAF— Liz Fong-Jones (@lizthegrey) November 29, 2018 Read the rest

The precincts that swung hardest for Trump in 2016 and for the GOP in 2018 also had the highest incidence of Google searches for “erectile dysfunction,” “hair loss,” “how to get girls,” “penis enlargement,” “penis size,” “steroids,” “testosterone” and “Viagra.” 'This is new: votes for John McCain and Mitt Romney did not correlate strongly with these searches.The search terms are a proxy for "fragile masculinity," a secret insecurity about one's manhood. Men who boast about their testosterone levels (like Donald Trump) or the size of their hands (like Donald Trump) are thought to be suffering from fragile masculinity.The research was carried out by the Washington Post's Monkey Cage, which focuses on statistics as a means of understanding the news. Our data suggests that fragile masculinity is a critical feature of our current politics. Nonetheless, points of caution are in order.First, the research reported here is correlational. We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way. However, given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.Second, it remains to be seen whether any link between fragile masculinity and voting will persist after Trump exits the national stage. We suspect, however, that Trump’s re-engineering of the GOP as a party inextricably tied to many Americans’ identity concerns — whether based on race, religion or gender — will ensure that fragile masculinity remains a force in politics. Read the rest

Google's Project Dragonfly is a formerly secret project to build a surveilling, censored version of its search engine for deployment in China; it was kept secret from the company at large during the 18 months it was in development, until an insider leak led to its existence being revealed in The Intercept.According to named and anonymous senior googlers who worked on the project and spoke to The Intercept's Ryan Gallagher, the secrecy was motivated by the fear that googlers would object to the project so passionately that it would be scuttled (another controversial project, Project Maven, would have provided AI services to the Pentagon's drone project, but the internal outcry was so intense that it was killed and the CEO of Google's cloud division resigned in disgrace). They were right to be scared. The existence of the project triggered mass protests from inside Google, with waves of resignations (including at the highest levels).Today's report in The Intercept reveals the great and unethical lengths Project Dragonfly's leadership went to to slip the project past the company's rank-and-file, and its founders.Yonatan Zunger -- a respected security researcher -- was on the Dragonfly team, but subsequently quit to work for a startup. He says he would have quit anyway, because of irregularities in the planning and execution of Project Dragonfly.The Intercept puts the blame for Dragonfly on Google China Operations Head Scott Beaumont, whom sources (including Zunger) say systematically excluded the privacy and security teams from Dragonfly meetings, misleading them about support from Google founders for the project, and keeping them from sharing their research and recommendations from Beaumont's bosses. Read the rest

Bypass Paywalls is a popular extension for Firefox and Chrome that does what the name implies: allows your browser to manipulate its cookies so that websites with "soft paywalls" that allow a small number of free articles can't accurately determine if you've already exceeded your limit.Bypass Paywalls is a free software project maintained by Iamadamdev and hosted on Github. On November 17, Iamadamdev updated the project's Readme file to announce that Mozilla had removed the extension from its Add-Ons Store; according to Iamadamdev, the add-on was removed for violating Mozilla's terms-of-service; but they dispute that the project violates those terms.The terms are spread across two pages and the relevant passage appears to be "Mozilla reserves the right ...[to] remove [an add-on that] our reasonable opinion, violates this Agreement or the law, any applicable Mozilla policy, or is in any way harmful or objectionable to End-Users".I do not believe that Bypass Paywalls violates any law; and it's hard to see how it would be harmful or objectionable to the users who run it. The "applicable Mozilla policy" seems a little circular, but maybe that's the justification?Release and Beta versions of Firefox do not allow unsigned extensions to be installed, so the vast majority of Firefox users will not be able to use Bypass Paywalls unless it is restored to the Add-Ons store.The Mozilla Add-Ons Store still lists two not-very-ambitious paywall circumvention tools; Chrome's add-on store still includes Bypass Paywalls.The author of Bypass Paywalls is urging users to contact Mozilla and ask them to reconsider their decision to remove the add-on. Read the rest

