I get several robocalls a day, along with Microsoft tech support scams, and IRS scams. The calls get forwarded to Jolly Roger Telephone bots that engage in inane conversations with the pests. From Jolly Roger's website: By keeping the bad guys busy, you keep them from pestering other innocent people, and you hit them where it hurts most...their wallets...because no matter how hard they try, our robots won't ever buy anything.Before Jolly Roger, there was "Lenny," a senior with a strong Australian accent who loves to talk and talk and talk to telemarketers, even when they become furious and abusive. Motherboard has a good article about the origin of "Lenny."According to a Reddit post by the person who claims to be the voice and creator of the Lenny chatbot, he sought to create a “telemarketer’s worst nightmare.” This, he decided, would be “a lonely old man who is up for a chat, proud of his family, and can’t focus on the telemarketer’s goal.”The final result was a chatbot that consists of 16 stock phrases played in order. The first four phrases are scripted so as to encourage the telemarketers to begin their sales pitch and the last 12 phrases are played in a loop until the telemarketer hangs up. Lenny is powered by an interactive voice script, a software program that listens for one-and-a-half second pauses in the conversation so that it knows when to say the next phrase in the loop.To those in the know, Lenny’s persona is hilarious. Read the rest

A 23-year-old man jailed for drug possession complained to his jailer that a snake was in his cell. When the jailer entered the cell, the prisoner walked through the door and locked the jailer in the cell. Read the rest

In this preview from the upcoming episode of BBC's Dynasties -- a young male lion finds himself surrounded by a pack of 20 hyenas. The video ends before we find out whether or not he prevails, I guess we have to tune in to find out, but my money is on the relentless hyenas. Read the rest

Sleep apnea is a fast-growing health complaint among Americans, and that has triggered a set of deceptive and unethical measures by US health insurers to shift the cost of using CPAP machines (the forced air machines that sleep apnea patients rely on to stay healthy) to the people who use them, with the effect that it's often much cheaper to pay cash for your machine and its consumables than it is to get them through insurance.Insurers insist that patients rent their machines rather than purchasing them, with typical costs running to $105/month; while the machines themselves can be purchased for $500. The $105/month is below the maximum deductible for the year, and that deductible resets every year, meaning that CPAP users could end up paying out of pocket forever, spending enough money to buy dozens of machines outright.The consumables that go with the machine are also grossly overpriced: Cigna charges insured people a $25.68 co-pay for disposable filters, while paying the supplier $7.50; the accompanying mask has a $147.78 co-pay, with the supplier receiving $95. Meanwhile, both masks and filters are available online at retail costs lower than those the supplier is paid.This all gets worse when you factor in the remote telemetry, which covertly and nonconsensually harvests your usage data and feeds it in a constant stream to your insurer; if you fail to comply with the arbitrary minimum usage guidelines (adopted from Medicare's guidelines, which were not research based or in any other way reflective of empirical study), your insurer can cut you off and stop paying anything toward your CPAP therapy. Read the rest

Squared (AKA Gaby) is a French hacker who created edex-ui, a science-fiction inspired desktop "heavily inspired from DEX-UI and the TRON Legacy movie effects," which gives you a terminal and live telemetry from your system; it looks like it would be especially fun on a tablet (though if you really wanna go sci fi, build a homebrew cyberspace deck).eDEX-UI is a fullscreen desktop application resembling a sci-fi computer interface, heavily inspired from DEX-UI and the TRON Legacy movie effects. It runs the shell of your choice in a real terminal, and displays live information about your system. It was made to be used on large touchscreens but will work nicely on a regular desktop computer or perhaps a tablet PC or one of those funky 360° laptops with touchscreens.I had no ideas for a name so i took DEX-UI and added a "e" for Electron. Deal with it.edex-ui [Squared/Github](via Four Short Links) Read the rest

I take a lot of comfort from China Miéville's The City & the City. It's a book I return and read at least once a year. It's a novel that dances on the cusp of the fantastical, but never seems to teeter over in a way that makes my imagination work too hard: the world that Miéville presents, where multiple cities uneasily exist in the same space at the same time, is easy for me to hold in my mind. Also, I frigging love a good murder mystery.When I heard that there was to be a TV adaption of the novel, I was worried that it might not feel the same as the book that I've become so familiar with over the years. This brief clip makes me feel that maybe, just maybe, those fears have been misplaced. The series made its debut with the BBC this past spring. It's not currently available to stream, but I'm hoping it may pop up as a digital download sooner or later. Has anyone watched it? Did you enjoy it? Read the rest

