Pegged on the massive new Andy Warhol retrospective opening today at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New York Times asked the likes of Fran Lebowitz, Mary Woronov, Joe Dallesandro, Viva, and many other of his friends, collaborators, and party guests to reminisce about their experiences of The Factory, in all three of its incarnations. A few bits from the New York Times feature:André Leon Talley, 69, fashion journalist. Receptionist at the Union Square Factory, 1975.The Factory was very much a creative playpen, but there were still rules. You had to show up every day, or you would be fired. Andy was always walking around being very vague about everything. But you had to be enthusiastic. There was a seriousness about the place, a decorum and deportment.Mary Woronov (star of "Chelsea Girls")One day a drug dealer came up. He shot up this girl, and she for some reason passed out. It was in the bathtub. She went under water. We thought she was dead. We panicked because she was not waking up. Finally someone said, “We should send her down the mail chute.” We wrote little notes on her body and puts stamps on her forehead. Then we realized she wasn’t dead. I don’t think she would have fit in the mail chute. But we would have tried.In those days the Factory was like a medieval court of lunatics. You pledged allegiance to the king — King Warhol. Yet there was oddly no hierarchy. Warhol was also one of us. Read the rest

On this day in 1966, Buzz Aldrin took the first selfie in space while standing on his seat and hanging out of an open hatch as part of the Gemini XII mission. From NASA:This “stand up” EVA (the first of three during the mission) was conducted with the hatch off while Aldrin stood on his seat, his upper body clear of the spacecraft. He completed his tasks with ease, including setting up an ultraviolet camera to image star fields, installing a movie camera, fixing a handrail, and retrieving a micrometeorite experiment. The flawless EVA lasted two hours and twenty minutes.The second EVA, on November 13, was the real test of Aldrin’s extensive training. Attached to the spacecraft by an “umbilical” cord, he stepped out into space and began his work. The combination of underwater training, multiple restraints and handholds on both vehicles, and a new waist tether paid off: he was able to perform the needed tasks on both the Gemini XII and the GATV without a struggle. He rested periodically, which allowed him to recover between activities, and used the new restraints to position his body in diverse ways that weren’t possible on previous missions. The EVA was a resounding success.For the final EVA, like the first one, Aldrin stood in his seat on the spacecraft. He discarded unneeded equipment and food containers, knowing they would eventually reenter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, and took pictures of stars. Altogether, Aldrin spent five and a half hours conducting the Gemini XII spacewalks. Read the rest

Artisan maker Dick Whitney modifies beautiful antique phones to offer Amazon Echo functionality. His goal with the "Alexaphones" and other creations is to "combine classical design and usability with the most salient elements of your modern world." Unlike other spying smart speakers, Alexaphone only listens when you lift the handset. Absolutely stunning work.• Secure. Alexa can only hear you when the handset is off the receiver; all of the microphones are physically disconnected otherwise, so you’re not depending on a mute button to be trustworthy.• Speaker Compatible. Each Alexaphone comes with a 1/8" auxiliary out port, so you can connect it to your home speakers.• The Lights Of The Future. Status LEDs are carefully made visible in a way unique to each phone, striving for minimal disruption of the original aesthetic. Know when your Alexaphone is connected, listening, and more.• The Sounds Of The Past. On some phones we’ve been able to preserve or rebuild the antique earpiece electronics, so you’ll hear the original voice of the phone.• Easy Setup. Just plug in the USB power cable and set up with the Alexa app.• Uncompromised Experience. These works of art function with your Alexa app and any of Alexa’s skills.Alexaphone (Grain Design, thanks John Park!) Read the rest

From our friends at Futility Closet:Here are a penny and a quarter. Make a statement. If your statement is true, then I’ll give you one of these coins (not saying which). But if your statement is false, then I won’t give you either coin.Raymond Smullyan says, “There is a statement you can make such that I would have no choice but to give you the quarter (assuming I keep my word).” What statement will accomplish that?Answer is here. Read the rest

Police in Indonesian cities report that teens have been attempting to get high by boiling sanitary pads (used or new) and drinking the water. According to Adj. Sr. Comr. Suprinarto, head of the National Narcotics Agency's Central Java chapter, the chlorine in the pads is an intoxicant. Of course, ingesting chlorine is an absolutely terrible idea.“I don’t know who started it all, but I knew it started around two years ago. There is no law against it so far. There is no law against these kids using a mixture of mosquito repellent and [cold syrup] to get drunk,” Jimy (Ginting, an "an advocate for safe drinking," told The Jakarta Post. Read the rest

These old Japanese fireworks catalog scans from the Yokohama City Library are a treat for design lovers.[via Present and Correct] Read the rest

The legendary comic-book author, publisher, and film producer Stan Lee has died. He co-created Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, the Avengers, the X-Men, Black Panther, and many more characters and imaginary worlds we've come to know through comic books, games, and movies. He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The news of his death was first reported by TMZ, and came from Stan's daughter. Stan Lee, who began in the business in 1939 and created or co-created Black Panther, Spider-Man, X-Men, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, Ant-Man and others, died Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center https://t.co/fEYNEJdzGR pic.twitter.com/Ih8FIgUvFr— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) November 12, 2018Stan Lee may be known as a creator, but I think people forget how good he was as a superhero hype man. He talked with the excited energy of someone running into a diner after seeing Spider-Man swing by overhead. He sounded like he had all the secrets and couldn't wait to share.— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) November 12, 2018If you haven't seen it, this is Stan Lee addressing racism in a 1968 edition of Stan's Soapbox, after the assassinations of JFK and MLK.What an utter shame this advice holds up, word for word, 50 years later. pic.twitter.com/2zRg83QImt— Andray (@andraydomise) November 12, 2018RIP Stan Lee. I don't claim to be a comics expert, but Marvel's notion that heroes could also be people with neuroses and mundane, messy problems made a big difference in the American conception of heroism generally. Read the rest

