Boing Boing

Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced a bill called the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act, which allows the US government to manufacture generic versions of drugs "in cases in which no company is manufacturing a drug, when only one or two companies manufacture a drug and its price has spiked, when the drug is in shortage, or when a medicine listed as essential by the World Health Organization faces limited competition and high prices."Generic drugs once dominated Americans' filled prescriptions, but as the number of manufacturers for generics has dwindled, so has their available -- meanwhile, prices have surged, and while stories about Martin Shrkeli and epipen profiteers have generated headlines, they're just the tip of the iceberg. The high prices aren't just a product of an uncompetitive market; according to state antitrust suits, a cartel of 16 generic drug manufacturers conspired to fix prices on more than 300 drugs.Warren's bill requires the US government to pay a license fee the patents on drugs; then grant permission to manufacturers to use these licensed patents to make the generic versions at a "fair price."The bill also bans former drug lobbyists, and executives from pharma companies that had been punished for wrongdoing from serving as director of the new, proposed Office of Drug Manufacturing.One drug is listed specifically: Generic insulin treatments would have to be produced within the first year of the legislation’s passage. Prices for insulin have skyrocketed in recent years and shortages are common.“In market after market, competition is dying as a handful of giant companies spend millions to rig the rules,” Warren said in a statement. Read the rest

Boing Boing pal Douglas Rushkoff's new book, Team Human, is a fiery, inspiring, and ultimately optimistic call for us to fight against the divisive, commodifying agenda built into our technology, reassert what it really means to be human, and then, as Timothy Leary urged, "find the others." Above, watch Doug lay it all out in a TED Salon talk.From TED:Humans are no longer valued for our creativity, says media theorist Douglas Rushkoff -- in a world dominated by digital technology, we're now just valued for our data. In a passionate talk, Rushkoff urges us to stop using technology to optimize people for the market and start using it to build a future centered on our pre-digital values of connection, creativity and respect. Read the rest

This year's hot -- and controversial -- holiday toys are Hasbro's Yellies, a line of plush spider-like ("Spooders) creatures that move faster when you scream at them. The toys are creating quite a kerfuffle with parents who think the toys are a bad idea.The person who invented this toy is clearly not a parent. pic.twitter.com/DQGsrn58mI— Ellie Hall (@ellievhall) December 12, 2018Every parent's nightmare. #yellies pic.twitter.com/z0wNdM3fP0— littleterror (@mattterror) December 1, 2018One mother shared that her son was scared of the toy and that it actually fed off her kid's "screams of terror":...Being the mother of a naturally loud and boisterous kid, I thought it would be the perfect Christmas present... well I couldn’t wait for Christmas. So I crack it open tonight, and get a good look at it. I test it out. I’m amazed at how powerful the little motor is... how fast the little legs move... how its creepy little eyes glow a lovely shade of radioactive green. So I call Leo in. He looks at it, cocks his little head to the side. And then, obviously, I yelled at it. The spider ran for it. Leo starts screaming... the louder he screams, the faster the spider pursued him. He runs. And this is when we discovered the fun little feature in which the spider has a tendency to stop abruptly... pause for a couple seconds... spin in several erratic circles... and then turn towards wherever it senses sound... and take off in that direction. Read the rest

Instead of having grownups write a Christmas movie for kids, Stephen Colbert gathered a group of children to write their own Christmas movie concept. That part of the segment was funny enough but then he got some of his celebrity pals to star in the faux film's trailer -- Bryan Cranston, Laura Linney, Nick Kroll, Rachel Dratch, and John Oliver -- and that put it over the top. Watch the hilarious trailer for Santa Fight: Saving the Holiday from Atnas. Read the rest

Dotsies is a typeface that abandons the latin alphabet completely in favor of dots. Not pixelated letterforms, like a pixel font: seeemingly random agglomerations of noise. It looks like something designed to be seen by machines, like QR codes, but which would remain human-readable to those in the know. [via Jeff Atwood]How much better is it?It is significantly more horizontally condensed than normal fonts, letting about twice as much fall within the area of your field of vision that perceives fine detail. As to overall space efficiency in practice, the jury is still out. This sounds hardIt's easier than you think. There are only 26 letters. Numbers and punctuation aren't altered.The linked demo page is set up to let you accomodate yourself to dotsies by scrolling down the page. ZALGO!!Previously: Tzump_(Wikipedia article from the future) Read the rest

Improv Everywhere's latest mission? Place a giant red boombox at Pier 17 in Manhattan for passerby to discover and plug in. Real New Yorkers worked together to carry the 160-foot long cord across the pier to an oversized outlet. Once the boombox was plugged in, everyone was surprised by a massive holiday dance party with 100 acrobatic dancers, thousands of Christmas lights placed on two historic ships, and 10 hidden snow machines. Behind-the-scenes photos of the mission can be found at the Improv Everywhere site. Read the rest

