Boing Boing

This morning, an official video was released of Melania Trump walking through the White House, silently admiring its new Christmas decorations. Holding leather gloves in one hand, the FLOTUS first makes her way through a forest of blood-red trees (bring on the metaphors!). We are then shown a glass ornament of the White House and then some laser-cut art of U.S. cities. Tasteful enough, I suppose. But as the minute-long video goes on, it strays back into the strange. Some decorations featuring the First Lady's initiative of "Be Best" are revealed including an ornament and a wreath made of pencils that has to be seen to be believed.simonoftheplaya:Previously: Just Be Best: Randy Rainbow sings about Melania(Mashable) Read the rest

Many open source projects attain a level of "maturity" where no one really needs any new features and there aren't a lot of new bugs being found, and the contributors to these projects dwindle, often to a single maintainer who is generally grateful for developers who take an interest in these older projects and offer to share the choresome, intermittent work of keeping the projects alive.Ironically, these are often projects with millions of users, who trust them specifically because of their stolid, unexciting maturity.This presents a scary social-engineering vector for malware: A malicious person volunteers to help maintain the project, makes some small, positive contributions, gets commit access to the project, and releases a malicious patch, infecting millions of users and apps.This is apparently what happened to event-stream, a widely used tool that was compromised by a crypto-currency stealing attacker who gained commit access, poisoned an update, and then locked the project's owner out. I don't know what to say. #116 [Dominic Tarr/Github] Read the rest

I'm really digging this retro-styled reversible Cyber scarf ($109) by Seattle-based KnitYak, maker of "generative mathematical" machine-knit goods. The yarn used is a 100% machine washable acrylic in bright green and black. Ships with source code in Processing for the pixel native cyber pattern that is knit into the scarf.Do go check out KnitYak's other scarves -- the one with the Macintosh IIfx icons is divine. Read the rest

The ever-useful Gartner Hype Cycle identified an inflection point in the life of any new technology: the "Peak of Inflated Expectations," attained just before the sharp dropoff into the "Trough of Disillusionment"; I've lived through the hype-cycles of several kinds of technology and one iron-clad correlate of the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" is the "Peak of Huckster Snakeoil Salesmen": the moment at which con-artists just add a tech buzzword to some crooked scam and head out into the market to net a fortune before everyone gets wise to the idea that the shiny new hypefodder isn't a magic bullet.Machine Learning has enjoyed an extraordinarily long and destructive peak, with hucksters invoking AI to sell racist predictive policing systems, racist sentencing and parole systems, and other Weapons of Math Destruction.But those were Long Cons run by sophisticated hucksters with huge gangs of confederates; lately, we've been seeing a lot of short cons run by petty grifters who prey on fears to target individuals and small businesses, rather than cities, nations and Fortune 100 multinationals.Here's an example: Predictim uses a secret "black-box algorithm" to mine your babysitters' social media accounts and generate a "risk rating" that you're entrusting your kid to someone who is a drug abuser, a bully, a harasser, or someone who has a "bad attitude" or is "disrespectful."This system does not weed out risky people. It is a modern-day ducking stool, used to brand people as witches. What's more, it's a near-certainty that its ranking system is racially biased and also discriminates on the basis of class (because poor and racialized people are overpoliced and more likely to be arrested or otherwise disciplined for offenses that wealthier, whiter people get away with, so if you train a machine-learning system to find the correlates of anti-social behavior, it will just tell you to steer clear of brown people and poor people). Read the rest

Our current news cycle pushes out stories, scandals and tales of catastrophe faster than shit through a goose. There's no keeping on top of it all anymore. With this being the case, it's little wonder that we managed to miss the fact that a Canadian woman was charged with what amounts to witchcraft this past October.From Vice:This weekend police in Milton, a small town in Ontario, arrested 32-year-old Dorie Stevenson who was running a psychic business out of her basement. She was charged with extortion, fraud over $5,000 [$3,813 USD], and witchcraft/fortune telling. If you’re thinking, whoa, Canada has witchcraft laws? Well, the answer would be yes, but they’re probably not exactly what you think.It's covered under section 365 in the Criminal Code under the title “pretending to practice witchcraft.” It focuses on anyone who “fraudulently” gets paid to tell fortunes, “pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration,” or using their “skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science” to find where lost things are. Stevenson was picked up by Halton Regional Police after it was discovered that she was running a business, selling psychic insights to folks out of her basement. That's fine: there's plenty of folks in Canada doing much the same. What the cops took exception with, after a months-long investigation, was the fact that Stevenson was preying on her customers while they were in a vulnerable state. According to the police, Stevenson was routinely telling her customers that she could foresee terrible things happening to them if they didn't bring her cash, jewelry and other expensive bobbles that would help her to divert their encroaching disaster. Read the rest