When you train a machine learning system, you give it a bunch of data -- a simulation, a dataset, etc -- and it uses statistical methods to find a way to solve some task: land a virtual airplane, recognize a face, match a block of text with a known author, etc.Like the mischievous genies of legend, machine learning systems will sometimes solve your problems without actually solving them, exploiting loopholes in the parameters you set to find shortcuts to the outcome you desired: for example, if you try to train a machine learning system to distinguish poisonous and non-poisonous mushrooms by alternating pictures of each, it might learn that all odd-numbered data-points represent poisonous mushrooms, and ignore everything else about the training data.Victoria Krakovna's Specification gaming examples in AI is a project to identify these cheats. It's an incredibly fun-to-read document, a deep and weird list of all the ways that computers find loopholes in our thinking. Some of them are so crazy-clever that it's almost impossible not to impute perverse motives to the systems involved.* A robotic arm trained to slide a block to a target position on a table achieves the goal by moving the table itself.* Game-playing agent accrues points by falsely inserting its name as the author of high-value items* Creatures exploited physics simulation bugs by twitching, which accumulated simulator errors and allowed them to travel at unrealistic speeds* In an artificial life simulation where survival required energy but giving birth had no energy cost, one species evolved a sedentary lifestyle that consisted mostly of mating in order to produce new children which could be eaten (or used as mates to produce more edible children). Read the rest

Here's a website that lets you make your own emojis. You can also simply click "randomize" and see what you get:"crying cat face with tongue hanging out and money eyes" -- For those times your cat eats your $800/ounce Loud Dream strain, thinking it's catnip."vomiting confounded skeptical face" -- When Trump says the election was rigged."angry happy face with cowboy hat and wavy mouth" -- When you find out you've run out of Skoal, but you have been planning to quit smokeless tobacco anyway."angry nerdy happy face with open eye" -- It's 3:17am, I'll play one more Splatoon turf war then stop, I promise. Read the rest

We left Claresholm after eating a continental breakfast of terrible coffee and decent muffins. The hotel’s owner chatted lazily with us as we noshed. He had been a manager of Woolworth's department stores, from Toronto, Ontario to Terrence, British Columbia. He served the chain loyally for decades of his life, never questioning when they sent him north, east or west. They fired him after 27 years of service. He’d become redundant. I told him that I remembered eating grilled cheese sandwiches at the Woolworth’s lunch counter where I grew up. There was pride in his voice as he told me that, before McDonald's came along, the department store’s lunch counters were the biggest restaurant chain in the world. The sun was high for it being so early in the day. We heated the RV’s engine for a half hour before wheeling south. It’s a strange time to write for a living. Where normally I expect to raise an eyebrow when I tell folks what I do, my vocation of late has roused opinions and suspicions. I wasn’t sure if I would stand up to questioning at the border. I needn’t have worried: the border guard was more concerned about where we were going, how long we’d be there and whether we had any contraband onboard. In her rear view mirror, my wife saw our border guard staggering through a pee-pee dance from her booth to the border patrol facility a few feet away as we drove off. Montana. The mountains are different here than they are in Alberta. Read the rest

Meet Bonnie's new toy "Forky" and head out on the road. Directed by Josh Cooley (“Riley’s First Date?”), Toy Story 4 comes to theaters June 21, 2019. Read the rest

About 90% of elephants living in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park were slaughtered for their tusks by poachers during Mozambique's 15-year civil war that ended in 1992. The poachers then profited by selling the tusks to finance weapons. As a result, we're now seeing a growing population of elephants in the country born without tusks. Tuskless females, for instance, have jumped from 2%-4% of the population to around 33%.According to National Geographic:Hunting gave elephants that didn’t grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa. Recent figures suggest that about a third of younger females—the generation born after the war ended in 1992—never developed tusks. Normally, tusklessness would occur only in about 2 to 4 percent of female African elephants.Decades ago, some 4,000 elephants lived in Gorongosa, says Joyce Poole—an elephant behavior expert and National Geographic Explorer who studies the park’s pachyderms. But those numbers dwindled to triple digits following the civil war. New, as yet unpublished, research she’s compiled indicates that of the 200 known adult females, 51 percent of those that survived the war—animals 25 years or older—are tuskless. And 32 percent of the female elephants born since the war are tuskless.Sadly, this isn't the only population of elephants losing their numbers – and their tusks – to poachers. In South Africa, "fully 98 percent of the 174 females in Addo Elephant National Park were reportedly tuskless in the early 2000s." Used to defend themselves, as well as for digging, protecting their trunk, and helping them strip bark from trees in order to eat, tusks are enlarged incisor teeth that are essential to their daily well-being. Read the rest

Vantablack is a pigment made from carbon that is so black that anything painted with it looks like a hole in reality. It absorbs 99.965% of visible light. The Action Lab Man made something even blacker than Vantablack, then shines lights and lasers onto it to see if it visibly reflects the light. He uses marks made with a black Sharpie and a paint called Black 2 (which absorbs 95% of visible light) to compare how well his black square absorbs light. There's a surprising reveal at the end. Read the rest

