Two thirds of the world lost access to Youtube yesterday because Pakistan's internet censors lost control of their censorship tools and applied them globally.Pakistan is one of the many countries that censors websites by publishing bad "routes" to them, using national firewalls to advertise bogus pathways that computers should use to reach the banned sites; when computers try to take these routes, they reach a dead end, and thus their users can't gain access to banned sites.The protocol for publishing internet routing information is designed to propagate from one computer to the next -- this is part of how the internet recovers from damage or malfunctions in backbone infrastructure -- and so careless censors can accidentally push poisoned routing information beyond their national borders.Pakistan's censors ordered 70 ISPs to block Youtube over a trailer for an upcoming movie by the Dutch authoritarian islamophobe Geert Wilders. One or more ISPs messed up its routing table, and, according to Renesys Corp, who monitors internet routing data, more than two thirds of the world lost access to Youtube as a result.China's national censors have previously cut off worlwide access to sites that were banned in China, and while they blamed this on operator error, many in the global network infrastructure community believed that it was a veiled threat or demonstration of power by China. Pakistan Telecom established a route that directed requests for YouTube videos from local Internet subscribers to a "black hole," where the data was discarded, according to Renesys. Read the rest

No, they aren't after people who litter. The National Park Service's Investigative Services Branch (ISB) of 33 special agents handle the rapes, murders, assaults, robberies, poaching, drug smuggling, and other big crimes that occur on the 85 million acres of United States parks, historical sites, monuments, and other NPS turf. From Outside:)ISB agents are a strange breed. They require a high tolerance for time alone in the backcountry—but because solving crimes typically comes down to getting information from people, they also need social skills. “I look for people who can talk to anybody,” Sullivan told me. Each of the half-dozen agents in the office was drawn to the job for different reasons. Kristy McGee, a petite blonde wearing cowboy boots, specialized in violent crime. “I had a very chaotic childhood. I was exposed to a lot of adult-natured things—drugs, abuse,” she told me. “I found a place where I can use that to relate to people.”Steve Kim, who has salt-and-pepper hair and a degree in wildlife ecology, told me about how he had spent the summer of 1995 living the life of a dirtbag climber, when Yosemite put out a call asking climbers to help with a death investigation. While rappelling off the east ledges of El Capitan, looking for clues, Kim discovered that ISB work suited him—“It’s probably my obsessive-compulsive tendencies”—and never looked back.Cullen Tucker, the office’s youngest agent at age 30, was born into the business; his dad is a former deputy chief ranger at Yosemite, and his mom was one of the park’s first female investigators. Read the rest

EotBeholder on Deviantart nails decades of derivative genre fiction and gameplay with "the only fantasy world map you'll ever need."Wow, almost four years later and this thing just exploded. ... To anyone asking for permission to use this for their own campaigns... I mean it hardly qualifies as "original", so as long as you're comfortable stealing from someone who steals from the people who only steal from the best, knock yourselves out :)If I could make some additions (which I suppose I could, but, nah) I'd call out the Boring/Doomed Pastoral Village somewhere in the Tiny Bickering Fiefdoms or the Land of Poncy Knights, and also add a Giant Wall to Keep the Monsters Out. Giant walls are so hot right now.I love the comments and tweets from fans of specific franchises (such as Forgotten Realms or Riftwar) who think it is specifically a parody of their favorite fantasy world. See TVTropes' entry for the fantasy world map and, specifically, the left-justified fantasy maps.The map of Allansia from the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series is a nice professionally-drawn example.Previously. Read the rest

The long fight over Do-Not-Track followed a predictable trajectory: a detailed, meaningful pro-privacy system was subverted by big business, and then published as a "standard" that offered virtually no privacy protections.Today, turning on the Do-Not-Track setting in your browser does virtually nothing (Medium and Pintrest offer some support, everyone else not so much). EFF's Privacy Badger blocks ads from companies that don't comply with Do-Not-Track, so running Privacy Badger is a way to give your browser settings some teeth.The biggest obstacle was advertisers who didn’t want to give up delicious data and revenue streams; they insisted that DNT would “kill online growth” and stymied the process. (You can chart the death of Do Not Track by the declining number of emails sent around on the W3C list-serv.) By the time the debate was winding down at the end of 2013, it wasn’t even about not tracking people, just not targeting them, meaning trackers could still collect the data but couldn’t use it to show people intrusive ads based on what they’d collected. The inability to reach a compromise on what DNT should be led sites like Reddit to declare “there is no accepted standard for how a website should respond to [the Do Not Track] signal, [so] we do not take any action in response to this signal.”To demonstrate their theoretical support for DNT—or from a more skeptical perspective, to garner some positive press—Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, and others started offering the “Do Not Track” option in their respective browsers, but absent a consensus around the actions required in response to the DNT:1 signal, these browsers are just screaming for privacy into a void. Read the rest

Facebook Portal is a camera that is supposed to follow you around your house while you videoconference; the product launch was repeatedly delayed because of the company's string of horrific privacy breaches; when the company finally pulled the trigger on the launch it was at pains to insist that Portal would not collect your data while you used it. That was a lie.Portal will spy on you continuously while you use it and that data will be used to target Facebook ads at you later.But Facebook has since reached out to change its answer: Portal doesn’t have ads, but data about who you call and data about which apps you use on Portal can be used to target you with ads on other Facebook-owned properties.“Portal voice calling is built on the Messenger infrastructure, so when you make a video call on Portal, we collect the same types of information (i.e. usage data such as length of calls, frequency of calls) that we collect on other Messenger-enabled devices. We may use this information to inform the ads we show you across our platforms. Other general usage data, such as aggregate usage of apps, etc., may also feed into the information that we use to serve ads,” a spokesperson said in an email to Recode. It turns out that Facebook could in fact use data collected from its Portal in-home video device to target you with ads [Kurt Wagner/Recode](Images: Alessio Jacona, CC-BY-SA; Cryteria, CC-BY) Read the rest

