Boing Boing

When Amazon division Abebooks -- the largest platform for antiquarian booksellers in the world -- announced it would blacklist stores in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, South Korea and Russia, citing nebulous transaction-processing difficulties -- 600 antiquarian booksellers in 27 countries went on strike, withdrawing their 4,000,000 titles from Abebooks.Two days later, Amazon reversed its policy and promised that booksellers in the affected countries would continue to be welcome on its platform.Despite the victory, the lesson that some booksellers have taken away from the event is that Amazon does not have their interests at heart and that their efforts should be focused on selling off of Amazon's platform. “AbeBooks was saying entire countries were expendable to its plans,” said Scott Brown, a Eureka, Calif., bookseller who was an organizer of the strike. “Booksellers everywhere felt they might be next.”The matter was apparently resolved when Sally Burdon, an Australian bookseller who is president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, spoke with Arkady Vitrouk, chief executive of AbeBooks. In a Wednesday email to her members after their talk, Ms. Burdon said Mr. Vitrouk apologized for the platform’s behavior “a number of times” and said booksellers in the affected countries would not be dropped as scheduled on Nov. 30.“Arkady told us that ABE are very well aware of the mistake they have made,” she wrote in the email, which was viewed by The New York Times. “He stated that it was a ‘bad decision’ and that they deeply regret the hurt and harm they have caused.”After Protest, Booksellers Are Victorious Against Amazon Subsidiary [David Streitfeld/New York Times](Image: Kheel Center, CC-BY)(via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

Denuvo bills itself as the best-of-breed in games DRM, the most uncrackable, tamper-proof wrapper for games companies; but its reputation tells a different story: the company's products are infamous for falling quickly to DRM crackers and for interfering with game-play until you crack the DRM off the products you buy.The company's reputation for unjustifiable bragging is well-deserved: the latest iteration of Denuvo DRM is version 5.3, slated to launch with Hitman 2 on November 13th. But Hitman 2 leaked onto the internet yesterday, two days prior to its launch, and Denuvo 5.3 was cracked within hours -- two days before the official release.The DRM was cracked by a group calling itself FCKDRM.While several groups have been chipping away at Denuvo for some time, FCKDRM is a new entrant (at least by branding) to the cracking scene. Notably, FCKDRM isn’t a ‘Scene’ group but one that works in P2P circles. At least for now, their identities remain a secret but their choice of name is interesting.FCKDRM is the official name for the anti-DRM initiative recently launched by GOG, a digital distribution platform for DRM-free video games and video.There’s no suggestion at all that GOG is involved in the cracking of Denuvo, of course, but the FCKDRM group are using GOG’s FCKDRM logo when announcing releases, which certainly has the potential to confuse casual pirates.Hitman 2’s Denuvo Protection Cracked Three Days Before Launch [Andy/Torrentfreak] Read the rest

I will watch anything that Joel and Ethan Coen had a hand in. Anything. When that anything stars Tim Blake Nelson, Tom Waits and Brendan Gleeson, three of my favorite people that I'll likely never meet, that goes double.The Ballad of Buster Scruggs moseyed into theaters for a limited release last week and will ride on over yonder to Netflix on November 16th. Read the rest

Just in time for the holidays, Hasbro has released "Monopoly for Millennials", the game where you're encouraged to take a break from the rat race because "adulting is hard." This should go over well. Money doesn't always buy a great time, but experiences, whether they're good -- or weird -- last forever. The Monopoly for Millennials game celebrates just that. Instead of collecting as much cash as possible, players are challenged to rack up the most Experiences to win. Travel around the gameboard discovering and visiting cool places to eat, shop, and relax. Interact with other players via Chance and Community Chest cards, (which are super relatable). And players don't pay rent -- they visit one another, earning more Experience points. This board game is a great way to bring a fun and relaxed vibe to a party or casual get-together.That's right - there's no rent to pay and no real estate to buy because, as it says on the front of the box, "Forget real estate. You can't afford to buy it anyway." Experiences include a 3-day music festival, a friend's couch, a vegan bistro, bike share, and yoga studio. A hashtag and smiley face emoji are among the tokens. The person with the most student debt rolls first. Uncle Pennybags is wearing a participation ribbon.Yikes.The reaction has been less than appreciative. Monopoly for Millennials [Walmart][Photos: Walmart/Hasbro] Read the rest