Tanya Chen and Katie Notopoulos asked Tide about the "delicious laundry wine" that teens won't be drinking.When asked if P&G was aware of the dark futility of the internet, and if they had any concerns, the spokesperson provided BuzzFeed News with the following statement:"We all know laundry detergent is for cleaning clothes. To be sure people know this is detergent, we put a large picture of our Tide bottle on the side of the box. Whether your Tide comes in a box or a bottle, it should be stored up and away, out of the reach of children."It's funny, and I will be buying one and reviewing the '18 vintage, but after the whole "eating Tide pods" imbroglio it's hard to avoid the suspicion that this can't be an accident. There's an entire marketing discplipline devoted to avoiding semiotic shelf disasters -- avoiding the packaging formats, colors and type design associated with edible goods -- and this blithely handwaves through a third of it. Read the rest

Shawn Woods grew some ultra-hot Carolina Reaper peppers in his backyard to find out if they can be used as a rodent repellent. He first ate a whole pepper himself and it made him cry. Then he mixed up some Carolina Reaper into grains and seeds to see if rodents would stay away. The video camera shows that the mice and rats were not bothered by the peppers and pepper juice. Conclusion - hot peppers are ineffective as a rodent repellent. Read the rest

If you can make it past the clip of Trump's stomach-churning cameo appearance in a 1980s movie dud, you'll get John Oliver's useful taxonomy lesson on everything that slithers, creeps, and slimes about in his noxious swamp of corruption. Read the rest

Pedro Volta, an escape artist from northern Spain, was paying tribute to Houdini at an international magic festival near Madrid by trying to get out of a water tank while wearing a strait jacket. In the video, it's not clear at first that he is struggling, but he later told reporters that he had trouble with a buckle to release his arms. "I made an effort and managed to release the buckle but the energy and oxygen used in doing so was too much."It wasn't until he lost consciousness and his body went limp that onlookers realized he was in serious trouble and people rushed to rescue him. Once they lifted him out he quickly regained consciousness. Via Metro Read the rest

Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor who sexually assaulted hundreds of young girls, will spend the rest of his life in jail. USA Gymnastics circled the wagons and shredded the files, and as a result it's hard to understand details of how it faciliated and protected Nassar. But Kerry Howley's startling article in The New Yorker shows how important medical bullshit was to his strategy and how the fraternal relationship between medical and administrative authority covered for him. 17-year-old Brianne Randall filed a complaint with Meridian Township police and had a rape kit administered at the local hospital. Detective Andrew McCready called Nassar and asked him to come in for questioning, which he did. Nassar told McCready that he had indeed touched Brianne’s perineum, that it was part of a treatment called “sacrotuberous-ligament release,” and that the treatment was “published in medical journals and training tapes.” He also gave McCready his PowerPoint presentation on said ligament, in which he is pictured cupping a girl’s buttocks and pressing near a girl’s vulva. McCready then called Brianne’s mother to tell her the case would be closed and that “no crime was committed.”And:in 2014, cheerleader Amanda Thomashow reported an assault to one of MSU’s Title IX investigators and university police... Thomashow, concluded [investigator Kristine] Moore, failed to understand the “nuanced difference” between osteopathic manipulative medicine and sexual massage. “Dr. Nassar has presented on this nationally and internationally,”This sort of thing was constant and typical. It's hard to see where dumb respect for the doctor stops and willful contempt for his victims begins. Read the rest

Under Article 13 of the new EU Copyright Directive, it will no longer be enough for online platforms to remove materials if someone claims they infringe copyright; instead, the platforms will have to prevent the display of any copyrighted material that has not been explicitly licensed for distribution.In a new blog post, Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki continues her series of posts about the impossibility of complying with this rule.Wojcicki considers the example of Youtube's all-time most popular video, Despacito, which has been cleared for Youtube by its creator, but whose "multiple copyrights" include some works whose proprietors are unknown or disputed. Under Article 13, Youtube would be expected to censor this video and deny the creators involved the opportunity to earn the small fortune in ad revenue that Youtube has paid them, as well as access to the 5.6 billion (!) viewings the video has received. The consequences of article 13 go beyond financial losses. EU residents are at risk of being cut off from videos that, in just the last month, they viewed more than 90bn times. Those videos come from around the world, including more than 35m EU channels, and they include language classes and science tutorials as well as music videos. We welcome the chance to work with policymakers and the industry to develop a solution within article 13 that protects rights holders while also allowing the creative economy to thrive. This could include more comprehensive licensing agreements, collaboration with rights holders to identify who owns what, and smart rights management technology, similar to Content ID. Read the rest

They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen #hesnotfittorepresenthisgreatcountry— Nicholas Soames (@NSoames) November 10, 2018 Sir Arthur Nicholas Winston Soames, member of parliament and grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, laid into Donald Trump for his shameful cowardice in the face of rain. Read the rest

Trumpy Bear [Amazon] is a thing this holiday season: an incredibly expensive teddy bear with a blond wig stapled on and a flag stuffed into a "hidden zipper". Wittgenstein's advice is recommended: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." [via Snopes] Read the rest

"If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row," Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said of a supporter who praised her. Hyde-Smith is facing a run-off election; her opponent is a black man."If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row"- Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith says in Tupelo, MS after Colin Hutchinson, cattle rancher, praises her. Hyde-Smith is in a runoff on Nov 27th against Mike Espy. pic.twitter.com/0a9jOEjokr— Lamar White, Jr. (@LamarWhiteJr) November 11, 2018“Hyde-Smith’s decision to joke about ‘hanging,’ when the history of African-Americans is marred by countless incidents of this barbarous act, is sick,” said NAACP president Derrick Johnson in a statement Sunday. “Any politician seeking to serve as a national voice of the people of Mississippi should know better.”Democrat Mike Espy, whom she’ll face in a Nov. 27 runoff election, said the comment had “no place in our political discourse.”In conservative "jokes" about violence, always look for the rope. Read the rest

