Boing Boing

On November 28, Conservative MPs removed references to assault rifles from the Offensive Weapons Bill in order to win support for Theresa May's Brexit bill from the European Research Group -- the hardline, pro-Brexit wing of her party -- who are also pro-assault-rifle. The vote was supported by every sitting Conservative MP. Britons overwhelmingly support gun control. The police had asked for the assault-weapons ban. The ban was bipartisan.The pro-Brexit wing of the Tories are a tiny minority of Parliament with fringe views well outside the norms of the popular British political consensus, but they call all the shots (literally), because they control the balance of power. Next time there is a British mass-shooting, remember that it was enabled by cowardly Tories who have been completely captured by extremists from their own party. The Tories are the party of assault rifles. But – and here’s the really striking thing – as well as securing the support of the ERG, every Conservative MP went along with the vote. Of course, every Tory MP I have spoken to privately is mystified by the decision, but for the most part, the politics makes short-term sense: they are in safe seats where the issue is not going to cause immediate harm. That said, one can easily imagine how at some future election, any of James Cleverly, Penny Mordaunt or Nigel Huddlestone, either as a boxfresh opposition leader or as Prime Minister, will wake up to discover that a Momentum video on their opposition to banning assault rifles (pegged perhaps to some hypothetical future shooting) has gone viral on Facebook overnight. Read the rest

RIP George H. W. Bush, 1924–2018. Read the rest

After St Louis police officer Jason Stockley, killed an unarmed black man named Anthony Lamar Smith with an unauthorized AK-47, planted a pistol on his body, and was then acquitted on murder charges in 2017, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Officer Dustin Boone sent several texts in which he relished the prospect of beating up the protesters he anticipated following the verdict: phrases like "It’s still a blast beating people" and It’s gonna get IGNORANT tonight!!” and “It’s gonna be a lot of fun beating the hell out of these s---heads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart!!!!” These weren't idle musings: Boone and two fellow officers Randy Hays (who later texted "going rogue does feel good"), and Christopher Myers grabbed a black protester that night, threw him to the ground, and kicked and clubbed him, while the protester peacefully complied with their barked orders.That black man was actually a cop, with 22 years on the force. Following the beating, he was hospitalized, couldn't eat, and ultimately lost 20 pounds; he's since had surgery for his injuries and remains too disabled to return to work.All three officers (as well as another cop, Bailey Colletta) have been indicted by a Grand Jury. The indictment alleges that the officers destroyed evidence and lied to investigators. The local police union says that we shouldn't rush to justice on these three white cops who beat up a black cop, because that would be convicting them before "their day in court."In fact, texts from Boone, Hays and Myers suggest those officers were explicitly looking forward to violently attacking protesters. Read the rest

Trump's about to make a bunch of whales, turtles, and dolphins go deaf.The Trump administration is about to take a preliminary step toward oil and natural gas drilling off the Atlantic shore, by approving requests from energy companies to conduct “deafening seismic tests that could harm tens of thousands of dolphins, whales and other marine animals,” reports the Los Angeles Times.The information was revealed in a NOAA call with reporters.“The Trump administration is ignoring threats to whales, dolphins and other marine life to further its ongoing quest for energy dominance,” says the National Parks Conservation Association:The Trump Administration today advanced plans related to offshore drilling exploration in the Atlantic Ocean, threatening whales, turtles, fish and marine life near 33 coastal national parks. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Fisheries Service issued Incidental Harassment Authorizations, allowing companies to disturb federally protected marine mammals through seismic airgun testing. Such testing would take place along the coast from Delaware to central Florida, with far-reaching threats to marine life up and down the eastern seaboard.Five companies applied last year to search for oil and gas deposits beneath the Atlantic seafloor using seismic airgun technology. The technology involves shooting loud blasts of compressed air down into the seafloor to locate underground deposits of fossil fuels. Today’s approval serves as a final procedural step before approving permits for five companies.Scientists have warned that this practice threatens whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other marine life, and may force these animals from their feeding, breeding or calving habitats. Read the rest