Sony -- whose most notorious DRM foray infected millions of computers with malware -- has announced an incoherent plan to use blockchain to make DRM work, somehow.Despite Engadget's inexplicable assurance that blockchain as "a DRM tool makes sense and may also help creators keep tabs on their content," there's no detail about how this will actually work, and it's hard to imagine a circumstance in which DRM helps blockchain or vice versa (indeed, given the recent bloodbath in cryptocurrency and blockchain, and the widespread public hostility to DRM, this feels more like tossing an anchor to a drowning victim).Sony's proposal seems to involve tracking creative works' provenance using a distributed ledger -- presumably you could upload signed hashes of your work at different stages and later prove that you created them. This has nothing to do with DRM and addresses the most rare copyfraud circumstance, in which a plagiarist claims to have made a work that someone else actually created (the commonest copyfrauds are to claim that copyright endures in works that are in the public domain, or to falsely assert copyright infringement, including by ignoring fair use).Sony also implies that every transaction in which someone buys a creative work will end up in the ledger. This has extremely grave privacy implications, but it also has nothing to do with preventing copyright infringement. People who lawfully acquire copyrighted works have the right to sell them, lend them, and give them away -- and they are not liable if (for example) their data (including copyrighted works) is stolen and released online. Read the rest

Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the brutal killing and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (everybody, that is, except the Trumps, who coincidentally do a lot of business with the House of Saud) and the lurid brutality of that murder has prompted calls for western businesses to reconsider their increasingly cozy relationship with Mohammed bin Salman.MBS's charm offensive over the past year has been the subject of much uncritical reporting from the alleged guardians of the public trust, including the New York Times, who treated "Prince Charming" as a liberalizing reformer, even as he led slaughter in Yemen, mass arrests of journalists and political opposition figures in Saudi Arabia, and other crimes against humanity and human rights abuses.This whitewashing -- which included public Starbucks visits with Michael Bloomberg, cozy walks with Sergey Brin, and praise in Vanity Fair -- helped open the doors to US business for the brutal regime, promoted by Trump co-conspirator David Pecker, publisher of the National Inquirer, cover-upper of the Stormy Daniels affair, and, eventually, publisher of a glossy magazine lauding the financial upsides of doing business with the Saudis. This helped pave the way for "Davos in the Desert," AKA the "Future Investment Initiative," which is hemorrhaging sponsors and attendees for whom the dismemberment of a journalist is a bridge too far.But hacking a journalists to pieces with a bone-saw in an embassy is absolutely on-brand for the real Prince MSB, and anyone who paid even cursory attention during his western rehabilitation would have known that: October 2 wasn't an exceptionally murderous day by Saudi standards, and the hacking up of dissidents shouldn't be a surprise to the Bloomberg and his Starbucks date, or Brin and his perambulations, or any of the investors and media companies who signed up to attend "Davos in the Desert."If anything is to be salvaged from this moment, let it be an end to US complicity in the slaughter in Yemen, which is careering towards a famine whose death-toll will rise to 12-13 million. Read the rest

The "Halloween Whimsey 3D Latex Mask Head Mask for Party Cosplay Costume Prank Joking", available at Amazon, is this season's de rigeur trick-or-treat outfit.• Great for Masquerade Parties, Costume Parties, Carnival, Christmas, Easter, Halloween or any other parties• Perfect for a fun meme, Halloween,Easter, Carnival, Costume parties, Tag party or simply for going to a night club.• Anyway, it will see plenty of use at times other than Halloween "Anyway," the author trails off there. Yes, anyway. Plenty of use. Job interviews. Court dates. The opera!This marvel was chanced upon by Julia Pugachevsky on Twitter: "THE EYES," she writes.UPDATE: Combine this year's two most popular Halloween accessories in a single terrific costume! Read the rest

The FCC justified its Net Neutrality-killing order by claiming that comments it received showed strong public support for dismantling the rules that stop your ISP from deciding which parts of the internet you get to use; but it was widely reported that the comments in the Net Neutrality docket were flooded by bots that opposed Net Neutrality, using names and personal information from stolen identities of dead people, sitting US senators, journalists and millions of others.While bot-flooding has become routine in regulatory comments, the Net Neutrality case was especially egregious, in part because FCC Chairman (and former Verizon lawyer) Ajit Pai didn't seem to care that his regulatory proceedings had been taken over by corporate bots, and then actively obstructed law-enforcement efforts to discover who was behind these bots.The New York Attorney General's office is undeterred by Pai's bot-complicity, and has expanded its investigation into the astroturf campaign, issuing subpoenas for records from a slate of telcoms lobbyists themselves, more than a dozen in all. “The FCC’s public comment process was corrupted by millions of fake comments—and our investigation found that as many at 9.53 million of those comments stole the identities of real people,” Underwood said in a statement.“The law protects New Yorkers from deception and the misuse of their identities. And all Americans deserve a fair and transparent process for determining public policy that impacts their daily lives. My office will get to the bottom of what happened and hold accountable those responsible for using stolen identities to distort public opinion on net neutrality.” New York Attorney General Expands Investigation Into Bogus Net Neutrality Comments [Karl Bode/Motherboard](Image: David Saddler, CC-BY) Read the rest