Hacking Team (previously) was an Italian company that developed cyberweapons that it sold to oppressive government around the world, to be used against their own citizens to monitor and suppress political oppositions; in 2015, a hacker calling themselves "Phineas Fisher" hacked and dumped hundreds of gigabytes' worth of internal Hacking Team data, effectively killing the company.Three years later, the Italian prosecutors who have been chasing Phineas Fisher have given up on unmasking them. On Motherboard, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai combines the contents of sealed court documents with interview with "Fisher" to reveal the tradecraft that kept Fisher safe from legal retaliation; the stupid mistakes that left Hacking Team vulnerable; and the sleazy tactics the company's CEO used to torment his former employees in the name of tracking down Fisher.Fisher's ability to evade unmasking is largely attributable to their extreme caution and diligence: using tools like Tor to remain anonymous, and using stolen, hacked Bitcoin to buy the services and tools that Fisher used to penetrate Hacking Team's defenses.The attack was only possible because David Vincenzetti, Hacking Team's founder and CEO, refused to upgrade his VPN software, forcing the IT workers at Hacking Team to keep older, legacy services running. One of the systems administrators who might have caught Fisher during their raids on Hacking Team's data was reportedly distracted by a weeks-long World of Warcraft binge, allowing Fisher to operate with impunity.Meanwhile, the court documents reveal that Vincenzetti has pursued vendettas against former employees whom he falsely believed to be implicated in the hack, going so far as to frame them with false evidence. Read the rest

Gamers of a certain age remember what it was like to walk into Game Stop or Electronics Boutique, pick a game, then be tempted by the siren call of a Prima guide at the front counter. Before the Internet offered walk-through videos Twitch streams and online guides, the guides churned out by Prima were one of the best ways to enrich/ruin your gaming experience with all of the hacks, loot locations and maps required to play every game in your library from soup to nuts. Sadly, after years of service to gamers and scads of books, Prima's calling it a day.From Kotaku:Thanks to the rise of sites like GameFAQs—and major gaming publications like IGN commissioning their own online guides, which bring in monstrous amounts of traffic—print strategy guides have struggled for years now. In 2015, Prima purchased and swallowed its biggest competitor, BradyGames, and has been consistently churning out guides for both print and the web, but it wasn’t enough to survive what the company called “a significant decline” in the world of print video game guides.I feel a lot of nostagia for Prima's dead tree guides, but they've honestly have had their day. Books were fine back in the days before updates, expansion packs and patches. But as games have become more dynamic, the books became far less useful and were often out-of-date within weeks of hitting store shelves.Image via Custom Tombstone Maker Read the rest

When Amazon division Abebooks -- the largest platform for antiquarian booksellers in the world -- announced it would blacklist stores in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, South Korea and Russia, citing nebulous transaction-processing difficulties -- 600 antiquarian booksellers in 27 countries went on strike, withdrawing their 4,000,000 titles from Abebooks.Two days later, Amazon reversed its policy and promised that booksellers in the affected countries would continue to be welcome on its platform.Despite the victory, the lesson that some booksellers have taken away from the event is that Amazon does not have their interests at heart and that their efforts should be focused on selling off of Amazon's platform. “AbeBooks was saying entire countries were expendable to its plans,” said Scott Brown, a Eureka, Calif., bookseller who was an organizer of the strike. “Booksellers everywhere felt they might be next.”The matter was apparently resolved when Sally Burdon, an Australian bookseller who is president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, spoke with Arkady Vitrouk, chief executive of AbeBooks. In a Wednesday email to her members after their talk, Ms. Burdon said Mr. Vitrouk apologized for the platform’s behavior “a number of times” and said booksellers in the affected countries would not be dropped as scheduled on Nov. 30.“Arkady told us that ABE are very well aware of the mistake they have made,” she wrote in the email, which was viewed by The New York Times. “He stated that it was a ‘bad decision’ and that they deeply regret the hurt and harm they have caused.”After Protest, Booksellers Are Victorious Against Amazon Subsidiary [David Streitfeld/New York Times](Image: Kheel Center, CC-BY)(via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Denuvo bills itself as the best-of-breed in games DRM, the most uncrackable, tamper-proof wrapper for games companies; but its reputation tells a different story: the company's products are infamous for falling quickly to DRM crackers and for interfering with game-play until you crack the DRM off the products you buy.The company's reputation for unjustifiable bragging is well-deserved: the latest iteration of Denuvo DRM is version 5.3, slated to launch with Hitman 2 on November 13th. But Hitman 2 leaked onto the internet yesterday, two days prior to its launch, and Denuvo 5.3 was cracked within hours -- two days before the official release.The DRM was cracked by a group calling itself FCKDRM.While several groups have been chipping away at Denuvo for some time, FCKDRM is a new entrant (at least by branding) to the cracking scene. Notably, FCKDRM isn’t a ‘Scene’ group but one that works in P2P circles. At least for now, their identities remain a secret but their choice of name is interesting.FCKDRM is the official name for the anti-DRM initiative recently launched by GOG, a digital distribution platform for DRM-free video games and video.There’s no suggestion at all that GOG is involved in the cracking of Denuvo, of course, but the FCKDRM group are using GOG’s FCKDRM logo when announcing releases, which certainly has the potential to confuse casual pirates.Hitman 2’s Denuvo Protection Cracked Three Days Before Launch [Andy/Torrentfreak] Read the rest