The holiday season isn't even waiting for a proper chill to set in in much of the country, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - especially for those of us getting our shopping done early, and from a laptop or phone in air-conditioned splendor. We're seeing plenty of deals already on tech and household items, and here are a few of our favorites. From geek tech to next-gen can coolers, there's something from every wish list.11. Samsung POWERbot Star Wars Robot VacuumMSRP: $699.99 | Normally: $372 | Price Drop: $349.99 (50% Off) If you've got an especially tidy or overworked Star Wars fan, this is the droid you're looking for. Upgraded with CycloneForce tech, this suctioning soldier will clean up any corner of your empire, and its Visionary Mapping feature makes sure it won't get hung up on obstacles. This POWERbot was originally $699, then dropped to $372, and currently sits at $349.99. It won't be there long, so pick one up.10. Audio Cassette to MP3 Music ConverterMSRP: $69.99 | Normally: $20.99 | Price Drop: $16.80 (76% Off) We completely understand having an attachment to the old cassette tapes that kept our heads banging through road trips of yore. But time will not be kind to that medium, so keep the music alive with this easy rig that converts those old tapes to audio files for a new life on your computer or phone. The Audio Cassette to MP3 Music Converter is already 70% off at $20.99, but you can save an additional 20% off with the code BFSAVE20. Read the rest

The LiteLok Gold bike lock is marketed as being all but impossible to beat, with a 17-minute ad showing various tools and an "Ironman" triathlete unable to get in. An independent tester picked one up to see what all the fuss was about, and needed only 16 seconds to defeat it.He chomped through it with this pair of cable cutters [Amazon], which I'll now be getting for all my petty street theft and interrogation needs. It's a premium brand (HK Porter) but nothing fancy. LiteLok's manufacturer, in response to this video, says that none of the others tested were of much use. As bike lock failure goes, though, nothing beats this classic from Engadget where they open a Kryptonite model by jamming a pen in it: Read the rest

Winter's here and, like clockwork, everyone's started driving like idiots. If you recently bought a vehicle with part-time four wheel drive, four wheel drive, all wheel drive or anything else in between, this might be a good time to brush up on what your ride's good for and what you should avoid. Look no further than this video. Unless you really want to. If so, you'd do well to spend some time reading this story by Jalopnik. Read the rest

Working as a delivery driver is an easy path to a long dark night of the soul. Eight hours of folks wondering why their package wasn't delivered earlier, miserable traffic conditions and heavy carrying heavy stuff up flights of stairs or wheeling boxes around tight corridors on a dolly and people that won't get the hell out of the way is enough to wear anyone down. And that's before bringing racists into the equation.From The Washington Post:Timothy Warren was driving his FedEx truck through a verdant Portland, Ore., neighborhood when the man he would soon kill screamed that Warren was going too fast.Warren stopped his truck. He was exhausted, he tried to explain to Joseph Magnuson that night in late September, and just wanted to get done with his work.Magnuson was unrelenting and hurled numerous aggressive insults and racist slurs toward him.That was something Warren, who is black, could not abide.He stepped out of the truck, and both men yelled at one another.Magnuson took a swing. Warren swung back, connecting a single blow above Magnuson’s left eye that sent him tumbling to the ground.Magnuson, 55, briefly lost consciousness, then died later that evening.When police began the task of piecing together what the hell had happened, they had plenty to work with. Six people witnessed Magnuson's racist rant. Three of the six had seen the whole thing go down, from soup to nuts. Everyone the cops spoke with said that Warren had been driving safely. Read the rest

There has to be a reason why this happened, but I can't begin to guess. Please help by making up a fake news story to explain this short video.https://weirdrussians.tumblr.com/post/180031084056/mondays-can-be-difficult-for-everyone Read the rest

The Digital Comics Museum has over 15,000 Golden Age comic books (all in the public domain). It's a treasure trove of clip art and inspiration for designers and artists.[via Open Culture] Read the rest

Michael M. Ahmadshahi Ph.D., Esq. is the inventor of the patented Signal-Activated Lingerie:“Lingerie, such as bras which are worn by females, have a fastening mechanism, such as a hook-type fastener, which is difficult to open, especially for the male counterpart. A bra according to the present invention could be made using a signal-activated fastener such that the female’s boyfriend or husband could clap his hand and the bra would automatically open.”[via New Shelton] Read the rest

Most expensive chain reaction video ever."Clean-up crew needed on aisle one... and two.... and three... and four...."[via Nag on the Lake] Read the rest

