A leaked police-training presentation from digital forensics company Elcomsoft (a company that made history due to its early run-in with the DMCA) advises officers not to look at Iphones seized from suspects in order to avoid tripping the phones' facial recognition systems -- if Iphones sense too many unlock attempts with faces other than those registered as trusted, they fall back to requiring additional unlock measures like passcodes or fingerprints. “iPhone X: don’t look at the screen, or else… The same thing will occur as happened on Apple’s event,” the slide, from forensics company Elcomsoft, reads. Motherboard obtained the presentation from a non-Elcomsoft source, and the company subsequently confirmed its veracity.“This is quite simple. Passcode is required after five unsuccessful attempts to match a face,” Vladimir Katalov, CEO of Elcomsoft, told Motherboard in an online chat, pointing to Apple’s own documentation on Face ID. “So by looking into suspect’s phone, [the] investigator immediately lose one of [the] attempts.”Cops Told ‘Don’t Look’ at New iPhones to Avoid Face ID Lock-Out [Joseph Cox/Motherboard] Read the rest

California is one of the hot-zones in the world's urban housing crisis, driven by a combination of opposition to highrise/high-density living and the mass purchase of foreclosed properties following the 2008 crisis by giant Wall Street landlords who have steadily ratcheted up rents and evictions in a big to safeguard the flow of payments to bondholders who get a share of the rents extracted from struggling tenants living in dangerous, substanding housing.California's cities have different policy levers they can yank on to address this: zoning changes, commuter rail, school spending. But one lever that cities have relied upon since the beginning of modern urban government is missing: rent control. California state law forbids rent control on single-family homes; and apartments build after 1995.A ballot measure, Prop 10, will allow cities to impose rent controls on all rental stock, allowing voters a say in the way that their cities are developed. But the giant hedge funds that own hundreds of thousands of California rental properties are pumping millions more into scare-campaigns intended to convince voters to oppose Prop 10.Blackstone, the largest private equity firm in the world, is California's biggest corporate landlord, with 127,000 single-family homes in its "portfolio." They're responsible for $6,859,747 in anti-Prop-10 spending, part of the $45m attack on the proposition.Landlords across California have sent eviction notices to their tenants giving them 60 days to leave; other have announced massive rent increases -- and tenants have been notified that these will be cancelled only if Prop 10 fails. Read the rest

The first wave of computerized automation caught trade unions flat-footed; already reeling from the Reagan-era attacks on labor, union leadership failed completely to come up with a coherent response to the automation of manufacturing industries (a notable exception was the longshoremans' union, which ensured that containerization led to massive pay raises and generous retirements for the workers whose work was largely eliminated by better shipping techniques).With a second wave of automation upon us, unions representing service workers and truck drivers are floating more nuanced responses to automation, calling for worker input into how their jobs are automated, "about how technology can assist the work we perform and ease the rigors of our work, how our members are trained, what happens to workers who would otherwise be tagged as redundant, how our members are repositioned to succeed or hired into other workplaces."It's exemplary of the new labor consciousness of protecting workers' interests in an era of technological abundance -- ensuring that as work disappears into automated systems, workers themselves share in the dividends of that automation.Unite Here is following a similar path. Mr. Singh listed the union’s goals for Marriott contracts: “We want to talk about how technology can assist the work we perform and ease the rigors of our work, how our members are trained, what happens to workers who would otherwise be tagged as redundant, how our members are repositioned to succeed or hired into other workplaces.”In June, the union managed for the first time to include protections from technological change in its contracts covering workers at the Las Vegas properties of MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment. Read the rest

Monday is the end of the comment period for a sweeping National Park Service proposal that will have a dramatic effect on the ability of Americans to protest in sight of their government.Under the proposed new rules, protests around the White House and the National Mall would require permits, protestors would be barred from the sidewalk north of the White House. The proposal also seeks public comment on charging protesters fees for permits to gather.You can and should comment. Here is what the ACLU submitted.The park service plans to close 20 feet of the 25-foot-wide White House sidewalk, limiting demonstrators to a 5-foot sliver along Pennsylvania Avenue. This is perhaps the most iconic public forum in America, allowing “We the People” to express our views directly to the chief executive, going back at least to the women’s suffrage movement 100 years ago.The closure would violate the earlier court order, which permits demonstrations by at least 750 people on the White House sidewalk and declares that any lower limit is “invalid and void as an unconstitutional infringement of plaintiffs’ rights to freedom of speech and to assemble peaceably and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The park service didn’t offer any justification for closing the sidewalk. Even if it were based on security grounds, that wouldn’t pass muster because the White House fence is about to be replaced with a new, taller fence with special anti-climbing features, approved last year specifically to “meet contemporary security standards” while allowing the sidewalk to remain open. Read the rest