We've all seen the videos of thieves shamelessly stealing packages off of people's porches. Now someone is fighting back. That someone is former NASA-JPL engineer/current science YouTube star Mark Rober and he ain't playing nice. He's spent six months crafting a beautifully over-engineered revenge package that looks like an Apple product. After the thief nabs it, it first gloriously sprays a pound of glitter when opened and then follows up by spurting out fart spray every 30 seconds. Oh yeah, it also has several phone cameras inside recording it, so we get to watch it all go down. He says it might be his "Magnum Opus" and I may have to agree. It's pretty crazy. "I've officially peaked. This was one of the most arduous builds in a long time just because there were so many single points of failure for the system (means LOTS of testing/tweaking). Thanks for watching and sharing with anyone you know who has had a package stolen."Now, if you don't have building skills like Mark (and who does?), you can do what I do. I put junk I no longer want in empty boxes, tape it back up and leave it on my porch. (It's not my idea, I saw some meme that's been going around.)Mark Rober previously on BB(MAKE) Read the rest

In 1974, the State of New York banned nunchuku, the Okinawan martial arts weapon popularized in the US by the classic Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon. On Friday, 44 years later, Brooklyn federal court judge Pamela Chen ruled that the ban is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The plaintiff in the case is a fellow named James Maloney who had been busted nearly 20 years ago for possessing nunchaku in this home. From the Associated Press:The ruling went over the history of the ban, and said it “arose out of a concern that, as a result of the rising popularity ‘of ‘Kung Fu’ movies and shows,′ ‘various circles of the state’s youth’ — including ‘muggers and street gangs’ — were ‘widely’ using nunchaku to cause ‘many serious injuries.’”..Maloney, a professor at the State University of New York’s Maritime College, said some of his motivation was outrage. “How could a state simply ban any and all possession of a weapon that had a long and proud history as a martial-arts weapon, with recreational, therapeutic and self-defense utility,” he said.Maloney also wanted to teach a form of martial art using nunchucks that he created, which he calls “Shafan Ha Lavan” to his sons, the ruling said. Read the rest

Keep fucking that chicken! Read the rest

In the Ozarks, a Missouri court ordered a poacher to watch the movie "Bambi" over and over again as part of his sentence for a criminal scheme to illegally kill hundreds of deer.From KansasCity.comDavid Berry Jr. was ordered to watch the Disney classic at least once a month during his year-long jail sentence in what conservation agents have called one of the largest deer poaching cases in state history, the Springfield News-Leader reports."The deer were trophy bucks taken illegally, mostly at night, for their heads, leaving the bodies of the deer to waste," said Don Trotter, the prosecuting attorney in Lawrence County.Berry, his father, two brothers and another man who helped them had their hunting, fishing and trapping privileges revoked temporarily or permanently. The men have paid a combined $51,000 in fines and court costs — but the judge ordered a special addition to Berry's sentence for illegally taking wildlife.Court records show he was ordered by Lawrence County Judge Robert George to "view the Walt Disney movie Bambi, with the first viewing being on or before December 23, 2018, and at least one such viewing each month thereafter" while at the county jail.Berry was also sentenced to 120 days in jail in nearby Barton County for a firearms probation violation.IMAGE: This undated photo provided by in Lawerence County Sheriff in Mt. Vernon, Mo., shows David Berry Jr. Berry was ordered to watch the Walt Disney movie at least once each month during his one-year jail sentence in what conservation agents are calling one of the largest deer poaching cases in state history. Read the rest

Unmute this one!“This is a Pantheon style Cathedral in Montefrio, Spain,” says IMGURian MayMyEnemiesLiveLong. “The design allows for a 6 second long reverb. As an audio engineer, this definitively blows my mind.” That reverb.... (Rejoice)The vocal artist is Malinda.Source: facebook.com/groups/AudioEngineeringSoc. Read the rest

In the video below, Actor Jason Momoa, his friends, and his children perform the ceremonial Haka at the premiere of the new Warner Bros. movie 'Aquaman.'Here's the full video. Crank up the sound!PHOTOS: 'Aquaman,' courtesy Warner Bros. Read the rest

After Donald Trump was sworn in as President, Russia's information warfare teams focused on a new target: special counsel Robert Mueller.Russia worked to help get Trump into the White House, and they've been working ever since to attack the biggest threat to Trump's power, which Mueller represents. More at the Washington Post:The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram — which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal — claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with “radical Islamic groups.”Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday.One of the reports, authored by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and network analysis firm Graphika, became public when The Washington Post obtained it and published its highlights Sunday. The other report was by social media research firm New Knowledge, Columbia University and Canfield Research.Together the reports describe the Russian campaign with sweep and detail not before available. Read the entire Washington Post story -- it's an important one. Read the rest

John Unger writes, "Using marble, stone and precious gems, I am creating a series of 14 mosaics that replicate 16th century anatomical engravings. Each mosaic is 7’ x 4’ and presents the figures at life size— viewers can stand before them and see anatomy as though looking in a mirror."I’ve invested over 41 thousand dollars and more than 4000 hours of labor to bring this project to the halfway point. The vast bulk of that expense was buying several tons of stone all at once to insure consistent color throughout the series.I’ve just launched a Kickstarter campaign to support the completion of the series. Rewards range from large ruby crystals for only $25 to life-size reproductions of the mosaics. I only need to raise $3110 to finish the next three, and if I top $7594.00, I can add the two illustrations that detail the human skeletal system.The stones and minerals I use in the mosaics occur in all the same colors as the interior of the human body—this similarity is completely fascinating to me, and was a major inspiration for the project.I select each piece of stone to closely match the color, shading and texture of the reference images—high-res scans from the U.S. Library of Medicine’s 1873 edition of Bartolomeo Eustachi’s Tabulae Anatomicae. I start with 12” x 12” stone floor tiles and cut them into strips as thin as 1mm on a wet saw. I then use tile nippers to cut the strips to size and a series of three different diamond lapidary machines to smooth and shape them. Read the rest