I will watch anything that Joel and Ethan Coen had a hand in. Anything. When that anything stars Tim Blake Nelson, Tom Waits and Brendan Gleeson, three of my favorite people that I'll likely never meet, that goes double.The Ballad of Buster Scruggs moseyed into theaters for a limited release last week and will ride on over yonder to Netflix on November 16th. Read the rest

Just in time for the holidays, Hasbro has released "Monopoly for Millennials", the game where you're encouraged to take a break from the rat race because "adulting is hard." This should go over well. Money doesn't always buy a great time, but experiences, whether they're good -- or weird -- last forever. The Monopoly for Millennials game celebrates just that. Instead of collecting as much cash as possible, players are challenged to rack up the most Experiences to win. Travel around the gameboard discovering and visiting cool places to eat, shop, and relax. Interact with other players via Chance and Community Chest cards, (which are super relatable). And players don't pay rent -- they visit one another, earning more Experience points. This board game is a great way to bring a fun and relaxed vibe to a party or casual get-together.That's right - there's no rent to pay and no real estate to buy because, as it says on the front of the box, "Forget real estate. You can't afford to buy it anyway." Experiences include a 3-day music festival, a friend's couch, a vegan bistro, bike share, and yoga studio. A hashtag and smiley face emoji are among the tokens. The person with the most student debt rolls first. Uncle Pennybags is wearing a participation ribbon.Yikes.The reaction has been less than appreciative. Monopoly for Millennials [Walmart][Photos: Walmart/Hasbro] Read the rest

Unix pioneer Rob Pike was there from the start, physically transporting key elements of the "Toronto distribution" of Unix to Berkeley when he started grad school, and then to Bell Labs, working alongside Dennis Ritchie and other key Unix programmers to develop and refine everything from modern editors to compilers to windowing systems.His hour-long "illustrated memoir" of the deep history of Unix is delightful, touching on the people and institutional forces that shaped the operating environment that has come to dominate modern computing (he even gives a mention to Cardiac, the cardboard computer that shaped my own computing life).And beyond being fascinating, this is also very funny: those early pioneers were very playful and prone to pranking each other in ways that remain very relatable, even all these years later. Pike is a very good presenter, and his Zelig-like presence at so many key moments in our shared digital history makes this a tale worth telling, and watching.(via Four Short Links) Read the rest

Gwern Branwen asks the deceptively simple question "How many computers are in your computer?"Having defined "computer" as "a Turing-complete device which can be programmed in a usefully general fashion with little or no code running on the 'official' computer," Branwen enumerates the crazily large number of systems in your phone, laptop or server that qualify -- which may seem like a mere exercise. But that's where the other half of Branwen's definition comes in: a computer "is computationally powerful enough to run many programs from throughout computing history and which can be exploited by an adversary for surveillance, exfiltration, or attacks against the rest of the system."In other words, every one of these computers is a potential weak point in your "computer"'s security. For a lot of people, BadUSB was a wake-up call on this, and then Bloomberg's controversial story about tiny backdoor chips in server hardware came as an important reminder about all the ways that a computer can be compromised.But Branwen's list goes so far beyond these components as to be dizzying and somewhat demoralizing. Attacks on any of these "Turing-complete device[s] which can be programmed in a usefully general fashion" represent a huge blind spot in contemporary computer security.You might think you have just the one large CPU occupying pride of place on your motherboard, and perhaps the GPU too, but the computational power available goes far beyond just the CPU/GPU, for a variety of reasons: transistors and processor cores are so cheap now that it often makes sense to use a separate core for realtime or higher performance, for security guarantees, to avoid having to burden the main OS with a task, for compatibility with an older architecture or existing software package, because a DSP or core can be programmed faster than a more specialized ASIC can be created, or because it was the quickest possible solution to slap down a small CPU and they couldn’t be bothered to shave some pennies. Read the rest

America's commitment to market-based broadband -- fueled by telcom millions pumped into campaigns against public broadband provision -- has left rural Americans without access to the broadband they need to fully participate in twenty-first century life, with students among the hardest-hit victims of broadband deprivation.The FCC can fix this. Across the country, "whitespace" spectrum (used to buffer licensed broadcasters from overlapping signals in adjacent territories) was historically allocated for rural educational TV broadcasts. When these didn't materialize, the spectrum was reclassified for wireless internet and the FCC started parceling it off to telcos, taking it away from the schools that could use it to connect their kids to the internet.Many of these schools are on publicly operated, state-funded fiber loops, and could erect their own towers that students could use to connect to the internet over high-speed fixed wireless links, but only if the FCC gives the educational sector access to that educationally earmarked spectrum. A recent FCC proceeding was flooded both by comments from educator technologists describing the educational costs of the homework gap and promising to remediate this gap by rolling out fixed wireless; and comments from telcoms lobbyists, representing the companies that have so significantly failed rural America, promising that if they get the school spectrum allocated to them, they'll do better this time.With Trump's FCC in the hands of dingo babysitters like Ajit Pai, who want to end all public provision of network service and hand everything over to big telco, things look grim for rural American kids. Read the rest

The British government has decreed that adult sites must collect age-verification data on everyone who looks at material rated for 18-and-over viewing; this amounts to a database of the porn-viewing habits of every adult in the UK.While this logging is compulsory, compliance with privacy protections is optional.The Open Rights Group has a form where you can contact the government and demand that they make privacy protection mandatory and integral, not optional and an afterthought.* We are grateful to the BBFC and the DCMS for recognising that Age Verification technology needs strong privacy protection.* The BBFC’s voluntary privacy scheme is an improvement, but companies can simply ignore the guidance. * Protecting the public’s digital privacy should not be optional. Strong privacy protections for Age Verification technology must be made compulsory.* The implementation of Age Verification technology must be delayed until privacy protections are mandatory.* Major data breaches make headlines on a regular basis. Strong privacy protection must be a priority, not an afterthought.Making Age Verification privacy rules matter [Open Rights Group] Read the rest