Art Donovan (previously) writes, "Delivered. A very special design commission for the Project Director of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. A 'white glove' delivery, in fact. The first lamp in 28 years that I simply could not trust to survive theravages of FedEx." It took a while to complete, as it grew more ambitious by the week. I went,"O.G" for the design- "Original Galileo", using his telescopes first threeastronomical targets as visual influence: The Moon, Jupiter and Saturn. Atthe outset, the Director suggested I use the newly discovered 'Trappist-1System of Exoplanets' as inspiration. But there was no visual imageavailable that I could use to base the overall design upon...So Vintage Astronomy I went. "Astronomea" has two optional domes: One in white for ambient light at hisdesk at Goddard/NASA and one with a rear-pained "Jupiter" for when he's inan "astronomical" mood. The tapered maple base reflects the shape of theHarvard "Great Refractor" Telescope commissioned in 1847-the very firsttelescope commisioned by the U.S. government.. The task lamp has a diffuserinspired by the barn doors on observatory domes. The arc with brass markersreminiscent of navigational sextants. Hand painted Jupiter, Moon and Saturnrings with custom brass dimmer knobs. All in, the lamp has the look of asmall scale astronomical device from the 19th century. "Astronomea" The first of 5 new illuminated designs with a vintage, science-y influence. [Art Donovan] Read the rest

Amber Guyger, the Dallas cop who killed an unarmed neighbor in his own apartment then claimed she had thought she was in her apartment, was charged today with murder.Guyger, who was arrested and fired from her job as a Dallas police officer after the September shooting, initially faced a charge of manslaughter. But Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson had said a grand jury could issue a stiffer charge. Botham Jean's family has wanted Guyger to be indicted for murder, their attorney Daryl Washington told CNN. Guyger, who is white, was off-duty when she encountered Jean, an 26-year-old unarmed black man, in his apartment on September 6, police said. Still in her uniform, Guyger parked her car in the complex and walked to what she believed was her apartment, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Local authorities slow-walked both Guyger's original arrest and the investigation into her killing of Botham Shem Jean, giving her days to plan her story and months to prepare her defense. Read the rest

At the age of 15, Tavi Gevinson was the prodigy founder of Rookie, a latter-day second-coming of Sassy Magazine -- a smart, funny, critical teen magazine that presaged the odd world we live in now, when magazines like Teen Vogue have become highly politicized.Rookie is must-read material, and its annual collections were some of the best books in print, year after year.Seven years later, Gevinson has a burgeoning acting career (she's very good), and a heavy heart about her online creation. Rookie has been a victim of the mediapocalypse, in which the majority of advertising money has been creamed off by the social media platforms, who control access to audiences and bat small, cash-strapped media business around like cat toys, demanding that they "pivot to video" or some other bullshit.As her business became more fraught, Gevinson resigned herself to raising investment capital, only to discover that the process presaged a future where she would hate her life and her publication: relentless pressure to grow; endless meddling from investors with conflicting, uninformed advice; high stakes and with them, pressure to compromise on matters of principle.What's more, Gevinson's been doing Rookie since she was 15 and now she's 22. Realizing your girlhood dream is cool: being trapped in it once you're a woman is a little chafing.The upshot of all of this is that Gevinson is folding up her publication. I'm heartbroken, though I completely sympathize. Though I didn't start work on Boing Boing as a teenage, I have been working on this project for nearly 18 years now, which is a fuck of a long time. Read the rest