Arizona realtor Andy Gregg's Nest doorbell/camera started talking to him: the voice on the other end identified itself as a Canadian "white hat" security researcher who'd broken into his camera by using a password that Gregg had used on multiple services, including some that had been breached. The hacker warned him that he was vulnerable and told him to tighten up his security before a bad guy got into his doorbell. Read the rest

Pablo Ferro died last month at the age of 83. He created many memorable movie title sequences and trailers, including Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, Bullitt, Men in Black, The Thomas Crown Affair, and Stop Making Sense.(One title Ferro did not create, but I showed my kids last night, is the one for Soylent Green, a split-screen masterpiece created by Chuck Braverman.)[via Open Culture] Read the rest

Television's long cancelled Cougar Town was horribly named, but an absolutely brilliant sitcom. Bobby Cobb's Penny Can is a testament to its greatness.PENNY CAN!!!!!!!!!Bobby "Wrong balls" Cobb, nicknamed for wrongly hitting his competitor's ball during a pro golf tournament, was portrayed by Brian Van Holt. Bobby was a maker and loved inventing games. Domination Ball was not a hit, but Penny Can lives on.Penny Can remains awesome in its simplicity. Throw pennies into a coffee can. When you land a penny, everyone cries out "Penny Can!" It never gets old, I can't explain it!There were countless new and changing rules on the show, as well as a few variants. Truth or Penny Can and Ultimate Penny Can being favorites. In Moving Target Penny Can comedic genius Ian Gomez' character "Andy" would carry the can while the cast threw pennies at him.At one point I regretted not acquiring an official competition Bobby Cobb Penny Can Can, I believe they are now Lou Diamond Phillips, and less legit. No spinning or lights!!I have a Maxwell House can. I think Bobby would respect it. Read the rest

As a rule, the only Christmas music I can stand is Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Now though, I can punctuate those exceedingly joyful jazz tunes with my friend Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs doing his hauntingly beautiful take on "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." “I saw Meet Me In St. Louis as a child and this song just stayed with me forever,” Greg said. “It has a spectral quality that I always wanted to exaggerate.”photo by Sam Holden Read the rest

The Green European Journal has published a package on the proposed new European Copyright Directive: first, an outstanding interview with the rebel Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda (previously); and then a new science fiction story I've written to show what a future where our speech is governed by unaccountable black-box copyright censorbots might look like: "False Flag."Agata had always assumed that getting the footage would be the hard part. As it turned out, a covert North Sea drone insertion and exfiltration were the *easy* part.Agata and her cell spend months planning the North Sea op, working with a cold haste that balanced the possibility that they would be too late against the possibility that they would be detected and blown. But on the morning, skipping over the shop in the little Zodiac, captained by Oxana, looking all Pussy Riot in her balaclava, Agata knew it was going to work. She pulled out her Toughbook and sparked up the drones, each the size of a firefly, and sent them off to reccy the trawler, using both radar and cameras to capture the undersea nets and follow them for their full 25 kilometer span. It was incredible to behold, and terrible, a vast wickedness that would sterilize the sea as it was dragged behind the trawler, which was flying a Panamanian flag.The drones had just enough power to buzz the ship, getting its registry and flags and automatically zoomed-in shots of the sailors’ faces before the batteries died. Read the rest

In the early 20th century, Arthur Earland and Edward Heron-Allen volunteered at what's now called the Natural History Museum, London (NHM). The two men spent their time researching fossils of single-celled organisms with shells, called Foraminifera, cataloging the various species, and creating microscope slides of the specimens. But each year when Christmas came around, they transformed their unique interest and skill into a fantastically fun gift exchange. From Smithsonian:These Christmas-themed slides, which the two exchanged over their years of collaboration, had personalized greetings spelled out with microfossils (a term for fossils measuring under 1mm in size) that would be visible under a microscope. One from 1912 has Earland’s initials (“AE”), “XMAS,” and the year in an arrangement that measures about 1cm across.Several examples of their Christmas slides are now in the collections of NHM. The 1912 slide is a part of the museum’s touring exhibition Treasures of the Natural World alongside birds studied by Charles Darwin and an Iguanodon bone described by Richard Owen. More humble than these illustrious objects, the slide is still an incredible work of art and science, with each small fossilized shell carefully selected and delicately attached to the slide using a fine paint brush and Tragacanth gum... Read the rest

The employee uprising over Google's secret "Project Dragonfly -- a plan to release a censored, surveilling search engine for use in China -- has reportedly attained its goals: some of the engineers on the covert team Project Dragonfly team have been re-tasked to other projects, and the remainder have been denied access to the critical data-set that made the project possible.While the project sparked open dissent from thousands of googlers, and waves of resignations, the turning point seems to have been the project's decision to bypass Google's Privacy and Security team, which was described in detail by the departed security engineer Yonatan Zunger; and which led to the creation of a six-figure strike fund raised by Google Site Reliability Engineer Liz Fong-Jones.The decision to bypass the Security and Privacy team led to Project Dragonfly being denied access to data from 265.com, a large Chinese web-portal that Google bought in 2008; this data was being used as a "honeypot" to help the Dragonfly team tune the censorship systems in their product.This data was reportedly key to the creation of Project Dragonfly. Now, deprived of this data and with their headcount in decline, the project is -- according to internal Google sources -- dead.The internal dispute at Google over the 265.com data access is not the first time important information related to Dragonfly has been withheld from the company’s privacy team. The Intercept reported in November that privacy and security employees working on the project had been shut out of key meetings and felt that senior executives had sidelined them. Read the rest

