Boing Boing

The Instant Pot Ultra 6 Quart electric pressure cooker usually sells for about $150, and right now Amazon has it for a bit more than half that price. I use my Instant Pot a few times a week or more, and you can find tons of cookbooks with recipes designed for this versatile cooker. One thing a make a lot is chicken curry. I cut up two packs of chicken thighs (10 thighs), add them to a quart of chicken stock, a bag of baby carrots, a can of coconut cream, a tablespoon of salt, a lot of crushed garlic, a tablespoon of curry powder, and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. The meal takes 30 minutes to make. Read the rest

Last June, 18-year-old Daniel Fabian of Pasco County, Florida was playing Grand Theft Auto Online, when he informed the other players in his team chat that he was going to take a break to "smash" (have sex with) a 15-year-old girl.An unnamed player in that chat says he later heard a woman's voice say the word "no," and cries of "distress" through Fabian's mic, and called the police.This week, Fabian was arrested for "lewd and lascivious behavior" with an underage victim (there is another 2018 case against Fabian for the same charge, it's not clear if both cases relate to the same incident). Fox's report alleges that the console in question was a PlayStation 4, but it does not go into detail about whether Fabian's console included a PlayStation Eye camera—which can optionally function as a full-room listening device for in-game chat. Popular game-streaming sites like YouTube and Twitch do not immediately appear to have captured archives of the Grand Theft Auto Online session in question, in spite of PS4 consoles including a one-button way to capture and archive online-game audio and video.A hot PlayStation mic captures sounds of apparent rape, leads to arrest [Sam Machkovech/Ars Technica] Read the rest

A large boulder on Mt. Spantik in Pakistan tried to kill a man, but missed by an inch or two (that's 2.54cm or 5.08cm for our non-US readers).Image: YouTube Read the rest

[via BIOTV] Read the rest

Boing Boing pal and maker superhero Mitch Altman, creator of the amazing TV-B-Gone, spent several years designing a simple-yet-powerful DIY music synthesizer that he could use to teach creative electronics and also digital signal processing to kids and adults. The result is the ArduTouch Music Synthesizer! And it's only $30! Demo videos below. Mitch wrote about the method behind his maker madness in IEEE Spectrum. From his essay:As a kid with a lust for music, I was rocked by the Moog synthesizer sounds of 1968’s Switched-On Bach. I needed to learn how to make those sounds! Thus began a lifetime of learning and synthesizer making while I made my way in the tech industry, where I ultimately created the TV-B-Gone, a gadget that lets you turn off almost any model of remote-controlled television. Since the popular success of the TV-B-Gone, I’ve created many fun, open-source, hackable hardware kits for the maker workshops I give around the world. In these workshops, newbies learn to solder, tinkering their way into electronics and microcontrollers. Remembering my own youth, I wanted to provide them with a kit that was simple to assemble [PDF] and use but still a fully fledged music synthesizer.The result was the US $30 ArduTouch. This project incorporates, on a single board, a touch keyboard, an ATMega328P (the same processor used in the Arduino Uno), and an audio amp with a speaker. It also has a software library that can serve as an entry point into the world of digital signal processing. Read the rest

If you knew what all the initial conditions were before you flipped a coin, you could predict with 100% accuracy whether it would land heads or tails. In this video the Action Lab Man conducts a number of interesting demonstrations to show the difference between chaos and randomness. In short, random events are unpredictable, and chaotic events seem random because we can't calculate them. Read the rest