A 7.0 earthquake hit eight miles north of Anchorage, AK this morning, followed by a 5.8 earthquake. The earthquakes caused buildings to crack and roads to buckle, along with "major infrastructure damage," according to the Anchorage Police Department. A tsunami warning was briefly issued, but later canceled.Via NBC:Gov. Bill Walker said he issued a major declaration of disaster after the "major earthquake" and is in communication with the White House."There is major infrastructure damage across Anchorage," according to a statement from the Anchorage Police Department. "Many homes and buildings are damaged. Many roads and bridges are closed. Stay off the roads if you don’t need to drive. Seek a safe shelter. Check on your surroundings and loved ones."And via Anchorage Daily News:All Alaska Railroad operations are shut down due to severe damage at the railroad’s Anchorage Operations Center on Ship Creek, including the dispatch center, according to spokesman Tim Sullivan. The center is closed by flooding from burst pipes and the power is out.No trains were running when the quake hit, but service can’t resume until crews assess damage, Sullivan said. It will be a day or two before that happens.So far there are no reports of people being injured. 7.2 earthquake here in Anchorage, Alaska. This is a video my dad took from the Minnesota exit ramp from international. 😰😰 pic.twitter.com/1yOGj3yz9q— sarah m (@sarahh_mars) November 30, 2018KTVA’s newsroom felt the blow of the earthquake this morning. #anchorage #alaska #earthquake #weather pic.twitter.com/d1SaxriGw9— Cassie Schirm (@cassieschirmtv) November 30, 2018I’m guessing that houses all across Anchorage have rooms that look like this or much worse right now. Read the rest

It's becoming more difficult by the day to recognize the nations we live in as the same ones we grew up in. Men and women, terrified of their lot in life becoming smaller than it is, fueled by the hateful rhetoric of opportunistic shit-heel politicians, look to minorities and the less fortunate to blame for problems that we as a society have all had a hand in. Skapegoating and the hate that comes with it has reemerged with a startling momentum. Even nations once known for their tolerance have proven susceptible to it its vile, slobbering charms.From The CBC:The number of police-reported hate crimes reached an all-time high in 2017, largely driven by incidents targeting Muslim, Jewish and black people, according to Statistics Canada data released Thursday.The federal agency said hate crimes have been steadily climbing since 2014, but shot up by some 47 per cent 2017, the last year for which data was collected. In total, Canadian police forces reported 2,073 hate crimes – the most since 2009, when data became available.The largest number of hate crimes on record, since Canadians started to keep records of it. Graffiti on the walls of places of worship. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia haunting our children's schools and out places of business. People are dying for fear of the other. The CBC is quick to point out that such crimes "...account for 0.1 per cent of the more than 1.9 million non-traffic crimes reported by Canadian police services in 2017." They want you to know that Statistics Canada thinks that the increase in hate crimes might be because more people are reporting them. Read the rest

There are few things more satisfying in life than watching someone who attempted to do something awful being handed their ass by their would-be victim. It's a good thing the scumbag was wearing a helmet. Read the rest

There's been quite a bit of bad ink surrounding Tesla electric vehicles this year: delays in production, growing rumors about subpar customer service, former employees blowing the whistle on dangerous, indifferent working conditions in Tesla assembly plants and logistical woes to name a few. According to The Washington Post, Tesla owners in China can add in-car state surveillance to the list. Apparently, the Chinese government has demanded that Tesla vehicles purchased in China send a steady stream of information concerning the vehicle's whereabouts and who knows what else to the Chinese government, in real-time. It's some greasy, invasive bullshit that comes at a time when China, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, has been cracking down on dissent, privacy and freedoms in the country. At the very least, Tesla isn't alone: other makers of electric vehicles are being forced to make their customers' information available to the Chinese government as well.From The Washington Post:More than 200 manufacturers, including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Mitsubishi and U.S.-listed electric vehicle start-up NIO, transmit position information and dozens of other data points to government-backed monitoring centers, The Associated Press has found. Generally, it happens without car owners’ knowledge.The automakers say they are merely complying with local laws, which apply only to alternative energy vehicles. Chinese officials say the data is used for analytics to improve public safety, facilitate industrial development and infrastructure planning, and to prevent fraud in subsidy programs.But other countries that are major markets for electronic vehicles — the United States, Japan, across Europe — do not collect this kind of real-time data. Read the rest