Weed is legal now in Canada. Here's what it'll cost ya. Some places are banning smoking it in public and there are other bumps expected, but the business windfalls are expected to define an emerging market by attracting global brands previously leery of associating with drugs. With nearly 40m inhabitants, Canada became overnight the largest market for legal weed, with few of the peculiar regulatory compromises found in large U.S. states.Previously: The New York Times has the dope on cannabis use in Canada Read the rest

Sarah Gailey's micro-short-story STET is a beautiful piece of innovative storytelling that perfectly blends the three ingredients for a perfect piece of science fiction: sharply observed technological speculation that reflects on our present moment; a narrative arc for characters we sympathize with; and a sting in the tail that will stay with you long after the story's been read.All that in a "story" that consists of a single paragraph of text, its footnotes, and a series of annotations documenting the requested changes made by the piece's fictional author's editor and her responses.I don't want to delve into too much detail about the dazzling and surprising storytelling here, because it unfolds itself with all the deft, surprising artifice of a paper fortuneteller whose final flap lifts up to reveal an IED that blows your hand off.But the story's subject is more conventional and a smart piece technological metaphor, interrogating the (overhyped and unrealistic) "trolley problem" to score deep wounds in our contemporary world of algorithmic cruelty and sociopathy. I've made my own modest contribution to the fiction on this subject, and I like to think that my piece works well as a companion to Gailey's wonderful gem.Below is the text without its metatext; click through to witness the near-miraculous conversion of a dry piece of pretend scholarship into a scorching piece of science fiction.Section 5.4 — Autonomous Conscience and Automotive CasualtyWhile Sheenan’s Theory of Autonomous Conscience was readily adopted by both scholars and engineers in the early days of Artificial Intelligence programming in passenger and commercial vehicles, contemporary analysis reinterprets Sheenan’s perspective to reveal a nuanced understanding of sentience and consciousness. Read the rest

Boing Boing is proud to welcome Outvote.io as a sponsor.Want to get Dems and progressives elected in the 2018 midterm elections? In 5 minutes? From your couch? There’s an app for that.The majority of registered voters missed the last midterm. Unsurprisingly, most people won’t admit it. Young people are the worst when it comes to pretending that they’ve voted.So how can we get people into the voting booth this November? It turns out that reminding your friends to vote is surprisingly effective.The bottom line is that people trust their friends. If your longtime pal tells you something about a candidate, you’re much more likely to trust their opinion than a TV ad. In fact, during the 2018 primaries, friends that got a single text via Outvote became 10% more likely to vote.The Outvote app shows you which of your contacts have missed a recent election by matching them to publicly available voting data provided by the state they live in. It then makes it easy to send reminders to everyone that needs them.The app will even tell you which of your friends live in the critical swing districts that are needed to take back the House this November.The average person has about 500 contacts. You could easily have 50 votes sitting in your pocket that aren’t going to show up unless you text them.MoveOn, Swing Left, Flippable and Democratic State Parties across the country are all using Outvote to get Democrats and progressives to the polls this year. Read the rest

Nick Douglas explains that "No One Needs Hot Glue Shoes." This is apparently a thing. That said, the video trend of "bad hacks" is wonderful and must be feasted upon.But you don’t need to block bad hacks videos.Instead you, and me, and everyone, we need to watch them. We need to gorge on them. We need to make parodies and response videos, like Jenna Marbles sarcastically building hot glue flip-flops, wearing them, and observing that “it feels like standing on softish Legos.” We need to make #content out of these hacks.My marginally popular "how to get a stripped screw out of a mobo" video was recently (angrily) denounced as a "bad hack" on Twitter and it was quite an honor. It honestly never struck me that spraying electronics with orange-hot showers of metal filings might carry risks! My PC ran just fine. Read the rest

Several years ago media sites began firing writers en-masse to hire video people instead, because Facebook and other social media companies told them that this was the future. "Pivoting to video," some called it. But what Facebook actually delivered was "fraudulent" analytics. Advertisers slowly figured out the videos weren't being watched. Facebook lied about it for a while. Then it apparently admitted it. Then the media sites started firing the video people too.Here's an excerpt from a lawsuit unsealed yesterday, posted to Twitter by Jason Kint, the CEO of an online publishers' trade group. 63. In June 2016, a Facebook engineering manager finally followed up on advertiser complaints dating back to early 2015, writing that "[s]omehow there was no progress on the task for a year." But even once it was decided to take action on the metrics, Facebook did not promptly fix its calculation or disclose that the calculation was wrong. Instead, it continued reporting miscalculated viewership metrics for another several months, as it developed a "no PR" strategy to avoid drawing attention to the error. The company decided to "obfuscate the fact that we screwed up the math" by quietly retiring the erroneous metrics and replacing them with corrected metrics under a new name. For instance, Average Duration of Video Viewed would be replaced with Average Watch Time. 64. In August 2016, Facebook began reaching out privately to select, large advertisers, telling them that Facebook had "recently discovered a discrepancy" in the video ad average view metrics. Read the rest

It's been a little over three months since the 12 boys and their soccer coach were rescued from a Thai cave. On Monday, Ellen DeGeneres had all 13 of them, plus a translator, on her show to give their first interview after their frightening incident. They report that they are all healthy and fine. Ellen had them recount their 10-day-long experience in the cave and discovered that meditation was key in keeping them all calm while they were trapped underground. And, as is the tradition on the show, they got some surprises, including a visit from the boys' soccer idol, Swedish pro-player Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Read the rest