Ohio has become the first state to allow businesses to use cryptocurrency – bitcoin, specifically – to pay their taxes. And the state doesn't plan to HODL, either. As soon as they receive it they will sell it off for US dollars. (With bitcoin plummeting over 40% over the last month, their decision not to HODL is a practical one.) Via Mashable:According to The Wall Street Journal, businesses can start registering this week on ohiocrypto.com for the chance to pay their taxes in bitcoin. And yes, it's only bitcoin — sorry ether fans. "Under the leadership of Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, taxpayers are able to pay their state business taxes with cryptocurrency for the first time anywhere in America," explains the Ohio crypto website. "Ohio has become the first state in the United States, and one of the first governments in the world, to accept cryptocurrency." So with bitcoin in a downward spiral and no plans to horde the cryptocurrency in hopes of a longterm gain, why would Ohio accept it in the first place? According to The Wall Street Journal:The idea to accept the digital currency for taxes came from state Treasurer Josh Mandel, who has held the office since 2011 and started taking an interest in bitcoin several years ago. Mr. Mandel, 41 years old, views the new program both as a convenience for filers and an opportunity for “planting a flag” for Ohio in the currency’s adoption.Image via Pexels Read the rest

The most devastating fire in California history has been contained.From The Washington Post:The Camp Fire — the deadliest, most destructive blaze in California history, which has killed 85 people, destroyed 14,000 residences and charred an area the size of Chicago — has been fully contained, authorities announced Sunday.Cal Fire, the state’s forestry and fire protection agency, made the announcement after spending 17 days beating back a blaze that has roared through 153,000 acres of Butte County, which is north of Sacramento. Three straight days of rain helped more than 1,000 firefighters get a foothold.While the news that first responders and prisoners roped into fighting the Camp Fire's flames have been able to bring this hellish inferno to heel, it's hardly a celebratory moment. Thousands have lost everything they've owned, save the clothes on their back. Where thriving towns once stood, there's nothing but ash. What's more, as multiple hospitals had to be evacuated, medical care in the areas effected by the fire isn't great. The overflowing shelters where thousands of displaced Californians currently call home are a perfect breeding ground for the spread of viruses and disease. Additionally, as the Washington Post points out, “Areas experiencing significant rainfall following a wildfire are at risk for debris flows and flash flooding."Those who have been affected by the fire have a long way to go before their lives begin to resemble anything that could be called normal.Image by Devin Cook - Own work, Public Domain. Read the rest

China's war on jaywalking went to the next level last spring when AI-based facial recognition systems were integrated into some crosswalks, to punish jaywalkers by squirting them with water, sending them texts warning them about legal consequences of jaywalking, and/or publicly shaming them by displaying their pictures and names on large digital billboards.Last week, this system entered a new and exciting failure mode when a traffic-cam in the port city of Ningbo captured a face displayed on the side of a passing bus, correctly identified it as belonging to Dong Mingzhu, CEO of Chinese AC giant Gree Electric Appliances, and then plastered Ms Dong's face all over a giant billboard, falsely accusing her of jaywalking.The Chinese government is currently working to combine the operations of more than 170 million public security cameras to strengthen its surveillance network’s ability to track and monitor the country’s 1.4 billion citizens. Research firm IHS Markit has estimated that the number of surveillance cameras in China could reach 450 million by 2020.Although Chinese citizens have raised concerns about privacy protection, China’s broader initiative to become a global leader in AI has prompted local governments and police departments across the country to embrace facial recognition technology as an important tool for public safety efforts.Facial recognition snares China’s air con queen Dong Mingzhu for jaywalking, but it’s not what it seems [Li Tao/South China Morning Post](via /.) Read the rest