Watch. So chilling.Find someone who is as happy to see you as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman, who high-five each other and dive in for a bro hug, laughing like only two murderers can, at the G20 in Argentina.Check out Trump glowering silently in the background. Did his handlers tell him to cool off the man-crush and stay low key? Or does Donald haz a sad, realizing he'll never really belong in their Big Bad Murder club?Russian President Putin and Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman embrace and laugh at the G20 in Argentina. pic.twitter.com/DtyNK6RwhI— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 30, 2018Saudi crown prince and Putin greet each other at #G20 summit pic.twitter.com/INGKBd2EjF— Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) November 30, 2018Russian President Vladimir Putin greeted Saudi Arabia’s crown prince with a huge grin and a high-five. https://t.co/9XS2RVvL6r— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) November 30, 2018As most world leaders debate how to handle seeing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia at the G20 summit in light of Jamal Khashoggi's murder, Vladimir Putin is all smiles and handshakes. pic.twitter.com/csiOEdtoUM— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) November 30, 2018Saudi Crown Prince MBS Still Popular at G20; Gets High Five from Putin, Private Moment with Mnuchin, Trump https://t.co/hKcQowDtLZ pic.twitter.com/FnnB2IQROK— Mediaite (@Mediaite) November 30, 2018More images of Saudi crown prince and Russian president Putin during the #G20 summit (via AFP, Getty) pic.twitter.com/TEZzd17U66— Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) November 30, 2018Russian President Vladimir Putin and Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia greeted each other warmly at the G-20 Summit in Argentina, with handshakes and laughs as other world leaders arrived. Read the rest

After Trent Reznor dissed Ted Cruz at his Nine Inch Nails concert a few days ago, telling his audience that the "pain-in-the-ass" senator "was bugging to get on the guest list, and I told him to fuck off,” the delicate Texas senator went on the defensive."To all the gullible reporters who are “reporting” that I asked to be on the guest list at a Nine Inch Nails concert: uh, no, NIN is not my music taste. He was clearly joking. And for the record, I also didn’t “drink all his beer” the last time...but I would have! #FakeNews To all the gullible reporters who are “reporting” that I asked to be on the guest list at a Nine Inch Nails concert: uh, no, NIN is not my music taste. He was clearly joking. And for the record, I also didn’t “drink all his beer” the last time...but I would have! #FakeNews https://t.co/ZNr292SCVl— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 29, 2018When Spin wrote about Reznor's comments yesterday, they had tried to reach out to Cruz for comments, but he ignored them. If Cruz isn't going to take the opportunity to comment on a story about himself, he should stop whining about "fake news" and "gullible" reporters who are reporting with a video to back them up. If Cruz would think for himself rather than parrot Trump all the time, he'd realize that, whether or not what Reznor said was true, reporting on what the rock star said is not fake news. Read the rest

On Sunday, Pastor Bartholomew Orr of Southaven, Mississippi's Brown Baptist Church flew down from the rafters to deliver a sermon about the unexpected second coming of Jesus Christ. Gotta spend money to make money, I guess.(UPI) Read the rest

On Making Light, Avram Grumer is compiling a list of real songs about fictional songs, like "The Time Warp," "Jailhouse Rock," "The Monster Mash," "Crocodile Rock," "Waltzing Matilda," "The Tennessee Waltz," and "The Masochism Tango" (not to be confused with songs that are about themselves, like "Let's Do The Twist"). Can you think of more? Read the rest

As part of their research on the future of play, RMIT University's Exertion Games Lab demonstrated a game based around an ingestible sensor pill that measures internal body temperature and transmits the data in real-time to your smartphone as the sensors travels through your gut. You can guess what marks the end of the game. (This is the same group that explored the use of chest-mounted robot arms for "playful eating.") From their research paper (PDF): In the Guts Game, a chocolate bar is given to each player initially. Then the researchers, who dress up like medical doctors, tell the players that they have been infected by a parasite, which is sensitive to its environment’s temperature, i.e. the body temperature of the player as measured by the sensor. If the environment’s temperature reaches a certain value, the parasite will be hurt. The crafty parasite may adapt to the environment so the target temperature might change once reached. The more often the player reaches the target temperature, the bigger possibility he/she will survive. To aid the treatment, the “doctors” developed an application called the Guts Game. Players need to swallow the sensor to measure their body temperature and the application will guide players. Players need to come back to the “doctors” after the game ends to check if the parasite is still there.The Guts Game ends when one of the players excretes the sensor. The Guts Game (Exertion Games Lab) Read the rest