D. Allan Drummond is a a professor of biochemistry, microbiology, and human genetics who has a penchant for trilobites, the marine arthropods that first appeared more than 500 million years ago and went extinct 245 million years ago for unknown reasons. Drummond creates 3D renderings of his trilobite fossils and then has them cast in bronze. Now, Drummond has added insects to his practice, modeling jumping spiders, praying mantises, and stag beetles. Seattle's reborn Roq La Rue Gallery is presenting Drummond's first show of his work until January 6: D. Allan Drummond: "Curiosity" Read the rest

A man, woman, and what sounds like a kid are sitting in a car, parked along the side of the road in Windham, Maine, while the man films a high speed chase. Suddenly the speeding car swerves out of control, crosses the lane into oncoming traffic, and slams into them. Crazy! The people in the car were rushed to the hospital, with "serious but non life-threatening injuries," according to WMTW News. A truck was also hit, but the driver was not injured. Video: Tyler Bisson Read the rest

Over the weekend, firefighters in Conroe, Texas responded to a house fire caused by Christmas tree lights. When they arrived, they were faced with more than 100 snakes and numerous lizards. From CNN:The reptiles -- which, according to CNN affiliate KTRK included several five- to six-foot-long pythons and boa constrictors -- were in glass cases but still needed to be carried outside the house. With the help of the home's owners, fire crews ferried the snakes to safety..."The homeowner wasn't willing to give a lot of information on why they had so many snakes. In fact, they told us the snakes don't like people in uniform," Flannelly added. "But as firefighters, we will do anything to help anybody."Several reptiles died in the fire but the ones that were rescued were transferred to a local facility and are expected to be okay, KTRK reported. Read the rest

The host of Honest Guide conducted a sting operation against crooked convenience store employees who double the price of items, like food and water, for tourists. He recommends steering clear of stores that don't have price tags on the products. Read the rest

Google's Sidewalk Labs convinced Toronto to let it build an all-surveilling "smart city" on a small patch of lakefront and then promptly shenaniganized things, breaking all its privacy and transparency promises and prompting a mass exodus of its advisory board members and other watchdogs. But the shenanigans just keep coming: newly discovered documents reveal that the privatization and private surveillance of Toronto will extend far beyond the original site, capturing most of the waterfront, including Exhibition Place, Ontario Place, Fort York, Harbourfront, Rogers Centre, the CN Tower, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and Union Station.The whole process remains shrouded in mystery, and it seems unlikely that the terrible provincial government will have the competence or moral force to do anything to check it.And on December 5, the Auditor General of Ontario issued a report on the project, stating it is being rushed forward without sufficient public disclosure. Auditor Bonnie Lysyk said Waterfront Toronto’s “new agreement with Sidewalk Labs raises concerns in areas such as consumer protection, data collection, security, privacy, governance, anti-trust and ownership of intellectual privacy.”The province responded to the report by saying it will work with the municipal and federal governments to determine whether any new legislation, bylaws or policies are needed to protect the public interest before the deal is finalized.The auditor’s report also noted: “We found internal Waterfront Toronto emails indicating that the (Waterfront Toronto) board felt it was being “urged – strongly --” by the federal and provincial governments to approve and authorize the framework agreement with Sidewalk Labs as soon as possible.”Plan to re-imagine Toronto’s waterfront: How much does public know about it? Read the rest

Kiwibots are autonomous transport robots that quickly deliver food, usually to hungry college students. But over the weekend, students at UC Berkeley found one of these robots rolling along in flames. Via The Verge:Kiwi, the startup that makes and manages the one hundred-strong fleet of robots, issued a statement to say that the fire was quickly extinguished by a passerby before the city’s fire department arrived and doused the machine in foam. No one was harmed as a result of the incident. Kiwi suspended its service until it was able to complete its investigation. It said that it believed the fire was caused by human error, when a faulty battery was manually inserted into the robot, eventually causing thermal runaway — the same issue that resulted in the recall of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 phones. Kiwi says that a new piece of software will “rigorously monitor the state of each battery” to prevent anything like this from happening again.Fortunately, the bot was not delivering at the time and no students went hungry. The students did mourn the little guy, however, with a candlelight vigil, as seen below.so a delivery robot caught fire on berkeley's campus and students set up a candlelight vigil for it pic.twitter.com/alen7vF7Ho— James Wenzel 🦊 (@ratherbright) December 15, 2018English textile worker destroying mechanized loom, c. 1820. (colorized) pic.twitter.com/HtxQgtUNHB— 🤔 (@brlohn) December 14, 2018 Read the rest