Unix pioneer Rob Pike was there from the start, physically transporting key elements of the "Toronto distribution" of Unix to Berkeley when he started grad school, and then to Bell Labs, working alongside Dennis Ritchie and other key Unix programmers to develop and refine everything from modern editors to compilers to windowing systems.His hour-long "illustrated memoir" of the deep history of Unix is delightful, touching on the people and institutional forces that shaped the operating environment that has come to dominate modern computing (he even gives a mention to Cardiac, the cardboard computer that shaped my own computing life).And beyond being fascinating, this is also very funny: those early pioneers were very playful and prone to pranking each other in ways that remain very relatable, even all these years later. Pike is a very good presenter, and his Zelig-like presence at so many key moments in our shared digital history makes this a tale worth telling, and watching.(via Four Short Links) Read the rest

Gwern Branwen asks the deceptively simple question "How many computers are in your computer?"Having defined "computer" as "a Turing-complete device which can be programmed in a usefully general fashion with little or no code running on the 'official' computer," Branwen enumerates the crazily large number of systems in your phone, laptop or server that qualify -- which may seem like a mere exercise. But that's where the other half of Branwen's definition comes in: a computer "is computationally powerful enough to run many programs from throughout computing history and which can be exploited by an adversary for surveillance, exfiltration, or attacks against the rest of the system."In other words, every one of these computers is a potential weak point in your "computer"'s security. For a lot of people, BadUSB was a wake-up call on this, and then Bloomberg's controversial story about tiny backdoor chips in server hardware came as an important reminder about all the ways that a computer can be compromised.But Branwen's list goes so far beyond these components as to be dizzying and somewhat demoralizing. Attacks on any of these "Turing-complete device[s] which can be programmed in a usefully general fashion" represent a huge blind spot in contemporary computer security.You might think you have just the one large CPU occupying pride of place on your motherboard, and perhaps the GPU too, but the computational power available goes far beyond just the CPU/GPU, for a variety of reasons: transistors and processor cores are so cheap now that it often makes sense to use a separate core for realtime or higher performance, for security guarantees, to avoid having to burden the main OS with a task, for compatibility with an older architecture or existing software package, because a DSP or core can be programmed faster than a more specialized ASIC can be created, or because it was the quickest possible solution to slap down a small CPU and they couldn’t be bothered to shave some pennies. Read the rest

America's commitment to market-based broadband -- fueled by telcom millions pumped into campaigns against public broadband provision -- has left rural Americans without access to the broadband they need to fully participate in twenty-first century life, with students among the hardest-hit victims of broadband deprivation.The FCC can fix this. Across the country, "whitespace" spectrum (used to buffer licensed broadcasters from overlapping signals in adjacent territories) was historically allocated for rural educational TV broadcasts. When these didn't materialize, the spectrum was reclassified for wireless internet and the FCC started parceling it off to telcos, taking it away from the schools that could use it to connect their kids to the internet.Many of these schools are on publicly operated, state-funded fiber loops, and could erect their own towers that students could use to connect to the internet over high-speed fixed wireless links, but only if the FCC gives the educational sector access to that educationally earmarked spectrum. A recent FCC proceeding was flooded both by comments from educator technologists describing the educational costs of the homework gap and promising to remediate this gap by rolling out fixed wireless; and comments from telcoms lobbyists, representing the companies that have so significantly failed rural America, promising that if they get the school spectrum allocated to them, they'll do better this time.With Trump's FCC in the hands of dingo babysitters like Ajit Pai, who want to end all public provision of network service and hand everything over to big telco, things look grim for rural American kids. Read the rest

The British government has decreed that adult sites must collect age-verification data on everyone who looks at material rated for 18-and-over viewing; this amounts to a database of the porn-viewing habits of every adult in the UK.While this logging is compulsory, compliance with privacy protections is optional.The Open Rights Group has a form where you can contact the government and demand that they make privacy protection mandatory and integral, not optional and an afterthought.* We are grateful to the BBFC and the DCMS for recognising that Age Verification technology needs strong privacy protection.* The BBFC’s voluntary privacy scheme is an improvement, but companies can simply ignore the guidance. * Protecting the public’s digital privacy should not be optional. Strong privacy protections for Age Verification technology must be made compulsory.* The implementation of Age Verification technology must be delayed until privacy protections are mandatory.* Major data breaches make headlines on a regular basis. Strong privacy protection must be a priority, not an afterthought.Making Age Verification privacy rules matter [Open Rights Group] Read the rest

With all the smoke in California's air, ABC7 decided to answer the eternal question: will a mask designed to filter smoke and other particulates actually filter smoke and other particulates?Public health officials say yes. Just make sure you get an N95, P95 or R95 mask.Bearded people and young children need not bother.The Bay Area Quality Management District advises that masks aren't suitable for men with beards or young children.#DYK how to wear a respirator (mask)? A “N95," "P95," or "R95" mask is the common type to protect you from particles in smoke or ash, and are available at hardware stores and pharmacies. Learn how to properly use one here: https://t.co/yH09rfUpue#CampFire #WoolseyFire #CDPH pic.twitter.com/DRKzCRCJ4M— CA Public Health (@CAPublicHealth) November 10, 2018 Read the rest

this french bulldog playing with a balloon is the most wholesome thing on the internet today😊 pic.twitter.com/9wvypOZafS— Ian Laking (@IHLaking) November 8, 2018 Love the playful puppy. Read the rest

Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered the world an internet sourced doctored video demonstrating CNN's Jim Acosta physically chopping at the arm of a White House intern*. The White House then used that video as an excuse to take away Acosta's press pass.Acosta was repeating a question that President Trump did not like, however Acosta felt important to get answered. Journalists try to push the President to answer questions at every press conference. It is their job.Multiple sources have confirmed source video of the actual event, played at normal speed, shows Acosta to be a professional who regarded the intern with respect, while continuing to push the President. The video shared by Sanders is a sham.Meanwhile, back at the White House, damage control was whimpering and hiding in a corner.Things became desperate enough to release the Conway.Be prepared to marvel in Kellyanne's logic free-zone.From Politico:"Oh, well, that's not altered, it's sped up. They do it all the time in sports to see if there's actually a first down or touchdown," Conway told host Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday.""So, I'm going to have to disagree with, I think, the overwrought description of this video being doctored as if we put somebody else's arm in there."The video in question was tweeted out by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday night in announcing the decision to suspend Acosta's press pass and thus his access to the White House. Acosta and Trump had a tense exchange during a news conference earlier Wednesday, in which Trump called him "a rude, terrible person."Acosta tried to continue asking a question as a staffer attempted to take the microphone away from him — the point at which, the White House claims, he "puts his hands on" the intern. Read the rest

Oh boy, I think I have a new hobby. I've just learned that you can combine puzzles, that have the same die cut, to make really awesome pieces of art. It had never occurred to me that manufacturers of mass-produced puzzles cut different puzzles of theirs in the same way, making the pieces interchangeable. It makes complete sense, of course, but my mind is still blown! I learned about the art of "puzzle montage" from one of the readers of my inbox zine, Marcia Wiley (she's the gal in Seattle who's fixing up that cool old Checker Cab). She was visiting the Bay Area and we met up for the first time this past Friday. That's when she told me about her friend Tim Klein, who makes incredible puzzle montages. I'm excited to share his work with you.In an email exchange, Tim told me that he learned about puzzle montages from the man who first made them, art professor Mel Andringa of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, "As far as I know, he and I are the only artists ever to pursue it seriously. And I think he's moved on to other things nowadays, so I may be the sole surviving practitioner."And this is what Tim shared with me about his process:...By selecting pieces from two or more compatible puzzles, I assemble a single "puzzle mashup" with surreal imagery that the publisher never imagined.Sometimes the results are merely chuckle-making, such as my combination of King Tut's burial mask with the front of a truck, which I call "King of the Road". Read the rest

Note-taking just caught up to the digital age. For most of us, writing freehand is quicker and more convenient than pecking away on a tablet, but what to do when you need those scribbles on file? Grab a Rocketbook Everlast Reusable Notebook, which seamlessly fuses analog and digital notes.Just jot down your thoughts, journals or sketches as you normally would on any of the Everlast's 32 pages with a special Pilot FriXion pen (included with this 2-pack, but also available in stores). You'll find the writing feels natural and the ink permanent - until you need to use the page again. In which case, simply wipe the page clean with a damp cloth. Need to save your work? Use the companion app to scan and send your page to cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox or OneNote. You can even flag the included icons to save directly to specific folders.Pick up the Rocketbook Everlast Reusable Notebook and never buy another. A 2-pack with included Pen Station is on sale at $59.99. Read the rest

This takes some golden brass balls. (via Crazy Abalone) Read the rest

Locking bootloaders with trusted computing is an important step towards protecting users from some of the most devastating malware attacks: by allowing the user to verify their computing environment, trusted computing can prevent compromises to operating systems and other low-level parts of their computer's operating environment.But as with every security measure, there's a difference between "secure for the user" and "secure against the user." Bootloader protection that doesn't allow an owner to decide which signatures they trust is security against the user: security that prevents the user from overriding the manufacturer, and so allows the manufacturer to lock the user in.Apple's latest bootloader protection, the controversial T2 chip, is a good example of this. The chip comes with a user-inaccessible root of trust that allows for the installation of Apple and Microsoft operating systems, but not GNU/Linux and other open and free alternatives.There's no reason it has to be this way: Google's flagship Pixel Chromebooks come with hardware switches that can be activated during the bootup to allow their owners to change which signatures the system trusts (users can initialize these systems with passwords that prevent others from covertly altering the trusted root later). This gives users the best of both worlds: a system that, by default, protects them from malware, and, with should the user choose, allows them to nominate parties other than Google to decide whom they trust.To make things worse, publishing tools to allow for bootloader overrides is legally risky under section 1201 of the DMCA, which provides for 5 year prison sentences and $500,000 fines (for a first offense) for anyone who trafficks in tools to override access controls for copyrighted works. Read the rest