The writers of New York Magazine's Strategist tested "dozens upon dozens of gels, rollerballs, felt-tips, ballpoints, and fountain pens" and published a ranked list of the top 100 pens in existence.While the number one pen is a pricey $55 Rollerball, the rest of the upper echelon is surprisingly affordable: number two is the $8 OHTO Needle Point Knock Ballpoint Pen Horizon Eu 0.7mm Ballpoint Silver Body ("you’ll be amazed at how small you can write with this thing"); while number 3 is the Prismacolor Premier Fine Tip Illustration Markers, which sell at $7 for a five-pack (of course, the next one on the list, is Jet's $120 Aurora Ipsilon Resin Red Medium Point Fountain Pen, but then again, fountain pen people are weird).One note: A lot of what makes one pen better than another is completely subjective. Some of us prefer a finer line and some of us a thicker one (even within the Strategist’s ranks, there is dissent). One person’s beautiful pen might be no more than inoffensive to another. The finer the point, the scratchier it’s likely to be. And if you disagree (or have a favorite we missed), share it in the comments — we just might test it when we update this list in the future. The 100 Best Pens, As Tested by Strategist Editors Gels, ballpoints, rollerballs, felt-tips, and fountain pens — we tried them all. [Karen Iorio Adelson and Lauren Ro/Strategist](Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

Oklahoma City Thunder basketball star and retro-videogamer Paul George worked with Nike and Sony on a new pair of PS1-inspired sneakers. Due out December 1, the PG 2.5 x PlayStation design follows on the heels (sorry) of the black PG2 x PlayStation sneakers that were released in February and sold out in a hot minute. "For those who know me, gaming is a big part of who I am – I love the fans and I love this community, so it was amazing to see the gaming and sneaker worlds collide with the original PG2 collaboration," George writes. "This time around, I wanted to take the design old school, back to my earliest days of gaming. For me – as I’m sure many of you can relate – those memories date back to the original PlayStation." Read the rest

China-watchers observed the rise-and-rise of Chinese premier Xi Jinping with caution and sometimes alarm, but also held out some hope that despite his authoritarian tendencies and thin skin, Xi was genuinely committed to rooting out the rampant corruption that has plagued the country since its rapid industrialization under Deng Xiaoping: the creation of an untouchable elite and a hereditary princeling class immune to civil justice; looting by respected members of the business community; and a sense that the looters are exfiltrating their money, bypassing currency controls, and stashing the booty in apartments overseas, fueling both the Bitcoin and real-estate bubbles worldwide.Xi, after all, has pretty impeccable revolutionary credentials, having marched with Mao and then serving seven years in a forced-labor camp during the Cultural Revolution, sleeping on a bed of bricks in a cave, shitting in a bucket, and living on thin rice-gruel.But when Xi secured a second term and embarked on a purge of "corrupt" elements, many worried that he'd learned the wrong lessons from the Cultural Revolution, and had seized on the pretense of corruption to clear the political ranks of his challengers. The fact that an early arrest included Bo Xilai, the charismatic (and very, very corrupt) official seen as a potential successor to Xi didn't assuage the fears -- and then when Xi delighted President Trump by effectively declaring himself Chinese President For Life, people really started to worry.Were they right to worry?A new paper called Personal Ties, Meritocracy, and China’s Anti-Corruptionby USF economist Peter Lorentzen and NUS political scientist Xi Lu (presented at the University of Chicago's East Asia Workshop on Politics, Economy and Society) takes a fascinating, data-driven approach to answering this question. Read the rest

Take a look at the sequence. What number comes next? The answer is a no brainer – once you know the answer, that is. Neil Sloane, founder of the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, starts explaining the answer at :22, so pause before then if you need more time to figure it out.Extra footage of this video can be found here. Read the rest

What happens when drug warriors in Monroe County, Georgia jail a woman for several months because they used a known-unreliable drug test that causes cotton candy to test positive for methamphetamine? My prediction is that the taxpayers will give her a large court settlement, and the drug warriors will give zero fucks.From WMC5 News:[Dasha] Fincher told the deputies the bag contained blue cotton candy, but when [Monroe County deputies Cody Maples and Allen Henderson] tested the bag using a roadside field test, the results came back positive for methamphetamine.In addition, Maples wrote in the incident report that Fincher was “shaking” and “very anxious” during the traffic stop, according to the AJC.Fincher was arrested and charged with meth trafficking and possession of meth with intent to distribute, WMAZ reports.Fincher’s bond was set at $1 million, and because she couldn’t pay it, she remained in jail for nearly four months, as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation tested the bag and its contents.In March 2017, the GBI lab tests determined the substance in the bag was not an illegal drug but was, indeed, cotton candy, the lawsuit states.Fincher’s charges were dropped four weeks later in April 2017.Image: B Calkins/Shutterstock Read the rest