I like these Epicurious videos where food and drink experts are given blind taste tests and asked to identify the cheap and expensive samples and explain their reasoning.In this episode of 'Price Points', Epicurious challenges bread expert Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery to guess which one of two breads is more expensive. Lahey breaks down white bread, whole wheat bread, rye bread, sourdough bread, and focaccia bread. For each type, Jim analyzes, smells, and taste tests before guessing which bread costs more.[via Dooby Brain] Read the rest

Wanna see how an insurgent, anti-establishment candidate can use snark, personality, and a combative spirit to advance the political dialog? Stop following Cheeto Hitler and start following the youngest Congresswoman in US history, the amazing, delightful, on fire Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (previously).ACO's social media is a nonstop riot of the Congresswoman-elect making dinner and talking about cash bail, chilling in sweats and doing a Q&A with Justice Democrats; making Sarah Palin look exactly as stupid as Sarah Palin is; zinging the fuck out of Trump and his enablers; slaughtering Republican Congressjerks unwise enough to come at her; and dropping truth bombs.As The Mary Sue's Vivian Kane says, Ocasio-Cortez is "s lifting the veil on an institution that can seem entirely untouchable by those not born into a family or community that already has access to that world established."It's truly the contratrumpian model for political social media. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is the Anti-Donald Trump of Social Media [Vivian Kane/The Mary Sue] Read the rest

Jesse Hirsh the CBC Toronto's longstanding and deservedly respected tech columnist, a fixture for many words, interpreting the tech news of the day for the public broadcaster's nonexpert audience, explaining how tech's turns and twists are relevant to their lives.This week, Hirsh covered the New York Times's blockbuster report on Facebook, which revealed that the company had chosen deliberate inaction after being warned about its product's role in genocidal murder-sprees, and then the company hired a notorious dirty-tricks PR firm that created malicious, false, anti-Semitic news stories that linked Facebook's critics with George Soros.This is par for the course with Hirsh, who has long been a sharp critic of Facebook (as Jesse Brown notes on this week's Canadaland podcast, Hirsh is of the generation of technologists who have always eyed Facebook with suspicion as a centralizing walled garden where surveillance and casino-style intermittent reinforcement are combined to produce the most toxic force in technology today).But then Hirsh broke with his normal coverage and explicitly called out the CBC for its cozy relationship with Facebook, which is reinforced by management's exhortations to its on-air staff to regularly remind the CBC's audience to follow programs and personalities on Facebook, and by the broadcaster's commercial relationship with Facebook (presumably this refers to ad buys for CBC programs).Hirsh reveals that every time he criticizes Facebook on air, Facebook's corporate officers complain to CBC, and that "CBC has not defended me, or has not defended our right to have these conversations" (Hirsh adds that CBC Toronto's Metro Morning does defend him). Read the rest

Most software, writes Ink & Switch, is slow. Slow Software works as a FAQ about all the reasons this is the case, from input latency to inefficient design. Read the rest

You read that headline right: the ISS has been bopping around our planet for two long decades. How do you celebrate one of the greatest collaborative scientific undertakings in human history? If you're the European Space Agency, you plop out the longest spacebound timelapse video ever taken for the world to enjoy. Read the rest

Ever wanted to give yourself a whole new you for the holidays? Online learning is a great way to kickstart a new career or enhance an existing one. And whether it's art, coding or business, there's a course for you in this roundup of the five best-selling learning bundles of 2018 - and this week, they're all up to 75% off.The Fundamentals of Drawing BundleThis 7-course class gives you a solid foundation in the basics of art before branching out to focus on shading, portraiture, animals and comic book styles - everything you need to turn that doodling hobby into a well-honed skill. The Fundamentals of Drawing Bundle is already sale priced at $39, but enter the code BFBUNDLE75 for an additional 75% off.The Complete 2018 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle: Lifetime AccessPacking 12 courses and more than 140 hours of learning, this bundle covers every aspect of IT for the business world. You'll learn to build and troubleshoot cloud, Linux, mobile networks and more, and get certified in the security know how to keep them humming. Lifetime access to the Complete 2018 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle was $59, is just now dropping to $49.The Ultimate Excel Bootcamp Bundle: Lifetime AccessThis one is a must for any data wrangler. In more than 70 hours of tips and tutorials, you'll learn how to fully navigate the business world's most widely used spreadsheet tool, taking a deep dive not only into the mechanics of Excel but the underlying theory behind the numbers, allowing you to use that data more effectively. Read the rest