Create your own version of "Smell-O-Vision" by watching one the first three Star Wars films and lighting these officially-licensed candles from Merchoid when the scene coincides with the smell.List of scents:A New Hope:Wookiee: Ever wondered what a walking carpet smells like?Bantha Milk [erroneously spelled 'Banther' on the candle]: Love the smell of bantha milk in the morning?Trash Compactor: Find out what was very nearly the last smell Luke, Leia and Han ever experiencedX-wing Cockpit: Perfect for playthroughs of Battlefront's aerial combatCantina: Eau de scum and villainyLightsaber Duel: Do you prefer the smell of the dark side or the light side?The Empire Strikes Back:Han Solo Carbonite: This smell is all Leia had to remember Han for a long timeMillenium Falcon: She may not look much, but she's got it where it counts (the smell)Inside of a Tauntaun: Thought it smelt bad on the outside? You've experienced nothing yet!Yoda's Cooking Pot: Yoda's legendary Force powers are only eclipsed by his cooking skills. Smell it for yourself!Return Of The Jedi:Rancor: The only way to smell a Rancor without ending up its lunchSarlaac Pit: Add a new dimension to your favourite ROTJ sceneJabba's Palace: Admit it, you've always wondered what Jabba smells likeEwok: Do they smell as cute as they look? Let's find out!Death Star Destroyed: The sweet smell of rebellionThe candles are available in sets, starting at $36.99 (one film) and going up to $127.99 (entire trilogy on display board). Read the rest

There's a plot of land in Vermont where ice cream flavors go when they die. Located next to the Waterbury home of Ben & Jerry's plant and headquarters, the Flavor Graveyard is the final resting place for the company's discontinued flavors such as Wavy Gravy, White Russian, and (32) more.Travel + Leisure:“Ben & Jerry’s is known for outrageous, chunky, funky flavors,” said Flavor Guru Eric Fredette in a company press release. “But experimentation comes with risk, and not everybody likes our edgier ideas. Like everything else, ice cream flavors have a beginning and an end.”This year, visitors who take a Ben & Jerry's factory tour, along with a visit to the Flavor Graveyard, between Oct. 29 and 31 will be treated to a sample of a limited edition pumpkin pie ice cream available only in Waterbury.You can also visit their virtual burial ground and, if you wish, submit a request to "resurrect" any of the dead flavors. Zombie Schweddy Balls, anyone? Read the rest

Sure, you could use the same old PowerPoint templates for your next business presentation. It's not like you have bosses or investors to impress. Oh wait, you do? Time to augment that slideshow with Slideshop - the presentation tool that can individualize your pitch while saving you time.Compatible with PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides, Slideshop makes the process of preparing your visual aids as easy and creative as it should be. Users can choose from a core library of more than 15,000 modern, eye-catching slide templates to tailor their show to the content. Creating and customizing charts and infographics are easier than ever with Slideshop's intuitive editing tools, allowing you to spend more time on your business and less time prepping for the pitch.Best of all, Slideshop is on sale now for $29.99. Read the rest

Now that's dedication.IMGURian Mike Matola is a wonderful weird genius. He hand-copied the entire Jurassic Park script, line by line, to create this line art of a scene from the Steven Spielberg dinosaur movie. You can buy his art! Find him at linebylineposters.com.[via] Read the rest

Tito the raccoon enjoys swimming at the pool. In this video, Tito gives his new friend Penny the dog a swimming lesson.Video Link: “Tito The Raccoon Spends The Day At The Pool Ft. Penny” Read the rest

It's so tiny and deadly!The Slow Mo Guys fire a 2 inch Gun at 12,500fps. Pew Pew!“Do not mess around with pinfire guns at home.You could get a tiny but very real owwie.Filmed on the Phantom v2640 at 12,500fps.”I love what these guys do.Full video below. Read the rest

This is completely insane. Trump's ICE squads are sending separated under-5 children back to countries of origin without telling the kids' families. This week, U.S. Immigration officials sent a 4-year-old separated child from the U.S. to Guatemala City, an extremely dangerous place, without even telling her relatives in Guatemala that she was coming home. Excerpt from Huffington Post's Angelina Chapin:On Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent a 4-year-old separated child from the U.S. to Guatemala City without telling her family she was coming home. When Karla, a pseudonym HuffPost is using to protect the child’s identity, arrived in Guatemala, no one came to pick her up at a reunification center near the airport. Instead of reuniting with her deported father, whom she hadn’t seen since they crossed the U.S. border together six months ago, the child spent yet another night in a government-run shelter, according to Kids In Need of Defense, an organization helping the U.S. government to reunify families. “Just imagining this 4-year-old going back [home] after months and months of separation ... and then her dad didn’t show up after all of this,” said Lisa Frydman, KIND’s director of regional and policy initiatives. “The trauma level is unimaginable.” Legal and immigration experts say ICE is sending children back to Central America without properly notifying parents of their travel plans. The Department of Justice recently said ICE is only handling only “a relatively small number” of repatriation cases, but advocates say even a handful of situations in which parents aren’t given the proper notice to pick up their children is a major cause for concern. Read the rest

Because of course they would. President Donald Trump's son Don Jr., along with pro-Trump extreme right wing media, are exploiting Washington Post contributing journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s interviews with Osama bin Laden to imply that he supported Islamic terror, reports The Daily Beast. Khashoggi is reported to have been abducted, tortured, killed, and dismembered by agents of the Saudi government, inside their embassy in Istanbul.Will Sommer, Daily Beast:The latest attack on Khashoggi’s reputation started Friday with Patrick Poole, a terrorism correspondent for conservative website PJ Media. Poole ran images from a 1988 article Khashoggi wrote showing Khashoggi holding a rocket-propelled grenade with fighters in Afghanistan opposing the Soviet Union.Khashoggi was among a number of journalists who interviewed Bin Laden in the 1980s and ’90s. But the picture and article, Poole claimed, was proof that Khashoggi was “tooling around Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden.”“He’s just a democrat reformer journalist holding a RPG with jihadists,” Poole tweeted.“Huh,” Davis wrote. “It’s almost like reality is quite different than the evidence-free narratives peddled by media with a long history of cooperating with or getting duped by Iran echo chamber architects.”Trump Jr. then boosted Davis’ post, retweeting for his 3 million Twitter followers the attack on Khashoggi. Read the rest