Until now the most uplifting thing in Red Dead Redemption 2 has been killing Klansmen. If current video gaming culture is any indication, multi-player online play won't be much different.Says The Verge:Those who purchased the “ultimate edition” of the game will have access to the Red Dead Online beta starting on Tuesday, November 27th, and on Wednesday, it will open up to anyone who played Red Dead Redemption 2 when it launched on October 26th. On Thursday, anyone who played the game between October 26th and 29th can access the beta, and it will finally open up to everyone on Friday, November 30th. The online spinoff is free for anyone who owns the base game on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.As for what you’ll actually be doing in Red Dead Online, there’s still a lot we don’t know. Here’s how Rockstar explains it:"With the gameplay of Red Dead Redemption 2 as its foundation, Red Dead Online transforms the vast and deeply detailed landscapes, cities, towns, and habitats of Red Dead Redemption 2 into a new, living online world ready to be shared by multiple players. Create and customize your character, tailor your abilities to suit your play style, and head out into a new frontier full of things to experience.Explore this huge world solo or with friends. Form or join a posse to ride with up to seven players; gather around the fire at your camp; head out hunting or fishing; visit bustling towns; battle enemy gangs and attack their hideouts; hunt for treasure; take on missions and interact with familiar characters from across the five states; or fight against other outlaws in both spontaneous skirmishes and pitched set-piece battles; compete with other players or whole posses in open world challenges and much more."My friends are looking forward to mounting up and doing what we do not know. Read the rest

The Gerber Dime multi-tool has needle nose spring-loaded pliers, a wire cutter, a blade, a package opener, scissors, a flat driver, a crosshead driver, a bottle opener, tweezers, and a file, and it's on sale for the next 14 hours at a steep discount. Read the rest

If you want to get the most out of dedicated digital audio players, smartphones, cameras, drones, tablets or game systems, you'll need to pair it with the right memory card. No problem: head down to Best Buy or log into Amazon and you ca--shit there's a ton of the frigging things. You can buy the first, least expensive one that you see. That'll work for some things... but not all of the things. Some devices can benefit from speedier, more expensive memory cards. Knowing which card to jam into which thing can be daunting. Thankfully, Gizmodo's David Neild has put together a quick, easy-to-understand guide to figuring it all out. From Gizmodo:To start with you’ve got a choice of sizes: The standard SD ones (mostly for digital cameras and bigger gear) and the smaller microSD ones (originally developed for, and still used in, smartphones). Extra letters after the SD mean a newer, improved standard, with room for greater capacities and faster speeds—these include HC (High Capacity) and the latest XC (Extended Capacity), and both are used across the SD and microSD form factors today.Yeah, it's pretty dry stuff. But it's well presented and deeply useful.So, before you buy a new memory card to go along with your new digital whatever this Monday, you'd do well to stop by Gizmodo first.Image by CompactFlash.jpg: André Karwath aka AkaSecure_Digital_Kingston_512MB.png: Andrew pmkMS-PRO-DUO.JPG: KB AlphaXD_card_typeH_512M_Olympus.png: og-emmetMicroSD_card.jpg: KowejaMemory_Stick_Micro.JPG: The original uploader was J Di at English Wikipedia..Later version(s) were uploaded by Toehead2001 at en.wikipedia.derivative work: Moxfyre (talk) - CompactFlash.jpgSecure_Digital_Kingston_512MB.pngMS-PRO-DUO.JPGXD_card_typeH_512M_Olympus.pngMicroSD_card.jpgMemory_Stick_Micro.JPG, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Read the rest