Amazon admits that it leaked some users' email addresses and names. But it's not saying how the information was exposed, how many were affected, or otherwise talking to those affected or to the press. From the sound of things, it'll be a Christmas miracle if anyone finds out.From TechCrunch:TechCrunch that the issue exposed names as well as email addresses. “We have fixed the issue and informed customers who may have been impacted.” The company emailed all impacted users to be cautious.In response to a request for specifics, a spokesperson said the company had “nothing to add beyond our statement.” The company denies there was a data breach of its website of any of its systems, and says it’s fixed the issue, but dismissed our request for more info including the cause, scale and circumstances of the error.I guess the good news is that those who Amazon is certain of having been affected by their leaky ship have been contacted via email and told the following:“We’re contacting you to let you know that our website inadvertently disclosed your email address due to a technical error... The issue has been fixed. This is not a result of anything you have done, and there is no need for you to change your password or take any other action.”What a relief. After all, Who wants to know how or why a snafu that could have a deep impact on their personal finances occurred. Give me a vague explanation of a serious issue, any day. Read the rest

If you're planning on traveling to the European Union in the near future, you'd best grease up as a new border security project is planning on sliding into your background, personal story and biometrics before you have a chance top step off of your plane.From Lonely Planet:A new EU-funded project designed to ramp up security will put travelers from outside the European Union to the test by using lie-detecting technology. Countries participating in the project include Luxembourg, Greece, Cyprus, Poland, Spain, Hungary, Germany, Latvia and the UK.The iBorderCtrl project has been implemented because more than 700 million people enter the EU every year, and the huge volume of travelers and vehicles is putting pressure on external borders. This makes it increasingly difficult for border staff to uphold strict security protocols including checking the travel documents and biometrics of every passenger, while keeping disruption to a minimum. The project aims to facilitate the work of border guards in spotting illegal immigrants, and contribute to the prevention of crime and terrorism.As part of the project which was seemingly named by someone who's watched Hackers at least 90 times, iBorderCtrl will consist of two parts. The first is a creepy online component that visitors to countries enrolled in the program will have to endure before they leave home. Speaking to a virtual border guard, they'll be asked about their gender, ethnicity and to upload a photo of their passport in order to sort out their visa. The program will also inform travelers of their rights while they're in the EU. Read the rest

And in accordance with tradition, Uncle Bill will now lead us in "A Thanksgiving Prayer" (1986). Read the rest

My friend Mitch O'Connell, "The World's Best Artist," recreated the cool shirts featured in an episode of Leave it to Beaver and is selling them on his site. If you never saw the peewee version of ‘The Wild Ones’ on tv and are a little confused about what I’m yacking about, watch it for free.I did see it as a youth, and immediately salivated over the surfin’ wild Rat Fink-like graphics, but sadly, they only existed in tv land. According to Tony ‘Wally' Dow, a talented stagehand actually painted the iconic incredibly icky shirts that you see hanging in the window at Tildens. It took me 56 years to get around to doing my best to replicate those cool duds, and through Threadless, you can finally get all four Beaver horror heads printed on pretty much whatever your heart desires, including grey sweatshirts! Read the rest

After Property of the People (previously) used clever Freedom of Information Act requests to learn that the FBI classed the Proud Boys as 'an Extremist Group with Ties to White Nationalism', the organization's founder, Gavin McInnis (the Canadian who co-founded Vice Magazine) resigned from the organization he founded. Read the rest

The EU wants to punish Google for allegedly underpaying artists for the use of their works on YouTube, and so they're proposing copyright filters that block anything that appears in an anonymously created, crowdsourced database of forbidden works that are allegedly in copyright.The reasoning goes like this: if Google can't post stuff that appears on the blocklist, they'll offer the entertainment industry more and more money until they remove it from the blocklist. Then the entertainment industry will take the extra money Google made and hand it to the artists who made those works.Here's how that's likely to work: The entertainment industry will get a little extra money from the use of the filters and will pass little or none of that money on to artists. Then, because YouTube is so critical to the entertainment industry's ability to reach its audience, the gains will taper and end, because YouTube will still control that market and Big Content needs YouTube more than YouTube needs Big Content.What if we did it a different way? What if we extended the blanket licenses used for recording covers, playing music on the radio and in public halls, and cable TV, to cover YouTube? Then we could set a rate that the entertainment industry and the artists' lobbies agreed was fair, and mandate that a certain percentage of that money had to go to the artists.Then, instead of YouTube's competitors being killed by a filtering mandate that only YouTube could afford, cementing Google's dominance and its negotiating leverage, we'd create a level playing field where small competitors to Google could access exactly the same catalog of works, and only pay out a proportional share of the licensing fees (companies with 1% of the reach of Google would pay 1% of the licensing fees), which would rise as they grew. Read the rest

From the weekly series The Bureau.