Garden gnomes are great but, hey, it's October. Doesn't your yard (garden/stoop/desk) deserve something more seasonally appropriate?Enter Casper and Sadie Revenant's handmade Garden Nightmares. They're kind of like garden gnomes but much scarier. Each one is inspired by famous horror flicks' bad guys. They're not-officially-licensed creations so they have names like the "Springwood Terror - Nightmare" (read: "Freddy Krueger") or the "Crystal Lake Slasher" (Friday the 13th's "Jason Voorhees") or the "Texas Chainsaw Butcher" ("Leatherface") and so on.The Garden Nightmare statues stand a foot tall and cost $55 each. They can be ordered from the RevenantFX website or from their Etsy shop.Previously: Someone put this Jason Voorhees statue under a lake to freak out divers(TIWIB) Read the rest

A two-foot-tall, 50-lb. nose prop went missing overnight Sunday in Portland, Oregon and its family just wants it back. The Oregonian:"We woke up this morning and the nose was gone," Delia Albert said.Delia Albert said her husband, who works for an advertising agency, rescued the nose out of the trash a year ago. It was a discarded prop from a photo shoot, though she wasn't sure what campaign had used it.Since last October, it's been sitting on their front porch. The couple's kids, ages 5, 7, and 11, were devastated at the loss of their nose."They burst into tears, super upset, couldn't believe somebody would take something that didn't belong to them," Albert said. "We didn't realize how attached they were to it. It really clearly brought them a lot of joy."...Her 11-year-old son pledged to bolt down the nose if it found its way home. The kids also plan to post missing fliers around the neighborhood with reward money they collected among themselves of $6.27.Albert said she did file a police report about the nose, at her children's insistence. On the value of the stolen item, she wrote, "priceless."If YOU'VE seen this oversized nose, contact Albert at deliavalbert@gmail.com with details.(Vice) Read the rest

YouTuber The Q spent 200 hours crafting a rideable bicycle out of wood, the glue that holds it together, and a handful of metal pieces like washers. Why? I don't know, but it's pretty cool. (The Awesomer) Read the rest

Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, is an Eastern European territory with a strong Soviet vibe. Technically, the country does not exist. Transnistria is considered a part of the Republic of Moldova, and isn't an officially recognized nation of its own, despite declaring independence in 1990, followed by a war in 1992. I attended this year's Independence Day celebrations in Transnistria, hoping to understand what the place and the people are all about. Here's what I saw.My journey into Transnistria began two days ahead of schedule, when my travel buddy and I accidentally crossed the border in the middle of the night, driving through via Ukraine. The shortest distance between the capitals of Ukraine and Moldova (where we were headed) takes you through Transnistria, and boy, were we caught off guard.The border greets you with the Transnistria state emblem, which bears a prominent hammer and sickle. While you can freely enter without a visa, you are issued a pass that allows you to stay for up to 10 hours. There was a road toll of 58 Transnistrian rubles (a currency that cannot be exchanged outside of their borders; about 3.40 USD); when I asked if I could pay in the Ukrainian currency, the border guard mulled it over, then more than doubled the price. From then on, the road conditions went from bad to worse, so it’s anyone’s guess as to what that payment was really for.Still on the way to Moldova, exiting Transnistria on the other side about 20 km later, there was another checkpoint. Read the rest

In this video, Caltech demonstrates the Rabbit Illusion, a "time-traveling illusion trick." It tricked me.Caltech researchers have developed these two new illusions that reveal how the senses can influence each other—in particular, how sound can give rise to visual illusions. These illusions occur so quickly that they illustrate a phenomenon called postdiction (as opposed to prediction) in which a stimulus that occurs later can retroactively affect our perceptions of an earlier event. Read the rest

You can see this cute bridge in California sag ominously as a heavy bus passes over it. According to the person who shot the video, "This is the 2nd bus to cross the 10-ton limit one-lane Beaver bridge." I don't think the bridge can handle many more bus crossings like this. Read the rest

Our friends at Core77 recently found a Tumblr devoted to aesthetically pleasing arrangements of knobs, buttons, sliders, and blinking lights. What is it about a well-designed control panel that makes it so appealing?Image: a VCS3 Putney, which sold on eBay in 2017 for US $21,665.60. Read the rest

The face of this 1921 silver dollar has been carved to depict some kind of scene (not sure what it is) and it includes an ingenious mechanical surprise. It brings to mind one of my favorite podcasts episodes of all time, The Mystery Show's "Belt Buckle."This coin Read the rest

"Access issues" are affecting YouTube this evening.You're not nuts.YouTube is down as of 6pmish Pacific time (Los Angeles, USA). Thanks for your reports about YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Music access issues. We're working on resolving this and will let you know once fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you updated.— Team YouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2018If I were YouTube I would restart the service and then enter one of these codes pic.twitter.com/T08WZTr0Zn— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) October 17, 2018Never seen YouTube down for 30+ minutes like this before 👀— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) October 17, 2018Alright. Which one of you jokers took down YouTube just before my nightly viewing of Johnny Johnny Yes Papa— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) October 17, 2018It's not just you: A lot of people are reporting that YouTube is down right now 😬 pic.twitter.com/bXUdzWhLZZ— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) October 17, 2018everyone rn: lmao youtube broke youtube: pic.twitter.com/GYGnZJ74W8— queen quen (@quenblackwell) October 17, 2018YOUTUBE MACHINE BROKE— Jon (@MrDalekJD) October 17, 2018 Read the rest

Trump's vaunted 60 Minutes interview was a ratings flop, just as analytics show articles sourced to it were flops and the fact that this post about it being a flop will also be a flop. According to the A.P., the president’s 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night reached 11.7 million viewers, just over half as many as Daniels pulled for her own blockbuster 60 Minutes interview back in March. Around 22 million viewers tuned in then to watch Daniels discuss her alleged 2006 affair with the president. That interview got the program’s highest ratings since a 2008 interview with Barack and Michelle Obama. Trump’s episode also flopped in comparison to his 60 Minutes interview in 2016, which drew 20 million viewers.Everyone knows what he is; he's a marker, not a man. It doesn't require journalistic elaboration anymore. The tweets are quite enough. Read the rest