Jason Stiber in Connecticut was pulled over for talking on his cell phone while driving. The cop then gave him a hefty $300 ticket for distracted driving. The only problem, according to Stiber, was that he wasn't on his cell phone. He was simply enjoying a hash brown patty from McDonald's.According to Times Union, Stiber says “I was eating a hash brown and he thought he saw a cellphone near my mouth." Stiber's story might sound a bit suspicious, but records show he didn't use his phone as a phone during the time of the ticket. And he says he has bluetooth, so there's no reason he would hold his phone up to his face. But this kind of logic hasn't penetrated in court. He fought the ticket in court over the summer and lost. He's now set for a retrial on December 7th at state Superior Court. Read the rest

Akaya Kunugi makes a nice living entertaining women at a host bar in Tokyo. One of his clients even bought him a $370,000 car. In this Asian Boss video, Akaya, who was formerly homeless, describes his duties as the number one host at the largest and most prestigious club of its kind in Japan.They also interview one of his 19-year-old clients, who said an evening with Akaya at the club costs at least $700. She once bought a crystal magnum decanter of Louis XIII cognac at the club for $110,000.Image: Asian Boss/YouTube Read the rest

Last week I posted a clip of the BBC nature program, Dynasties, which showed a young male lion defending itself against 20 or so hungry hyenas. The clip ended with the lion getting worn out, and the hyenas closing in. BBC just uploaded the full clip, so you can find out what happened. Read the rest

Gradient shaded sunglasses, microfilm and a super early version of the Apple phone all make an appearance in dated TV spy drama, Masquerade. None of this stuff looks fancy or secretive today.Distrust of our intelligence agencies is apparently not a new thing! In the '80s this TV drama shared a US spy agency recruiting everyday American citizens to do its overseas dirty work.I may be the only person who remembers it. Read the rest

No one knows who erected the Georgia Guidestones in 1980. The Stonehenge-like monument is inscribed with 10 guidelines in eight languages:Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.Unite humanity with a living new language.Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.Avoid petty laws and useless officials.Balance personal rights with social duties.Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.YouTuber Tom Scott paid the Guidestones a visit. Read the rest

With NASA's InSight spacecraft scheduled to land on Mars today, it's fun to watch this vintage ABC News Australia segment from 1962: "Is there life on other planets?"One of my favorite responses: "I hope not. Because they'd be frozen to death."(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Holiday pricing on giant LEGO sets continues as the LEGO Apollo Saturn V Rocket goes on sale for $79.Cleverly this LEGO set comes with 1969 pieces. I bought it last year for $119, and do not regret a dime of it.LEGO Ideas Nasa Apollo Saturn V 21309 Building Kit Read the rest

Todo mundo do twitter quando tiver filho, irá comprar esta ferramenta super efetiva pra fazer o bebe gorfar 😍😍😍😍 pic.twitter.com/UCwpdEpGek— KLAUS (@Klausitox) November 24, 2018 Twitter makes this Monday better. Read the rest

The bane of the futurist's existence is that almost daily you see, hear, or read something and want to scream, "I told you so." Sometimes, it's a cause for exhilaration—we got it right—and other times, it makes you angry—why didn't we do something about it earlier, why did we not heed the warning signs? Right now, I am in the latter state. As stories of Facebook's deflection and manipulation of public opinion dominate the news cycle, I am harking back to things I and others wrote almost ten years ago, in the early days of social media. In 2010, while seeing the great promise of social production (work that involves micro-contributions from large networks of people who often receive "payment" in the form of fun, peer recognition, and a sense of belonging, i.e. social rather than monetary currencies), I started worrying about its shadow side. It seemed that many social media platforms had the potential to re-create the manor economies of the past in the digital world. Reflecting on the lawsuit brought by bloggers who contributed free content to Huffington Post but didn't get any financial returns when the site was sold for $315 million to AOL, I saw similarities between the medieval and emerging digital manor economies:Just like digital manor economies today, the manorialism of feudal society in medieval Europe integrated many elements of commons production. In most manors, peasants and tenants were assigned rights to use the commons—pastures, forests, fisheries, soil—within each manor's boundaries…The dark side of manor economics, however, lay in the fact that it perpetuated huge inherited disparities in incomes. Read the rest

