YouTube personality Casey Neistat took a break from his paternity leave to open and test his new (not a) toy, the Boring Company's "Not a Flamethrower." As you may know, the Boring Company is an Elon Musk entity. Its $500 propane torch (the "flamethrower") is, as Neistat describes it, Musk's "$10 million dollar joke." He notes that it's simply a roofing torch encased in a plastic air gun shell topped with a bike water bottle holder (to hold the tank of propane), parts he says you can get on the internet separately for much less. Still, he thinks it's "hysterical" and gives it a whirl, melting the cover to his microphone. Previously: The Boring Company's Not a Flamethrower is a joke compared to actual flamethrowers, Build your own Boring Company flamethrower! Read the rest

Twitter today pulled down a disinfo bot network that was amplifying pro-Saudi talking points about disappeared journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who is presumed to have been tortured and killed on orders of the government of Saudi Arabia.NBC reports that Twitter became aware of the crisis Thursday, when an NBC News reporter presented the social media firm with “evidence of coordinated activity” in the form of “a spreadsheet of hundreds of accounts that tweeted and retweeted the same pro-Saudi government tweets at the same time.”You'd think by now Twitter would be ahead of such things, rather than reporters alerting them with the smoking gun. You'd be wrong.This is all pretty nuts to read. I noticed intense, seemingly coordinated pro-Saudi activity on Twitter starting Monday of this week, and I wasn't the only one talking about it and suspecting a state-sponsored campaign. Now we know more. Excerpt from the NBC News report by Ben Collins and Shoshana Wodinsky:The list was compiled by Josh Russell, an Indiana-based information technology professional who has previously identified foreign influence campaigns on Twitter and Reddit.A Twitter employee, who asked not to be identified because the employee was not authorized to speak publicly, said the company was aware of the influence operation and had already suspended even more pro-Saudi government accounts before they were caught by researchers. The employee said the accounts are being pulled down for violating rules about spam, and referred to it as a routine spam operation takedown.Twitter has moved to crack down on bot networks in recent months, claiming to have purged millions of fake accounts. Read the rest

Facebook is working very hard right now to prove it can be trusted to protect users from malicious fake news, political disinformation, and cyberattacks intended to throw the 2018 midterms. What Facebook is not doing: providing details. The social media giant invited reporters yesterday into what they're calling their “war room” (ugh), a new workspace at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters in which data scientists, threat investigators, and other experts from 20 Facebook teams are apparently very hard at work protecting America.Why so few specifics on what, if anything, they're doing to address the fact that their platform has been successfully weaponized against elections, again and again? Why so few details, and so much emphasis on the optics? Oh right. Because Facebook.From the Guardian's Sam Levin:The press briefing provided minimal new information about Facebook’s specific strategies and impacts when it comes to combating foreign interference and false news. The corporation has been eager to publicly demonstrate that it is taking abuses on its platforms seriously amid an avalanche of scandals. That includes a vast data breach, government inquiries across the globe, new ad fraud allegations, and the continuing stream of viral fake content and hate speech.The stakes are high as the US approaches critical midterm elections in November and the 2020 presidential race. WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging service, has also been linked to widespread false news stories that have led to violence and mob lynchings in India. The platform has further struggled to mitigate harms it is causing in Myanmar, where an explosion of social media hate speech has contributed to violence and genocide. Read the rest

The highly secretive Silicon Valley-based data company Palantir is reported to be considering an initial public offering.The firm was founded by Peter Thiel, and is known for ability to analyze extremely large data sets for intelligence agencies and governments worldwide. The U.S. government credits Palantir with help assassinating Osama bin Laden, and disrupting various terror organizations.A Palantir Technologies Inc. IPO could be one of the biggest we've seen this decade, reports Rob Copeland at the Wall Street Journal:Palantir is discussing with investment banks Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley plans to go public as soon as the second half of 2019, the people said. Some bankers have told the firm it could go public with a valuation of as much as $41 billion—depending in part on the timing—or twice what it was most recently valued by private investors, the people said.People familiar with the plans said they remain in flux, and that Palantir could ultimately decide to stay private or offer shares at a lower price to what is being discussed.The discussions come amid a gusher of technology giants charging toward newly volatile public markets. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that ride hailing firms Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. are eyeing public debuts. Uber received proposals to go public at a staggering $120 billion valuation, nearly double its value in a private fundraising round just two months ago.Other well-known startups considering IPOs in the months to come include workplace instant-messaging app Slack Technologies Inc. Read the rest

A report from The Web Foundation, which was founded by internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee, shows a stark decline in the worldwide growth of internet access. Around the world, an estimated 3.8 billion people don't have internet access, the report shows. The so-called 'digital divide' is still here, and it's worse than ever for people in isolated locations, poor people, and women. “In poor urban areas, men can outnumber women on the internet as much as two to one.” The internet revolution remains a distant dream for billions of people on Planet Earth in 2018. And most of all, for women.The Guardian got an exclusive look at the data before publication. From their report:The striking trend, described in an unpublished report shared with the Guardian, shows the rate at which the world is getting online has fallen sharply since 2015, with women and the rural poor substantially excluded from education, business and other opportunities the internet can provide.The slowdown is described in an analysis of UN data that will be published next month by the Web Foundation, an organisation set up by the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The data shows that growth in global internet access dropped from 19% in 2007 to less than 6% last year.“We underestimated the slowdown and the growth rate is now really worrying ,” said Dhanaraj Thakur, research director at the Web Foundation. “The problem with having some people online and others not is that you increase the existing inequalities. Read the rest