Prince George’s County Police Officer Ryan Macklin was charged with rape after a woman was attacked during a traffic stop last week. Macklin is listed as a two-time patrol officer of the month at the department's website.During the traffic stop, Macklin reportedly forced the woman to perform a sex act while they were sitting in her car in a nearby parking lot.Police say Macklin was “on-duty, in uniform, and driving a marked police cruiser at the time.”Investigators are not sure why Macklin targeted this woman, but believe there may be other victims. Read the rest

If you're not pissed off at the assassination of The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, you should be. As a permanent resident of the United States, Khashoggi should be protected by the U.S. Government, just like any United States citizen. But, instead of pouring pressure on Saudi Arabia to bring the perpetrators of Khashoggi's slaughter to justice, there's nothing but the flapping of gums over "rogue killers." Money, as always, is being put ahead of the sanctity of human life and the rule of law. Khashoggi's murder is also an attack on the freedom of the press. His brave, unwavering reports on corruption and human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia made him a target for the Saudi royal family and the nation's intelligence apparatus. He was killed for telling the truth. We can't force our governments to take action over Khashoggi's murder. But we can make our outrage known to those responsible for doing business with Saudi Arabia. The Future Investment Initiative (FII) is a conference being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on October 23rd. Rich people will talk about rich people things to make themselves even more rich. The event is the work of Public Investment fund--one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. The PIF is a mechanism by which our aforementioned invest in things that only rich people can afford to spend their money on in order to be even more rich. The FII's October 23rd event is an orgy of money-grubbing elitists talking about how to secure further funding, build assets, and control even more of the world's wealth than the ultra-rich already do. Read the rest

I'm writing this on a flight to Chicago. By the time I return to Canada on Thursday, the sale and use of cannabis, in many circumstances, will be cool, from coast to coast to coast. This does not excite me: I'm not a cannabis enthusiast. Your mileage, however, may vary. If you're a Canadian who enjoys the use of weed in its many forms or love the idea of visiting my often-frozen nation so that you can partake in a legal left-handed cigarette, you should know that the laws surrounding where and when you can use marijuana varies from province to province. The same goes for who can sell it. Fortunately, The New York Times has taken it upon itself to give its readers the scuttlebutt on all of these issues and more:From The New York Times:On legalization day, only fresh or dried flower, seeds, plants and oil will be available. Legal marijuana will have lower levels of THC, the chemical that brings on the buzz, than most products now on the black market.The law will not allow cannabis-infused edibles and concentrates until next year. So those craving pot-infused gummy bears, baked goods, barbecue sauce and drinks will have to wait to buy them legally.It is unclear whether cannabis creams and cosmetics will ever be approved.The Times goes on to talk about the fuzziness of what cannabis will cost from province to province, how much of it is legal to own, the limits placed upon growing your own, and the age required to make buying it OK. Read the rest

Indicating in your will that you want to leave some money to a charity that reflects the values you were passionate about is a fine gesture. Living a life of frugality so that you can leave a ridiculous amount of money to charity once you're gone: that's next level philanthropy. Chow Yun-fat, the bad ass star of such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hard Boiled is very into this latter, hardcore-level of giving. Despite the wealth that his career in film has brought him, the 63-year old icon has spent years in Hong Kong, one of the world's most expensive cities, enjoying a simple life on around $100 U.S. dollars per month. Thanks to this monk-like level of frugality, it's estimated that when he passes, Chow will be leaving behind close to $714 million to charity.From Shanghaist: Chow’s wife, Jasmine Tan, says that her husband manages to live so frugally in one of the world’s most expensive cities by frequenting street food stalls and rarely buying new things, according to an Oriental Daily report from last week. For example, for 17 years, Chow stuck with his trusty Nokia flip phone, only recently purchasing a new smartphone when his old device finally stopped working.The 63-year-old Chow is often seen riding public transportation where he rocks a simple wardrobe — a shirt costing him 98 yuan ($14) and sandals costing another 15 yuan ($2). When asked why he likes to shop at discount shops despite his tremendous net worth, Chow replies, “I don’t wear clothes for other people. Read the rest

Recent research suggests that our sense of smell evolved to help us find our way. Now, McGill University neuroscientist Louisa Dahmani and her colleagues support that idea, termed the "olfactory spatial hypothesis." From Science News:Scientists linked both skills to certain spots in the brain: The left orbitofrontal cortex and the right hippocampus were both bigger in the better smellers and better navigators. The left orbitofrontal cortex and the right hippocampus were both bigger in the better smellers and better navigators. While the orbitofrontal cortex has been tied to smelling, the hippocampus is known to be involved in both smelling and navigation. A separate group of 9 people who had damaged orbitofrontal cortices had more trouble with navigation and smell identification..."An intrinsic association between olfactory identification and spatial memory in humans" (Nature Communications) Read the rest

According to the explanation of the phrase "like a moth to the flame" at The Phrase Finder, "the word moth was used the the 17th century to mean someone who was apt to be tempted by something that would lead to their downfall." But why do moths have this fatal attraction anyway? National Geographic explains in the above video:The theory is that these primarily nocturnal insects have evolved to travel by the light of the moon and stars. This way of travel is called transverse orientation. An easy way to think about transverse orientation is to imagine a sailor travelling in the direction of the North Star. In theory, moths similarly follow the light source at a precise position and a precise angle to their bodies. This is how moths would navigate for millions of years … by the light of the moon. What moth evolution couldn’t account for was the proliferation of constant electric light in our modern world. When Thomas Edison patented the lightbulb on January 27, 1880 it was a bad day in moth history. These lightbulbs began to act as artificial moons, confusing moths and overwhelming their senses. Since moths are accustomed to orienting to distant light sources, they can be easily disoriented when a closer light source, like a porch lamp, comes into view. Read the rest