Your computer ships with a collection of trusted cryptographic certificates, called its "root of trust," which are consulted to verify things like SSL connections and software updates.A recent report from Secorvo reveals that Sennheiser's Headsetup drivers for its headphones covertly inserted two certificates into this root of trust. What's more, the certificate was ineptly secured, making it possible to guess the other half of the key-pair (certificates come in pairs; what one signs, the other can verify, and a well-formed certificate can never be used to infer its matching other half).Worse still: the Headsetup installer didn't remove the certificates when you uninstalled the software, leaving your computer in a vulnerable state.The upshot: anyone with access to the Headsetup installer could figure out the signing key, then use that key to sign certificates that would allow them to impersonate Google, Apple, Microsoft, your bank, the IRS (etc) to your computer, in an undetectable way, opening the door for malware, phishing, and other attacks.When the researchers analyzed the private key, they determined that it was encrypted with AES-128-CBC encryption and needed to find the proper password to decrypt it. As the HeadSetup program needed to decrypt the key as well, it means it must have been stored somewhere, which in this case was in a file called WBCCListener.dll."In order to decrypt the file we needed to know the encryption algorithm and key that the manufacturer used for encryption," the researchers explained. "Our first guess was that the vendor employed the common AES encryption algorithm with 128-bit key in CBC mode. Read the rest

During a Nine Inch Nails concert in Irving, TX two nights ago, Trent Reznor asked the crowd who voted for Ted Cruz. The room exploded with a resounding chorus of boos. He then told his fans, "He was bugging to get on the guest list, and I told him to fuck off.”According to Spin, Reznor said it wasn't the first time the "pain-in-the-ass" senator from Texas had asked for free tickets. “We put him on [the guest list] a few years ago. He drank all the beer and was just a pain in the ass to be around,” Reznor told the crowd, before launching into a performance of “1,000,000” from The Slip.Here's a reddit video of Reznor at his NIN concert explaining to his audience why he told Cruz to fuck off.Image: by Mark Benney, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Read the rest

New York City's "marshal" service is a throwback to the Dutch colonial days; the 35 marshals are appointed by the mayor, draw no salary, and earn their livings by skimming a percentage off of the debts they collect, operating with impunity and reaching around the world.The most prolific and successful NY marhsal is Vadim Barbarovich, who earned $1.7 million last year, making him New York's best-paid municipal employee. Barbarovich grew his income to such untold heights by partnering with internet-based "cash-advance" companies -- these are business lenders who circumvent loan-sharking limits on interest rates by characterizing their loans as buying a heavily discounted interest in the future earnings of a company.NY marshals can obtain "court orders" requiring banks to turn over their targets' savings without ever appearing in front of a judge or providing evidence of a genuine debt. These are not enforceable outside of New York City, but victims of NY marshals say theyhave made a practice of hitting out-of-town banks (and in-town branches of banks to get at out-of-town customers), partnering with cash-advance companies to rake in millions, reaching into the bank accounts of distant American small business owners and simply cleaning them out, leaving them to scramble or go bust.Barbarovich now employs both his father and his daughter to help in the family business, and he's increased his income 20-fold since he started as a marshal in 2013. He's got competition: retired police lieutenant Stephen Biegel is also a favorite of cash-advance lenders, and last year, he made $786,418. Read the rest

Last year, scientist Chen Zhanqi from China noticed a baby jumping spider behaving in a way that baby mammals do: it attached itself to its mother the way baby animals do when suckling milk. Zhangi decided to closely study jumping spiders along with a colleague, and discovered that their babies actually do suckle milk from their mother's epigastric furrow, which is found on her abdomen. The milk was found to have four times the amount of protein as that of a cow, and the baby spiders suckled until they were considered "sub-adults" at 40 days old. But when the scientists painted over the epigastric furrow to block the flow of milk, the babies died after 10 days. "Providing milk and long-term care together is virtually unheard of in insects and other invertebrates. And with the exception of mammals, it’s not even that common among vertebrates," according to ScienceMag.org, which makes this discovery all the more fascinating. Read the rest

Remember when the Department of Defense's own internal auditor revealed that the agency had committed $6.5 trillion in accounting fraud in just one year? Now, an in-depth investigation into the Pentagon's crooked accounting in The Nation hints at the full extent of the accounting frauds deployed by the agency that already absorbs two-thirds of all of America's federal tax revenue, and delves into the methods used by the Pentagon's bagmen to hide their financial sleights of hand.The Pentagon's main goal is to ensure that it never has its budget cut, so it is at pains to disguise any funding surpluses it has at the end of the year. The laundering tactics used to accomplish this are shifting money from "one-year funds" into "five-year funds." The Pentagon's other tactics are internally described as "plugs" (which "plug a hole" in a budget) and "nippering" (shifting funds from a Congressionally approved purpose into another one, repeatedly, "until the funds become virtually untraceable").The total figures are inconceivably large. From 1998 to 2015, the Pentagon made at least $21 trillion worth of unaccountable transactions (some of these were on the positive side of the ledger) -- five times the annual US GDP! (Similar practices take place in other agencies: for example, HUD also made $351 million in off-books spending in the same period).One interested party has taken action—but it is action that’s likely to perpetuate the fraud. The normally obscure Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board sets the accounting standards for all federal agencies. Read the rest