In a video released Wednesday, Banksy revealed the "Girl With Balloon" shredding stunt malfunctioned at Sotheby's, noting that it "worked every time" in rehearsals. Also revealed: the mechanisms inside the frame that supposedly shredded the art were more complicated than the originally shown X-acto blades. Its new owner, a woman in good standing with the auction house, paid £1.04m for the pre-shredded work and will keep it. The ribboned piece is now called, "Love Is in the Bin." Previously: Myth-busting the self-shredding Banksy painting Read the rest

Apple invited consumer technology reporters to an event scheduled for next Tuesday, October 30, at New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music, Howard Gilman Opera House. The late-October event will presumably feature something different from the September iPhone-centered event.Bottom line: New iPad Pro models are anticipated by reporters who follow Cupertino closely. Also expected: MacBook updates. Whatever they're doing starts at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. From Juli Clover at Macrumors:Apple sent out multiple different Apple logo designs on the invitations that it sent out to members of the media, all of which feature the tagline "There's more in the making." We're still awaiting multiple product refreshes before the end of 2018, including updates to several Mac models and the iPad Pro, which are likely to see a debut at the event. 2018 iPad Pro models are expected to adopt an iPhone X-style design with no Home button, slimmer bezels, and a TrueDepth camera system that will enable Face ID for biometric authentication. Read the rest

Just when you thought things couldn't get stupider, they do. Former Donald Trump senior campaign aide Jason Miller is suing Will Menaker, co-host of the politi-comedy podcast 'Chapo Trap House,' over a tweet in which Miller is described as a "rat face baby killer." Okay.They're going after a Gizmodo Media Group and Splinter News reporter, too. From Asawin Suebsaeng at The Daily Beast:Court documents reviewed by The Daily Beast show Miller and his legal team have added Menaker to a $100 million defamation lawsuit against Gizmodo Media Group and Splinter News reporter Katherine Krueger. (The documents can be viewed at the bottom of this article).The amended suit filed Thursday cites a tweet that Menaker, who is dating Krueger, posted earlier this week, blasting Miller. It read: “rat faced baby killer and Trump PR homunculus, Jason Miller, is suing my girlfriend for $100 million, cool!”Miller is seeking unspecified damages for what the suit calls “Menaker’s misconduct.” Menaker declined to comment and it was unclear if he has yet been served with the complaint.Miller, who worked for Trump during the campaign and the presidential transition, filed the original suit on Monday, alleging that Splinter, one of Gizmodo’s news websites, colluded with his ex-lover A.J. Delgado, another former Trump campaign adviser, to plant a false story that Miller dropped an abortion pill into the smoothie of a pregnant stripper.The Daily Beast reported earlier this week that Mr. Miller is represented in this matter by Ken Turkel and Shane Vogt, longtime members of Charles Harder's team. Read the rest

A woman in charge of a toddler, whose mother was in the hospital, was supposed to drop him off at his father's house. But when the father wasn't home, the woman – who is a friend of the mother's (hopefully not anymore) – instead drops him off on the porch of a stranger's house. The way she carries him by only one arm can't be comfortable for him. She knocks on the door and scrams, leaving the little guy standing there all alone.Fortunately, someone, who was trustworthy, was home. According to The Washington Post:A woman answered a knock at her door to find the small boy standing there alone and called 911, Spencer said. Sheriff’s deputies canvassed the neighborhood, knocking on every door nearby, including the father’s, officials told reporters, according to the Chronicle. The father was not at home at the time.The child’s father, Willie Simmons, spoke to reporters on Thursday.“If that was her child, she wouldn’t have left him,” he said, according to the Chronicle. “Just imagine if my nice neighbors weren’t there. My son would have wandered in the street and got hit."The toddler, who wasn't hurt, will be reunited with his family. Read the rest

David Firth's YouTube channel won its millionth subscriber this week, and our reward is a new short animation of Salad Fingers, his most splendid and notorious creation. Read the rest

John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, and John Bolton, his moustache, got into a "profanity-laced" shouting match so nasty that a resignation from one or the other was briefly anticipated, reports Jennifer Jacobs.The chief of staff, John Kelly, and the national security adviser, John Bolton, fought over immigration and border crossings, including the performance of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, one person familiar with the matter said.Bolton criticized Nielsen, a former Kelly deputy whom he advocated to replace him at the department. Trump sided with Bolton, the person said, which may once again stir speculation that Kelly will soon depart the White House. Read the rest