Procedural generation isn't just for video game landscapes and galaxies. The technique for creating vast amounts of realistic but uncannily superficial content goes back a long way. Pfizer used it to generate drug names in 1956, feeding code to an IBM mainframe and getting potential products in return.James Ryan (@xfoml) posted excerpts from news article from the time (above), and it's fascinating to read how it's described for a mid-1950s lay audience to whom computers and their ways were utterly alien.Based on the newspaper's description, Hugo (@hugovk) reimplemented the 60-year-old generator, and now you too can generate thousands of realistic but uncannily superficial drug names.Some picks:NEW DRUG NAMESscudylwhirringomreenefentreeicsuffuseetaduplexunenickelanraunchyatahandbillalgammonasapluckerelslawax...IMPROPER FOR A FAMILY MEDICINE CHESTloralivacrumpledolmoraluraburnishitesmuttyevosucklingifyhagfishatcockpitedmoraluxballcockoseshittyulecocklesexFrom the full output list I like "coughedore" -- like a stevedore, but for unloading mucus.I wonder how long it took Pfizer to realize that procgen is useless. Read the rest

New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood has concluded that seven New York hospitals illegally billed rape survivors for their rape kits, at least 200 times, for sums ranging from $46 to $3,000, and then sent collections agents after survivors who could not pay.New York law requires hospitals to bill the state's Office of Victim Services for rape kits; in addition to ensuring that rape kits are available regardless of ability to pay, the rule clears an impediment to reporting rape: women who bill their insurance for rape kits may fear stigma from their employers or families. The seven hospitals did not comply with the law, nor did they inform the survivors of their rights -- another legal obligation.The hospitals involved are Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center, Columbia University, Montefiore Nyack Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, New York-Presbyterian Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Richmond University Medical Center, and St. Barnabas Hospital. The hospitals have not admitted culpability, but have agreed to refund the rape survivors and establish policies to ensure future compliance.In case you were wondering, there is another way to address this: universal, free health care, AKA Medicare for All. Because hospitals you don't have to pay to use don't have billing departments, don't contract with debt collectors, and don't have to deal with private insurers.Underwood is the first woman to serve as New York attorney general. She took over the state's top law enforcement job on an interim basis earlier this year after Eric Schneiderman resigned amid a flurry of accusations of abusing women, which he publicly contested. Read the rest

Astronauts on board the International Space Station have switched on CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile CompanioN), a new AI companion robot built by German space agency DLR, Airbus, and IBM. CIMON is an interface for IBM's WATSON AI system. From Space.com:Marco Trovatello, a spokesman of the European Space Agency's Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, told Space.com that CIMON could respond within a couple of seconds after a question was asked, no slower than in ground-based tests. A data link connects CIMON with the Columbus control center in Germany; from there, the signal travels first to the Biotechnology Space Support Center at the Lucerne University in Switzerland, where CIMON's control team is based. Then, the connection is made over the internet to the IBM Cloud in Frankfurt, Germany, Bernd Rattenbacher, the team leader at the ground control centre at Lucerne University, said in the statement..."CIMON is a technology demonstration of what a future AI-based assistant on the International Space Station or on a future, longer-term exploration mission would look like," Trovatello said. "In the future, an astronaut could ask CIMON to show a procedure for a certain experiment, and CIMON would do that." Read the rest

Blue light special in his pants.Newsweek:The local police department tweeted on Tuesday officers were working what appeared to be a “self-inflicted accidental shooting” inside the Watson and Yuma Walmart.Buckeye PD later confirmed in an update: “Adult male accidentally shot himself in the groin area inside the Walmart Watson & Yuma. Being transported to hospital. No other injuries.”The Arizona Republic newspaper reported the incident occurred at around 6:30 p.m. after a semiautomatic handgun that was being held in the man’s waistband began to slip. The gun, which was not in a holster, discharged as he attempted to reposition it, the man told cops.The Arizona Republic reported when police officers responded to the gun shot the man was found in the meat section of the Walmart store with “survivable injuries.” Officers said they filed a report for the unlawful discharge of a firearm but it was believed to be accidental.It was not immediately clear if the man would be charged by the local police department. The man’s identity and condition at the hospital was not made public by law enforcement. Read the rest