The good news: Facebook downgrades the number of accounts hit in the breach they disclosed two weeks ago to 29 million, down from 50 million. The bad news: Uh, that's still a LOT. And if you were one of those 29 million Facebook users, A LOT of your intimate personal data was stolen. Facebook disclosed this in a corporate blog post, “An Update on the Security Issue,” with more details on the massive privacy breach. Facebook Product Management VP Guy Rosen says:People can check whether they were affected by visiting our Help Center. In the coming days, we’ll send customized messages to the 30 million people affected to explain what information the attackers might have accessed, as well as steps they can take to help protect themselves, including from suspicious emails, text messages, or calls.This attack did not include Messenger, Messenger Kids, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Workplace, Pages, payments, third-party apps, or advertising or developer accounts. Naturally they published at the end of the day on Friday, when all bad news gets dumped to minimize impact.“For 15 million people, attackers accessed two sets of information — name and contact details (phone number, email, or both, depending on what people had on their profiles),” writes Rosen in the post.“For 14 million people, the attackers accessed the same two sets of information, as well as other details people had on their profiles.”Bu “other details,” he means your location, gender, relationship status, your recent search and personal physical location data. Read the rest

The WWE has a self-created Saudi Arabia problem on its hands.Crown Jewel, a pay-per-view event scheduled to take place on November 2nd in Riyadh, is under heavy scrutiny as we learn more about the Saudi government's role in the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And now, members of Congress are calling for the event to be canceled. On April 25th, 2016, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman unveiled Saudi Vision 2030 – a plan to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy and expand public service sectors, including entertainment. Remember when country singer Toby Keith headlined a concert in Riyadh and everyone was like, WTF? That was part of Saudi Vision 2030. Another central part of the expanded entertainment sector was announced on March 5th of this year, when WWE entered into a 10-year strategic partnership with the Saudi government through the General Sports Authority. 
The first event in this new partnership, the Greatest Royal Rumble, took place on April 27th in front of 60,000 fans at King Abdullah International Stadium in Jeddah. If you watched any of the pay-per-view, you know that it was essentially a five-hour infomercial for the House of Saud with some wrestling matches tossed in. None of those matches featured any of the WWE’s women wrestlers because Saudi Arabia is still emerging from the Dark Ages. Women were allowed to attend the event, but only if they were accompanied by a man. Again, Dark Ages.The second event in this partnership, Crown Jewel, is scheduled for November 2nd at King Saud University in Riyadh. Read the rest

Enjoy this delightful clip from Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color "Disneyland Showtime" that aired on March 22, 1970. From the IMDB page:The Osmond Brothers, accompanied by Kurt Russell and E.J. Peaker, come to Disneyland to perform at a show being held there. But Donny and Jay Osmond go off to explore the park. Worried that they will miss the performance, the rest of the cast go to try and retrieve them before it is too late. They also visit the then-newest Disneyland attraction at the time, the Haunted Mansion.(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

Sean Kayode, a homeless person hustling to make ends meet in San Francisco unsurprisingly received a lot of parking tickets, in San Francisco. Naturally, the best way for San Francisco to secure payment was to seize his method of earning money. A federal judge has ordered the car be returned, for now.Via the SF Examiner:A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the city of San Francisco to return a towed car to a homeless man who couldn’t afford to pay the parking tickets he received while working as a food delivery driver.U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said Sean Kayode had raised “serious questions” about whether the March 5 towing of his car because of unpaid parking tickets violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.White wrote that in a situation in which a car owner can’t afford to pay overdue parking tickets, “it is not clear…that seizure is reasonable in an effort to secure repayment of the debt owed.”The judge issued a preliminary injunction requiring return of the car. The order will remain in effect until there is a full trial on a lawsuit filed by Kayode, 52, and James Smith, 64, whose car was towed on Dec. 28, 2017.Kayode’s car was towed from a street-cleaning zone outside a homeless shelter where he was staying. In the previous 10 months, he had received about 30 parking tickets and had paid some but not all of them.A state law allows local authorities to tow a car whose owner has five or more unpaid parking tickets for at least three weeks. Read the rest