With all the smoke in California's air, ABC7 decided to answer the eternal question: will a mask designed to filter smoke and other particulates actually filter smoke and other particulates?Public health officials say yes. Just make sure you get an N95, P95 or R95 mask.Bearded people and young children need not bother.The Bay Area Quality Management District advises that masks aren't suitable for men with beards or young children.#DYK how to wear a respirator (mask)? A “N95," "P95," or "R95" mask is the common type to protect you from particles in smoke or ash, and are available at hardware stores and pharmacies. Learn how to properly use one here: https://t.co/yH09rfUpue#CampFire #WoolseyFire #CDPH pic.twitter.com/DRKzCRCJ4M— CA Public Health (@CAPublicHealth) November 10, 2018 Read the rest

this french bulldog playing with a balloon is the most wholesome thing on the internet today😊 pic.twitter.com/9wvypOZafS— Ian Laking (@IHLaking) November 8, 2018 Love the playful puppy. Read the rest

Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered the world an internet sourced doctored video demonstrating CNN's Jim Acosta physically chopping at the arm of a White House intern*. The White House then used that video as an excuse to take away Acosta's press pass.Acosta was repeating a question that President Trump did not like, however Acosta felt important to get answered. Journalists try to push the President to answer questions at every press conference. It is their job.Multiple sources have confirmed source video of the actual event, played at normal speed, shows Acosta to be a professional who regarded the intern with respect, while continuing to push the President. The video shared by Sanders is a sham.Meanwhile, back at the White House, damage control was whimpering and hiding in a corner.Things became desperate enough to release the Conway.Be prepared to marvel in Kellyanne's logic free-zone.From Politico:"Oh, well, that's not altered, it's sped up. They do it all the time in sports to see if there's actually a first down or touchdown," Conway told host Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday.""So, I'm going to have to disagree with, I think, the overwrought description of this video being doctored as if we put somebody else's arm in there."The video in question was tweeted out by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday night in announcing the decision to suspend Acosta's press pass and thus his access to the White House. Acosta and Trump had a tense exchange during a news conference earlier Wednesday, in which Trump called him "a rude, terrible person."Acosta tried to continue asking a question as a staffer attempted to take the microphone away from him — the point at which, the White House claims, he "puts his hands on" the intern. Read the rest

Oh boy, I think I have a new hobby. I've just learned that you can combine puzzles, that have the same die cut, to make really awesome pieces of art. It had never occurred to me that manufacturers of mass-produced puzzles cut different puzzles of theirs in the same way, making the pieces interchangeable. It makes complete sense, of course, but my mind is still blown! I learned about the art of "puzzle montage" from one of the readers of my inbox zine, Marcia Wiley (she's the gal in Seattle who's fixing up that cool old Checker Cab). She was visiting the Bay Area and we met up for the first time this past Friday. That's when she told me about her friend Tim Klein, who makes incredible puzzle montages. I'm excited to share his work with you.In an email exchange, Tim told me that he learned about puzzle montages from the man who first made them, art professor Mel Andringa of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, "As far as I know, he and I are the only artists ever to pursue it seriously. And I think he's moved on to other things nowadays, so I may be the sole surviving practitioner."And this is what Tim shared with me about his process:...By selecting pieces from two or more compatible puzzles, I assemble a single "puzzle mashup" with surreal imagery that the publisher never imagined.Sometimes the results are merely chuckle-making, such as my combination of King Tut's burial mask with the front of a truck, which I call "King of the Road". Read the rest

Note-taking just caught up to the digital age. For most of us, writing freehand is quicker and more convenient than pecking away on a tablet, but what to do when you need those scribbles on file? Grab a Rocketbook Everlast Reusable Notebook, which seamlessly fuses analog and digital notes.Just jot down your thoughts, journals or sketches as you normally would on any of the Everlast's 32 pages with a special Pilot FriXion pen (included with this 2-pack, but also available in stores). You'll find the writing feels natural and the ink permanent - until you need to use the page again. In which case, simply wipe the page clean with a damp cloth. Need to save your work? Use the companion app to scan and send your page to cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox or OneNote. You can even flag the included icons to save directly to specific folders.Pick up the Rocketbook Everlast Reusable Notebook and never buy another. A 2-pack with included Pen Station is on sale at $59.99. Read the rest

This takes some golden brass balls. (via Crazy Abalone) Read the rest

Locking bootloaders with trusted computing is an important step towards protecting users from some of the most devastating malware attacks: by allowing the user to verify their computing environment, trusted computing can prevent compromises to operating systems and other low-level parts of their computer's operating environment.But as with every security measure, there's a difference between "secure for the user" and "secure against the user." Bootloader protection that doesn't allow an owner to decide which signatures they trust is security against the user: security that prevents the user from overriding the manufacturer, and so allows the manufacturer to lock the user in.Apple's latest bootloader protection, the controversial T2 chip, is a good example of this. The chip comes with a user-inaccessible root of trust that allows for the installation of Apple and Microsoft operating systems, but not GNU/Linux and other open and free alternatives.There's no reason it has to be this way: Google's flagship Pixel Chromebooks come with hardware switches that can be activated during the bootup to allow their owners to change which signatures the system trusts (users can initialize these systems with passwords that prevent others from covertly altering the trusted root later). This gives users the best of both worlds: a system that, by default, protects them from malware, and, with should the user choose, allows them to nominate parties other than Google to decide whom they trust.To make things worse, publishing tools to allow for bootloader overrides is legally risky under section 1201 of the DMCA, which provides for 5 year prison sentences and $500,000 fines (for a first offense) for anyone who trafficks in tools to override access controls for copyrighted works. Read the rest