More than 200 runners in last weekend's big Shenzhen Half Marathon were caught cheating by traffic cameras as they snuck through trees, cutting out up to three kilometers from the course. (I did similar things in high school gym class although my motivation was not the competitive spirit but rather laziness.) Other cheaters in Shenzhen wore fake number bibs or ran under others' names. From The Guardian:Xinhua (news agency) quoted organisers as saying: “We deeply regret the violations that occurred during the event. Marathon running is not simply exercise, it is a metaphor for life, and every runner is responsible for him or herself.”ther marathon events in China are reported to have started using facial recognition technology to track runners.Competitors in other marathons are now kitted out with electronic chips that register runners’ progress as they pass over timing mats installed around the course. This provides more accurate times – but it also gives organisers, and anyone who cares to look, a wealth of data to examine for suspicious results. Read the rest

Even though now I know how it's done, that food still looks so damned delicious. (via Kottke) Read the rest

Five years ago, I coined the term "peak indifference" to describe a moment when a public health problem -- like climate change, tobacco use, surveillance capitalism, or monopolism -- reaches a tipping point: the moment when the consequences of actions taken a long time ago and very far away start to be felt so widely that the number of people who believe there is a problem starts to grow of its own accord. It's not the moment when a majority of people agree that the problem is real, but it is the moment at which the denial of the realness of the problem reaches its peak, and begins a long, inevitable decline.Peak indifference is the theory that says if you have a real problem that you falsely deny, the consequences of that problem will grow and grow, until you can't deny it any longer.But peak indifference doesn't necessarily mean action. It can mean nihilism. It's easy for recognition to be accompanied by despair: "OK, yeah, I finally admit that you were right all along and smoking was gonna give me cancer, but fuck it, it's too late now, might as well enjoy this cigarette while I can." (See also: "If the rhinos are doomed, why not kill this one?" and "If all my data is gonna leak some day, why not enjoy Facebook while I can?")Now, a new poll reveals that the majority of Americans, including a majority of Republicans (including a majority of old white male Republicans) believe in climate change. Read the rest

How bad is the Marriott/Starwood breach disclosed today? "Unauthorized access to the Starwood network since 2014 … For approximately 327M of these guests, the info includes some combination of name, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number.” Marriott says information from as many as 500 million people has been compromised, and credit card numbers and expiration dates of some guests may have been taken. The Marriott hack is one of the largest known data breaches ever disclosed, as measured by the number of individual people potentially affected. The only larger one known is the 2013 Yahoo breach that affected three billion people.Marriott said it has uncovered unauthorized access that has been taking place within its Starwood network since 2014. If you thought the IT side of the Marriott-Starwood merger was going to be a fustercluck of United-Continental magnitude, well, you were right. https://t.co/jNlR1hPmCu— Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) November 30, 2018From the New York Times:The Marriott International hotel chain said on Friday that the database of its Starwood reservation system had been hacked and that the personal details of up to 500 million guests going as far back as 2014 has been compromised.The hotel group, which runs more than 6,700 properties around the world, was informed in September about an attempt to access the database, and an investigation this month revealed that unauthorized access had been made on or before Sept. 10, Marriott said in a statement.The investigation also found that an “unauthorized party had copied and encrypted information, and took steps toward removing it,” the statement said. Read the rest

It's on? After important legal news in the Trump-Russia investigation broke on Thursday, Donald Trump canceled a planned one-on-one meetup with Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit on Saturday in Buenos Aires. Today, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells Russian news agency RIA the two leaders will meet for a brief, impromptu get-together. Reuters:MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin will have a brief impromptu meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Argentina just as he will with other leaders at the G20 summit, RIA news agency cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Friday.Trump on Thursday abruptly cancelled a planned meeting with Putin in Argentina after Russia captured three Ukrainian navy vessels and their crews off the coast of Crimea. Read the rest