Stephen Hawking's final paper that he and his colleagues completed just days before his death has now been published. It's titled "Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair," co-authored with Sasha Haco, Malcolm J. Perry, and Andrew Strominger, about the black hole information paradox. Here is the abstract:A set of infinitesimal VirasoroL⊗VirasoroR diffeomorphisms are presented which act non-trivially on the horizon of a generic Kerr black hole with spin J. The covariant phase space formalism provides a formula for the Virasoro charges as surface integrals on the horizon. Integrability and associativity of the charge algebra are shown to require the inclusion of `Wald-Zoupas' counterterms. A counterterm satisfying the known consistency requirement is constructed and yields central charges cL=cR=12J. Assuming the existence of a quantum Hilbert space on which these charges generate the symmetries, as well as the applicability of the Cardy formula, the central charges reproduce the macroscopic area-entropy law for generic Kerr black holes.The Guardian has a translation:In the latest paper, Hawking and his colleagues show how some information (contained in an object that falls into a black hole) at least may be preserved. Toss an object into a black hole and the black hole’s temperature ought to change. So too will a property called entropy, a measure of an object’s internal disorder, which rises the hotter it gets.The physicists, including Sasha Haco at Cambridge and Andrew Strominger at Harvard, show that a black hole’s entropy may be recorded by photons that surround the black hole’s event horizon, the point at which light cannot escape the intense gravitational pull. Read the rest

"Investors are bailing" from Facebook, writes CNN Money. The share price for the disgraced social media firm has dropped 30% since July. Facebook has had a hard time shaking its image as a firm that happily violates users' privacy, manipulates users emotional well-being, doesn't take proper steps to secure users' data, courts advertisers interested in targeting white supremacists, and sells users' behavioral information to unscrupulous entities.Despite hours of testimony, a blitz of executive interviews and numerous tweaks to its privacy settings, Facebook has yet to put the Cambridge Analytica issue behind it. And now, Facebook faces the prospect of additional regulatory scrutiny after disclosing a new security breach affecting nearly 50 million users.The longer the privacy backlash continues, not to mention ongoing concerns about election meddling, the more potential for damage to Facebook's core business."For the first time, we've heard some grumblings from the advertiser community that the hot water that Facebook is in politically is creating some hesitation on budget allocations (for some)," Ross Sandler, an analyst with Barclays, wrote in an investor note this week. Read the rest

In an embarrassing video released today, the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, Scott Wagner, thinks he's a tough guy when he threatens his opponent, Gov. Tom Wolf: "Well, Governor Wolf, let me tell you what, between now and Nov. 6, you better put a catcher’s mask on your face, because I’m going to stomp all over your face with golf spikes." Wolf's running mate tweets that Wagner has "lost it.".@realScottWagner has lost it.🤬🤪Warns my running mate he’s going to “stomp on his face with golf spikes” https://t.co/ocwBndREsC— Mayor John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) October 12, 2018No, he hasn't lost it. This is just what the devolution of the GOP looks like.Via the Daily Beast Read the rest

Science Alert claims this illusions mimics time travel in the brain. I think the illusion works, but I saw no dinosaurs.Via Science Alert:In the Illusory Rabbit, the middle flash never happens, but most people still think they saw three flashes to match three beeps.In the Invisible Rabbit, it's the middle beep that is missed – and the brain usually thinks there was no middle flash either.The fact that the middle beep or flash IS getting manipulated shows postdiction at work – it's actually the last flash and beep that causes the illusion to happen. They make our brain alter what it perceived in the past. Read the rest

A Russian hacker who calls himself "Alexey" is infiltrating insecure networks and adding security patches to Latvian-made MikroTik routers so they "can't be abused by cryptojackers, botnet herders, or other cyber-criminals," reports ZDNet. Alexey claims to have secured over 100,000 MikroTik routers so far. A security expert told ZDNet that over 420,000 MikroTik routers have been hijacked to mine cryptocurrency on the sly.Alexey has not been trying to hide his actions and has boasted about his hobby on a Russian blogging platform. He says he accesses routers and makes changes to their settings to prevent further abuse."I added firewall rules that blocked access to the router from outside the local network," Alexey said. "In the comments, I wrote information about the vulnerability and left the address of the @router_os Telegram channel, where it was possible for them to ask questions."But despite adjusting firewall settings for over 100,000 users, Alexey says that only 50 users reached out via Telegram. A few said "thanks," but most were outraged.The vigilante server administrator says he's been only fixing routers that have not been patched by their owners against a MikroTik vulnerability that came to light in late April. Read the rest

Kara Swisher is one of the best journalists working today, so it was fascinating to read about her experiences working for well-known editors as she rose through the ranks.My next boss after [Jack] Shafer was John McLaughlin, of the TV show The McLaughlin Group. I ghostwrote his column in the National Review -- he would add in the right-wing invective -- and then I worked on his show. That asshole of a human being. I got the sense he sort of respected me because I didn’t put up with his shit. Because I wasn’t a Republican. I was a liberal, obviously. All these people were weird acolytes to him because he was a big deal during the Reagan administration. That was his power. So he used that. These people would do everything to work for one of the top Republican people, and I was like, I don’t give a fuck. My whole history is not going to depend on this. He enjoyed a smart woman in a weird, sick way.He was awful and abusive and terrible -- and as it turned out, he was like Sexual Harasser 101. He was harassing a woman on the staff who was a friend of mine. But he was abusive to the whole staff. He would line people up by height and then make them look for a dust ball under his couch. Stuff like that. This was Captain Queeg kind of behavior. He was just super crazy. Everyone had a beeper -- he had to know where you were. Read the rest

The new record for most eliminations in a single match by a squad is now 61. Watch Fortitude_Fqrbes, Nexjs, tactjc, and TTV NadeXC take down most of the lobby.There is a lot of swearing, as there should be. Read the rest

When we spent 5 weeks in Japan this summer, we bought a lot of prepared meals from convenience stores. They were really good. In this video, we see how a family who moved from Canada to Japan makes great dinner spreads using frozen meals. Read the rest