Mechas are cool. Mecha toys are even cooler. But mecha toys based on my own stories has been the coolest. When I was eight (making it the late 80s), I spent two years in South Korea. I remember how much I used to love going to toy stores and staring longingly at all the various mecha kits. Miniaturized robots fighting titanic battles over the fate of the world was a fun escape, especially with the Cold War still breathing its last gasps and the threat of North Korea ominously real, making every day life intense. My love of big robots continued throughout the years after I returned back to the States, growing with games like Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid and Zone of the Enders, while anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Patlabor, and Escaflowne fired me up even more. That passion influenced me professionally too as I spent my first big gig writing game manuals for LucasArts and building mechas in what was then a new 3D package called Maya on my own time to improve my art abilities. I obsessed over details, how the parts would actually move, and what type of complex rigging systems the robots would need to be animated.When it came time to writing my new book, Mecha Samurai Empire, I drew on those experiences and tried to craft a more realistic mecha book, integrating my knowledge of animation and visual effects. I made parallels between the huge teams that are required to bring a character to life and the crews driving the massive mechas. Read the rest

More than 40% of US federal judges have attended Manne seminars, a notionally "bipartisan" educational conference presented by a Florida "Law and Economics" institute whose invited ideological allies explained to judges why pollution is good for minorities (polluted neighborhoods are cheaper and therefore affordable by poor people), unions are bad, monopolies are economically efficient, discrimination in punishment is economically efficient, insider trading is economically efficient, and so on.The Manne seminars also included high-profile "liberal" economists as well, but they were asked to lecture in domains that were outside of their expertise. It was rare for rebuttals to the nutty Law and Econ ideas to be presented by economists who studied the subjects under discussion.Using Freedom of Information Act requests, a group of academics got a list of the judges who attended the Manne seminars, then used "cutting edge econometrics and natural language processing" to analyze the judges' rulings, to see whether the Manne seminars actually changed the tenor of justice in America.The short answer is that the Manne seminars were devastatingly effective: "we find that Manne attendees subsequently are more likely to rule against regulatory agencies, for example the EPA and NLRB. Next we look at criminal sentencing in the district courts. We find that Manne attendance is associated with harsher prison sentences imposed." The program has a recognized conservative bias, yet the attending judges are effusive in their praise regardless of ideological standpoint. What is the impact on observed judge decisions? …We focus on two agencies the Law and Economics movement specifically criticized: the National Labor Relations Board and the Environmental Protection Agency. Read the rest

A self-lubricating latex condom is being developed by scientists that becomes slippery when wet and can remain so for 1,000 thrusts. The researchers report that typical intercourse consists of 100 to 500 thrusts (huh). BBC:It is thanks to a special, durable coating that should last throughout intercourse, says the team, backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.They hope it will make condoms more appealing to use and thereby prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as well as unwanted pregnancies.Without enough lubrication, sex can be painful and condoms may split or slip.When used correctly, condoms are a highly effective contraceptive, but not everyone likes them.They are often already lubricated to make them easier to use, but sometimes this might not be enough for comfort.People can add lubricant, but this can be messy and may need several applications, interrupting sex.Researchers say the self-lubricating condom, which becomes really slippery once it comes into contact with body fluid, should get round this.Royal Society Open Science journal: Friction-lowering capabilities and human subject preferences for a hydrophilic surface coating on latex substrates: implications for increasing condom usage(DesignTaxi)image via Hey Paul Studios Read the rest

Video from Sacre-Coeur in Quebec (attributed to Jean Arthur) shows the forest floor lift and fall eerily as high winds blast the trees. Read the rest

I can imagine the first brainstorm: "What if the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey was actually a massive pack of cigarettes? And they found it at the bottom of the ocean?" Here's the actual back story according to Big Dog Media Productions:When health warnings first appeared on packets in 1971 and the rules for cigarette advertising rules were changed, tobacco companies were faced with the challenge of maintaining brand awareness and driving sales in a market made more aware of the risks than ever before.The change in rules, coupled with a fresh approach to advertising in general, gave birth to a unique genre of advertising that neatly ticked the boxes of the rule book yet created an art form. As with Surrealist art, these ads aimed to surprise and intrigue the viewer by replacing the objects people expected to see in a particular scene with something incongruous – in this case, a packet of cigarettes.Collett Dickenson Pearce was tasked with the advertising for Benson & Hedges in 1973....The story goes that Frank Lowe, Managing Director at CDP in 1977, had two finished campaigns to present. After much debate, he took both campaigns to CDP’s Creative Director, Colin Millward, and asked him his view.Colin said “…one will let you sleep at night, the other will make you famous.” (via r/ObscureMedia, thanks UPSO!) Read the rest

It's highly unusual for a police officer to be fired when they shoot an unarmed person, which happens on a regular basis. It's even more unusual for a cop to be fired just for the words he uses, but the officer who threatened a group of people last summer by saying he was "trigger happy" has just been canned. Shocking but true.The video above shows Stephen Barone, a former police officer from the Hartford Police Department in Connecticut, talking to a group of people who had been hanging out on a porch without any lights on. The officer didn't like the looks of things, and demanded their IDs. And he wanted to know what was on their persons. Even worse, he let them know he was the bully in charge by telling them that if anyone wanted to run, "I'm a little trigger happy, guys, I'm not gonna lie." He then brags about how he'll be “paid a ton of money in overtime if I have to shoot somebody, so don’t do anything stupid.”According to The Daily Dot:On Wednesday, the Hartford Police Department put out a statement that they had fired Barone after finishing an investigation into the incident in the video, as well as a traffic incident in July.“Our success as a police department depends on our relationship with the community we serve,” said Police Chief David Rosado. “This officer’s conduct does not reflect the values of our agency. I did not make this decision lightly. Read the rest