With all the coffee and tea I drink, my teeth become yellow pretty quickly. I use these Crest 3D White Whitestrips Vivid Plus whitening strips to keep my teeth white. They are usually pretty expensive, but Amazon has a double offer right now: a coupon (click the link on the product page) for $5 off and a code (7CWSVIVIDBF) for another $7 off. The box has 12 treatments.The strips are clear plastic strips coated with some kind of gooey bleaching agent. They stick easily to your teeth. I put one on my top teeth and another on my bottom teeth and set a timer for 30 minutes. If you're like me, you'll notice a big difference after the first day.Image: Darya Prokapalo/Shutterstock Read the rest

Yes, Trump is a pathological liar, but he's also the first US president to call Ted Cruz a liar, the first to admit that the Saudis were likely behind 9/11, the first to admit that the Saudi royals can kill a lot of journalists but that the US will still do business with them because they buy a lot of American bombs, that Nancy Pelosi blew a chance to impeach Bush, that pharma and defense contractors rip off the American public, that politicians are for sale to their political donors, that Vladimir Putin doesn't have a monopoly on political assassination (and that the US is hardly innocent on this score), and that going into Iraq was a "big, fat mistake."But as preposterous as it sounds, there’s a case to be made that he’s simultaneously America’s most honest president. Every now and then, in the midst of his unending eruption of prevarication, Trump will blurt out the truth about the United States in a way that no normal politician ever has.Most recently, when asked whether he would consider sanctioning Saudi Arabia for its Mafia-like murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump was hesitant. Why? “Because they are ordering military equipment. Everybody in the world wanted that order. Russia wanted it, China wanted it, we wanted it. We got it. … Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon … I don’t wanna lose an order like that.”This Thanksgiving, I’m Grateful for Donald Trump, America’s Most Honest President [Jon Schwarz/The Intercept] Read the rest

In The State of 4G Pricing, Finnish researchers Rewheel identify the US as having some of the most expensive wireless data (fifth highest prices) in the world, and they predict things will get worse thanks to looming mergers in the already super-concentrated wireless sector. Meanwhile, a monopoly over business data connectivity generally keeps consumer mobile prices high. According to the FCC's own data, 73 percent of the special access market (which feeds everything from ATMs to cellular towers) is controlled by one ISP. This varies depending on the market, but it’s usually AT&T, Verizon, or CenturyLink.These high prices to connect to cellular towers then impact pricing for the end user and smaller competitors, those same competitors and consumer groups have long argued.These critics have also argued that Ajit Pai’s FCC recently made these problems worse by lifting price caps on this uncompetitive sector, something he justified by literally weakening the very definition of competition. Monopolies nobody wants to fix and regulators beholden to an industry they’re supposed to hold accountable go a long way toward explaining the US ranking.All told, the study found that US mobile data pricing was four times more expensive than prices in many four-competitor European Union countries, and sixteen times more expensive than large, competitive four-competitor European markets. The State of 4G Pricing [Rewheel]US Wireless Data Prices Are Among the Most Expensive on Earth [Karl Bode/Motherboard] Read the rest

Phrenology (the fake science of predicting personality from the shape of your cranial bones) is like Freddy Kruger, an unkillable demon who rises from the grave every time some desperate huckster decides they need to make a few extra bucks. The latest example? "Faception," a machine learning company in Tel Aviv, Israel, whose "proprietary computer vision and machine learning technology" profiles people, "revealing their personality based only on their facial image."They claim this ML system can guess whether you are a "Extrovert, a person with High IQ, Professional Poker Player or a threats (sic)."They pitch this as a technology for use in "smart cities" where the "dangerous world" (including "terrorists and other criminals") can be identified even if they are "unknown to the authorities" by a machine learning oracle that will convict you of being a threat based solely on an image of your face. What if it was possible to know whether an anonymous individual is a potential terrorist, an aggressive person, or a potential criminal? Better yet, what if that information could be obtained and used in real-time, when it matters the most?​Faception offers a breakthrough computer-vision and machine learning technology that goes beyond Biometrics. Our solution analyzes a person’s facial image and automatically reveals his personality, enabling security companies/agencies to more efficiently detect, focus and apprehend potential terrorists or criminals before they have the opportunity to do harm.​Our solution is easy to deploy with minimum integration work and can installed on the client hardware, the system can integrate with an existing face recognition platform and support operational hierarchy and reporting modules. Read the rest