Trump aide Stephen Miller "was a strange dude" and a "loner" who ate glue as a child, according to his third grade teacher Nikki Fiske. The 72-year-old teacher, who taught Miller in 1993, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter and, among other things, had this to say about Miller:"I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk — he always had stuff mashed up in there. He was a strange dude. I remember he would take a bottle of glue — we didn't have glue sticks in those days — and he would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off and then eat it."I remember being concerned about him — not academically. He was OK with that, though I could never read his handwriting. But he had such strange personal habits. He was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time."Fiske, who teaches in Southern California, has been suspended for her remarks. "The district says it's concerned about the public release of student information," according to NBC News. Image: DonkeyHotey/Flickr Read the rest

I've been doing a lot of Raspberry Pi retrogaming lately, and have tried a lot of different gamepad controllers. The best controllers, in my estimation, are the ones made by 8BitDo. They've introduced a new model, the SN30 ($30), and it comes in colors matching the old Game Boy Pockets. They pair with Raspberry Pi, Switch, OS X, iOS, Android, and Windows. You can also connect them to a device using the included USB cable. Read the rest

A high-speed train going from Cologne to Munich carrying 510 passengers caught fire early this morning (local time). At least two cars burned, but amazingly no one was hurt. From Reuters:Mass-selling daily Bild said a policeman traveling on the ICE train smelled smoke and activated the emergency braking system, “averting catastrophe”.Operator Deutsche Bahn [DBN.UL] said it had closed the high-speed line between Cologne and Frankfurt as a result of the fire and would divert trains traveling that route, adding 80 minutes to the journey time.The cause of the fire is unknown at this time. Read the rest

Today I learned that by placing a teal pumpkin out on Halloween, you are signaling that you are offering non-food (read: non-allergen) treats to children. It's a secret code that you have safe goodies like stickers, stencils, and glow sticks to give out instead of candy. Clever!The Teal Pumpkin Project was started in 2014 by non-profit advocacy group Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE). They write:The Teal Pumpkin Project encourages people to raise awareness of food allergies and promotes inclusion of all trick-or-treaters throughout the Halloween season. The nationwide movement offers an alternative for kids with food allergies, as well as other children for whom candy is not an option.The steps to participate are:Provide non-food treats for trick-or-treaters.Place a teal pumpkin – the color of food allergy awareness –in front of your home to indicate you have non-food treats available.Add your home to the Teal Pumpkin Project map.Spread the word! Share the Teal Pumpkin Project with your friends and family.Thanks, Phoebe!images via FARE Read the rest

Michael-Scott Earle, a self-publisher of "pulp harem fantasies" is seeking a trademark on the use of "Dragon Slayer" in connection with fantasy novels.Amazingly, the US Patent and Trademark Office thinks this has enough merit to proceed. Jason A Holt writes, "The USPTO, after receiving letters of protest containing over 100 pages of evidence that the phrase 'Dragon Slayer' is widely used in the book business, has decided to publish 'Dragon Slayer' for opposition. In other words, the examining attorney thinks it's A-OK as a trademark. Now everyone who wants to stop it will have to lawyer up."Earle is a serial trademark offender: he also sought a trademark on book covers featuring "one or more human or partially human figures underneath, at least one of the figures holding a weapon; and an author's name underneath the figures; wherein the title/series and author's name are depicted in the same or similar coloring." DRAGON SLAYER [USPTO] Read the rest

My new favorite subreddit is Accidental Maps, specializing in a pareidolia of places. Read the rest

Hirotakaster's instructions for combining magnets and fidget spinners are a one-way ticket to glorious, chaotic motion, as complex systems emerge from grids of obsolete, post-fad plastic waste. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

Stalin's pose and expression in the propaganda poster makes it look like he's just noticed there's a goose coming toward him and it's dawning on him that he has no idea how to deal with geese. Read the rest

A year ago, Chinese white-label CCTV/DVR vendor Xiongmai announced a recall and security update for its devices, whose weak security meant that they had been conscripted into a massive, unstoppable botnet.A year later, Xiongmai's promises have been broken: the company has invested precious little resource into keeping its security current, and as a result the cameras and recorders it sells are routinely compromised by voyeurs (who use them to spy on their owners), criminals (who use them to case businesses and plan crimes) and cybercriminals (who take over the devices and use them to run bot attacks of various kinds, from denial-of-service to simply disguising the location of another attack by using a hacked device as a proxy).To complicate the matter, Xiongmai is a white-label vendor whose products are sold under hundreds of brand-names, making it nearly impossible to tell whether you are about to buy (or already own) one of their defective products. It may not matter: Xionmai's major competitor, TVT, is another white label CCTV/DVR giant, and its products are incredibly insecure and it, too has failed to take action to fix things.The exploits used to take over these devices are not supervillainry: thanks to weak default passwords, deliberate backdoors, and bad design decisions (like not forcing a password change during setup), they are taken over in their thousands by clumsy, amateurish exploits.The latest Xiongmai vulnerability advisory comes from SEC Consult (who previously revealed similar defects in Shenzhen Gwelltimes Technology Co., Ltd's constellation of white-label internet of shit gadgets): they explored vulnerabilities in Xiongmai's cloud management system, called the "XMEye P2P Cloud."Logins for this system are easily guessed because they are derived from Xiongmai products' sequential MAC addresses; the passwords use weak default usernames ("admin" and no password!), and every device has a second, hidden backdoor account whose login/pass is "default/tluafed."Once an attacker gains access to a device, they have the ability to flash its firmware, and because Xiongmai doesn't practice firmware signing, an attacker can load anything onto its products. Read the rest