A roundup from Lithub of the best cover art on books from this year, with commentary. There's a strong trend toward in-camera or handmade graphics and natural media, with computers only showing up to do things that you don't need computers to do. I think this is a good thing, but it inspires me to pick out Joan Wong's art for Sam Munson's Dog Symphony, which is perfectly, surreally computerized. Read the rest

The Alien Chestburster Christmas Ornament is just the thing to finish your nerdmas tree; it's from Pittsburgh's Creature Replicas, who will also sell you a life-size 'burster, a fossil Tremors graboid, or some damned fine Aliens magnets.(via Creepbay) Read the rest

More outstanding paleocomputing Christmas cheer from Paleotronics (previously): a trove of 55 Christmas covers of classic computer magazines, include lamented bygones like Creative Computing. Read the rest

Wired Magazine has just published a package of eight sf writers visions of "The Future of Work," including some of our favorite authors like Laurie Penny (previously), Charlie Jane Anders (previously), (previously), Ken Liu (previously) and others -- eight in all.I've just read half of them and they're uniformly brilliant -- great short-short stories that pack a lot of emotional punch with their technofuturistic speculation.But charts and white papers only capture so much. Facts need feelings, and for that we turn to science fiction. Its authors are our most humane, necessary futurists, imagining not just what the future holds but how it might look, feel, even smell. In the following pages are stories from eight sci-fi specialists. Some are set in the near term; others, a bit farther out. All remind us that, no matter the inevitable upheavals, we don’t struggle alone—but with and for other people. And robots. —The Editors8 Sci-Fi Writers Imagine the Bold and New Future of Work [Wired] Read the rest

Saeb Erekat is a Palestinian negotiator. The Palestinians and Jared Kushner, Trump son-in-law and ostensibly the man charged with attaining middle-east peace, have apparently not been talking much lately. Erekat explains why: “This White House needs giant statesmen, not real estate agents."I told him ‘look: if you do this [move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem], you will have disqualified yourself from any role in the peace process.’He replied: ‘Don’t threaten me.’I said ‘read my lips: you will have disqualified yourself from any role in the peace process.’He said ‘you don’t know the changes that are happening around you in the Arab world.’I told him, ‘the best thing for me is to be a student — so teach me.’‘DON’T BE SARCASTIC,’ he shouted.I said ‘I’m not being sarcastic. What do you mean by changes? Do you think Arab countries will open embassies in Tel Aviv and accept Jerusalem, with the Al-Aqsa mosque, as Israel’s capital? Read the rest

Bahnhof is the Swedish free-speech-oriented ISP that was finally forced to block access to Sci-Hub (a site providing principled access to paywalled scientific literature) retaliated against science publishing giant Elsevier and the Swedish Patent and Market Court by blocking access to their sites for Bahnhof customers, redirecting requests to a page explaining why the block was in place.Now, the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) has announced that it will investigate Bahnhof for violating Net Neutrality rules, which require that ISPs do not interfere to block users from accessing sites they want to visit (the rules carve out an exemption for blocks like the one Elsevier secured through the Patent and Market Court).“Bahnhof gets a legal threat to block sites out there somewhere on this huge computer network called the Internet. We block the sites because in reality there is no legal chance to win cases against the copyright mob, since the judge and court are corrupt, and it also comes with a package of astronomic fines,” he explains.Karlung says that the PTS appears most interested in the ‘counter-blocking’ of Elsevier, which he characterizes as a “fine opportunity” to tell people about the dangers of site-blocking which targets “the soul and core” of the Internet.“[Blocking] also jeopardizes the principle for ISP’s to be able to operate services. The ISP can never be responsible for content, or what people are doing somewhere out there on the Internet.”ISP Faces ‘Net Neutrality’ Investigation For Pirate Site Blocking Retaliation [Andy/Torrentfreak] Read the rest

Last week, Viktor Orban's authoritarian government rammed through a pair of massively unpopular laws: the "slave labor" law (employers can require up to 400 hours/year of overtime, and take up to three years to pay for it); and a law creating a parallel system of "administrative courts" dealing with "government issues" like voter fraud, overseen by political appointees from within Orban's regime.The protests that thronged the streets have not abated: thousands have continued to march, braving brutal police crackdowns, including kettling, gassing, and beatings. Recent protests focused on the state TV broadcaster.Opposition MPs were violently dragged from the state TV headquarters after they attempted to read a petition against the slave labor law over the air.Orban is part of the global wave of corrupt strong-man autocrats who have swept to power -- see also Trump, Erdogan (Turkey), Duterte (Philippines), Bolsonaro (Brazil), etc -- by targeting economically insecure victims of neoliberalism with racist messages and conspiracy theories about George Soros. Clashes with police began when protesters arrived at the headquarters of state-run television station MTVA and tried to storm the building, CNN affiliate ATV Hungary reports.Video and images show officers in riot gear firing tear gas into the crowd during the confrontation. Live-streamed video posted by ATV Hungary showed reporters trapped in a crowd of protesters unable to move, as well as people crouched on the ground temporarily blinded by the tear gas.'Slave law' protests turn violent in Budapest [Sheena McKenzie and Mallory Gafas/CNN]Hungarian MPs removed from offices of state-run TV station.Read more: https://t.co/4l0BbV8rS9 pic.twitter.com/2ii0Il10b3— euronews (@euronews) December 17, 2018 Read the rest