Before entering Ohio's Akron Fright Fest, a park of self-proclaimed "extreme haunted houses," people need to sign a waiver. The waiver lets them know that these are mature haunted houses with actors who might physically touch them, but never do they mention people getting pushed down for a simulated rape. However, in one of the "all ages" haunted houses, a man named Ryan Carr was pushed down by a masked actor, who then pretended to rape him. According to the Huffington Post, Carr explained how his girlfriend, Sarah Lelonek, tried to stop it:“She comes over and yells, ‘Stop! What are you doing? That’s my boyfriend,’” Carr recalled Lelonek saying. He then described the masked person’s response: “‘Not anymore, he’s mine now. I’m going to rape him,’ and then he started thrusting against me.” According to Huffington Post, there was another alleged incident at one of the park's non-waiver houses in which a 16-year-old boy was thrown onto a mattress. Again an employee performed a mock rape on the boy and told him to "squeal like a pig." A representatives from the park, Jeremy Caudill, says he was "shocked" and "appalled" and that the employees “who worked in the area where the incident allegedly occurred have been suspended” while they investigate. “Obviously, rape is a horrible act,” he said. “Even a mock rape scene has no place as part of any entertainment.”Image: 27707/Pixabay - CC0 Creative Commons Read the rest

OG riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre has launched a new t-shirt line with all the money going to Peace Sisters, a non-profit that helps pay school tuition for underprivileged young girls in the West African nation of Togo. The shirts feature the likes of Kim Gordon, Jill Soloway, Chuck D (all seen below), Patton Oswalt, W. Kamau Bell, and Carrie Brownstein. The money from each $40 t-shirt sends a girl to school for a year. Buy 'em at Tees 4 Togo.From Rolling Stone:Hanna devised the concept after meeting Peace Sisters founder Tina Kampor. A former teacher in Togo, Kampor immigrated to Pasadena 15 years ago, where she would become a full-time registered nurse. Still, she could not forget her students back home: “[Tina] grew up there and she just saw all these girls who weren’t able to go to school,” explains Hanna. “A lot of them are orphans, or very poor. Past the fifth grade in Togo, you have to pay for [education]. She saw all these girls dropping out in the sixth grade. So when she came to California she started sending money home, then opened it up for other people to help. She’s put 130 girls through school herself and supported members of her family at the same time. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and [said], ‘I want to be a part of this!'” Read the rest

Chris Veltri, proprietor of San Francisco's legendary Groove Merchant record shop, posted this astounding artifact to his Instagram wunderkammer of outré culture paper ephemera @collagedropoutsf! It's a poster for a lecture by artificial intelligence pioneer Herbert Simon that took place at UC Berkeley in 1974. The speech was titled "How Man and Computers Understand Language." Far fucking out. Read the rest

Almost every time I visit Japan, I see black vans driving down the street with super loud megaphones blaring an angry rant. These vans are operated by people who are members of Japan's ultra nationalist movement. In this video, Asian Boss interviewed Shusuke Morigaki, leader of a group called Minzoku No Ishi Doumei (Alliance of the People's Will). He says he first became interested in ultra nationalism after reading about Adolf Hitler as a youngster. "I mean, yes, everybody hates him, but on the flip side he was loved by many people," he tells the interviewer. "People say, 'Don't love Hitler. Don't praise Hitler.' And if you praise him [it's taboo]. I think it's so wrong that people are educated that way."Image: Asian Boss Read the rest

Casey Johnston reports that the supposedly improved keyboards in new MacBook Pros still suffer the same old problems. Several users in the MacRumors keyboard thread suggested that the butterfly keyboards Apple has been pushing for two years now are a stepping stone to full touch-screen models; no keys, no mechanisms, no nooks and crannies, just a solid screen that displays virtual buttons. Others have wondered why Apple doesn’t just use Magic Keyboard keys in its computers; they are much more pleasant to use, quieter, and appear to not have the same crippling vulnerability to, uh, dust.I've sort of given up on them, to be honest. I need a new laptop and I think it's going to be a Thinkpad X1. I'm not enthusiastic about not having MacOS, but I am enthusiastic about typing without getting wirdly numbd fingrtips. Read the rest

Taylor Swift somehow managed to get out of her enclosure at Sacramento Zoo Sunday and led officials on a brief pursuit. Visitors were escorted away and Swift was soon recaptured.Vincent says staff used baffle boards and tables to gently guide the antelope to an off-exhibit holding area less than 15 minutes after it went missing. The zoo veterinarian found the animal had a few scrapes, but was otherwise healthy.Vincent says the calf was named after the singer because she was “very swiftly on her feet after birth.”More from the Sacramento Bee.The calf is an eastern bongo, an antelope species native to mountain forests in Kenya that is critically endangered by hunting as illegal logging reduces its habitat, according to the zoo. Only an estimated 200 eastern bongos still survive in the wild, officials say.The Sacramento Zoo said it has participated for more than 20 years in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Eastern Bongo Species Survival Plan, which coordinates management of the species. Read the rest