For those who don't know, the Vectrex was Milton Bradley's videogame console with an integrated vector graphics display that was introduced in 1982. As cool and unique as Vectrex was, it was only on the market for two years before succumbing to the video game crash of 1983. A few years ago, photos turned up revealing that Milton Bradley had apparently prototyped a more portable version of the console. Other than what was seen in those images though, there was little-to-no information about the actual system, like whether it actually worked or was just a mock-up. Until now. The National Videogame Museum has actually acquired one of the working prototypes!IT'S ALIIIIVE! We dug a little deeper into the Mini Vectrex console this weekend and we're happy to report it is now back to working order! Check out this video of the console in action! pic.twitter.com/9PFlcnYQlr— National Videogame Museum (@nvmusa) November 19, 2018We've heard it suggested that the Mini Vectrex was only mock-up and not a real system at all. We have already taken the unit apart and inside of it is the complete, authentic circuitry of an original Vectrex console. pic.twitter.com/1VV1NG7SRl— National Videogame Museum (@nvmusa) November 16, 2018 Read the rest

A rare, fully-operational Enigma cipher machine from World War II will go up for auction at Sothebys tomorrow as part of an amazing History of Science & Technology auction (also including Richard Feynman's Nobel Prize). The Enigma is expected to go for around $200,000. From a 1999 article I wrote for Wired:German soldiers issued an Enigma were to make no mistake about their orders if captured: Shoot it or throw it overboard. Based on electronic typewriters invented in the 1920s, the infamous Enigma encryption machines of World War II were controlled by wheels set with the code du jour. Each letter typed would illuminate the appropriate character to send in the coded message.In 1940, building on work by Polish code breakers, Alan Turing and his colleagues at the famed UK cryptography center Bletchley Park devised the Bombe, a mechanical computer that deciphered Enigma-encoded messages. Even as the Nazis beefed up the Enigma architecture by adding more wheels, the codes could be cracked at the Naval Security Station in Washington, DC - giving the Allies the upper hand in the Battle of the Atlantic. The fact that the Allies had cracked the Enigma code was not officially confirmed until the 1970s. Read the rest

A man on the federal wanted list for repeated crimes in Russia broke into an office building and stole 140,000 rubles ($2,100 USD) from a safe. He had brought a toolbox worth of tools, including "screwdrivers, wire cutters, a hammer, a nail puller, and a bunch of keys, to break into several private company offices, looking for valuables," according to Oddity Central. But before taking off, he spotted a leather armchair and couldn't resist. The gentleman took a seat and fell into a deep slumber, bungling any plan of escape.Asleep for hours, he was finally spotted on a security camera. Police came and had an easy time nabbing the man, who was still snoozing comfortably with his bag of cash. Needless to say, the 36-year-old burglar was arrested. Image: Mohamed Hassan/PublicDomainPictures.net; CCO Public Domain Read the rest

A Hannukah miracle I can get behind.The world has burnt enough oil.You can buy it here for $399. Read the rest

Fred Berry's dancing, largely on the incredible sitcom What's Happening! serves as an incredible anti-depressant. Read the rest

Trump today canceled, via a tweet, his planned G20 meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. He said he was cancelling their private, one-on-one, nobody else in the room visit because of Russian naval aggression against Ukraine.BREAKING: Trump cancels meeting with Putin, citing Russia's seizure of Ukrainian vessels.— The Associated Press (@AP) November 29, 2018Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she wasn't aware of any Trump-Putin phone call recently, but the two governments have been in communication. Trump's meetings with South Korea’s Moon Jae-In and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be pull-asides at the G20 summit, she said.— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) November 29, 2018The Kremlin says they have not been notified of a cancellation of the Putin-Trump meeting.Emily Tamkin, BuzzFeed News:Trump's tweet came the same day that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for NATO to send ships to the Sea of Azov, where the Ukrainian vessels were captured.It was also sent just hours after Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about pursuing the construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow in 2016. The details of the Trump Tower Moscow deal were first revealed by BuzzFeed News in May.The tweeted cancellation comes just two days after the State Department announced that Trump and Putin would meet at the G20. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to whether Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was expected to join the president in his meetings, would still meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. Read the rest