Scottish Limited Partnerships are notorious financial secrecy tools that have been used to launder an estimated $100 billion on behalf of ex-Soviet gangster-oligarchs.An explosive set of court rulings, regulatory warnings, official warnings from other nations (America, Canada, France, Belgium, Italy, Israel and Cyprus), a Council of Europe investigation and a UN blacklisting finally led the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy to open an investigation, helmed by the now-disgraced, former Business Minister Andrew Griffiths, who, from the start, signaled that he did not take the allegations seriously.Nearly a year later, the department has published its proposed reforms, which will do virtually nothing to kerb money-laundering through SLPs.As Richard Smith explains, the investigation consisted entirely of responses to a "call for evidence," but did not take into account the vast amount of official documentation of money-laundering already in the record. The call for evidence drew 29 responses from people "the vast majority of which said that they could not offer evidence which definitively links LPs, in particular in their Scottish form, to criminal activity" (or, as Smith puts it, "the views of twenty-odd unnamed respondents, all of whom say they know absolutely nothing about the question they are answering"). Smith has rounded up a set of links to the voluminous reporting on SLP money-laundering, none of which were considered by the Department in preparing its report. Unless you are familiar with UK-Governmental evidence-gathering processes, you may find BEIS’s evidence-filtering strategy to be surprisingly aggressive. It would certainly have been helpful of BEIS to describe exactly what it meant by ‘evidence’, before soliciting it, and then ignoring the evidence that it did get, but that’s not how BEIS rolls. Read the rest

To quote Kashana Cauney, in the future everyone will be canceled for 15 minutes.Jared "Threatin" Eames is a mediocre singer-songwriter who booked a European tour by buying a fake following on social media, establishing fake promoters and labels, and hiring some cool kids to be his backing band. He fooled a bunch of places in the UK and Ireland into letting him rent their venues, but didn't count for the fact that they all talk to each other and have their own significant online platforms. It all unraveled spectacularly and horribly on the internet after Threatin played to a couple of empty halls, but now the media wants, for its own reasons, to help the faker make it. Cue extensive, fascinating profiles from the BBC and Rolling Stone.In my conversation with the couple, they quickly admitted the hoax. ... he had something he was eager to show me - a series of emails that he said he sent out under yet another alias, a Gmail account belonging to “E. Evieknowsit”.“URGENT: News tip,” the subject line read.“The musician going by the name Threatin is a total fake. He faked a record label, booking agent, facebook likes, and an online fanbase to book a European tour. ZERO people are coming to the shows and it is clear that his entire operation is fake,” he wrote, including links to all his phoney websites.“Please don’t let this man fake his way to fame... Please Expose him.” ...“I manufactured my own destruction,” he said proudly. Read the rest

People in Soho, Piccadilly Circus, and Leicester Square are being told by the London Metropolitan Police to submit to a trial of the force's notoriously inaccurate, racially biased facial recognition system, which clocks in an impressive error-rate of 98% (the system has been decried by Professor Paul Wiles, the British biometrics commissioner, as an unregulated mess).The cops are handing out notices telling people they can opt out without being treated as suspicious.UK industry already operates an unregulated, unaccountable facial recognition system tied to a blacklist of alleged undesirables. The pressure group Big Brother Watch is suing to end the practice, and crowfunding the suit -- they could use your donations.These real-time facial recognition cameras are biometric checkpoints, identifying members of the public without their knowledge. Police have begun feeding secret watchlists to the cameras, containing not only criminals but suspects, protesters, football fans and innocent people with mental health problems. Big Brother Watch has joined with Baroness Jenny Jones to demand an end to the police's use of real-time facial recognition cameras. Baroness Jones, a member of the House of Lords, fears that she could end up on a facial recognition watchlist when conducting her parliamentary and political duties. A photo of her was held on the Met's "domestic extremism" database and her political activities were monitored while she sat on an official committee scrutinising the Met and stood to be London's mayor.However, facial recognition cameras mean that even if you're not on a police database now, you could be soon. Read the rest

Saturday night was the tenth annual Mid-Century Supper Club's holiday potluck and, as is customary, photos from it have been flooding my feeds since it ended. Once again, there were lots of great creations (and costumes, whoa boy) but I was particularly gobsmacked by this gingerbread (and candy clay) house fashioned after the circa 1974 Fisher-Price A-Frame dollhouse. Its creators are pals of mine here in Alameda, Jo Anne Yada (aka art teacher Ms. Y) and Michael Fleming (aka illustrator Tweedlebop). Jo Anne shared on Facebook that they picked up an actual vintage Fisher-Price A-Frame toy this past summer at a yard sale and that's when inspiration struck, "We knew even waaay back then that we would be recreating it in gingerbread..."They estimate the edible A-Frame took over 20 hours to complete. Michael focused on the house itself (he jokingly shared, "There was a learning curve.") and Jo Anne worked on the Little People.The People were made of fondant, with the faces drawn with cake decorating marker; half a toothpick holds the heads on securely. We really wanted to diversify the People in our scene, so we made a rainbow of skin colors to include more people in addition to the classic yellow-and-red haired ones. And of course, we had to include the dog!For their efforts, they won the potluck's People's Choice award. And, they're already starting to think about what they'll create next year. Can't wait!images via Michael Fleming and Jo Anne Yada, used with permission Read the rest