Dana Rohrabacher was an oddity: a Republican lawmaker sent from Democratic stronghold to the California legislature he's now out of a job).Rohrabacher was a genuinely terrible lawmaker: in ten years, the Tea Party darling voted to hand the president all-pervasive, permanent, unchecked spying powers; claimed the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville was a Democratic Party conspiracy; was tricked into screaming racist slurs by Sacha Baron Cohen; called the cops on a constituent who asked him persistent questions; etc.But one thing you may not remember is that Rohrabacher, a man who claims to venerate private property rights above all others, rented a house in Orange County, changed the locks to deny the owner entry, then trashed the place, filling it with garbage, destroying the fixtures, furniture and appliances; cutting the phone lines; and leaving behind squirming maggots under the stove. The damage cost $28,500 to fix. Then Rohrabacher sued his landlord for not refunding his security deposit.In August, a year after he, his wife and their triplets left the disaster and stiffed Polyniak out of a week of due rent, the congressman hired a lawyer, Devon R. Lucas, to file a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court. According to the complaint, Rohrabacher, who skipped all military service when he was eligible to fight in Vietnam and nowadays hails himself “a patriot,” thinks he and his wife are the victims in the dispute. He wants Polyniak—a soft-spoken construction subcontractor who honorably served in the U.S. Marines—to pay him $20,000 for not refunding his security deposit in a timely manner. Read the rest

Political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf says Trump's days in the White House are numbered. In a blistering Twitter thread, Rothkopf makes the case that any high-quality people Trump had supporting him have either fled or are getting ready to, and now that the House is under control of Democrats, Trump's inner circle of bottom-of-the-barrel crooks and buffoons won't be able to protect him from his sordid history of sleazy dealings and self-destructive narcissism.Thread by @djrothkopf: "No one knows the skeletons in Donald Trump's closet better than Donald Trump. No one knows the crimes he has committed, aided or abetted so […]"By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America - Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Read the rest

Seeing as ratings are the most important metric tracked by the executive branch of the US government, NBC's jump after booting Megyn "Black Face is Cool" Kelly should mean a lot.From the Daily Beast:According to just-released weekly Nielsen averages—figures provided to The Daily Beast by a media outlet that is not connected to NBC or its parent company, Comcast—the week after Kelly’s October 26 departure and the abrupt demise of Megyn Kelly Today, total viewership for Today’s third hour actually increased by 5 percent—from 2,522,000 during Kelly’s final week on the air to 2,649,000 during the week beginning Oct. 29.Significantly, this post-Kelly ratings spike occurred despite a slight falloff in total viewers (a decrease from 3,832,000 to 3,747,000) experienced week-over-week by Today’s 8 a.m. block, the lead-in to the third hour of the four-hour Today franchise.Even more revealing, the target demographic groups most desired by daytime television advertisers—women 18-49 and women 25-54—also enjoyed immediate upticks in the aftermath of Kelly’s exit. Women 18-49 increased by 10 percent (from 336,000 to 371,000), while women 25-54 spiked by 6 percent (from 465,000 to 495,000).“That absolutely comes as no surprise at all,” television news analyst Andrew Tyndall told The Daily Beast. “She was a speed bump placed right in the middle of a four-hour block of programming—dismantling the sense of teamwork on that set and the flow that will get you all the way through from the hard news at 7 a.m. to the light talk through 11 o’clock.” Read the rest

I've always felt a spiritual connection with grizzly bears. They're slow, chunky and have an overwhelming affection for peanut butter--just like I do. From time to time, I'm fortunate enough to spot one, or at least the signs of one's passing, while we're in Alberta. But, as they generally don't want anything to do with people, being able to spend a prolonged amount of time with one is an incredible treat. It's a treat that I had the opportunity to partake in earlier today. Around 30 minutes outside of Bozeman, Montana, we saw the first sign for it: Montana Grizzly Encounter. I wasn't into it at first: captive bears aren't cool. I checked out their website as we drove. Rescue bears. Rescue bears are very cool. Five minutes later we were pulling into the Montana Grizzly Encounter. Sixteen bucks for two adults and a score of steps later, we were in. MGE was founded in 2004 and has been giving homes to bears rescued from cruel captivity ever since. Five of the six bears that MGE shelters were rescued from inhumane situations from all across the United States. Their sixth bear, Bella, was an orphan discovered in Alaska. On her own, she wouldn't have stood a chance. At the sanctuary, she's living the best life that she possibly can. You won't find any bars or cages at MGE. The bears have a temperature controlled enclosure that they can enter or exit as they please. There's a large area for the bears to do bear things in outside of the public eye. Read the rest