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, let’s be grateful for the short memories of the tabloids, which gleefully forget what they’ve previously written the moment it’s inconvenient for them.Prince Harry’s wife “Meghan Meets Diana’s Secret Daughter!” screams the cover of this week’s Globe, describing how Sarah, allegedly “conceived in a bizarre fertility test before Prince Charles and Diana wed,” met with the latest addition to the Royal Family on the last day of her recent visit to New Zealand.Yes, this is the same love child who was murdered by Prince Charles on the Greek isle of Crete in May 2016, according to a report the following month in -- where else? -- the Globe.Fortunately the demise of Diana’s mystery child has not curtailed her globe-trotting, and she turned up in the antipodes to warn Meghan: “Beware! Charles is a killer!” Though clearly not a very good one, if Diana’s daughter Sarah is still alive two years after Charles definitively killed her.The Globe explains her earlier demise as “a ruse to save her life!”Such a shame that the Pulitzer Prize for fiction has already been awarded this year.George Clooney’s wife of four years “Amal Takes The Twins!” proclaims the National Enquirer cover, reporting that the couple’s "$520 million divorce explodes!” The Globe goes old school with its headline “Bossy Wife Drives Clooney Loony!” and claims “He wants out after she bans sausage, cigars, snoring and cussing.”Unsurprisingly, neither party has actually filed for divorce, let alone cited “sausages” as grounds for the split. Read the rest

Five and a half years ago, Edward Snowden put his life on the line, gave up his country, and went into exile, just to reveal that he had been part of a widespread, illegal mass-surveillance program within the US government -- an illegal enterprise that the most senior spies in the nation had routinely lied about (including lying to Congress), and that had distorted the internet, suborning the titans of surveillance capitalism and pressing them into service as part of a program of national surveillance unlike any the world has ever seen.Now, Ars Technica's Sean Gallagher takes a very deep dive into the consequences of Snowden's works, talking to his allies, his critics, and his fans to get a sense of how we're thinking about Snowden's disclosures a half-decade later.A couple things are clear from the piece: the Snowden revelations changed the debate, making the issue of mass internet surveillance into something that has infused every other online policy discussion since; another is that the Snowden's critics are still insistent that even though the surveillance Snowden revealed was unequivocally illegal, and even though the spy agencies had been illegally concealing their illegal surveillance, and even though Snowden had exhausted every conceivable avenue for getting the NSA to confront its own illegality, despite all that, Snowden's critics are still sure that he didn't have to go public, and that he could have done it all differently (none of them seem to have a coherent theory of why Snowden would risk so much and sacrifice so much if there was something else he could have done). Read the rest

Julian Oliver ("Critical Engineer, artist, immigrant and educator. Shoots arrows, eats plants") has found a novel and by all appearances very satisfying way to safely erase the data from old hard drives: 50lb Longbow, two arrows at 15 yards. (via JWZ)Hitachi HDD: Z7K320-250 / 250GB / SATA 3.0Gb/s. Data erasure method: 50lb Longbow, two arrows at 15 yards. pic.twitter.com/raNVkfilqO— Julian Oliver (@julian0liver) July 3, 2017 Read the rest

Sphero makes great RC style toys that teach kids programming. R2D2 is now available for $40.R2-D2 App-Enabled Droid via Amazon Read the rest

The XOXO festival (previously) is one of the best events I've ever attended; and this year's was the biggest, most inclusive one yet, but one of the things that makes XOXO so special is the cap on attendance, which means most of us can't attend; that's why it's such good news that the organizers have begin posting videos from all the presentations for your delectation. (via Kottke) Read the rest

From Thinkgeek, the $150 Fallout 76 Pip-Boy 2000 Construction Kit, a full-sized, wearable replica of the Pip-Boy 2000 Mark VI, in a vegan leather case, with a "completely in-world instruction manual." (via Wonderlandblog) Read the rest

Andrew Salomone writes, "I work as a preparator for The George Eastman Museum at the Kodak founder's historic estate in Rochester, NY. It's the world's oldest photography museum and has an extensive collection of early photographic and moving image objects, like zoetropes. The house itself is a local landmark and has put on an annual gingerbread house display for decades. This year, a couple of my colleagues and I decided to make a gingerbread house zoetrope and then wrote a tutorial about it. Read the rest