This weekend's viral load was significantly boosted by the appearance of Trump senior advisor Steven Miller on a current affairs show. No-one knows what he said because: What's that on his normally-bald head? For those who have difficulty seeing what's wrong there, I have helpfully removed all the other horrible, weirdly distracting elements of his face: Finasteride and hair transplants, gentlemen. All else is lies, and the only lie that works is a very high-end "hair system". Read the rest

"Aw yeah it's time for cookies," writes AI ringmaster Janelle Shane (previously at BB).One neural network I use, called textgenrnn, tries its best to imitate any kind of text you give it. I’ve given them paint colors, band names, and even guinea pig names and in each case their results are somewhat… mixed. (Paint colors called Stanky Bean, Stargoon, and Turdly, for example) The problem is that it doesn’t know what any of these words mean - it’s just picking letter combinations that seem likely to it.This is what happened when I gave it all the cookies from a list of American recipes. This is what human cookies sound like to a neural network.Previously, previously. Read the rest

Previously: A bicycle snob takes on an e-bike; The great e-bike experiment: the data)We're moving along now, and are so close to wrapping this whole thing up. Last time, we saw that an e-bike could be an equalizer if you commute in a lot of traffic, or up and down a lot of hills, but less so if you don't. Our final part will explore all of those other things that could factor in to your potential e-bike decision.The IntangiblesA crazy thing happened over the course of my experiment. I started riding the e-bike. A lot. It became really easy to make the call in the morning to hop on it instead of into my car. I still felt a bit of guilt over not riding a "real" bike, but I tried to round things off by pedalling my meat powered version at least once a week. Or, once every two weeks. Or so. As hinted at above, a lot of things started to add up to the e-bike being a really awesome way to travel around a city.Load it upThe first nice thing is that you can load as much weight onto these things as you want and it doesn't really matter. Commuting on a regular bike is an exercise in advanced logistics, where everything is pared down to a minimum and then stuffed into a tiny bag. With the e-bike, it's like heading out on a two-week family vacation with children, and you start bringing things along that you might think about using maybe. Read the rest

Peter Sobot, an engineer at Spotify, noticed something unsettling about his Brother label maker. Though apparently high-tech, under the laptop-style case they still use old-timey printing ribbons that retain an image of everything they ever spit out. Don't discard: destroy!Thermal label makers solve this problem, but don't offer quite so attractive a result. So I use an old-timey Dymo embosser [Amazon] , with the type wheel and rigid tape: the letterpress of labelmakers. Read the rest

This clock (supposedly made for kids) cracks me up. To tell what time it is, you have to do some simple math. Here's its story:The Albert Clock is named after Albert Einstein and inspired by an apocryphal anecdote: that Einstein was bad at math. Designer Alex Schindlbeck, who conceived this clock for a small Paris-based company, set out to turn classroom boredom into mental calculation skills. He gave the standard alphanumeric segment font a makeover, with improved readibility of numbers and mathematical symbols. This engaging educational tool caters to children's natural play instincts, and the satifsying delight of problem-solving.The Albert Clock is only available at the MoMA Design Store (for $340!). (bookofjoe) Read the rest

Almost immediately after buying my first iPhone in 2009, I became hooked on jailbreaking. Despite the fact that my iPhone 3GS met all of my mobile computing needs, I couldn't resist the temptation to tweak my user experience: tethering my computer on the go, messing with the color and style of my onscreen keyboard--you name it. If it was available for download via Cydia app, I gave it a spin. Some apps and hacks were worth paying for. Many weren't. I never dabbled in pirated apps, but I could have! That's what was so wonderful about Cydia: it offered the possibility of wandering off the path of what was normally a walled garden. Sadly, after years of service to the homebrew and jailbreaking community, Cydia is shuttering its store.From Engadget:Service creator Jay Freeman (aka Saurik) has shut down the Cydia Store citing a combination of costs and security issues. It "loses [him] money" and, when there were multiple staffers, cost him a significant chunk of his "sanity." And while Freeman had already planned to close the store by the end of 2018, he bumped it up a week after learning of a security hole that let let someone buy apps through your account if you were logged in and browsing untrusted app repositories.The good news is that you’ll still be able to gain access to apps previously purchased in the Cydia store – at least for the time being. As sad as it is to see Cydia winding down, this isn’t the end of the road for jailbreaking. Read the rest

I've used the same fountain pen and Fisher Space Pen for years: I used to constantly lose disposable pens, costing me scads of money every year. The two refillable pens I own now cost enough that I'm always a little paranoid about their whereabouts, so I've yet to lose them. Filling the fountain pen costs pennies. To snag a refill for my Space Pen up in Canada, I can expect to spend around eight bucks, plus shipping. That's 12 different kinds of BS.Earlier today, I ran across this video. After watching it, I picked up the Zebra refills at Office Depot. It worked! With my ink budget sorted out, I can spend more money on fancy paper. Read the rest