Remember the cartoons of your youth? There's a good reason. Nothing sparks the imagination like well-done animation. And whether you need a logo in motion or just want to bring your own imagination to life, CrazyTalk Animator 3 Pro is the tool that can take you there.Easy enough for casual users but with all the functionality of a professional animation studio, its only limit is your creativity. The versatile interface lets you customize and set into motion any of CTA3's character templates, or import any image or logo and apply the bone rig editor to animate it. Vast motion libraries give you a shortcut to nearly any action, keyed to human or animal physiology. Packed with facial animations, auto-audio lip-sync and even the ability to turn text to speech, CTA3 will put the story in your hands, whether it's a presentation or full-fledged cartoon creation.Find out how easy it is with CrazyTalk Animator 3 Pro for Windows, on sale now at a discounted $79. Read the rest

This vintage-style map of the USA puts the titles of songs that mention place names onto their corresponding geographical spot. So, for example, the Beasties Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is placed right on top of Brooklyn. Some of our favourite song choices are the ones which require you to think a little harder about connections, such as Space Oddity (David Bowie) which signposts Cape Canaveral, After the Gold Rush (Neil Young) which references Sutter’s Mill, and Homecoming (Kanye West) which is placed near the rapper’s home town of Chicago.You can get the map for £30 (~$39) at UK-based studio Dorothy. They also have a world song map (also £30/~$39) and a special edition world song map (£35/~$45). Head to Spotify to see the accompanying playlist.(The Awesomer) Read the rest

Denis Vrain-Lucas was an undistinguished forger until he met gullible collector Michel Chasles. Through the 1860s Lucas sold Chasles thousands of phony letters by everyone from Plato to Louis the 14th, earning thousands of francs and touching off a firestorm among confused scholars. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll trace the career of the world's most prolific forger.We'll also count Queen Elizabeth's eggs and puzzle over a destroyed car.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon! Read the rest

Habitot Children's Museum in Berkeley, California is making an unusually generous offer to the families of homeless kids. They are providing them with the opportunity to celebrate their child's birthday at their facility for free. Their free birthday party offer includes all the standards: decor, pizza, juice, cake, and even goodie bags for the guests. Plus, they gift the birthday child something special. Now, I'm not sure the age limit for the eligible children but, according to their site, the museum serves infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Want to learn more? Email the museum's Family Programs Manager at familyprograms@habitot.org. Also, if you have the means, please consider donating to Habitot so they can keep the magic going. photo by Yoshika Mcalister Read the rest

https://drawmaton.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/45118351_358662618238424_3396031426926215168_n.mp4Robert Sabuda (previously) writes, "It has long been a dream of the Leonardo da Vinci Robot Society to bring one of the Renaissance Master’s creations back to life. 2019 is the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death and the Society has chosen to honor his memory and celebrate his life through one of his best known inventions - the Robot Knight. This robot is an early proto-computer android whose read-only programmable memory allowed it to perform many actions. And it was also rumored that the robot’s arm could also perform an extremely complex task…draw a picture!""The Society has hired me to unlock the secrets of da Vinci’s robotic arm. The final result, in the form of a kit, is now available to you as da Vinci’s Drawmaton. Made only of wood and a few pieces of metal, this ancestor of the programmable computer, is capable of reading 1kb of analog memory via wooden “petalos” which, to da Vinci, resembled the petals of flowers. The programming “petalos” are easily switched out so the Drawmaton can draw an endless variety of single line images. A few turns of the hand knob completes a full rotation of the programming “petalos” and the drawing is complete. You can insert your own drawing tool into the robot’s hand, place any paper into the draw area, turn the knob and the drawing is revealed.Program your own images to create custom “petalos” which will draw your own masterpieces!"Sabuda is an eminent mechanical engineer who created some of my favorite pop-up books. Read the rest