Last year, my friends Tim Daly and Lawrence Azerrad and I released the Voyager Golden Record on vinyl for the first time ever and were blown away to win a Grammy Award for the box set. It's really a testament to the creators of the original Voyager Record, the iconic message for extraterrestrials launched by NASA in 1977. We were honored to have had the opportunity to bring this stellar artifact to a wider terrestrial audience.For those who still prefer compact discs, we also published the Voyager Golden Record 2xCD/Book edition! Two audio CDs containing all of the Voyager Golden Record music and sounds are tucked inside a full-color 96-page hardcover book (12” x 12”) featuring all images included on the original Voyager Record, gallery of images transmitted back from the Voyager probes, and an essay by Timothy Ferris, producer of the original Voyager Record.Today, we're offering 20% off the elegant Voyager Golden Record 2xCD/Book edition. It's a gift sure to spark the imagination. The sale ends tonight, November 26, at 11:59pm PST. We also have limited numbers of the Voyager Golden Record 3xLP Box Set, diagram pins, gold foil art prints, and turntable slipmats. Please order by December 9 for delivery in time for Christmas.Ad astra! Read the rest

European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst captured this beautiful video of the Russian Progress MS-10 cargo spacecraft launching into space from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome.The images were taken from the European-built Cupola module with a camera set to take pictures at regular intervals. The pictures are then played quickly after each other at 8 to 16 times normal speed. The video shows around 15 minutes of the launch at normal speed....Some notable moments in this video are:00:07 Soyuz-FG rocket booster separation. 00:19 Core stage separation. 00:34:05 Core stage starts burning in the atmosphere as it returns to Earth after having spent all its fuel.00:34:19 Progress spacecraft separates from rocket and enters orbit to catch up with the International Space Station.(ESA on YouTube) Read the rest

Dyson has made a smaller, battery-operated version of their famous ball vacuum, with actual suction power, for children. Don't get too excited, it's not time to pass off your heavy-duty floor-cleaning chores to your child. This toy is only capable of sucking up "small pieces of paper or polystyrene balls." But for just $30, it'll be nice to put Junior to work cleaning up all those pesky fortune cookie fortunes and piles of poly balls off the floor. (Apartment Therapy) Read the rest

Immortal Masks make a lot of masks, prosthetics and horrific creatures we see in films that later end up haunting our dreams. This video shows exactly how they do it. Read the rest

I never saw The Lion King when I was growing up. I was a little on my way out of high school by the time that it popped. But I know a lot of folks adore the film. Despite having never watched it, somehow, I know a reference to it when I see it on TV or in films. It's a cultural touchstone. It's a hell of a big deal, so much so that, instead of letting it stand as a classic, It's being remade. The animation in the trailer of Jon Favreau’s rehash of the Lion King looks outstanding. It's got a blend of realism and cutesy cartoon going on that I think both kids and grownups will dig. But I have to wonder why this thing exists. Disney's well-known for pulling their intellectual property out of cold storage from time to time, making a bundle of money off of Blu-ray sales and digital downloads and then stashing it away again until for another decade. It's absolutely genius: who wouldn't want to share the films they adored when they were children with their own children. If you saw the original Lion King in a theater with your family, how excited would you be to share that experience with your own child? I'd imagine it'd feel pretty good. Currently, the Lion King is available to download from iTunes. I'd be very interested to understand the financial soothsaying that goes into determining that a whole new imagining of a classic film You can it from Amazon, too. Read the rest

At 4163 pieces Big Ben is a massive LEGO set. I have sat on the Apollo Saturn V kit for a while and it a mere 1969 pieces.When will we find the time?The kit is $50 off today, $199 on Amazon.LEGO Creator Expert 10253 Big Ben Building Kit via Amazon Read the rest

The US Department of Homeland Security has published a new proposed rule that would make people ineligible for US citizenship if their credit-scores were poor.Notionally, the rule-change is meant to prevent immigrants from becoming burdens on the welfare system (migrants do not make disproportionate use of any public welfare system).However, the credit reporting bureaus are notoriously inaccurate and arbitrary in the credit-scores they assign; if you have a lot of assets but do not borrow money, you will have a much lower credit-rating than if you unwisely enroll in a number of high cost/high fee store cards and pay them off after running up debts on them and paying significant interest (I am allergic to debt, and with the exception of my mortgage have no debts at all; because of this I have a fairly low credit-score, despite the fact that both my wife and I earn very good livings).What's more, the credit-reporting sector is riddled with security holes; notoriously, Equifax doxxed the entire adult population of America by breaching more than 150 million residents' financial data. Integrating credit scores into the immigration process will grant the bureaux a permanent government contract and funnel tax-dollars to them forever, despite their routine errors, racial bias, and spurious guilt-by-statistical-association.Finally, the DHS's change is an appeal to selfishness and cruelty: if America is unwilling to accept migrants who are indigent or who need assistance, what does it say about us as a nation?It's a Made-in-America version of China's notorious Citizen Scores. Read the rest