Medtronic (previously) is a notoriously insecure medical implant manufacturer whose devices have been repeatedly shown to be grossly insecure -- their pacemakers can be hacked before leaving the factory!To make things worse, the company is notably hostile to independent security research and repair.The latest twist in the saga: Medtronic has been the subject of an FDA security alert, which has prompted the company to finally disable its insecure software updating system (which let hackers push malicious updates to the hardware "wands" used to update pacemakers) for some models (after denying that this was a problem!).These wands will now have to be updated by USB.Two models, the Carelink 2090 and the Carelink Encore 2091, could have been tampered with by an attacker modifying their firmware and, in turn, change how the programmers configured the implants. Medtronic said that now not only does it believe those vulnerabilities would be locally exploitable, but could also be targeted by an attacker who was able to remotely access the device."Although the programmer uses a virtual private network (VPN) to establish an internet connection with the Medtronic [software distribution network] SDN, the vulnerability identified with this connection is that the programmers do not verify that they are still connected to the VPN prior to downloading updates," the FDA explained."To address this cybersecurity vulnerability and improve patient safety, on October 5, 2018, the FDA approved Medtronic's update to the Medtronic network that will intentionally block the currently existing programmer from accessing the Medtronic SDN."It's the real Heart Bleed: Medtronic locks out vulnerable pacemaker programmer kit [Shaun Nichols/The Register](via /. Read the rest

Felipe is a Portuguese game-developer who makes fun, crowdfunded minigames; he tweeted a tantalyzing video clip showing an idea for a Snake/Tetris mashup called "Snetris," and the response was so warm and excited that he's promised to develop a playable version!snetris (snake + tetris)#protober #gamedev #screenshotsaturday pic.twitter.com/NEl0e4673o— nyune-BOO! 👻 (@nyunesu) October 6, 2018(via Kottke) Read the rest

I only wish that this was the real new Halloween film.It’s been 40 years since Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) survived a vicious attack from the crazy and zany Pee-wee Herman on Halloween night. But when Pee-wee escapes, will her family be safe from what is certainly to be his biggest Halloween adventure ever? Read the rest

A new report from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority attributes the majority (51%-73%) of the prodigious 2010-2016 increase in San Francisco traffic congestion on Uber and Lyft; the rideshare companies dispute the finding and say that it's really down to increased Amazon Prime delivery vehicles and Lyft has offered to work with the city on "congestion pricing" whereby use of the public roads are taxed at the same rate for both the city's incredibly wealthy tech elite and struggling underclass, with the intention of limiting private vehicle use.The companies have agreed to a 3.5% tax on single-rider trips to fund public transit, which will only go into effect if it is ratified by ballot initiative in 2019.San Francisco's public transit is markedly over capacity; it's been years since I last got a seat on a BART train and I frequently have to wait for multiple trains to go by before I find a car with enough space to board.By contrast, the French city of Dunkirk made its public transit free and increased service levels and saw a massive decrease in private vehicle use and traffic congestion; riders have discovered a newfound socialibility with their neighbors that they find delightful.“In the stories that are told all the time, blanket statements are made,” says Joe Castiglione, the deputy director for technology, data, and analysis at the SFCTA. “That really ignores a lot of the reality of the situation: Not that these impacts are spread everywhere in space or time, but that, in fact, they are highly concentrated in space and time.”Castiglione and his colleagues will present the report to the city’s Board of Supervisors, its main legislative body, on Tuesday morning. Read the rest

Tech-sector workers have enormous market-power: companies find it easier to raise cash than to use it to hire qualified developers.Almost every business -- not just Big Tech -- is bidding on tech talent. People mock Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto, but when you're courting workers who have their pick of employers, offering a chance to do meaningful, ethical work is a huge differentiator that can mean the difference of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The poorly understood corollary of this is that whenever Google contemplates something evil, those same developers walk off the job, and those potential millions leave with them. Google's leadership knows this, and while it doesn't prevent them from doing evil, it does change the internal calculations when evil is on the table: when evil costs you something, it needs a much bigger upside before it is profitable enough to pursue. Every tech company has its own version of "don't be evil" (Facebook's is "bring the world closer together"). Even if the corporate leadership pays lip service to this motto, the all-important workforce sometimes takes it to heart.Ever since big tech's leaders attended a meeting at Trump tower with a newly elected fascist who wanted to deport huge slices of their workforce and use big data to create concentration camps, big tech's workforce has been up in arms, founding groups like the Tech Workers Coalition and connecting their work to the problems in the world around them.From Microsoft to Google to Salesforce to Amazon and beyond, the tech industry's workforce has become a pitiless and unstoppable force against big tech itself. Read the rest

114,659 of New York's public school students is homeless, bouncing from shelters to relatives' beds: homelessness is a predictor of poor academic performance for all the obvious reasons, including very long commutes to school (some students' families have ended up at shelters that are two boroughs away from their schools).It's the largest number and proportion of homeless students in the history of homelessness statistics for the New York school system.The "vast majority" of homeless students attend just 144 out of 1800 schools. In some schools, a third of the students are homeless. The New York school system employs one social worker for every 1,660 homeless students.New York's housing market has been blown up by the same housing speculators who created a national eviction epidemic, which is centered in New York City.District 10 in the Bronx served the most homeless children of any of the city’s 32 school districts last year. The district includes Kingsbridge International High School, where about 44 percent of students who attended the school over the last four years were homeless at one point.More homeless students typically means more tardiness or absentees because of the challenges to get to school. Last year, students living in shelter missed an average of about 30 days in the school year.Some students have to travel through two or more boroughs to reach school from their shelters; only about half of the city’s homeless families lived in a shelter in the same borough where their youngest child attended school last year. Read the rest