Multinational companies have used the no-nonsense methodologies of Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma to oil a smooth-running operation for years. What is it? Six Sigma (and its offshoot, Lean Six Sigma) apply the principles of science to business, teaching managers to methodically target waste, maximize output and streamline the flow from producer to consumer. In a nutshell, it's a universal process that can work for any size company.The Complete Six Sigma Training & Certification Bundle teaches those principles for managers both prospective and practicing. In more than 75 hours of engaging lectures, exams, and hands-on exercises, you'll learn to identify the eight types of waste and use the patented DMAIC method to confidently tackle any project with any team. Users will progress through the yellow, green and black belts in both Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma and earn certified credentials with the included exam. It's an accomplishment that will pay dividends in any office and qualify you for top management jobs in a myriad of fields.Pick up The Complete Six Sigma Training & Certification Bundle for $59 today. Read the rest

I never know where our conversations are going to go when I get together with my friend Mark of Cardhouse. His tastes are more esoteric than the average person and I'm always surprised and amused by what he shares with me. So, we had lunch Wednesday. Somehow Dunkin' Donuts came up. He asked me if I had remembered when he posted about Donkey Donald's (in 2013). I hadn't. He explained.He cited a Tumblr written by two NYC concierges in which they shared funny stories about their job. The blog is called how may we hate you? and their "Donkey Donald's" story is as follows:Then he tells me that, back in 2013, he reworked the Dunkin' Donuts logo to become, of course, the Donkey Donald's logo (lead image). Then he says when Dunkin' Donuts changed its name to simply Dunkin' recently, he updated his Donkey Donald's logo to simply Donkey (because, of course):pic.twitter.com/a5JcbYUCQp— Cardhouse (@cardhouse) September 27, 2018Talk about playing the logo long game! Read the rest

Buy a single item at CVS and you can end up with a 4'-6'-long ribbon of register tape, a kind of orgy of coupons and come-ons.The phenomenon of the farcically long CVS receipt goes back to 2008 or so, when the company started buying data-mining services to plumb its customer loyalty card data, generating coupons on the fly.This apparently worked -- for a while. But stimulus regresses to the mean (AKA: we get used to stuff) and so CVS needed to do more to get the same yield, and other companies started printing their own super-long receipts, poisoning the well by getting us all more adapted to (and thus unimpressed by) the phenomenon.Register coupons have a long and weird history. Getting a coupon into the hands of someone who is likely to use it is hard because most people won't use most coupons. Consumer packaged goods companies like Unilever and P&G have spent decades experimenting with getting grocers to hand coupons out to people who are cashing out, on the grounds that someone who is buying groceries has a high probability of being the kind of person who buys groceries. But the problem is, someone who has just bought groceries is also likely to be someone who won't need to buy groceries for a while.There are lots of complicating factors here: the richer you are, the more willing you might be to try a new product (if you're poor and you buy a laundry detergent you don't end up liking, you can't necessarily afford to throw it away and go back to your old brand) -- but rich people are also less coupon-clippy, meaning that register coupons (intended to entice the purchaser into trying something new, because you don't need to convince someone to buy a product that they already routinely purchase) are more likely to go into their garbage than an envelope that is put aside for the next shopping trip. Read the rest

London is increasingly a city on two wheels: it's huge, it's congested, and gasoline is comically expensive. Thieves are targeting bike couriers, taking their mopeds and scooters for single-time use in subsequent crimes (such as robberies), and this BBC investigation shows how violent they're getting with victims. We’ve all got used to having food delivered to our doorsteps at all hours of the day and night. But spare a thought for the delivery riders, because they’re frequently finding themselves the target of armed bike and moped gangs, who attempt to steal their delivery vehicles to use to commit further crimes. To reveal just how dangerous it can be out there, we armed some of these drivers with cameras. Chris Rogers has the story.As a former Londoner now living in America, I have to admit that I can't imagine this sort of casual, push-you-off-your-bike theft here. Americans call it a "polite society" but that's just their way of describing an "I will blow your head off if you come within 10 feet of my bike" society. The result is an insane yet normalized pandemic of gun violence, but hey, at least no-one is going to try and nick your motorcycle at the lights.Some of the scenes are so amazing it seems like fiction. The police are so useless that couriers themselves are forming gangs to retaliate against thieves. It's like the first scene of Akira, but on little scooters going "iiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" and all they want to do is deliver lunch. Read the rest

I've only scratched the surface of former NPR producer Ian Chillag's podcast Everything is Alive but I'm already tickled by it. The premise: serious interviews with inanimate objects. So far, Louis (a can of cola), Maeve (a lamppost), Dennis (a pillow), Tar (a bar of soap), Ana (an elevator), and Paul (a tooth), have had their time in the limelight. Listen in here.(Waxy) Read the rest