A half a century after Judy Blume's classic young adult novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was first published, it's going to be made into a film. Blume has consistently refused to allow her books to become movies. Fremon Craig who wrote and directed The Edge of Seventeen will adapt "Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret" for the screen and direct the movie with James L. Brooks producing. Apparently Blume hit it off with them during a trip to Hollywood in August. From Deadline:“It is this right of passage for women and girls,” Fremon Craig told Deadline. “It’s rare for me to run into a woman or girl who hasn’t read it and every time I’ve mentioned it to a woman, they clutch their heart and let out this joyful gasp. There’s something so timely and full of truth and I remember for me that at that age, it felt like a life raft at a time when you’re lost and searching and unsure. This book comes along and tells you you’re not alone. Women remember where they were when they read it. I can’t think of another book you can say that about...."“I got the greatest email from Judy where she said if someone were to make a film of one of her books, she hoped it would have the same tone and feeling that The Edge of Seventeen had,” Fremon Craig said. “It’s maybe the greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten, because she has always been a North star for me as a writer. Read the rest

Salt comes from the sea. The sea is full of plastic, which we put there. So now 90% of table salt contains plastic.Of 39 salt brands tested, 36 had microplastics in them, according to a new analysis by researchers in South Korea and Greenpeace East Asia. Using prior salt studies, this new effort is the first of its scale to look at the geographical spread of microplastics in table salt and their correlation to where plastic pollution is found in the environment.The brands aren't listed and the study is behind the academic wall, but apparently include inland-sourced rock salt. They use seawater to dissolve, extract and filter it, see. P.S. The Himalayan stuff is mostly inauthentic. Free plastic, though. Read the rest

Pete Warden (previously) writes persuasively that machine learning companies could make a ton of money by turning to data-compression: for example, ML systems could convert your speech to text, then back into speech using a high-fidelity facsimile of your voice at the other end, saving enormous amounts of bandwidth in between.Less exotically, ML is also used for "adaptive compression" algorithms that use ML-based judgments to decide how to compress different parts of a data-stream without compromising fidelity in ways that are perceptible by human observers.Warden points out that companies already spend a lot of money on compression: vendors that want to sell ML-based compression systems would be asking for customers to switch who they spend an existing budget with, a much easier sell than convincing companies to spend money in an altogether new category.One of the other reasons I think ML is such a good fit for compression is how many interesting results we’ve had recently with natural language. If you squint, you can see captioning as a way of radically compressing an image. One of the projects I’ve long wanted to create is a camera that runs captioning at one frame per second, and then writes each one out as a series of lines in a log file. That would create a very simplistic story of what the camera sees over time, I think of it as a narrative sensor.The reason I think of this as compression is that you can then apply a generative neural network to each caption to recreate images. Read the rest

Fireball is Werner Herzog's forthcoming documentary "about meteorites and comets and their influence on mythology and religion," according to Variety. He's once again collaborating with British geoscientist Clive Oppenheimer, his partner on the volcano documentary Into the Inferno. From Variety:The producers of “Into the Inferno,” Andre Singer and Lucki Stipetic, are both on board “Fireball.” Herzog and Oppenheimer will co-direct. They will once more go globe-trotting, this time to visit sites that yield insight into comets and meteorites and help them understand what they can tell us about the origins of life on Earth. Read the rest

The mercenary squads who carry out targeted assassinations in Yemen on behalf of the autocratic rulers of the UAE are composed of US veterans from elite units like the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, CIA "ground branch" and the special forces of the Maryland Army National Guard, working for the US-based mercenary company Spear Operations Group. Some of the mercenaries are reportedly still US military reservists, others have US top secret clearance.The owner of Spear cheerfully admits that he pays his employees to assassinate people on behalf of the UAE government and says that the USA should have its own mercenary assassination squads.The CIA said it had no information about the mercenary assassination program, and the Navy's Special Warfare Command declined to comment. A former CIA official who has worked in the UAE initially told BuzzFeed News there was no way that Americans would be allowed to participate in such a program. But after checking, he called back: “There were guys that were basically doing what you said.” He was astonished, he said, by what he learned: “What vetting procedures are there to make sure the guy you just smoked is really a bad guy?” The mercenaries, he said, were “almost like a murder squad.”Whether Spear’s mercenary operation violates US law is surprisingly unclear. On the one hand, US law makes it illegal to “conspire to kill, kidnap, maim” someone in another country. Companies that provide military services to foreign nations are supposed to be regulated by the State Department, which says it has never granted any company the authority to supply combat troops or mercenaries to another country. Read the rest

Mineralblu produced this nice video celebrating the creative talents of cosplayers at New York's Comic-Con this year.Images: mineralblu/YouTube Read the rest