UK Digital Minister Margot James has vowed to crack down on "exploitative algorithms" used by airlines that deliberately split up families' seat assignments if they did not pay for pre-assigned seats; James says that the airlines used these algorithms to coerce families into paying for pre-assigned seating.According to James, the algorithms did not distribute seat-assignments randomly -- rather, they ensured that people with the same surname were seated apart from one another. The practice is most commonly ascribed to Ryanair -- an airline notorious for abusing, coercing and deceiving passengers -- but has been observed with other airlines as well.As The Independent reported earlier this year, splitting up passengers could hinder safe and rapid evacuations, according to a report produced by the Royal Aeronautical Society Flight Operations Group (FOG).Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent MindsThe report, entitled Emergency Evacuation of Commercial Passenger Aeroplanes, emphasised the importance of family members being seated together in an emergency.It lists “Passenger seat allocation” as one its 17 recommendations to improve aircraft evacuations: “Operators should not charge for family members to sit together. Airlines face crack down on use of ‘exploitative’ algorithm that splits up families on flights [Helen Coffey/Independent](via Naked Capitalism)(Image: Matthew Hurst, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

The Sackler Family (previously) are a family of self-styled philanthropist billionaires who have been largely successful in their campaign to whitewash their family name by giving away a few percentage points off the profits they earned from deliberately creating the opioid epidemic by tricking and bribing doctors to overprescribe Oxycontin, falsely claiming that it was not addictive, and promoting the idea that any doctor who left a patient feeling pain was engaged in malpractice.Destroying America was only the beginning for the Sacklers: even as their family business, Purdue Pharma, was admitting to its wrongdoing, they were engaged in exactly the same kind of deliberate corporate murder in new markets like Brazil -- and then attacking public education with a ideologically motivated PR campaign aimed at replacing public schools with charter schools.But the noose is tightening on the Sacklers: as the family dissolves into a bickering mess, they are facing mass litigation and criminal investigations all around the world.The Guardian's Joanna Walters rounds up a good cross-section of the legal troubles descending on the Sacklers, who are on the receiving end of legal threats from cities, states, class actions, and more.A spokesman for John Durham, the US attorney for Connecticut, declined to comment. Prosecutors for the southern and eastern federal districts of New York state did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the northern district of New York said the Department of Justice does not confirm, deny or comment on the existence of any investigation. Read the rest

Prepare to be impressed: While it doesn't actually play music, this 2,798-piece miniature LEGO model of a concert grand piano does have 25 independently working keys, a removable keyboard, and a height-adjustable bench. It also has a working damper and pedal, a self-playing mode, a working piano lid, and more. LEGO master SleepyCow engineered it to contribute to LEGO Ideas in the hopes that it will be voted in to be mass produced as a retail kit. He writes:Ever since I started learning music, I have always wanted to build a piano out of LEGO bricks. I have also been asked many times by my students about the inner-workings of a piano. I think this will be a great set to teach students about piano mechanics. I've seen many people do it in different ways, but I decided to make my own version, as well as try to make it as similar to a real piano as possible with correct proportions.Vote for it here.(The Awesomer, Mike Shouts) Read the rest

Seth Kaufman sends his video for "Godot the Musical," saying: "It is, I venture, the funkiest promotional book video ever made. The script appears in my new book Metaphysical Graffiti: Rock 'n' Roll & the Meaning of Life. So I decided to shoot it as a video. It recasts Vladimir and Estragon as hype-men waiting for 'The Master G' to come and rap." Read the rest

When Toronto attorney Charles Vance Millar died in 1926, he left behind a mischievous will that promised a fortune to the woman who gave birth to the most children in the next 10 years. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the Great Stork Derby and the hope and controversy it brought to Toronto's largest families during the Great Depression.We'll also visit some Portuguese bats and puzzle over a suspicious work crew.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

The patterns that emerge from plywood once it's sanded to a sphere are beautiful, but it all comes down to step 1: get the maths, the measuring and the cuts exactly right. Step 0 is, of course, "own a lot of expensive shop equipment." [via]Previously: Gray's Shapes. Read the rest

The announcement of Diablo: Immortal was met by howling dismay. That the ultimate PC nerd action RPG would end up looking like a reskin of the mobile-industry monogame is illustrative of changing times, though it's hard to care much when the anger at corporate greed seems inseparable from the other hatreds. But this funny video makes the basic point rather well: Diablo was always about loot, and in 2018, the loot isn't going to be on someone else's marketplace. Read the rest