In a stirring unsigned editorial, the New Scientist calls the scholarly publishing industry "indefensible," noting that the business of publishing tax-funded research and then selling it to tax-funded institutions has produced the most profitable industry in the world, where 40% margins dwarf those commanded by oil or finance.The editorial slams the practice of hiding scientific knowledge behind paywalls, and distinguishes these paywalls from the paywall used by The New Scientist for the majority of its articles by stating "good journalism does not come free" (the editorial is not behind the New Scientist's paywall).The editorial was occasioned by the advent of Plan S, through which a consortium of 15 of Europe's largest science funders have announced that they will only fund research that is freely available, on open access terms.Though much of humanity's publicly funded scholarship is paywalled, it can almost all be gotten for free through Sci-Hub, a site that has inspired scholarly publishers to abandon their commitment to a free press and instead demand national firewalls to censor access to the rival site.The reason it is so lucrative is because most of the costs of its content is picked up by taxpayers. Publicly funded researchers do the work, write it up and judge its merits. And yet the resulting intellectual property ends up in the hands of the publishers. To rub salt into the wound they then sell it via exorbitant subscriptions and paywalls, often paid for by taxpayers too. (Some readers may scent a whiff of hypocrisy, given New Scientist also charges for its content. Read the rest

Ted Kramer is CEO and co-founder of Six4Three, a creepy US-based machine-learning startup whose debut product was a Facebook app called Pinkini that let you search your friends' photos for pictures of them in bikinis; when Facebook shut down the app after a terms-of-service change, Six4Three sued Facebook and obtained a key trove of internal Facebook documents through the discovery process.Kramer was in London this week for work, and somehow the UK Parliament got wind of the fact that he was carrying a laptop with all those discovery documents, which have been sealed by order of a California judge. Parliament has been repeatedly trying to get Zuckberg to testify before it, even issuing threats that many believed to be hollow.The Conservative MP Damian Collins (chair of the culture, media and sport select committee) asked Kramer to turn over the Facebook docs, and Kramer demurred, saying that turning them over would risk a citation for contempt from the San Mateo Superior Court. Collins insisted, and then despatched a Parliamentary serjeant at arms to Kramer's hotel and dragged him before Parliament, where he was threatened with fines and arrest if he didn't turn over the docs.Kramer surrendered the docs to Parliament.The documents are said to detail Zuckerberg's direct knowledge of, and participation in, the privacy loophole that Cambridge Analytica exploited.Facebook's counsel have sent a letter to Parliament asking them not to review the documents and rather to destroy them, in keeping with the order of the San Mateo court. Read the rest

When Josh Hawley was Attorney General of Missouri, he was an (extremely selective) firebreathing trustbuster who used his office to chase Google up and down the state, investigating the company's anticompetitive action and the pontential for public harm represented by its market dominance and size.Hawley is part of a wave of GOP enthusiasm for antitrust enforcement -- when it comes to Big Tech, at least. Despite having sainted Ronald Reagan (who kicked off 40 years of antitrust malpractice, and despite being rotten from within by corporate thinktankies paid to espouse the "public harm" standard of antitrust (which holds that monopolies are "efficient" and thus desirable), a bunch of "free market" Republicans have started sounding off like Roosevelt trustbusters about Silicon Valley companies, galled by their Democrat-leading leadership and by a wave of no-platforming directed at the likes of Alex Jones.And now Hawley is the latest senator from Missouri, and he's doubled down on his trustbusting rhetoric, for Big Tech, at least (Hawley doesn't say much about breaking up big banks, oil companies, or Koch Industries and Walmart). He's joined by noted asshole Tucker Carlson, who uses his Daily Caller to rail against Big Tech's monopoly power, and the trustbusting chorus includes periodic, confused tweets from noted asshole Donald Trump and highbrow intellectual cover in the National Review.I think this is a mixed bag. The far-right echo-chamber is built on the idea of deference to authority, which means that right-wingers who gain dominance in their little Lord of the Flies LARP rarely get checked from within (publicly, at least -- privately, they're all about the long knives in the back). Read the rest