Two bedroom apartments in Phnom Penh start at $260,000 -- equivalent to 2,000 years' worth of average annual wages for Cambodia's workers.But the bricks being used to construct housing in Cambodia's capital are made by people for whom apartments are even more out-of-reach than the average worker: these "blood bricks" are made by indentured slaves (including children), mostly small farmers who got into debt when climate change wrecked their crops and took on consolidation loans in exchange for years of "bonded labor" from brick companies.The lenders prefer to indenture workers with families: the families can be held as hostages when the borrowers leave their job sites for medical care or other necessities.Though Cambodia has a fast-growing economy, the fruits of that growth are mostly in the hands of a tiny elite, backed by an autocratic dictator who has mastered the use of Facebook to suppress his opposition by pushing out pro-elite propaganda and exploiting Facebook's "real names" policy to get pseudonymous opponents exiled from the service, and kidnapping and torturing opposition figures who use their real names.The scope of blood bricks slavery is documented in a new report from Royal Holloway researchers. Workers reported "respiratory illnesses driven by the inhalation of kiln fumes and brick dust without protective equipment, and limb amputation resulting from unsafe brick-moulding machinery".When bonded labourers need to seek medical treatment or for other reasons, they must leave without their families to ensure they return, said the report, which was backed by the British government and the Economic and Social Research Council. Read the rest

When wind blows over the snow of Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf, the surface vibrates and produces a beautiful and eery drone. Colorado State University researchers deployed seismometers to explore the subsurface of the ice shelf and were surprised to learn that their sensors recorded the natural song of the terrain. The frequencies are below the threshold of human hearing and are sped up for audibility in the video above. From the scientific paper:Ice shelves are the floating buttresses of large glaciers that extend over the oceans and play a key role in restraining inland glaciers as they flow to the sea. Deploying sensitiveseismographs across Earth’s largest ice shelf (the Ross Ice Shelf) for 2 years, we discovered that the shelfnearly continuously sings at frequencies of five or more cycles per second, excited by local and regionalwinds blowing across its snow dune-like topography. We find that the frequencies and other features ofthis singing change, both as storms alter the snow dunes and during a (January 2016) warming eventthat resulted in melting in the ice shelf’s near surface. These observations demonstrate that seismologicalmonitoring can be used to continually monitor the near-surface conditions of an ice shelf and other icybodies to depths of several meters.More at Colorado State University News. Read the rest

Boing Boing pal, Peter Bebergal, has a new book coming out later this month called Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural. In 2015's Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock n' Roll, Peter explored what he identified as the "occult imagination" and how it had provided critical inspiration to many ground-breaking rock artists of the 60s and 70s (and beyond). In Strange Frequencies, Peter takes a hands-on look at how technology has always gone hand-in-hand with explorations of the otherworldy. He experiments with building a spirit radio, EVP (electronic voice phenomena) recordings, a brain machine, and an automaton, and examines the legend of the Golem (arguably the "programmable robot" of Jewish mysticism), spirit photography, and the relationship between stage magic and magic of the supernatural. To give you a taste of some of what's in Strange Frequencies, Peter recently appeared on Ryan Peverly's Occulture podcast. Peverly says that Strange Frequencies is the coolest book you will read all year.And Haute Macabre has just published an interview with Peter conducted by the poet, Janaka Stucky. JS: I’m glad you brought up divination because that relates to something else that was revelatory to me throughout the book, namely: that the ‘technology’ in the “technological quest for the supernatural” of the title isn’t just cameras, or televisions, or other mechanical devices, but also that crystals or sigils and other more fundamental tools external to our bodies are a kind of technology we use. Read the rest

Writing in Scientific American (!), Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph E Stiglitz (previously) describes the US economy as an "inherited plutocracy" that's "rigged" to shift an ever-greater share of the national wealth to the very richest people: Stiglitz blames the rigging on Ronald Reagan's dismantling of antitrust enforcement, inheritance tax, and other progressive measures 40 years ago -- and says that the orthodox economic apologists for economists who attribute inequality to globalism or other factors are wrong and unsupported by evidence.Stiglitz describes how concentrating wealth in fewer hands means that it's easier for the wealthy in America to collaborate to get laws and regulations (anti-labor laws, free trade laws, limits to corporate liability, etc) passed that make them even richer, creating a "feedback loop" that drives ever-greater levels of inequality and with it, misery, desperation and sickness and death for the economic losers, who comprise an ever-larger group of the population.Stiglitz also dismisses the economists who claim that inequality is the price we pay for growth, showing that inequality reduces GDP and national wealth -- and showing that broadly shared prosperity is an engine of growth that makes the nation better off as a whole, at the expense of a few mansions and super-yachts for the super-rich.He finishes with a prescription for righting America's wrongs: campaign finance reforms; an end to the "revolving door" between government service and lobbying; progressive taxation; educational spending and universal access to university; a restoration of competition law; labor laws that increase unionization; limits on corporate executive compensation; strong finance laws; antidiscrimination laws that protect racial minorities, women and others; and "sensible inheritance laws;" universal retirement benefits; guaranteed "access to health care"; and reform of urban housing policies to "ensure affordable housing for all". Read the rest

I wanted to be able to control a light above our bed without having to get out of bed. The Philips Hue Wireless Dimming Kit (currently on sale for $30 on Amazon) was an easy way to do it. The kit comes with an LED bulb that connects wirelessly to the dimmer. The dimmer is mounted to the wall with adhesive tape, but you can remove it from its magnetic housing if you want to control your light from another part of the room. The remote is much easier to use than a smartphone app (and more secure, too, I imagine). I've learned that the remote can be used to control up to 10 light bulbs. Read the rest