Anand Giridharadas was a former McKinsey consultant turned "thought leader," invited to the stages of the best "ideas festivals" and to TED (twice), the author of some very good and successful books, and as a kind of capstone to this career, he was named a fellow to the Aspen Institute, an elite corps of entrepreneurs who are given institutional support and advice as they formulate "win-win" solutions to the world's greatest problems, harnessing the power of markets to lift people out of poverty and oppression.But the deeper Giridharadas got into this new role, the more uncomfortable he became with it. On the night he was to give a valedictory address to an audience of business leaders, finance leaders, and other members of the ruling class, he abandoned the "Aspen consensus" and instead give a scorching and excoriating talk about the structural failure of "win-win" as a way of thinking about the world's problems.Giridharadas's point was that the business elites who were gathered to "give back" and "solve the big problems" were some of the most egregious contributors to those problems. They had looted the world's treasuries, shut down businesses and shipped jobs to low-wage, low-regulation free trade zones, gutted public services and replaced them with low-bidder private sector contractors, and had done so while formulating and promulgating the philosophy that business leaders' individual judgment about the provision of public services were always to be preferred to those policies set by democratically elected politicians.The speech was -- obviously -- divisive. Read the rest

Last year, Princeton researchers revealed a powerful new ad-blocking technique: perceptual ad-blocking uses a machine-learning model trained on images of pages with the ads identified to make predictions about which page elements are ads to block and which parts are not.However, a new paper from a group of Stanford and CISPA Helmholtz Center researchers reveals a powerful machine learning countermeasure that, they say, will permanently tilt the advantage toward advertisers and away from ad-blockers. The team revealed a set of eight techniques to generate adversarial examples of slightly modified ads that completely flummoxed the perceptual ad-blocker's model: from overlaying a transparent image to modifying a few pixels in the logo used to demarcate an ad. What's more, the team showed that they could cause the perceptual blocker's model to erroneously identify a page's actual content as an ad and block it, while leaving the ads unblocked.The team says that these techniques will always outrace the ability of perceptual blocking models to detect them, suggesting that perceptual blocking may be a dead letter.We note that detection of adversarial examples [27, 47]—a simpler problem in principle but also one far from solved [14]— may not be applicable to ad-blockers. Indeed, ad-blockers face both adversarial false-positives and false-negatives, so merely detecting a perturbation does not help in decision-making. This challenging threat model also applies in part to ad-blockers based on non-visual cues, e.g., ML-based ad-blockers that use similar features as filter lists [11, 29, 36]. None of these have yet been evaluated against adaptive adversaries. Read the rest

Government procurement data reveals that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Agency have each spent tens of thousands of dollars on products from Houston's Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC, which specializes in fake streetlight housings designed to conceal surveillance cameras.Since June, the DEA has spent $22,000 with Cowboy; ICE's total is about $28K. Neither the government agencies nor Cowboy Streetlight Concealments will reveal where or how the hidden camera housings were used.The DEA is currently advertising for competitive bids for "concealments made to house network PTZ [Pan-Tilt-Zoom] camera, cellular modem, cellular compression device." In the absence of a competitive bid, it will award the contract to Oregon's Obsidian Integration LLC; Obsidian recently provided concealed cameras to the Jersey City PD.The DEA also uses traffic barrels and digital speed displays to to conceal its covert cameras.Christie Crawford, who owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, a Houston police officer, said she was not at liberty to discuss the company’s federal contracts in detail.“We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures,” Crawford told Quartz. “Basically, there’s businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that’s what we do. They specify what’s best for them, and we make it. And that’s about all I can probably say.”However, she added: “I can tell you this—things are always being watched. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving down the street or visiting a friend, if government or law enforcement has a reason to set up surveillance, there’s great technology out there to do it.”The DEA and ICE are hiding surveillance cameras in streetlights [Justin Rohrlich & Dave Gershgorn/Quartz](Image: Cowboy Concealments; twistedrhye, Cryteria, CC-BY) Read the rest

Apple has long understood that hardware products that last a long time result in falling unit sales, as customers opt to keep their old machines instead of buying the latest models; that's part of why the company led the charge that killed every single Right to Repair bill introduced last year -- less repairs leads to more "recycling," which is Applespeak for dropping used units into giant shredders without harvesting any usable parts first.Every year, refurbishers rescue thousands of used Apple products from the e-waste streams, and every year, Apple finds new ways to frustrate their efforts.The latest wrinkle: Apple has gotten Amazon to agree to ban the sale of refurbished Apple products except those that come from Apple directly.Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and coauthor of The End of Ownership, told me in an email that this decision is a dangerous infringement of ownership rights.“Wow. This is a very troubling development,” he said. “Given Amazon’s dominance as an online retail marketplace, its decision to disregard the first sale rights of resellers will significantly limit consumer choice. The fact that this move was demanded by Apple makes it even more problematic. What we see here are the world’s two most valuable companies engaging in a coordinated assault on the lawful resale of consumer devices.”The United States Supreme Court has ruled that people who legally own a product may legally resell it, and federal law protects that right under something known as the “first sale doctrine,” which says that copyright holders give up their copyright to individual copies of a work once it is sold: “the first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. Read the rest