In Leeds, England, Ashley Watson, 26, set a new Guinness World Record with a backflip between horizontal bars nearly 20 feet (5.87 meters) apart. In this case, Watson didn't fly through the air with the greatest of ease as it took him six tries to land it.Bonus below, Watson's own "favorite videos of 2015, in and out of competition": Read the rest

In 2007, Florida multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to two felony prostitution counts in a sweetheart deal that sent him to a private wing of a minimum security prison, with a work-release program that let him go to an off-site office for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for just over a year. Prosecutors knew of at least 36 underage survivors of sex crimes committed by Epstein, but none of them were notified of the deal (this silence is a breach of federal law), and they were subsequently smeared by Epstein's lawyers who accused them of being "gold diggers."The Miami Herald has tracked down more than 80 of Epstein's victims, who were young teens when he convinced them to come to his house and committed nonconsensual and illegal sex acts with them. They were largely poor and desperate for the money that Epstein paid them, and they say he provided cash bonuses to girls who brought in more girls for him to have sex with. They also say he rejected girls who looked post-pubescent, preferring only the youngest-looking of the girls.The prosecutor who set up Epstein's plea bargain, and who -- according to emails reviewed by the Herald -- conspired to keep the deal out of the press, is named Alexander Acosta. Alexander Acosta is now Donald J Trump's Secretary of Labor.The women who were raped and molested by Epstein have had a hard time since Acosta allowed their assaulter to walk away from his crimes. Read the rest

The first two recreational marijuana dispensaries opened in Massachusetts last week to blockbuster numbers. The two dispensaries, located in Leicester and Northampton sold over $2 million dollars of product in just five days. Black Friday was especially popular, with customers spending almost half a million dollars in one day. The state of Massachusetts gets $376,995 in tax revenue and the two dispensary locations will get $66,528 in local taxes from those five days. Not too shabby. But the launch of legal weed hasn't been without problems. Neighbors of Cultivate, the Leicester dispensary held an emergency meeting Monday night to address the massive traffic jams created by weed seekers. Cultivate is averaging 1,000 customers a day and has pledged to add more parking spaces and additional employees. Three new dispensaries are expected to open in Salem, Easthampton, and Wareham over the next couple of weeks. Salem's opening will be interesting to watch as it will be the closest dispensary to Boston. Some cities and towns in the state (including the city of Peabody, where I live) have banned recreational sales. But I have a feeling that sweet, sweet tax revenue will become impossible to resist. Massachusetts’ Pot Industry Is off to a $2.2 Million Start (Spencer Buell/Boston Magazine)(Image: MarijuanaStox.com) Read the rest

Reddit has posted a punchy, impassioned warning about the likelihood that it will no longer be able to function if the EU's plan to mandate copyright filters and limit linking to news without permission goes through.In its note, Reddit links the fight over the new Copyright Directive to other policy fights it has joined in, like the fights for Net Neutrality and against SOPA. Visitors to Reddit in the EU are being shown a warning box explaining the issue and asking them to contact their MEPs. It's fantastic to see Reddit in the fight, especially after Youtube's CEO proposed that this could all be fixed if everyone had to use ContentID, or something like it. Defending equal access to the free and open internet is core to Reddit’s ideals, and something that redditors have told us time and again they hold dear too, from the SOPA/PIPA battle to the fight for Net Neutrality. This is why even though we are an American company with a user base primarily in the United States, we’ve nevertheless spent a lot of time this year warning about how an overbroad EU Copyright Directive could restrict Europeans’ equal access to the open Internet—and to Reddit.Despite these warnings, it seems that EU lawmakers still don’t fully appreciate the law’s potential impact, especially on small and medium-sized companies like Reddit. So we’re stepping things up to draw attention to the problem. Users in the EU will notice that when they access Reddit via desktop, they are greeted by a modal informing them about the Copyright Directive and referring them to detailed resources on proposed fixes. Read the rest

Retro 51 has issued this handsome series of rocket pens that celebrate NASA's launch vehicles of the space race era. The line includes a Mercury-Redstone, Gemini-Titan II, and the Apollo-Saturn V that carried all the astronauts who traveled to the moon. (No word on whether the pens work upside down.) From Space.com:The Mercury and Gemini pens retail for $50 each. The Apollo pen is priced at $60.The pens are also offered as a boxed set with matching serial numbers for $170.Retro 51 will be donating a portion of the proceeds from each pen to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF). Over the course of the past three decades, the Foundation has awarded more than $4.5 million to more than 500 U.S. college students excelling in science, technology, mathematics and engineering degrees. Read the rest