Everyone raised in my hometown learned to recite In Flanders Fields in school. Every year, as November 11th, Remembrance Day, drew near, we were taught about the First World War. We made poppies. We prepared for a concert to honor our veterans. Elderly men with often vacant, watery eyes would visit our classrooms and talk to us about their time overseas. Sometimes they cried. Other times, they laughed as they talked about long absent friends and their lost youth. As I grew older, I marched in my town's annual Remembrance Day parade: first as an cadet and later in a different uniform. Each year as we gathered at the armory after the parade had ended, there were fewer survivors of the First and Second World War there to greet us. Decades have passed since those days. The men and women who served their fellows and the future generations that would become of them have largely passed on. No matter where I am in the world, I take pause on November 11th, as many others do, to remember those that gave up their lives in the name of democracy and decency. I try to hold the millions that died from hate, xenophobia and greed. I give thanks that I am now too old and too broken to fight. I fear for those in uniform today that will see things that will never leave them and for those who deployed who will never come home.Amidst these meditations, I wonder over who will carry the torch of remembrance of wars and atrocities past, once those who survived them are no more. Read the rest

If you're planning on taking a salad to your Thanksgiving potluck this year, be wicked careful of what you throw into it: The Centers for Disease Control is currently warning everyone, frigging everywhere to avoid romaine lettuce as if eating it could dose you with E Coli... because there's a pretty decent chance that it will. According to the CDC's Twitter feed for the time being we none of us should be eating "...any romaine lettuce, including whole heads and hearts, chopped, organic and salad mixes with romaine" until they figure out what the source of E Coli is and how much of the romaine supply chain has been contaminated by it. For the complete lowdown on what the CDC knows so far, you'll want to check out their E coli alert page. For those unfamiliar with it, E coli (Escherichia coli,) bacteria can be found in the guts of healthy folks and many animals. It's fine, for the most part! Some strains of the bug, however, are not so fine. Should one of these strains of E coli get into our systems, typically via the ingestion of contaminated water or food, those stricken by the bug can suffer symptoms ranging fa quick bout of the trots to serious issues with symptoms including severe abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting.So, maybe serve up a kale, iceberg or coleslaw salad this year, instead. It'll give everyone gathered around your table one more reason to be thankful.Image via Wikipedia Commons Read the rest

When I was 12 years old, a kid that I thought was my friend but turned out to only be into me for my Nintendo, tempted me to try a little something that he snuck out of his mother's liquor cabinet. We ingested it! We were so drunk! We were full of shit: we'd been eating powdered pina colada mix, trying to convince each other that we were, indeed, hammered. Anyway, booze isn't the problem for young folks that it once was. More times than not, of late, the first experience that young folks'll have with mind altering substances outside of spending too long inside drawing with a Sharpie will likely be with marijuana.From The Verge:This trend is not because teens are smoking cannabis more than ever. Rather, the change is because teens are smoking cigarettes and drinking less while the numbers for marijuana have held steady, according to Katherine M. Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and co-author of the new study, published this week in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. The authors found this by analyzing 40 years of surveys from American high school seniors. For example, in 1995, three-fourths of seniors who used both marijuana and cigarettes had tried cigarettes first. By 2016, only 40 percent had tried cigarettes first. Today, less than half of teens try alcohol and cigarettes before trying cannabis. (The researchers didn’t look specifically at whether alcohol or tobacco came next.) Other studies have found that, in general, teens are doing fewer drugs than ever, except for marijuana. Read the rest

At some point, it happens to everyone: Your car breaks down. Your electricity fails at home. And if it happens at night, the first tool you need is your vision. There's a more reliable way to get it back than that nearly-dead penlight at the back of your junk drawer or glove compartment: The UltraBright 500-Lumen Tactical Military Flashlight.When we say military grade, we're talking 500 lumens with an adjustable zoom that can provide illumination for up to a mile. The wide working voltage will ensure that it keeps a long charge on a single AA battery, so it's there when emergencies happen. The multiple modes (bright, lower bright and SOS) give it versatility, and it's durable enough to be taken along on any trail expedition.Don't wait for the next emergency. Pick up a 2-pack of the UltraBright 500-Lumen Tactical Military Flashlight with storage case on sale for $14.99 - and take an additional 20% off this best-seller with the coupon code BFSAVE20. Read the rest

Patrick Costello (previously) writes, "My mom shares her recipe for cranberry orange bread with help from my dad. They have been married for fifty years and they are still crazy for each other. The full recipe is in the video description." Read the rest