Back in 2005, I posted about Jäh Division, a Brooklyn dub consortium that covers Joy Division songs. They produced a very limited edition 12" titled "Dub Will Tear Us Apart" that they mostly sold at their live shows. Now, Jäh Division returns with a new LP that combines that original record along with five unreleased tracks. "Dub Will Tear Us Apart​.​.​.​Again" comes out January 25 in digital and vinyl formats. Listen to a selection of the tracks:Dub Will Tear Us Apart...Again by Jäh DivisionFrom their Bandcamp page:A supergroup born of Brooklyn’s early 21st century DIY scene, Jäh Division’s sole 2004 12-inch Dub Will Tear Us Apart earned them an instant infamy for their psychedelic dub interpretations of Joy Division classics. Featuring members of Home and Oneida and recorded in the literal shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, Jäh Division grew from a joke between roommates Brad Truax and Barry London into a rolling improv collective that included members of Animal Collective and Oneida, among others. Expanded with 5 extra songs--3 from the original session, 2 from a scrapped album--Dub Will Tear Us Apart… Again is the sound of Manchester beamed into Brooklyn by way of the Black Ark, all linked by some intercosmic hook-up in the depths of Barry London's Space Echo tape loop. Recorded by the core Jäh Division quartet, the original release--part of Social Registry’s 12-inch series-- featured London on vintage keyboards, Truax on bass, Home’s Chris Millstein on drums, and Oneida’s Kid Millions on Barry’s collection of synth percussion, including trash-salvaged electronic drum pads, run through dubby delays and effects and a Farfisa reverb tank. Read the rest

In 1977, just a few months after Voyager 1 and 2 began their grand tour of the solar system, Carl Sagan gave the esteemed Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. You can watch them below via YouTube or at the Read the rest

In 1990, Pee-wee Herman recorded this delightful TV commercial for Japanese company Wako Securities. As we know, the following year, Pee-wee (aka Paul Reubens) was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult theater. From an Associated Press article at the time:″I know this may sound rude coming from a sponsor of his commercials, but he is not that famous in Japan, and the news doesn’t create as much of a fuss as in the United States,″ said Wako Securities Co. spokesman Yoshihei Nishimura.He said, however, that ″renewing the contract with him is unthinkable, given common sense″(via /r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Ganbreeder uses a machine learning technique called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to generate images that seem like photos, at least a first glance.GANs use a pair of networks, one of which produces data and the other classifies it; the "generator"'s goal is to get the "discriminator" to identify its data as belonging to a certain class (like a stop-sign, or a fingerprint), while the "discriminator"'s job is to successfully discriminate between real data and the synthetic data created by the generator.Ganbreeder uses a GAN to create creatures that appear to be objects of various types; you choose your favorite and the GAN produces a bunch of "children" for you to choose from, chasing down a rabbit-hole of weird, machine-learning found imagery. Fun!Ganbreeder(via Four Short Links) Read the rest

Stephen Hillenburg, who created the Nickelodeon megahit cartoon TV series “SpongeBob SquarePants,” died on Monday. He was 57.The cause of death was Amyotrophic Lateral Scleroris, or ALS, which Hillenburg said in March of 2017 he'd been diagnosed with.“We are incredibly saddened by the news that Steve Hillenburg has passed away following a battle with ALS,” Nickelodeon said in a statement. “He was a beloved friend and long-time creative partner to everyone at Nickelodeon, and our hearts go out to his entire family. Steve imbued ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ with a unique sense of humor and innocence that has brought joy to generations of kids and families everywhere. His utterly original characters and the world of Bikini Bottom will long stand as a reminder of the value of optimism, friendship and the limitless power of imagination.”From Variety:Hillenburg graduated from Humboldt State University in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resource Planning and Interpretation, with an emphasis on marine resources. He then became a marine biology teacher at the Orange County Marine Institute (now the Ocean Institute) in Dana Point, California. This interest, combined with his artistic talent and love of the sea and its creatures, led him to write and illustrate stories as teaching tools with characters that would later become the denizens of SpongeBob’s home, Bikini Bottom.He began his animation career in 1987, pursuing a degree in Experimental Animation at the California Institute of Arts in Valencia and earning his Master of Fine Arts in 1992. Read the rest