Dana Rohrabacher was an oddity: a Republican lawmaker sent from Democratic stronghold to the California legislature he's now out of a job).Rohrabacher was a genuinely terrible lawmaker: in ten years, the Tea Party darling voted to hand the president all-pervasive, permanent, unchecked spying powers; claimed the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville was a Democratic Party conspiracy; was tricked into screaming racist slurs by Sacha Baron Cohen; called the cops on a constituent who asked him persistent questions; etc.But one thing you may not remember is that Rohrabacher, a man who claims to venerate private property rights above all others, rented a house in Orange County, changed the locks to deny the owner entry, then trashed the place, filling it with garbage, destroying the fixtures, furniture and appliances; cutting the phone lines; and leaving behind squirming maggots under the stove. The damage cost $28,500 to fix. Then Rohrabacher sued his landlord for not refunding his security deposit.In August, a year after he, his wife and their triplets left the disaster and stiffed Polyniak out of a week of due rent, the congressman hired a lawyer, Devon R. Lucas, to file a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court. According to the complaint, Rohrabacher, who skipped all military service when he was eligible to fight in Vietnam and nowadays hails himself “a patriot,” thinks he and his wife are the victims in the dispute. He wants Polyniak—a soft-spoken construction subcontractor who honorably served in the U.S. Marines—to pay him $20,000 for not refunding his security deposit in a timely manner. Read the rest

Political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf says Trump's days in the White House are numbered. In a blistering Twitter thread, Rothkopf makes the case that any high-quality people Trump had supporting him have either fled or are getting ready to, and now that the House is under control of Democrats, Trump's inner circle of bottom-of-the-barrel crooks and buffoons won't be able to protect him from his sordid history of sleazy dealings and self-destructive narcissism.Thread by @djrothkopf: "No one knows the skeletons in Donald Trump's closet better than Donald Trump. No one knows the crimes he has committed, aided or abetted so […]"By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America - Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Read the rest

Seeing as ratings are the most important metric tracked by the executive branch of the US government, NBC's jump after booting Megyn "Black Face is Cool" Kelly should mean a lot.From the Daily Beast:According to just-released weekly Nielsen averages—figures provided to The Daily Beast by a media outlet that is not connected to NBC or its parent company, Comcast—the week after Kelly’s October 26 departure and the abrupt demise of Megyn Kelly Today, total viewership for Today’s third hour actually increased by 5 percent—from 2,522,000 during Kelly’s final week on the air to 2,649,000 during the week beginning Oct. 29.Significantly, this post-Kelly ratings spike occurred despite a slight falloff in total viewers (a decrease from 3,832,000 to 3,747,000) experienced week-over-week by Today’s 8 a.m. block, the lead-in to the third hour of the four-hour Today franchise.Even more revealing, the target demographic groups most desired by daytime television advertisers—women 18-49 and women 25-54—also enjoyed immediate upticks in the aftermath of Kelly’s exit. Women 18-49 increased by 10 percent (from 336,000 to 371,000), while women 25-54 spiked by 6 percent (from 465,000 to 495,000).“That absolutely comes as no surprise at all,” television news analyst Andrew Tyndall told The Daily Beast. “She was a speed bump placed right in the middle of a four-hour block of programming—dismantling the sense of teamwork on that set and the flow that will get you all the way through from the hard news at 7 a.m. to the light talk through 11 o’clock.” Read the rest

I've always felt a spiritual connection with grizzly bears. They're slow, chunky and have an overwhelming affection for peanut butter--just like I do. From time to time, I'm fortunate enough to spot one, or at least the signs of one's passing, while we're in Alberta. But, as they generally don't want anything to do with people, being able to spend a prolonged amount of time with one is an incredible treat. It's a treat that I had the opportunity to partake in earlier today. Around 30 minutes outside of Bozeman, Montana, we saw the first sign for it: Montana Grizzly Encounter. I wasn't into it at first: captive bears aren't cool. I checked out their website as we drove. Rescue bears. Rescue bears are very cool. Five minutes later we were pulling into the Montana Grizzly Encounter. Sixteen bucks for two adults and a score of steps later, we were in. MGE was founded in 2004 and has been giving homes to bears rescued from cruel captivity ever since. Five of the six bears that MGE shelters were rescued from inhumane situations from all across the United States. Their sixth bear, Bella, was an orphan discovered in Alaska. On her own, she wouldn't have stood a chance. At the sanctuary, she's living the best life that she possibly can. You won't find any bars or cages at MGE. The bears have a temperature controlled enclosure that they can enter or exit as they please. There's a large area for the bears to do bear things in outside of the public eye. Read the rest

Remember the cartoons of your youth? There's a good reason. Nothing sparks the imagination like well-done animation. And whether you need a logo in motion or just want to bring your own imagination to life, CrazyTalk Animator 3 Pro is the tool that can take you there.Easy enough for casual users but with all the functionality of a professional animation studio, its only limit is your creativity. The versatile interface lets you customize and set into motion any of CTA3's character templates, or import any image or logo and apply the bone rig editor to animate it. Vast motion libraries give you a shortcut to nearly any action, keyed to human or animal physiology. Packed with facial animations, auto-audio lip-sync and even the ability to turn text to speech, CTA3 will put the story in your hands, whether it's a presentation or full-fledged cartoon creation.Find out how easy it is with CrazyTalk Animator 3 Pro for Windows, on sale now at a discounted $79. Read the rest