Another story came out this week about gun owners letting their NRA memberships lapse.My gun-owning family — admittedly more my husband than me — falls into that middle ground. He chose to drop his NRA affiliation and his favored gun range when its mandatory NRA membership tipped from practical tips into political advocacy.Apparently, he is not alone.The National Rifle Association of America reported $98 million in contributions in 2017, down from nearly $125 million in 2016, according to The Daily Beast, even though it has in President Donald Trump a champion it helped elect. The NRA’s more than $128 million in dues last year was a drop from the $163 million it took in the year before, the report said.Moreover, there's growing dismay at the decadent lifestyles of NRA leaders amid belt-tightening and layoffs.The National Rifle Association paid more than $100,000 in personal expenses for an official who is now leading an austerity campaign within the organization, new tax filings show.The official, Josh Powell, is the NRA’s executive director for general operations. The Trace and Mother Jones reported two weeks ago that Powell, along with the NRA’s new treasurer, Craig Spray, is seeking to impose steep cuts to the gun group’s budget. The effort is so stringent that the NRA did away with free coffee and water coolers in its Fairfax headquarters, causing consternation among NRA staffers.Even conservative gun owners are getting tired of the NRA's political bullshit and lavish expenses, all paid for on their dime. Read the rest

UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) has just added reggae music to its list of more than 300 practices and expressions of "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" for safeguarding. From UNESCO:Having originated within a cultural space that was home to marginalized groups, mainly in Western Kingston, the Reggae music of Jamaica is an amalgam of numerous musical influences, including earlier Jamaican forms as well as Caribbean, North American and Latin strains. In time, Neo-African styles, soul and rhythm and blues from North America were incorporated into the element, gradually transforming Ska into Rock Steady and then into Reggae. While in its embryonic state Reggae music was the voice of the marginalized, the music is now played and embraced by a wide cross-section of society, including various genders, ethnic and religious groups. Its contribution to international discourse on issues of injustice, resistance, love and humanity underscores the dynamics of the element as being at once cerebral, socio-political, sensual and spiritual. The basic social functions of the music – as a vehicle for social commentary, a cathartic practice, and a means of praising God – have not changed, and the music continues to act as a voice for all. Students are taught how to play the music in schools from early childhood to the tertiary level, and Reggae festivals and concerts such as Reggae Sumfest and Reggae Salute provide annual outlets, as well as an opportunity for understudy and transmission for upcoming artists, musicians and other practitioners.(via CNN) Read the rest

The Worst Things For Sale explores "the terrible world" of sriracha sauce-themed merchandise, such as the official water bottle of Huy Fong Foods, the geniuses behind the distinctly-flavored red spooge. The unofficial stuff, though, is worse. Read the rest

We live at the confluence of two ages: the first rush of climate change, which is bringing new species and new pathogens to territories they've never been known in; and the nascent age of genetic engineering, which holds out the promise of eliminating these pathogens, and not just in the wealthy territories they've moved into, but throughout the world, including the poor countries where they are deadly scourges.A favorite target in these crosshairs is the disease-bearing mosquito, whose dengue, malaria, zika and other pathogens are among the world's deadliest killers, and whose range has pushed relentlessly north as the world has warmed.One possibility is to use CRISPR and gene-drives to directly intervene in the genomes of mosquitoes to kill them off.But another -- possible less controversial -- tactic is to tweak the pathogens that attack mosquitoes, like Wolbachia bacteria, which can be bred into to male mosquitoes (who don't bite and therefore can be released in large numbers without concern that this will increase the number of everyday stings inflicted on people), and who will transmit the infections to females they mate with, rendering them sterile.Google sister company Verity and a company called Mosquitomate have teamed up to conduct a trial of this approach in Fresno, where an invasive population of mosquitoes has reached such mass that people can no longer comfortably sit outdoors during mosquito season.The theory goes that since the mosquitoes are invasive to Fresno, eradicating them will not stress the ecosystem by removing a key organism from the food-web. Read the rest

It's not too late to get your conspiracy-theory-lovin' sweetie something they really want for the holidays: validation that the earth is flat. Start with this flat earth calendar ($13.22) and stay for the flat earth posters, stickers, decals, magnets, prints, tees, and tote bags. Find all of it at UK-based Etsy shop Flat Earth Posters.A big thanks to Doc Pop for this one!P.S. I previously listed some strange calendars but this one tops them all! Read the rest