Kids eat the darndest things. Dead flies, half-sucked candy found on the ground, erasers... and one of the most popular items, besides coins, are small toy parts. But once swallowed, do these toys always find their way out? And if so, how long does the journey take? These burning questions inspired a team of pediatrics workers to conduct a study, which was just published in The Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health. They got six adventurous volunteers to dine on Lego heads, and then poke around after each potty run until they spotted the bright plastic pieces in their poop. Fun times.The researchers constructed the study with a sense of humor, using a Stool and Hardness Score (SHAT) and Found and Retrieved Time (FART) score. According to Forbes:Before they swallowed the Lego heads, each participant had to keep a 3‐day stool diary, which could be quite disconcerting if confused with a regular diary. The researchers developed a Stool Hardness and Transit (SHAT) score to measure the frequency and looseness of their stool. A higher SHAT score meant that the participant had more frequent and looser bowel movements, which could affect how fast the Lego head was you-know-what out of the person. Each patient has a pre-SHAT score, calculated for the 3-day period before the Lego head meal, and a SHAT score for the time between the ingestion and the pooping out of the Lego head. Thus, each participant was given 2 SHATs.After the Lego head was swallowed, the next step was to keep track of the subsequent bowel movements and keep looking for the Lego head. Read the rest

For framing innocent black men, a police chief in Florida will go to prison for three years. Impunity is the norm in America for cases like this, so the conviction is a big deal.Raimundo Atesiano, the former police chief of Biscayne Park, Florida, stands convicted of directing his officers to frame innocent men in a series of unsolved burglaries. He now admits he was trying to please white community leaders, and manipulate property crimes statistics in the town of 3,000 residents.From the Miami Herald:“When I took the job, I was not prepared,” Atesiano told a federal judge on Tuesday. “I made some very, very bad decisions.”His apologies did not sway U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore, who on Tuesday sentenced the 53-year-old former cop to three years in prison. He allowed Atesiano to remain free for two weeks before surrendering so he can care for his mother, who is dying of leukemia.In September, Atesiano pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge of depriving the three suspects of their civil rights because he and the officers charged them without a legal basis. Atesiano’s conspiracy conviction carried up to 10 years in prison.What about the three men who were falsely arrested in the criminal cops' conspiracy? Not much detail there, but hopefully they'll receive some form of restitution..mcclatchy-embed{position:relative;padding:40px 0 56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%}.mcclatchy-embed iframe{position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%} Read the rest

A crowdfunding campaign to cover security costs for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford raised $647,610 in two months, which far surpassed the initial goal of $150,000. The woman who stood up to Trump Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh says she will donate all the extra money to organizations that support survivors of trauma. But do go on about how she’s a gold-digging liar who fabricated the whole Kavanaugh thing for a payoff.In a statement posted on the fundraising site last week, Christine Blasey Ford says she's shutting down the GoFundMe that was launched in her name, and will donate the remaining money to trauma survivors.“With immense gratitude, I am closing this account to further contributions,” Ford wrote on the “Help Christine Blasey Ford” site that appeared last September. “All funds unused after completion of security expenditures will be donated to organizations that support trauma survivors. I am currently researching organizations where the funds can best be used. We will use this space to let you know when that process is complete.”I am grateful to have had the opportunity to fulfill my civic duty,” she wrote. “Having done so, I am in awe of the many women and men who have written me to share similar life experiences, and now have bravely shared their experience with friends and family, many for the first time. I send you my heartfelt love and support. I wish I could thank each and every one of you individually. Thank you.”She said that the funds raised onlin “allowed us to take reasonable steps to protect ourselves against frightening threats,” including paying for security services for herself and her family, and a home security system. Read the rest