This vintage-style map of the USA puts the titles of songs that mention place names onto their corresponding geographical spot. So, for example, the Beasties Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is placed right on top of Brooklyn. Some of our favourite song choices are the ones which require you to think a little harder about connections, such as Space Oddity (David Bowie) which signposts Cape Canaveral, After the Gold Rush (Neil Young) which references Sutter’s Mill, and Homecoming (Kanye West) which is placed near the rapper’s home town of Chicago.You can get the map for £30 (~$39) at UK-based studio Dorothy. They also have a world song map (also £30/~$39) and a special edition world song map (£35/~$45). Head to Spotify to see the accompanying playlist.(The Awesomer) Read the rest

Denis Vrain-Lucas was an undistinguished forger until he met gullible collector Michel Chasles. Through the 1860s Lucas sold Chasles thousands of phony letters by everyone from Plato to Louis the 14th, earning thousands of francs and touching off a firestorm among confused scholars. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll trace the career of the world's most prolific forger.We'll also count Queen Elizabeth's eggs and puzzle over a destroyed car.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Habitot Children's Museum in Berkeley, California is making an unusually generous offer to the families of homeless kids. They are providing them with the opportunity to celebrate their child's birthday at their facility for free. Their free birthday party offer includes all the standards: decor, pizza, juice, cake, and even goodie bags for the guests. Plus, they gift the birthday child something special. Now, I'm not sure the age limit for the eligible children but, according to their site, the museum serves infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Want to learn more? Email the museum's Family Programs Manager at familyprograms@habitot.org. Also, if you have the means, please consider donating to Habitot so they can keep the magic going. photo by Yoshika Mcalister Read the rest

https://drawmaton.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/45118351_358662618238424_3396031426926215168_n.mp4Robert Sabuda (previously) writes, "It has long been a dream of the Leonardo da Vinci Robot Society to bring one of the Renaissance Master’s creations back to life. 2019 is the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death and the Society has chosen to honor his memory and celebrate his life through one of his best known inventions - the Robot Knight. This robot is an early proto-computer android whose read-only programmable memory allowed it to perform many actions. And it was also rumored that the robot’s arm could also perform an extremely complex task…draw a picture!""The Society has hired me to unlock the secrets of da Vinci’s robotic arm. The final result, in the form of a kit, is now available to you as da Vinci’s Drawmaton. Made only of wood and a few pieces of metal, this ancestor of the programmable computer, is capable of reading 1kb of analog memory via wooden “petalos” which, to da Vinci, resembled the petals of flowers. The programming “petalos” are easily switched out so the Drawmaton can draw an endless variety of single line images. A few turns of the hand knob completes a full rotation of the programming “petalos” and the drawing is complete. You can insert your own drawing tool into the robot’s hand, place any paper into the draw area, turn the knob and the drawing is revealed.Program your own images to create custom “petalos” which will draw your own masterpieces!"Sabuda is an eminent mechanical engineer who created some of my favorite pop-up books. Read the rest

Anand Giridharadas was a former McKinsey consultant turned "thought leader," invited to the stages of the best "ideas festivals" and to TED (twice), the author of some very good and successful books, and as a kind of capstone to this career, he was named a fellow to the Aspen Institute, an elite corps of entrepreneurs who are given institutional support and advice as they formulate "win-win" solutions to the world's greatest problems, harnessing the power of markets to lift people out of poverty and oppression.But the deeper Giridharadas got into this new role, the more uncomfortable he became with it. On the night he was to give a valedictory address to an audience of business leaders, finance leaders, and other members of the ruling class, he abandoned the "Aspen consensus" and instead give a scorching and excoriating talk about the structural failure of "win-win" as a way of thinking about the world's problems.Giridharadas's point was that the business elites who were gathered to "give back" and "solve the big problems" were some of the most egregious contributors to those problems. They had looted the world's treasuries, shut down businesses and shipped jobs to low-wage, low-regulation free trade zones, gutted public services and replaced them with low-bidder private sector contractors, and had done so while formulating and promulgating the philosophy that business leaders' individual judgment about the provision of public services were always to be preferred to those policies set by democratically elected politicians.The speech was -- obviously -- divisive. Read the rest

Last year, Princeton researchers revealed a powerful new ad-blocking technique: perceptual ad-blocking uses a machine-learning model trained on images of pages with the ads identified to make predictions about which page elements are ads to block and which parts are not.However, a new paper from a group of Stanford and CISPA Helmholtz Center researchers reveals a powerful machine learning countermeasure that, they say, will permanently tilt the advantage toward advertisers and away from ad-blockers. The team revealed a set of eight techniques to generate adversarial examples of slightly modified ads that completely flummoxed the perceptual ad-blocker's model: from overlaying a transparent image to modifying a few pixels in the logo used to demarcate an ad. What's more, the team showed that they could cause the perceptual blocker's model to erroneously identify a page's actual content as an ad and block it, while leaving the ads unblocked.The team says that these techniques will always outrace the ability of perceptual blocking models to detect them, suggesting that perceptual blocking may be a dead letter.We note that detection of adversarial examples [27, 47]—a simpler problem in principle but also one far from solved [14]— may not be applicable to ad-blockers. Indeed, ad-blockers face both adversarial false-positives and false-negatives, so merely detecting a perturbation does not help in decision-making. This challenging threat model also applies in part to ad-blockers based on non-visual cues, e.g., ML-based ad-blockers that use similar features as filter lists [11, 29, 36]. None of these have yet been evaluated against adaptive adversaries. Read the rest