The following is a sponsored post produced by WIRED Brand Lab for Hennessy.Joy Buolamwini is a poet.But she isn’t the kind of poet who fills journals with purple prose hoping to some day be published in an obscure literary magazine. Instead, the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League is a self-proclaimed “poet of code” who combines engineering with powerful language and compelling performance to ask urgent social questions of tomorrow’s technology.In July, Buolamwini was invited by Hennessy to be one of the bright minds visiting company headquarters in Cognac, France, as part of a celebration of the 200th Anniversary of Hennessy V.S.O.P Privilège. And this was a party with a purpose.Hennessy gathered masters in arts and design, science, technology, music and entertainment, business, aerospace, and the culinary arts for a series of conversations, workshops, and experiences to explore a single question: What is the future of mastery? How does poetry in code relate to the intuition, skill, and tradition flowing through Hennessy’s own distilleries?Part of the answer is in Buolamwini’s moniker, which juxtaposes the art of poetry with the applied science and research of code. This is also where Hennessy’s mastery lies, in the realm between unquantifiable yet perfect taste—and an expertise in using all technology has in order to offer to iterate and improve.Buolamwini uses poetry and science in a very distinctive and important way: “I use art alongside rigorous technical research to highlight overlooked ways AI can inadvertently propagate stereotypes of gender and race and other kinds of discrimination,” she says. Read the rest

Evangelical leader Pat Robertson told his followers that just because a journalist was tortured and murdered in a Saudi consulate doesn't mean the US should stop treating the country's leaders like beloved royalty. "We’ve got an arms deal that everybody wanted a piece of," he told his adoring television audience. Any action against the Saudi royal family would mean losing "$100 billion worth of arms sales." No doubt Jesus would have agreed with Robertson that it would be a profound sin to do anything to reduce the net worth of multi-billionaire arms dealers.Pat Robertson responds to reports that the Saudis murdered a journalist by telling everyone to calm down and focus on the important things, like the lucrative arms deal we have with them. pic.twitter.com/06b7s3R6Xe— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) October 15, 2018Image: YouTube Read the rest

Update: An earlier version of this article misidentified Dick's Towing of Everett as the Dick's Towing of Seattle involved this this story. I apologize to Dick's of Everett for the error.Seattle is in the grips of a dire housing emergency (though the city has money to burn when it comes to subsidizing multi-billion-dollar sports teams); Amanda Ogle is one of the many people in Seattle living out of a car, in her case, a 1991 Camry.Ogle's car was stolen, abandoned, and towed by Dick's Towing to an impound lot with a fee owing of $427 (which Ogle couldn't afford); Dick's Towing (sister company to Lincoln Towing, the City of Seattle's official towing partner) gave Ogle the wrong paperwork to give to the Seattle cops, creating a delays that sent Ogle to court, where she represented herself against Dick's. The court ordered her car returned, but Dick's had already sold off Ogle's car (which was also her home) for $150.Ogle got a lawyer who represents poor people, they sent Dick's a letter, and Dick's got her car back, but refused to return it to her unless she promised not to sue them for screwing her over. Then they started charging her $75/day ($2300/month, "enough to rent the 27-year-old car its own apartment with granite countertops in a downtown high-rise") to store the car because she refused.Finally, after the bill had hit $21,634, a judge ordered Dick's to pay $2,000 for every day that that her car was not returned to her. Read the rest

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation is a gnarly hairball of regulation; on the one hand, it makes it virtually impossible to collect mountains of data and buy/sell/trade/mine it to a corporation's heart's content; on the other hand, it imposes a ton of expensive compliance steps on its targets like high-cost record-keeping, and it apportions liability to website operators whose advertisers are out of compliance with the regulation.Here's what that means: obeying the GDPR is hard and expensive; if you use an ad service that screws up its GDPR systems, you can end up on the hook financially for very large damages.These twin factors -- expensive compliance and liability for publishers with out-of-compliance ad-brokers -- has enhanced Google's business at the expense of its smaller competitors. The massively profitable, dominant Google can easily afford best-of-breed compliance, while the little competitors (including the scrappy Made-in-Europe competitors to Google) don't have the same kind of resources. Some of these little guys just go out of business (or exit the EU market), and the remainder struggle to drum up business as publishers ask themselves whether they're willing to risk costly penalties if their little-guy ad-broker turns out to be out-of-compliance.But there's good news, too: the amount of tracking in the EU has fallen off a cliff!Making web publishers responsible for the behavior of their ad partners has radically reduced the number of companies a publisher can vet, and thus how many trackers will appear on any given page.It's an important and timely parable about the way that regulation works in a highly concentrated market. Read the rest

Ninjatrappeur built his own Raspberry Pi-based digital typewriter with an E-ink screen and a cheap keyboard. Total cost was about $180. He generously posted his build notes, and is seeking collaborators to help him improve on his prototype.Images: Ninjatrappeur Read the rest