In the late 2000s, Jamaican authorities launched a crackdown on drug dealers, extraditing the country's most notorious crime-bosses to the USA; the power-vacuum was filled by telephone advance-fee fraud (419/Spanish Prisoner/etc) scammers who targeted American victims, bringing an estimated $300,000,000 to Montego Bay and its region, the epicenter of the scam.The crime syndicates that run the scams are in open war with one another; three of Jamaica's largest districts have been under a state of emergency since January, occupied by armed soldiers. The soldiers arbitrarily detain and brutalize young men, and have collaborated with law enforcement in schemes to rob the scammers and keep the money -- one group was convicted of stealing $5.6 million this way.Montego Bay has a storied history as a tourist destination and Jamaican tourist authorities continue to promote it as a tranquil holiday spot.One of the founding fathers of Jamaican lotto scamming exemplified the corruption. Kenrick Stephenson, otherwise known as Bebe, was facing several lawsuits for fraud while also serving as vice chair of the People’s National Party constituency in his home area of Granville. Bebe had a highly unusual lifestyle. Not only was he a lotto scammer-cum-politician – he was also openly gay in a country notorious for rampant homophobia. But he wielded the power to rearrange some of the country’s norms. He dressed femininely and threw wild drag parties, an unheard of thing to do in Jamaica. He was murdered in 2014 at the gates of his mansion in the upper-class area of Ironshore, in a suspected gang-related killing. Read the rest

They're figuring out what we really want from a 21st Century deathbot: moves.When was the last time a human was seen in one of these videos? Perhaps in the next one we'll see a human crawling on all fours over ice, making loud engine noises between terrified whimpers, only for a perfectly stable bipedal robot to lunge in from off-screen and kick it. Then we'll know what has become of the fleshbags at Boston Dynamics. Read the rest

To make it clear that it's run by skateboarders for skateboarders, East Vancouver's Drive Skate Shop put a skateable sign in front of its store. The two-sided wood veneer "sandwich board" is not only skateable but looks great too. (Web Urbanist) Read the rest

Charles Phoenix's famous Cherpumple concept (stacked CHErry, PUMpkin, apPLE pies baked in a layer of cake) is being made into an epic parade float. Former Disney Art Directors Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily are crafting a 10-foot-tall Cherpumple wedge -- which Charles, the Ambassador of Americana himself, will be seated on -- for the Anaheim Halloween Parade on October 27. To see it for yourself, the fun starts at 6 PM in downtown Anaheim.Here's a peek:*"Cherry pie in white cake; a pumpkin pie in yellow cake, and apple pie in spice cake!"Charles Phoenix previously on BB Read the rest

Paul Allen, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, philanthropist, science fiction fan, and founder of Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture (formerly the Experience Museum Project), has died from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 65. "From technology to science to music to art, I’m inspired by those who’ve blurred the boundaries, who’ve looked at the possibilities, and said, “What if...? In my own work, I’ve tried to anticipate what’s coming over the horizon, to hasten its arrival, and to apply it to people’s lives in a meaningful way." -- Paul AllenAllen's professional timeline is quite something:1953: Paul Allen is born January 21, 1953 in Seattle, Washington1968: While at Lakeside School, Paul meets Bill Gates. A friendship that would later produce one of the world’s most innovative companies, Microsoft.1969: Attends first rock concert, where he sees Jimi Hendrix at Seattle Center Coliseum1975: Founds Microsoft 1982: In September, Paul is diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Nearly eight months later, doctors said he had beaten the disease.1983: Officially resigns from Microsoft in March1986: Founds Vulcan Inc. in Seattle as an investment and project management firm with his sister, Jody Allen1988: Establishes The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation1988: Purchases the Portland Trail Blazers1988: Rescues Seattle Cinerama from demolition by purchasing and restoring the theater1990: The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation makes its first grant.1990: Becomes a billionaire at age 371995: Makes his single biggest investment to date by purchasing a 18.5% stake in Dreamworks1996: Purchases the St. Read the rest

More on the story of how Epson tricked its customers into installing a fake "update" to their printers so that they would stop accepting third-party and refilled ink cartridges: not only does this force Epson customers to pay more for ink, but it puts everyone on the internet at risk, by teaching people not to update their devices.If you were affected by this scam, please get in touch with your state, phone number, and whether you saved the original receipt and (better still!) packaging. Activist, author, and EFF member Cory Doctorow tells Motherboard that Epson customers in other states that were burned by the update should contact the organization. That feedback will then be used as the backbone for additional complaints to other state AGs."Inkjet printers are the trailblazers of terrible technology business-models, patient zero in an epidemic of insisting that we all arrange our affairs to benefit corporate shareholders, at our own expense,” Doctorow told me via email.Doctorow notes that not only is this kind of behavior sleazy, it undermines security by eroding consumer faith in the software update process. Especially given that some printers can be easily compromised and used as an attack vector into the rest of the home network.“By abusing the updating mechanism, Epson is poisoning the security well for all of us: when Epson teaches people not to update their devices, they put us all at risk from botnets, ransomware epidemics, denial of service, cyber-voyeurism and the million horrors of contemporary internet security,” Doctorow said. Read the rest

Fendi is taking a beating online after creating a pink scarf that resembles female genitalia, bush and all. The Italian luxury fashion brand took down their £750 vulva-like "Touch of Fur" shawl after the internet got wind of it (blue and red versions are still available). It get really real when you flip it over 😭 pic.twitter.com/eqfNVeoru0— Eartha Kitten (@ginandtectonica) October 13, 2018The Guardian humorously notes, it "makes you look like you’re being born."If you like the look of labia, are ok with wearing real fur, and have $990 to kill, this scarf is still available from online retailer Farfetch.Fendi’s £750 ‘vulva’ scarf makes wearers look like they’re being born Read the rest