The Yokohama Board of Education has posted scans of six fantastic catalogs from Hirayama Fireworks and Yokoi Fireworks, dating from the early 1900s. The illustrated catalogs are superb, with minimal words: just beautiful colored drawings depicting the burst-pattern from each rocket.(via Kottke) Read the rest

Most of America's 9,000 7-Eleven stores are owned by franchisees, many of them immigrants; the owners' contracts with 7-Eleven corporate allows the company to pull their franchises if they violate US law.The current CEO of 7-Eleven is Joe DePinto, a West Point grad who got the job in 2005 and has spent his tenure slowly tightening the screw on franchisees, demanding business practices that return more profit to corporate HQ at the expense of the independent operators. As the franchisees have felt the sting, they've fought back, suing the company over DePinto's policies.DePinto has become legendary for his dirty tricks campaign to get rid of his least-favored franchisees, from hiring private eyes to making secret recordings. Now the franchisees allege that DePinto has started snitching on his own franchisees to ICE, directing government immigration raids against 7-Eleven stores. If these franchise owners are found to have illegally hired undocumented immigrants, DePinto can cancel their franchise agreements and kick them out of the business and take over their stores.The evidence is circumstantial and 7-Eleven denies it, but ICE's raids on 7-Eleven stores have targeted owners who have made trouble for the company.When Carter Anderson paused and asked if anyone had questions, Serge Haitayan took a microphone. He owns a 7-Eleven on a highway lined by grape farms in Fresno, Calif. Last year he joined Sandhu in the lawsuit alleging 7-Eleven was wrongly treating them like employees. On July 16 of this year, three federal agents walked into the little store he’s operated for 28 years, giving him three days to produce employee records dating back a year. Read the rest

With my wife's gig in north central Alberta spinning down for another year and the cold charging hard at us like a bull moose in rut, it's once again time for us to head south. This year, thanks to the two weeks it took me to replace a lost passport, we started off later than we would have liked. ***We left Calgary late in the day. No matter how much lead up we have, there always seems to be a few last things to do. Saying goodbye. Picking up snacks for the road. Double checking our rig's engine, air bags, air brakes, tires and all else. Even after receiving my passport last Friday, we waited until today--Wednesday. The weather was too coarse to risk in the rig. We aimed at Lethbridge as a first night target. Not far, but out of Calgary and within reach of the border early tomorrow morning. As the dusk settled in, we noted that our headlights were not up to the task of leading us. The bulbs would need to be replaced. But not tonight. We made for Claresholm: a highway pass-through town on the road south. By the time we pulled off for the evening, it had already hit -10. We lurked through town, the size of a semi truck with our Jeep in tow, searching for a dark corner of asphalt to call ours for the night. On with the generator. On with the furnace to warm our dog and our bones. Read the rest

Outrun, the classic racer that blew players' minds with its huge colorful sprites, is getting an ususual port: to the monochrome vectorbeam world of the vintage Vectrex console.Creator Chris Parsons:A little "demo" I put together today to warm up my coding skills as I get back to developing my second full Vectrex game. I put the Pole Position overlay on at the end as it comes out clearer without it when filming. Check out my Vectrex home brew games on here and at www.vectorrepublic.co.uk He's gotten the Ferrari, the tarmac and some roadside palms going, but it's missing other vehicles and curves: "Now, should I try to add some game in there???" Read the rest

I use an Acer 25-inch monitor with my Macbook Pro and like it a lot. This 21-inch model (920 x 1080) is a highly rated sub-100 dollar model, and is perfect for people who want a large monitor for their Raspberry Pi, perhaps to play retro-games. Read the rest

A Denver man is in critical condition after trying to play hero by rescuing a dropped cell phone from a trash chute.22-year old Scott Walsh was trying to rescue a female friend's phone when he fell fifteen feet down a first-floor trash chute and became trapped. The compactor began to move with Walsh stuck inside. Rescue workers had to disassemble the compactor in order to extricate Walsh.The compactor broke both of Walsh’s legs, cracked his skull on both sides and ruptured arteries in his neck, his friend Liz DiSalvo said. He’s been heavily sedated but is expected to survive, she said.The condition of the phone is unknown.Denver man in critical condition after being crushed by trash compactor in downtown apartment (Elsie Shmelzer/Denver Post)Image: mccarport.com Read the rest