The Supreme Court hearing on Pepper v Apple has not gone well for Apple; the Supremes are considering whether App Store customers are entitled to sue Apple over its monopoly control over the Ios App Store.The plaintiffs say that Apple's 30% commission and control over pricing (exerted through search ranking and other mechanisms) raise prices on apps, and that they should be entitled to sue Apple for the additional expense its customers bear due to this monopolistic control. The framing is important: since the Reagan era, US antitrust has been dominated by the "public harm" standard, which says that the only monopolies that matter are the ones that result in price increases for consumers -- all other forms of market domination are within bounds in this theory.Apple argues that whether or not the public is being harmed by elevated app pricing, the App Store customers don't have standing to sue. They cite a case called Illinois Brick, which concerned a brickworks cartel that conspired to raise prices on bricks that were sold to masons, who then passed the price-hikes on to consumers. In that case, the customers didn't have standing to sue the brick cartel, because they were buying their bricks through an intermediary.But App Store customers don't buy their apps from third parties (quite the contrary: Apple famously takes steps to prevent people from buying apps anywhere but its App Store), they buy them from Apple.It's always hard to say how the Supremes will rule, but based on the argument, it seems like Apple is likely to lose. Read the rest

David Hasselhoff makes a fairly accurate FunkoPop.At one of the many times American cars were regarded as nothing but awful, technologically backwards, fuel inefficient, rattle-y hunks of junk, the guys at Knight Industries introduced us to KITT; a crime fighting Trans Am with shitty mileage and too many plastic interior details. David Hasselhoff portrayed KITT's assistant, a washed up former cop turned corporate sponsored vigilante named Michael Knight. Now, the two are immortalized as a single FunkoPop!Usually Funko-ized folks look odd, vacant, and not like themselves... but something about the Hoff just works.Funko Pop Ride: Knight Rider - Michael Knight with Kit Collectible Figure via Amazon Read the rest

Our New Gilded Age is defined by its oligarchic concentration of wealth and power: not just how much wealth is controlled by the 0.001%, but how many of our key markets are dominated by just a handful of players -- sometimes just a single company.In a new, visual report, the Open Markets Institute presents an easy-to-understand snapshot of market concentration in more than 30 industries, with historic data showing how the concentration has increased over time. While digital markets are among the most concentrated, the report makes it clear that this isn't a "new economy" phenomenon -- otherwise, why would beer, a business that has its roots in ancient Egypt, be as concentrated as it is?America's Concentration Crisis [Open Markets Insititute] Read the rest

The same disinformation campaigns that epitomize the divisions in US society -- beliefs in voter fraud, vaccine conspiracies, and racist conspiracies about migrants, George Soros and Black Lives Matter, to name a few -- are a source of strength for autocracies like Russia, where the lack of a consensus on which groups and views are real and which are manufactured by the state strengthens the hand of Putin and his clutch of oligarchs.In a new Harvard Berkman Center paper, Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy, political scientist Henry Farrell (previously and security expert Bruce Schneier (previously) team up to explore this subject by using information security techniques, and come to a very plausible-seeming explanation and a set of policy recommendations to address the issue.Farrell and Schneier start by exploring the failures of both national security and information security paradigms to come to grips with the issue: Cold War-style national security is oriented around Cold War ideas like "offense–defense balance, conventional deterrence theory, and deterrence by denial," none of which are very useful for thinking about disinformation attacks; meanwhile, information security limits itself to thinking about "servers and individual networks" and not "the consequences of attacks for the broader fabric of democratic societies."Despite these limits, the authors say that there is a way to use the tools of information security to unpick these kinds of "information attacks" on democracies: treat "the entire polity as an information system with associated attack surfaces and threat models" -- that is, to think about the democracy itself as the thing to be defended, rather than networks or computers. Read the rest

A friend of mine (who wishes to remain anonymous) shares my interest in finding swipes of famous illustrators and comic book artists. Neither of us begrudge these artists for swiping (that's the comics industry term for using reference material perhaps a bit too faithfully). After all, these artists worked under brutal deadlines and sometimes they had to cut corners to meet them. "One of the great swipes," says my friend, "is Jack Kirby swiping a Hal Foster image and turning one panel that became an entire comics series and an integral part of the standing DC Extended Universe." That swipe is well-known. But my friend found a swipe by the Great Jim Steranko which was previously unspotted:"It appears that when Steranko painted the covers for the Shadow reprints, he swiped this cover from Spicy (Speed) Detective. The original artist was Hugh Joseph Ward and the periodical was Speed Detective June, 1945. "The image below is more the norm: Steranko being swiped himself. Here Williams' pinball machine "Blackout" swiped Steranko's famous Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D issue number 6 cover for its scoreboard art:" Read the rest