Minister Louis Farrakhan tweeted a video clip of one of his recent speeches with the comment, “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite.” Twitter says it's letting the comment stand because its policy on dehumanizing tweets is not yet in effect. The proposed policy defines dehumanizing tweets as ones that inlude “language that treats others as less than human ... Examples can include comparing groups to animals and viruses (animalistic), or reducing groups to a tool for some other purpose (mechanistic).” From Buzzfeed:However, a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the rules have not yet taken effect, so Farrakhan’s language is not in violation of any extant policy. The spokesperson did not give a date for when the new rule would go into effect, or if it would at all. He did not address whether Farrakhan’s tweet would be in violation were the policy in effect.The company has in the past removed special verified status from users as a way of punishing them for offensive speech, as it did in July when it unverified Farrakhan after the minister tweeted, “Thoroughly and completely unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.”I'm not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite. pic.twitter.com/L5dPQcnVg4— MINISTER FARRAKHAN (@LouisFarrakhan) October 16, 2018 Read the rest

Disney is Anaheim's largest employer and the city is something of a company town, with Disney exerting massive influence on the city government and engaging in strong-arm tactics to suppress media reports of the dirtiest of its deals, whereby the city financed much of the company's building projects and expansions while extending massive tax breaks.The times are changing: a less-Disney-friendly Anaheim city government, coupled with a high profile campaign for a $15 wage, pushed the company to offer across-the-board raises to its hourly staff, whose stories of homelessness and precarity had become a national symbol of the way giant corporations had shifted the distribution of profits from workers to shareholders.The Anaheim City Council is up for re-election and Disney is -- unsurprisingly -- a massive spender in the race, accounting for 23% of the eye-popping $4.3 million spent so far in the small Southern California city.But Disney's power is being checked by the union that represents its workers, who have spent even more -- 34% of the campaign contributions.The juiciest target is Measure L, a living wage ballot proposition that will force local businesses to promise to pay a "living wage" as a condition of receiving municipal subsidies -- in other words, if you're going to take taxpayer money to subsidize your business, you can't pay your workers so little that they end up on tax-funded benefits just to survive.Disney and the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce bitterly oppose the measure. Most of the donations to support the living wage measure have come from unions, including the United Food and Commercial Workers and Unite Here, which represents employees of hotel, restaurants, airports and sports arenas. Read the rest

This Decorative Gourd Season, you can soothe your anxiety with a perpetual streaming video wallpaper in the form of a "Ghoul Log" (like a yule log, gettit?) from the good people at Shudder. Read the rest

Stephen Hawking's final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, was released posthumously Tuesday by his children. Now, when Hawking died earlier this year at the age of 76, he hadn't yet finished the book. So, the late physicist's family and academic colleagues dug into his vast personal archive to complete it.As the title indicates, the book answers the 10 questions Hawking was commonly asked:— Is there a God? ["There is no God. No one directs the universe."]— How did it all begin?— What is inside a black hole?— Can we predict the future?— Is time travel possible?— Will we survive on Earth?— Is there other intelligent life in the universe?— Should we colonise space?— Will artificial intelligence outsmart us?— How do we shape the future?Phys.org:Hawking says humans have no option but to leave Earth, risking being "annihilated" if they do not.He says computers will overtake humans in intelligence during the next 100 years, but "we will need to ensure that the computers have goals aligned with ours".Hawking says the human race had to improve its mental and physical qualities, but a genetically-modified race of superhumans, say with greater memory and disease resistance, would imperil the others.He says that by the time people realise what is happening with climate change, it may be too late.Hawking says the simplest explanation is that God does not exist and there is no reliable evidence for an afterlife, though people could live on through their influence and genes. Read the rest

A top burger chain promises that its new burger will "give you nightmares". It's putting out a 2-minute ad showing actors submitting to a sleep study after devouring a seasonally-themed sandwich, then reporting the night-time horrors that resulted.Here's the ad:"The burger in my dream transformed into the figure of a snake," one reports.Fox 8 News:A new ad shows participants hooked up to sleep monitoring machines after eating the burger. Per USA Today, the incidence of nightmares increased 3.5 times over the normal rate, apparently due to various proteins. “I remember hearing voices and people walking around talking,” one participant says, per People.Quite a risky campaign in the country where significant numbers of people think vaccines cause autism, that chemtrails are sterilizing us, that Jews have tails, etc. Read the rest

Loganair's flights between Westray and Papa Westray, two islands in the Orkneys off the British coast, are the world's shortest at only 1.7 miles. They're planning to go electric, either by replacing the current plane's engines or getting a new one.It takes about two minutes - including taxiing - to complete the 1.7 mile Westray / Papa Westray leg flight, which is about the same length as the runway at Edinburgh Airport.The record is 53 seconds. The short inter-island services are seen as an ideal possible route for electric planes as a limitation of the aircraft would be range. As well as Westray and Papa Westray, the inter island routes via Kirkwall on mainland Orkney also serve Sanday, Stronsay, Eday and North Ronaldsay.The flight spends as much time on the runway taking off and landing as it does in the air between the islands. Three airlines bid the last time the subsidized service came up for tender, according to the Orkney Islands Council News. Read the rest

Did you know that he once "smoked a jay" with Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, and Robert Altman on a mountaintop at a Cannes film festival after-party? Or that he was cast by Lee Majors himself to appear in The Fall Guy?In this uncensored video, Jack Black shares honest and often hilarious moments from his career in show business by looking at his own IMDB page. It's all great, but be sure to watch it at least to the part where he talks about Johnny Skidmarks. I was in stitches.(Digg) Read the rest