Taylor Swift's latest record deal contained a clause in which Universal finally committed to sharing any gains from a future sale of Spotify (which the company invested in along with Sony and Warner) with all its artists, not just those whose accounts are in the black.It's a major victory that closes a loophole that let Universal promise to give money to artists without ever doing so, and still reaping the PR benefits.It's a complicated story, so bear with me a second.Concentration and funny accountingThe music industry is one of the most concentrated in the world. There are only a small handful of big record labels and they have all converged on a set of abusive practices. They haven't necessarily done so via a conspiracy. It's enough that their senior execs get regularly poached from one company to another, spreading the bad practices, as they go -- and even without that, the companies could just copy one another's most abusive practices -- as soon as company A wrings a new concession from musicians, company B can jump on the bandwagon and demand this from all its artists, citing company A as precedent.Among the bad practices the companies force on artists is funny accounting that lets the companies claw back most of the money the artists generate. Artists are paid advances against eventual royalties for their work, which they must earn back before they start getting paid. But artists are also required to pay back the costs of producing and promoting their work: the studio time, mixing, tour expenses, marketing and PR, etc. Read the rest

When the New York Times published its insider report detailing how Facebook executives had hired the Republic PR firm Definers, known for it dirty tricks campaigns, and then directed it to spread lies linking Facebook's critics to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that George Soros secretly directs political campaigns in the US and abroad, Facebook lied and said that the New York Times was wrong.But on Thanksgiving eve, after the majority of newsrooms had shut down for the night and while everyone's attention was elsewhere, Facebook quietly admitted that the Times had been right, with Facebook communications and policy chief Elliot Schrage, admitting that he had personally hired Definers and that the company had directed them to investigate and publish about Soros. Schrage is now leaving Facebook, and claims that the decision to do so pre-dated the scandal.Here is Schrage's memo. In it, he reveals that Facebook hired Definers in 2017 as part of its charm-offensive to court the far right -- who had become obsessed with the idea that Facebook's algorithms downranked right-wing news and conspiracy theories -- by hiring PR firms associated with right-wing causes.Did we ask them to do work on George Soros?Yes. In January 2018, investor and philanthropist George Soros attacked Facebook in a speech at Davos, calling us a “menace to society.” We had not heard such criticism from him before and wanted to determine if he had any financial motivation. Definers researched this using public information.Later, when the “Freedom from Facebook” campaign emerged as a so-called grassroots coalition, the team asked Definers to help understand the groups behind them. Read the rest

If you're keeping those ears to the ground for deals on headphones, get them warmed up. There's some quality tech to be had whether you're looking for yourself or a music-loving friend. Here are four of our favorite models that just got an early holiday price drop. And what's more, the price has been dropped on all of these headphones!Cowin E7 Active Noise-Cancelling Bluetooth HeadphonesSturdy in more ways than one, these headphones sport an impact-resistant build and remarkably long battery life - up to 30 hours on a charge. The solid earpieces aren't just for show, housing 40mm large-aperture drivers with active noise-cancelling tech that delivers crisp sound even in windy conditions. Originally $69.99, the Cowin E7s we're knocked down to $63.99. Use the code BFSAVE20 to save an addtional 20% off the marked down price.Cresuer Touchwave True Wireless Bluetooth EarbudsMinimalist design meets maximum performance with the Cresuer Touchwave. Sweat-resistant and form-fitting, they're perfect for the gym. CVC Noise Cancellation makes room for beautiful sound quality, and the one-tap operation lets you answer calls without undue pressure on the earbuds or your ear. They're currently down from their already discounted $44.99 to a holiday price of $34.99.TREBLAB Z2 Wireless Noise-Cancelling HeadphonesAnother set for the commute or morning jog, this TREBLAB pair makes full use of its neodymium-backed 40mm speakers with aptX and active noise cancellation. With Sound 2.0 technology, it's the pair you'll want when it's time to play your "desert island" discs. Originally selling for an MSRP of $259.99, the TREBLAB Z2 Wireless Noise-Cancelling Headphones are currently approaching 70% off at $78.99. Read the rest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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