Spoiler: a mix of corporate vanity and to avoid recurring licensing fees, though Arun Venkatesan elaborates a complex trend.Sadly, much of the justification behind typefaces from some very admirable companies is quite shallow. I can’t help but feel that some of these companies wanted a custom typeface simply because that’s what everyone else is doing. This cargo cult mentality that is so prevalent in design is at best wasteful and at worst illegal. Read the rest

In the business world, it's hard to find a job where you don't need Excel expertise. And it can be tough to prove that expertise to employers without an extensive background in data entry. Enter the Microsoft Excel Diploma Master Class, an online program that not only teaches you the ropes but lets you take the reins.Tailored to any level of experience, this course builds a firm foundation by teaching one small, easily-processed concept at a time. Soon, you'll be moving from the simple task of entering data to complex calculations, automating time-saving macros and constructing your own workbooks and worksheets. Along the way, you'll log CPD (Continuing Professional Development) hours, resulting in a certification that will prove to employers you have the skills for any workplace.Kickstart your career with the Microsoft Excel Diploma Master Class, now available for $19 - down from the original MSRP of $395. Read the rest

He loathed interviews from the outset of his career. If you're a fan of Prince loathing interviews, be sure to watch the classic BBC one embedded below.(Previously, previously) Read the rest

This photo, taken by Allison Goz, was posted to Reddit by her boyfriend, Brent Rossen. They were curious about why the swamp was rainbow-colored. The BBC reports:The couple were walking at First Landing State Park, Virginia, US, when they saw the unusual natural phenomenon.Jeff Ripple, a former Florida swamp walk leader, told the BBC: "The rainbow sheens found as a thin film on top of pooled water in swamps and marshes are the result of natural oils released by decaying vegetation or the biological processes of anaerobic bacteria reducing iron in soil. Read the rest

President Trump at today's rally in Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis:“You’ll say I’m very conceited. Other than the blond hair when I was growing up they said I look like Elvis.”(CNN) Read the rest

Breaking News: Robert Mueller says former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort violated his plea deal by lying to investigators.Paul Manafort and Donald Trump thinking they're going to outmaneuver Robert Mueller: pic.twitter.com/HhSZjntb3c— Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke) November 27, 2018Federal investigators wrote in a court filing [which you can read here in PDF] that Manafort’s “crimes and lies” during a series of interviews with prosecutors working for FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller relieve them of all promises they made to Manafort in the plea agreement.Lying to the feds is never wise.Neither is associating with Donald Trump.From the New York Times:Defense lawyers disagreed. Mr. Manafort has been truthful with the special counsel’s office and has abided by the agreement, they argued in the same status report to Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Given the impasse between the two sides, Mr. Manafort asked that Judge Jackson set a sentencing date.The dramatic development in the 11th hour of Mr. Manafort’s case means, at a minimum, that prosecutors will not ask for a lighter punishment in return for his cooperation. They could also conceivably seek to refile bank fraud charges that they agreed to dismiss as part of the plea agreement.The prosecutors did not describe what Mr. Manafort lied about, promising to file a sentencing memo that sets forth “the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies.”A jury in Northern Virginia convicted Mr. Manafort, 69, of eight counts of financial fraud in August stemming from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine. Read the rest

Wow, two CGP Grey videos in one month? I'll take it! In his latest one, he talks about the United States' federally-owned land and the complexities of what that actually means.Previously: Who owns the Statue of Liberty? CGP Grey explains Read the rest

Fascism is a word we've been hearing a lot of over these past few years, but are the mouths it's falling out of using it correctly? Some times, yeah. Many times, not so much.This brief video delves into the history of the word "fascism" and explains that, while we're collectively barreling towards a particular flavor of this unsavory state of being, there's plenty of ways, with left and right-wing leanings, to be a fascist. Read the rest

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