It's getting hot in here.Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, plead guilty today to lying to Congress about a Trump real estate project in Russia. Cohen has secured a new plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller. From CNN:According to the info being read out, Cohen made a false statement regarding Trump Tower deal in Moscow that he was working on in 2015 & 2016. He had discussion about the project even later. Cohen previously said the deal was stopped in January 2016.BOOMhttps://t.co/5FU94PFZri pic.twitter.com/HZTNmFTl4l— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) November 29, 2018From ABC News, earlier this morning:Cohen is scheduled to appear in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday where he is expected to enter a guilty plea for misstatements to Congress in closed-door testimony last year about his contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign.Once among the president’s most loyal and zealous defenders in business and politics, Cohen has now promised to “put family and country first” by cooperating with prosecutors, becoming perhaps the most pivotal public witness against his former boss.Cohen’s earlier plea deal with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York implicated President Trump in campaign finance felonies. Since then, Cohen has spent more than 70 hours in interviews with Mueller's team. The questioning has focused on contacts with Russians by Trump associates during the campaign, Trump’s business ties to Russia, obstruction of justice and talk of possible pardons, sources familiar with the discussions have told ABC News. Read the rest

Bargain shoe chain Payless recently took over a Santa Monica retail shop and turned it into Palessi, a luxury store selling their bargain shoes. Then they invited influencers to the store's grand opening to punk them. Shoes and boots that normally retail for $19.99 to $39.99 were presented as designer shoes. Adweek:Party goers, having no idea they were looking at discount staples from the mall scene, said they’d pay hundreds of dollars for the stylish shoes, praising the look, materials and workmanship. Top offer: $640, which translates to an 1,800 percent markup, and Palessi sold about $3,000 worth of product in the first few hours of the stunt.Payless, or “Palessi,” did ring up those purchases but didn’t keep the money. Influencers got their cash back, along with free shoes. Their reactions caught in the short- and longer-form ads—those shocked “gotcha” moments—are fairly priceless.Head over to Adweek (login required) to watch the video of the unsuspecting influencers gushing over the "designer" shoes and then watch the videos as a couple of them learn they've been fooled.screenshot via Adweek Read the rest

You'll need to be handy with CSS to make use of it, but NES.css offers boxes, buttons, containers, forms, speech balloons, icons and more to make your web projects looks like 8-bit games. It's by @bc_rikko. Read the rest

Are you actually running those errands or are they running you? Whether it's for that big work project or just your everyday life, you need an organization system that doesn't take up more time in entry than it's saving in implementation. Enter the 2DO Task Manager.Using 2Do's Quick Entry option, you'll be able to see all your tasks in color-coded lists within minutes. You can sort them by date range, location and more with an exhaustive set of tags, and schedule each item with a simple drag-and-drop. You can even set reminders when you're within range of a location-specific task on your list. And with support for Dropbox, Reminders and more, you can check in and stay on target no matter which device you're on.See why this is the one that racked up 4.8 stars on hundreds of Mac App Store reviews. Pick up a lifetime license to the 2Do Task Manager for $29.99 - a holiday drop off the already sale-priced $39.99. Read the rest

A restorative art project that teaches girls how to create a nose with mortuary waxTo show that mortuary science is a field for anyone, reps from the Mid-America College of Funeral Services in Jeffersonville, Indiana spent a day with local Girl Scouts. The event was presented as part of Spark, an event series that "allows girls to meet women working in STEM fields."News and Tribune:Teachers and students from the college answered the Girl Scouts' questions about restorative art and gave them a quick tour of a reconstruction lab, where they learned about the embalming process and uses for various tools. The kids also received a crash course on how to sculpt body parts such as noses with mortuary wax, which is often used in funeral services to return bodies to a natural appearance...Gohmann encourages more women and young people to enter STEM fields such as mortuary science, and she wants them to understand what funeral services involve to remove its stigma."In the past, you think of funeral directors being dour old men, and it's not," she said. "We're young women. We're grandmothers. We're mothers."Screenshot via News and Tribune Read the rest

Cat lovers who celebrate Christmas, your tree prayers may have been answered. Argos, a UK retailer is selling six-foot-tall "half parasol trees" with the description, "Keep your perfectly placed baubles, bows and bells out of reach of curious, crawling kids or your cats' playful paws."That means no more of these kinds of shenanigans (dangit):Argos' half trees cost £33.33 (about $43) and their flocked half trees cost £37.50 ($48).(Ladbible) Read the rest

Jewish a cappella group Six13 spun their own adaptation of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" in their delightful "Bohemian Chanukah.":Is this the eighth nightWe light with family?Recall with great prideOur escape from Greek tyranny?Kindle the lightsRemember the MaccabeesHow did those five boysLead us to victory?Thanks, Jake! Read the rest