I dig Moment's high quality smartphone camera lenses for the convenience that they offer. I don't always have my Sony RX100 III on me. It often isn't even charged and ready to use. But where ever I roam, I typically have my smartphone with me: thanks to Moment's lenses, I'm able to up my iPhone's photographic game to almost reach the heights that my pocket-sized Sony shooter affords. What's more, the money I've spent on their glass feels like a good investment. Should I ever pull together enough scratch to upgrade to a new iPhone, all I'll have to do in order to use the lenses I own is buy a new case for it. Currently, Moment makes cases for Apple, Samsung, and Google hardware and, as of earlier this week, OnePlus.The one Moment lens that I used more than any other was their 60mm tele lens. It provided 2x optical zoom over what my old iPhone SE could manage on its own. My dual lens iPhone 7 Plus? Same thing, only better: when paired with the iPhone's native optical zoom, you wound up with 4x optical magnification. A couple of years ago, it allowed me to shoot this:Not bad! But here's the thing: when you use the 60mm with a dual lens camera phone, like the iPhone X, which typically has a wider field of view, the images captured aren't as crisp at the edges as they are in the center. With the photo above, I was able to crop and correct for some of this in Lightroom, but it's a pain in the ass. Read the rest

Here's my reading (MP3) of my Locus column, "What is the Internet For?" (which asks, "Is the internet a revolutionary technology?") and my short story for the fiftieth anniversary of Reason Magazine, Sole and Despotic Dominion, which builds on my 2015 Guardian column, If Dishwashers Were iPhones.MP3 Read the rest

The first time I encountered Matteo Pizzolo, Amancay Nahuelpan and Tyler Boss's comic Calexit, I was skeptical: California separating from the USA is an incredibly stupid idea, predicated on innumerable misconceptions (including the idea that the state that gave us Nixon, Reagan, and Schwarzenegger is uniformly progressive, and also the idea that "the world's sixth largest economy" wouldn't radically contract the instant it lost access to the rest of the country, including the Atlantic Ocean). But when I found the first Calexit collection on the recommended table at the 100% reliable LA comic shop Secret Headquarters, I decided to give it a chance.Wow.First things first: this is not a wish-fulfillment fantasy about an ascendant California living in splendid isolation from the thick-fingered vulgarians of America. It is a story about an incredibly messy, violent "separation" sparked by all-too-plausible anti-immigrant policies enacted by a far-right demagogue President's Attorney General, in which California has splintered into many shifting and confusing pieces. It's not wish fulfillment: it's warning -- and a scarily imminent and salient warning at that.But that's not all: it's superb. The book is so fast moving, with such outstanding characters, such intense action -- like the second coming of Brian Wood's DMZ -- that I read it all in one sitting, at a coffee shop patio across the street from Secret Headquarters, using my phone's flashlight as the sun set around me.The book ends on a cliffhanger (of course), and then it continues -- with interviews by Pizzolo of figures from Bill Ayers to Lexi Alexander to David Sirota to the founders of Indivisible. Read the rest

In a deeply researched longread, New York Times investigative reporters Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe document in fine detail the role played by the ubiquitous McKinsey and Company in legitimizing, coordinating, and supercharging the world's most notorious human-rights-abusing regimes, from Saudi Arabia to China to Russia. In these countries, McKinsey consultants confer with ex-McKinsey consultants who ascend to high ranks in government ministries and para-governmental entities (such as Russia's VEB bank, which operates as a not-very-secret arm of the Kremlin), and the McKinsey company hires the scions of local power-brokers to work in their ranks. McKinsey worked alongside Paul Manafort to legitimize and guide Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych; they were one of the few "Western" countries to attend the "Davos in the Desert" event thrown by the Saudis after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; they had their fingers deep in the embezzlement scandal that brought down the Malaysian government.McKinsey insists that they are working to reform these countries from within, providing advice that uplifts the people living under the yoke of oppression and there's some truth to this, but they're also prolific rationalizers, according to insiders and former McKinseyites, who describe how this rubric is deployed to cover working for terrible people who want to do terrible things -- so long as they are profitable.Other consulting companies serve similar clients, but none have the stature to confer credibility quite like McKinsey, a confidant for 92 years to many of the world’s most admired companies.In China, it has advised at least 22 of the 100 biggest state-owned companies — the ones carrying out some of the government’s most strategic and divisive initiatives, according to a review of Chinese-language material by The Times. Read the rest

In San Francisco, property speculators have made a game out of tearing down historically protected homes, then retroactively applying for demolition permits, and using the now-empty lots to build massive mansions that sell for millions.Ross Johnstone says that he's not a speculator at all, and that the reason he knocked down modernist architect Richard Neutra's 1936 Twin Peaks Largent House at 49 Hopkins Ave. had nothing to do with the extra money he'd get from increasing the floor plan from 1,300 square feet to about 4,000 (he says he wanted to move his family into the larger house).The San Francisco City Planning Commission didn't buy this argument, nor the argument that the house had lost its historic character in earlier remodels and was therefore not worthy of preservation. Instead, they've ordered Johnstone to build an exact replica of the house he tore down, "executed beautifully in a way that would be consistent with the home’s original expression," and to post a plaque recounting the history of the house.The case attracted attention because Neutra is considered one of the most important modern architects and because it highlighted the trend of speculators illegally razing modest homes with the intention of replacing them with mega-homes. The new houses can fetch upward of $5 million, double or triple the price of an average house in already expensive San Francisco.Planning Commissioner Dennis Richards said he hopes the commission’s action in the 49 Hopkins case will send a message to speculators accustomed to ignoring city planning and building laws with few or no repercussions. Read the rest