An internet engineer at Equifax who coded parts of a breach portal for the credit agency has been sentenced to 8 months of house arrest for insider trading. He was convicted of using insider information about the Equifax breach to make more than $75,000.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu, 44, of Cumming, Georgia, figured out on his own that the website he was building was for a massive security breach at Equifax, the very company he worked for. That site was 'equifaxsecurity2017.com,' where Equifax sent everyone to see if they were affected by that huge 2017 security breach, in which personal data for more than 145 million users was hacked.In addition to the eight months of home confinement, Mr. Bonthu is also responsible for restitution of funds, somewhere in the neighborhood of that $75,000 figure.From ZDNet:In August 2017, Equifax managers told Bonthu he had been recruited to work on an internal project named Project Sparta. Managers didn't provide Bonthu with details about the project, but they said the company was handling a security breach for a high priority client that was going public with news of a breach the next month, in September 2017.Bonthu was ordered to create the online interface through which that company's customers would be able to query a database and see if they were affected.The SEC said in an indictment that Bonthu realized on his own --based on test data and discussions on internal mailing lists-- that the secretive Project Sparta client was, in reality, his employer. Read the rest

No wonder he was smiling. The United States received $100 million from Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, which coincidentally, so weird!, was the same day Secty. of State Mike Pompeo landed in Riyadh to laugh and smile with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman about missing Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.The money arrived, but not the truth about Khashoggi.The Saudis provided no facts to Pompeo, who says he asked them for none. We now know from audio tapes published today that Khashoggi was tortured, dismembered, and beheaded inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, presumably at the Saudi government's orders. The Saudis have denied everything. We don't know what Trump's personal conflicts of interest are in this story, either. But what's a little journalist vivisection among amoral allies?From John Hudson at the Washington Post:The United States received a payment of $100 million from Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, the same day Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Riyadh to discuss the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a State Department official confirmed Wednesday amid global calls for answers in the case.Saudi Arabia publicly pledged the payment to support U.S. stabilization efforts in northeastern Syria in August, but questions persisted about when and if Saudi officials would come through with the money.The timing of the transfer, first reported by the New York Times, raised questions about a potential payoff as Riyadh seeks to manage the blowback over allegations that Saudi agents were responsible for Khashoggi's disappearance. The State Department denied any connection between the payment and Pompeo's discussions with Saudi officials about Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist. Read the rest

You look like you could use a baby elephant video.Above, an elephantastic video of two juvenile elephants staying cool and parasite-free in the delicious wet mud. [via] Read the rest

This man's reaction when a stranger points out he's wearing his motorcycle helmet BACKWARDS is endearing. His embarrassed grin is pure gold.The part when they both turn their heads in unison! So meme-worthy.Seems to have been taped on this IMGURian's Android phone somewhere in Dubai.something wrong [Source] Read the rest

Here, you look like you could use a ferret video.Theories for this adorable and mystifying behavior, a ferret that seems to be introducing her caretaker to her newborn ferret babies:• “She wants you to babysit so she can go out with her friends”• "Feast, my children! Feast upon the delicious handmeats I have provided!"• “Pay attention children, this is the hand that feeds you”[via] Read the rest

The "Civilian Interaction Training Program" is a project of the Texas Commission On Law Enforcement, aimed at teaching children how not to terrify heavily armed, easily-spooked Texas law enforcement officers, who, when triggered, are at risk of murdering children during traffic stops. Reviewing these training materials is mandatory for anyone hoping to receive a diploma from a Texas high school. The bill's author, Texas state senator Royce West, says the curriculum's purpose is to end "distrust for law enforcement." Read the rest

Perfect for all your Voodoo 3D needs. [Amazon] Read the rest

Panasonic's design studio Future Life Factory, with avant-garde Japanese designer Kunihiko Morinaga, have created Wear Space which are essentially glorified horse blinders for people who work in open-plan offices. They are designed to create "psychological personal space"WEAR SPACE is a wearable device designed to aid concentration by limiting your senses of sight and hearing, via noise-canceling technology and a partition that controls your field of view.As open offices and digital nomads are on the rise, workers are finding it ever more important to have personal space where they can focus. WEAR SPACE instantly creates this kind of personal space – it’s as simple as putting on an article of clothing. The device can be adjusted based on the level of concentration you desire, so it adapts to the various situations you’ll find yourself in...Wear Space is currently available to preorder through a Japanese crowdfunding campaign for ¥29,000 (approx. $259). Also, is everything derivative?(Dezeen) Read the rest

Greenpeace International just released this beautiful music video for "Hands off the Antarctic," a new track by Radiohead's Thom Yorke. Part of Greenpeace's Protect the Antarctic Ocean initiative, the footage is from their Arctic Sunrise research vessel."There are some places on this planet that are meant to stay raw and wild and not destroyed by humanity’s footprint,” Yorke said. “This track is about stopping the relentless march of those heavy footsteps. The Antarctic is a true wilderness and what happens there affects us all. That’s why we should protect it.”The environmental group premiered the video yesterday by projecting it onto London's Marble Arch. Read the rest