Six4three sucks at redaction: its court filing in its lawsuit against Facebook (previously) was redacted by drawing black rectangles over the text, which can still be copied and pasted to read it. This is a stupid mistake that most people stopped making a decade ago.The unredacted text reveals that in 2012 Facebook planned to market access to its Graph API for $250,000; it also provided access to the API to Nissan and Royal Bank of Canada (these two were previously known to have accessed the API) as well as Chrysler/Fiat, Lyft, Airbnb, and Netflix (these are revealed through the botched redaction). Six4Three lawyer David Godkin has not responded to Ars’ request for comment. But he did file an 18-page document on February 9, 2017, that lambasted the deals with these companies.“In each of these cases, Facebook seems to base its decision to grant or deny these companies an unfair competitive advantage based on its ability to extract payment or other valuable consideration,” he wrote in the redacted portions of the 2017 filing.In a footnote on the final page, he concluded:“Buyers who would not meet the arbitrary minimum requirements set by Facebook were shut out of the market, as was the case with Plaintiff, since it could not afford to spend $250,000 per year on unrelated advertising expenses with Facebook. Plaintiff’s annual advertising budget was far lower than this arbitrary minimum.”Facebook pondered, for a time, selling access to user data [Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica] Read the rest

If Schrodinger’s cat could read he’d feel right at home with this week’s tabloids.Quantum superposition and tabloid supposition seem interchangeable in the way that this week’s tabloid tales might be alive with truth or dead wrong, at one and the same time.The long-lost Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 has been “Found In Cambodian Jungle!” screams the front page of the National Enquirer, which offers a satellite image of the plane’s wreckage. At the same time, the blurry and indistinct photo appears to show some sort of unidentified objects amid trees, which could equally be the remnants of abandoned housing, or the wreckage of any number of drug-runners’ planes that may have crashed, or planes shot down amid Cambodian hostilities during the Vietnam War.As a discerning tabloid reader, Schrodinger’s cat might conclude that the wreckage of MH370 had been found after four years, and that its wreckage had also not been found. Schrodinger’s feline might find the same paradox with the Enquirer story that actor Kevin Spacey has been “hiding from the law” for the past year to avoid being hit by any further allegations of sexual harassment or assault – as if Spacey's absence from the public eye would stop police from filing criminal charges or prevent any alleged victims from filing a civil suit.The fact is that for the past year paparazzi have failed to photograph Spacey, which in the tabloid world means he’s “been in hiding.” But wait! “The Enquirer has found him!” crows the tabloid. Read the rest

The disgraced former foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign was boasting about a Russia business deal after the election, a newly unearthed letter reveals.“George Papadopoulos allegedly told a confidant in 2016 that he was pursuing a business deal in Russia that would result 'in large financial gains' for him and Trump,” reports The Atlantic's rockstar reporter Natasha Bertrand. The House Intel Committee and FBI are now investigating.Excerpt:George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his interactions with a Russia-linked professor in 2016, went to jail on Monday after fighting, and failing, to delay the start of his two-week prison sentence. But a letter now being investigated by the House Intelligence Committee and the FBI indicates that Papadopoulos is still in the crosshairs of investigators probing a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.The letter, obtained last week by The Atlantic, was sent to Democratic Representative Adam Schiff’s office on November 19 by an individual who claims to have been close to Papadopoulos in late 2016 and early 2017. The letter was brought to the attention of Schiff and House Intelligence Committee staff, according to an aide who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The letter was also obtained by federal authorities, who are taking its claims “very seriously,” said two U.S. officials who also requested anonymity due to the sensitivities of the probe.The statement makes a series of explosive but uncorroborated claims about Papadopoulos’s alleged coordination with Russians in the weeks following Trump’s election in November 2016, including that Papadopoulos said he was “doing a business deal with Russians which would result in large financial gains for himself and Mr. Read the rest