Someone checked in on Bing search and the results aren't pretty. At some point it became a sewer of racism, antisemitism, pedophilia and conspiracy theories—and that's just the recommendations.The BBC reports:In his investigation, Mr Hoffman looked up racially-themed terms and found that the majority of suggestions for further searches that accompanied results pointed people to racist sites or images.Racist memes and images were also returned for many of the words he tried."We all know this garbage exists on the web, but Bing shouldn't be leading people to it with their search suggestions," wrote Mr Hoffman.It is believed that the suggestions for further searches connected to these terms have emerged from a combination of user activity and concerted action by far-right groups to skew responses.Everyone's mad at Microsoft for not giving a shit (and it has promised to start giving a shit), but it is instructive to see such a huge-scale mirror image of what the algorithms think we want to see--and what we are are searching for.More fun Chris Hoffman found on Bing: Read the rest

Caltech researchers developed the illusion above to illustrate postdiction, a sensory phenomenon "in which a stimulus that occurs later can retroactively affect our perceptions of an earlier event." From Caltech Matters:"Illusions are a really interesting window into the brain," says first author Noelle Stiles (PhD '15), a visitor in biology and biological engineering and a postdoctoral scholar–research associate at USC. "By investigating illusions, we can study the brain's decision-making process. For example, how does the brain determine reality with information from multiple senses that is at times noisy and conflicting? The brain uses assumptions about the environment to solve this problem. When these assumptions happen to be wrong, illusions can occur as the brain tries to make the best sense of a confusing situation. We can use these illusions to unveil the underlying inferences that the brain makes...."Postdictive processing has been demonstrated within individual senses, but this work focuses on how the phenomenon can bridge multiple senses. The key to both of the new illusions is that the audio and visual stimuli occur rapidly, in under 200 milliseconds (one-fifth of a second). The brain, trying to make sense of this barrage of information, synthesizes the stimuli from both senses to determine the experience, using postdiction to do so. Read more in the researchers' scientific paper: "What you saw is what you will hear: Two new illusions with audiovisual postdictive effects" (PLoS ONE) Read the rest

Boston Dynamics has just released this astounding video of their Atlas humanoid robot doing parkour:The control software uses the whole body including legs, arms and torso, to marshal the energy and strength for jumping over the log and leaping up the steps without breaking its pace. (Step height 40 cm.) Atlas uses computer vision to locate itself with respect to visible markers on the approach to hit the terrain accurately. Unfortunately the engineers failed to outfit Atlas with a speech synthesizer to yell "Parkour! Parkour! Parkour!" like so. Read the rest

Voting rights advocacy groups are suing the state of Georgia to reinstate 53,000 blocked voter registrations, 70% of which are from African American voters, saying the current policy violates the U.S. Voting Rights Act and The National Voter Registration Act. BREAKING: We have just filed a lawsuit against Brian Kemp to end #Georgia’s exact match law, which has put as many as 53K voter registrations on hold ahead of the #MidtermElections.Joining us in this suit: @CampaignLegal @AAAJ_Atlanta @NAACPGA pic.twitter.com/JxXPAzGMoZ— Lawyers' Committee (@LawyersComm) October 11, 2018The Lawyer's Committee For Human Rights tweeted this afternoon, “We have just filed a lawsuit against Brian Kemp to end #Georgia’s exact match law, which has put as many as 53K voter registrations on hold ahead of the #MidtermElections.”Here's the lawsuit [PDF].So black Georgians are affected by this registration hold-up at a rate more than double their prevalence in the population... as Brian Kemp oversees his own election.This is outrageous enough that it seems almost impossible that the courts will allow this to stand. pic.twitter.com/T4v41A1MlO— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) October 11, 2018Tonya got her ID today in #Orlando #Florida! Her license expired while she was in the hospital battling cancer and she didn't have to funds to get it renewed when she recovered. But she got her ID & will be applying for a job with her local school district! @SpreadTheVoteUS pic.twitter.com/sJwJr9VyMa— SpreadthevoteFL (@SpreadthevoteFL) October 11, 2018Registration deadline for people in Randolph and Grady Counties, Georgia extended thru at least Monday, *October 15th*. Read the rest

The United States Postal Service (USPS) wants to raise the fees it charges Amazon.com and other internet commerce shippers by 9 to 12 percent. This comes just months after President Donald Trump criticized the USPS, saying it gives Amazon too good of a deal. I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018“The parcel select service, which is also used by United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx, is the last and typically the most expensive step in the shipping process that gets the packages to customers' doorsteps,”, writes Waverly Colville at NBC News, and “The USPS proposed a 9.3 percent increase on this service for packages weighing over one pound and a 12.3 percent increase to lighter packages.”Excerpt:Trump issued an executive order in April to set up a task force to examine the USPS, claiming that it was on an "unsustainable financial path." He's also tweeted that the USPS is Amazon's "delivery boy" and doesn't make money from Amazon's business.A USPS spokesperson said these proposed changes are not a response to Trump's criticism."The price increases reflect the best judgment of the Postal Service Governors, who are seeking to establish new rates that will keep the Postal Service competitive, while also providing the Postal Service with much needed revenue," the spokesperson said. Read the rest