Monopoly for Millennials, an edition of the game noted for its surprisingly contemptuous mockery of younger generations, was perfectly-designed to go viral. It's $55 at Amazon, but WalMart had it for just $20 (sold out, I'm afraid). The Bearded Picker went from store to store buying every box and selling them online. All he had to do was iterate the "available" count on his third-party seller listing at Amazon, raking in $2500 for a single (admittedly long and arduous) day's work.Other sellers report that Amazon prevents them selling these as "New". One explanation is that they're may be setting the price too high, tipping the algorithm off that they're gouging customers. But The Bearded Picker also points out that he's an approved seller of the brand at Amazon:Certain brands require approval before you can sell them. It helps AZ fight counterfeits or the brand has requested it by entering the brand registry.Amazon-approved arbitrage! Read the rest

Some drafts of Article 13 of the pending EU Copyright Directive no longer contain the word "filters" -- because the world's leading technical, legal and human rights experts all say these will lead to widespread censorship of legitimate, noninfringing materials.But it doesn't take a lot of work to understand that the Directive still mandates filters. In a nutshell, if you demand that, say, Youtube must vet all of the 300 hours of new video it receives every minute to ensure it doesn't infringe copyright, with massive penalties for letting even a single frame of infringing material through, there just isn't any other conceivable way to even approximate that, apart from filters.And of course, the proposal has been about filters from the start. The fact that the word "filter" has been removed from MEP Axel Voss's latest text doesn't change that -- nor do unconvincing phrases about avoiding filters or not clobbering legitimate materials. The entertainment corporations (and not regular users) have all the power in this system, and if platforms have to choose between risking the wrath of a kid whose school project was unfairly censored, or Universal or Disney, the kid is going to be out of luck.After many Twitter debates with apologists for Article 13, I've summarised and rebutted all their arguments in a post for EFF's Deeplinks: "Yes, the EU's New #CopyrightDirective is All About Filters." 7. The Directive does not adequately protect fair dealing and due process Some drafts of the Directive do say that EU nations should have "effective and expeditious complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users" for "unjustified removals of their content. Read the rest

Want to skip Amazon and support independent artists this holiday season? Head to the online market put together by the good folks of the XOXO festival. They've curated some really cool stuff made by enterprising members of their community.These are just some of the things I have my eyes on:https://xoxoholidaymarket.tumblr.com/post/180562582041/cross-stitched-emoji-artwork-by-steph-parrotthttps://xoxoholidaymarket.tumblr.com/post/180557361706/you-think-you-know-me-a-conversational-card-gamehttps://xoxoholidaymarket.tumblr.com/post/180595957966/intricate-pop-up-cards-from-the-pop-up-cardhttps://xoxoholidaymarket.tumblr.com/post/180561425521/musical-delights-by-molly-lewis-bandcamphttps://xoxoholidaymarket.tumblr.com/post/180560075296/colorful-optimistic-zines-postcards-and-postersPreviously: Videos from this year's XOXO festival Read the rest

Stayed at a Starwood hotel in the last five years or so? Every one of you and more—as many as 500 million people, says owner Marriott—are implicated in what would be the second-largest hack of all time. The company said Friday that credit card numbers and expirations dates of some guests may have been taken. For about 327 million people, the information exposed includes some combination of name, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number, Starwood Preferred Guest account information, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure information, reservation date and communication preferences. For some guests, the information was limited to name and sometimes other data such as mailing address, email address or other information.Yahoo holds the record, with 3bn accounts breached. The only other breach in the same league as these would be the 412m accounts dumped from Adult Friend Finder. Marriott and Starwood merged two years ago, but open season at Starwood's servers apparently continued until September this year. Read the rest

These porcelain druggist jars by Jonathan Adler are certainly conversation starters but do you really want to label your drug stash so obviously? Expand your horizons with our Druggist Canisters. Dreamy third-eye mindscapes rendered in Delft-inspired blues and accented with real sparkly gold. High-fired porcelain elevates the experience. Stash your secrets in a single trippy vista, or cluster all four to create your own surreal apothecary.Prices range from $228 to $298 per jar. Read the rest

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