When something goes wrong with a product you own or a service you pay for, it's reasonable to expect quick, effective customer service from the company responsible for whatever it is that's giving you trouble. More and more companies are turning to online services to allow their customers to vent: line yourself up for a chat with one of the company's reps, detail the issues you're having and, hopefully, you'll get the help you need.Unfortunately, along with being given assistance, you can also expect to be surveilled as part of your online exchange. Many companies have set their customer service reps to see what you're typing before you click "send" on your message to them.From Gizmodo:Next time you’re chatting with a customer service agent online, be warned that the person on the other side of your conversation might see what you’re typing in real time. A reader sent us the following transcript from a conversation he had with a mattress company after the agent responded to a message he hadn’t sent yet. Something similar recently happened to HmmDaily’s Tom Scocca. He got a detailed answer from an agent one second after he hit send. Googling led Scocca to a live chat service that offers a feature it calls “real-time typing view” to allow agents to have their “answers prepared before the customer submits his questions.” Another live chat service, which lists McDonalds, Ikea, and Paypal as its customers, calls the same feature “message sneak peek,” saying it will allow you to “see what the visitor is typing in before they send it over.” Salesforce Live Agent also offers “sneak peak.” I mean sure, having reps see what you're typing before you've fired off a message allows for a faster response--you'll be able to get on with your life a lot faster thanks to sneak peeking than without it. Read the rest

Dell released a statement on Wednesday that says the computer giant reset passwords for all accounts on the Dell.com online electronics store on Nov. 14. That was a full 5 days after they discovered and reportedly thwarted hackers who were trying to steal customer data.Not the kind of news you want leading up to the holiday electronics shopping season.Dell did not tell its customers about the attack when it forced the password resets 5 days after the attack, according to reports. The only data the hackers attempted to access, according to Dell today, was customer names, email addresses and scrambled passwords.From Reuters:Dell said in a statement that on Nov. 9 the company detected and stopped hackers who had breached its network and were attempting to steal customer data. Investigators found no evidence that the hackers succeeded, but have not ruled out the possibility that they did steal some data, the company said.They only sought customer names, email addresses and scrambled passwords, Dell said.The breach occurred as companies come under increasing scrutiny from regulators worldwide to provide quick and accurate disclosure of customer data theft. The European Union implemented strict new privacy regulations in May that punish violators with fines of up to 20 million euros ($23 million), or 4 percent of global revenue, whichever is higher.Dell determined that there were no regulatory or legal requirements that it disclose the incident, but decided to come forward “with customer trust in mind,” according to the source. Read the rest

Takes a special kind of evil to pull off what longtime Donald Trump advisor Roger Stone and his pal Jerome Corsi did to Seth Rich's family. The “political provocateurs” and their paid assistants harassed the murdered man's mom and dad and surviving loved ones with conspiracy theories about his death, even though they knew it was all a lie.Newly released email shows the Russia truthers knew full well who supplied Wikileaks with the Clinton emails. They kept blaming a murdered staffer, even after his parents begged them to stop, reports Will Sommer at the Daily Beast:Stone became one of the first major figures in Trump’s orbit to suggest Rich was murdered over the emails, tweeting on August 10, 2016 that Rich had “ties to DNC heist.”In 2017, after Rich’s parents begged right-wing media personalities to stop pushing conspiracy theories about their son, Corsi put the blame for the email theft on Rich in a three-part InfoWars series.In his InfoWars posts and a series of YouTube videos, Corsi portrayed Rich as a disaffected supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who stole the emails to get revenge against the DNC and paid for it with his life. Corsi wrote Rich had clearly been “implicated in breaches of email systems.” The young staffer was, according to Corsi, the “likely perpetrator.”Corsi’s theory helped fuel conspiracists on the right who claim, without evidence, that Rich was murdered on the orders of Hillary Clinton. But emails from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia show that Corsi knew all along that it really was hackers who gave the emails to WikiLeaks. Read the rest

You can preorder an Alexa-enabled Big Mouth Billy Bass for $40.As Boing Boing pal Morpheus says, “Big Mouth Billy Bass, the legendary talking robotic centrarchidid, is now available with Amazon Alexa support. You can ask it for stock quotes or to order some more Ranch Doritos and blowgun darts!”The future is weird.From the Amazon blurb:• Everyone's favorite talking and singing fish is now programmed to respond to Alexa voice commands.• Pair big mouth Billy bass with your preferred device in the Echo family and let the fun begin.• Responds to Alexa voice commands• Lip syncs with Alexa spoken responses• Responds to inquiries about the weather, your commute, the news, random facts, and more• Reacts to timers, Notifications, and alarms• Dances to the beat with music.• This is a hilarious gift! Read the rest

From the weekly series The Bureau.

Magic lifts the spirits. Read the rest

It's the Electronic Frontier Foundation's annual Power Up! week, when donations to the charity are matched by a group of challenge donors, making every tax-deductible dollar you give count twice! I'm a contractor for EFF (my fees come out of a grant from the MIT Media Lab, where I'm a Research Associate), and I've been involved with the org for more than 15 years now, and I've never seen a nonprofit spend its money smarter to make more of a difference in the world. Read the rest