“On Helen’s form, which was filled out with assistance from officials, there is a checked box next to a line that says, “I withdraw my previous request for a Flores bond hearing.” Beneath that line, the five-year-old signed her name in wobbly letters.”What the Trump administration is doing to these thousands of children is morally repulsive. We have to stop it.Here's an excerpt from a New Yorker feature on Helen, “a smart, cheerful five-year-old girl” seeking asylum from Honduras. She ends up in court, separated from her parents. The organization helping her is lupenet.org, and you should support their work. They managed to get Helen reunited with her mother, and out of Trump's brown kid prisons. But here's what happened to her:In July, Helen fled Honduras with her grandmother, Noehmi, and several other relatives; gangs had threatened Noehmi’s teen-age son, Christian, and the family no longer felt safe. Helen’s mother, Jeny, had migrated to Texas four years earlier, and Noehmi planned to seek legal refuge there. With Noehmi’s help, Helen travelled thousands of miles, sometimes on foot, and frequently fell behind the group. While crossing the Rio Grande in the journey’s final stretch, Helen slipped from their raft and risked drowning. Her grandmother grabbed her hand and cried, “Hang on, Helen!” When the family reached the scrubland of southern Texas, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended them and moved them through a series of detention centers. A month earlier, the Trump Administration had announced, amid public outcry over its systemic separation of migrant families at the border, that it would halt the practice. Read the rest

After K-pop group NCT 127 from Vancouver, Canada performed on KTTV-Fox 11's Good Day L.A., host Araksya Karapetyan gave one of the singers an odd compliment: "Very cool, your English is awesome. I love it." Here's the clip:“Your english is awesome , I love it” I mean he’s from Canada , what is he supposed to speak , moose? pic.twitter.com/goGiN4FDmR— leaf 🌱 (@haspuwu) October 9, 2018 Read the rest

It's taken M. Night Shyamalan close to two decades and three films to fully realize his vision of a world full of super-powered heroes and villains, but here we are! Eighteen years after Unbreakable popped and close to two after Split was released, Glass is here. Well, almost. It'll be hitting theaters on January 19th.I know that M. Night Shyamalan's plopped out a few turds over the years, but I have faith in his vision as a filmmaker and as a writer. Fingers crossed that Glass is just as good as it looks. Read the rest

On October 11, 1968, NASA launched the first Apollo crew into space. This mission, Apollo 7, opened the spaceways for the moon landing the following July. Apollo 7 had the following objectives: Demonstrate Command and Service Module (CSM) with crew performance; demonstrate mission support facilities' performance during a crewed mission and demonstrate Apollo rendezvous capability; demonstrate live TV broadcasts from space.From NASA:The Apollo 7 crew was commanded by Walter Schirra, with Command Module Pilot Donn Eisele, and Lunar Module Pilot Walter Cunningham. The mission consisted of an 11-day Earth-orbital test flight to test the Apollo command and service module. It was also the first time a crew flew on the Saturn IB rocket.Although Apollo 7 was a complete technical success, it was born out of a tragedy. After the fatal fire that took the lives of the Apollo 1 crew—Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White—the Apollo 7 crew took over the mission.Apollo 1 was supposed to be the first crewed Apollo mission. During a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy, an electrical fire broke out in the cabin. Because the cabin atmosphere was pure oxygen, the fire spread incredibly quickly. The fire also created intense pressure inside the cabin, and because the hatch could only swing inward, the crew was stuck inside.All further crewed missions had to wait until NASA could determine the sources of the mishap—technical and organizational—and ensure that nothing like it would happen again. In the 21 months between Apollo 1 and Apollo 7, the Apollo spacecraft and spacesuits were redesigned to more safely fly crews to space. Read the rest

Brennan Walker, a 14-year-old black boy, missed his school bus and tried to walk to school. Getting lost, he knocked on Jeffrey Ziegler's door to ask for directions. Ziegler, a 53-year-old white man, walked shirtless onto his porch armed with a shotgun and fired it at Walker. Though claiming the gun went off accidentally when he tripped, his own porch camera shows him calmly taking aim at the boy, who escaped unharmed. The video was released today in Ziegler's attempted murder trial. Also taking the stand Tuesday was Detective Shawn Pace, who said during his investigation, his assessment of what had allegedly happened at the Zeigler house — a home invasion attempt — changed as he watched the surveillance video.Ziegler is why black boys run. Pace is why black men kneel. Read the rest

This mysterious large object washed up last week on Seabrook Island in Charleston County, South Carolina. Apparently it has the consistency of foam and does not seem to contain any metal. The Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network posted this photo of it to their Facebook page generating many fantastic theories and a few boring ones. From UPI:Some have suggested the object resembles the shape of a damaged marine buoy like those used by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Seabrook Island officials had the object removed by a truck and trailer, but they have not commented on the identity of the unusual piece of debris. Read the rest

In a year of unprecedented involvement by women in politics, as candidates, as votes and as subjects of political debate and rancor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has an interesting proposal: women should quit social media for 10 days, right before the election.With a major election less than a month away, Nelson’s timing was particularly unfortunate for women involved in politics. Parker is a member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, a left-leaning group founded in the wake of the 2016 election to encourage LDS women to become politically involved. She is helping to organize a nonpartisan “voter prep party” in her neighborhood where women will gather to review the issues, with the goal of boosting turnout in the midterms. Her group had planned to distribute sample ballots and other mateials online before the party, but now they are handing out invitations and information by hand and hoping for the best. Tax them. Read the rest