The Wall Street Journal [paywall] just published a major expose revealing "several previously unreported instances in which Mr. Trump intervened directly to suppress stories about his alleged sexual encounters with women." The Wall Street Journal interviewed "three dozen people who have direct knowledge of the events or who have been briefed on them, as well as court papers, corporate records and other documents." Trump has lied on several previous occasions about the payoffs, saying he played no role in them.The article reports that Trump met with National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and the two struck a deal to pay hush money to women who wanted to publicize their alleged sexual affairs with Trump.Less than a year later, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Pecker to quash the story of a former Playboy model who said they’d had an affair. Mr. Pecker’s company soon paid $150,000 to the model, Karen McDougal, to keep her from speaking publicly about it. Mr. Trump later thanked Mr. Pecker for the assistance.The Wall Street Journal obtained an audio recording of a conversation between Trump and his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, which reveals Trump's sense of loyalty towards people who go out of their way to help him:As Mr. Cohen explained his plans, Mr. Trump spoke over him: “So, what are we gonna pay… One-fifty?” Mr. Trump asked. Mr. Cohen paused and replied, “Yes.”Mr. Cohen said he would be getting “all the stuff,” meaning the other files on Mr. Trump he had been seeking. They discussed the uncertainty about what might become of the files if Mr. Read the rest

Today would have been Carl Sagan's 84th birthday. I wish he were here. Watch the above, climb aboard your Ship of the Imagination, and make the future. View this post on Instagram My dear wonderful dad would be 84 today. I find that very hard to imagine. I spend a lot of time wondering what he would be like as an old man. I wish I could know that version of him. Just as I wish I could know the version of him pictured here, young and full of promise. I miss all the versions of him. The ones I knew and the ones I didn’t. Thank you to everyone who knew him and everyone who didn’t who still misses him, who still reads his work, who still thinks of him. It means a lot. #carlsaganday A post shared by Sasha Sagan (@sashasagan) on Nov 9, 2018 at 7:12am PST We're celebrating #CarlSagan's birthday by sharing his "lost lecture", the talk he gave at his 60th birthday symposium @Cornell @CornellCAS. Today is the perfect day to celebrate the #CarlSagan vision, which inspired @CSInst https://t.co/lxvgKQEvL5— Carl Sagan Institute (@CSInst) November 9, 2018Astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, communicator, father, friend, and our co-founder.Here's to the man who inspired us to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish our pale blue dot. #CarlSaganDay pic.twitter.com/ZwrcnGPHgD— Planetary Society (@exploreplanets) November 9, 2018 Read the rest

NASA's Juno spacecraft took this glamour shot of Jupiter on October 29, 2018, from about 4,400 miles (7,000) kilometers above the planet's clouds. From NASA:A multitude of magnificent, swirling clouds in Jupiter's dynamic North North Temperate Belt is captured in this image... Appearing in the scene are several bright-white “pop-up” clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval.Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and to process into image products at: http://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam. Read the rest

Researchers have spent decades exploring methods to 3D print organs for transplant but progress is slow due to the complex structure of, say, a kidney or pancreas. Precise Bio, a startup founded by scientists from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, claim that the first real success will come from 3D-printed corneas. They've already conducted animal studies and are building a roadmap toward human trials. From IEEE Spectrum:Corneas could be the first mainstream application of bioprinting, (Precise Bio CEO Aryeh) Batt says, in part because they have a layered structure that’s a good match for the technology. Each layer consists of different types of cells and fibers, which the printer could lay down in sequence, and these layers don’t contain blood vessels or nerves. What’s more, putting a new kind of transplant in the eye is inherently safer than implanting one deep in the body, since physicians could easily check for signs of trouble and could remove the tissue if anything seemed wrong. There’s certainly a need for more corneas in the world, says Kevin Corcoran, president and CEO of the Eye Bank Association of America. In 2017, his members supplied nearly 51,000 transplantable corneas to patients in the United States, and also sent more than 26,000 abroad. Internationally, “there is a tremendous amount of unmet demand,” he says. “It’s estimated that 10 million people suffer from corneal blindness globally, primarily because they lack access to effective and affordable treatment.”Part of Precise Bio’s proprietary approach is its printer, which uses a technique called laser-induced forward transfer to propel droplets of bioinks onto a surface. Read the rest

One of the big problems I've had with taking long drives, anywhere, has been that I'm forced into unproductive time when I should be working. This isn't a problem when I'm going on vacation. But here's the thing: I seldom take a vacation. As I'm self-employed, there's no such thing as vacation pay in my world. When I stop writing, the money stops coming in. Working on the road is possible--all I have to do is tether my laptop to my iPhone and I'm in business. So long as I can keep my laptop, you know, in my lap. Maintaining a stable platform to work on while my wife wheels us across the continent has proven difficult. I've tried lap desks, balancing my computer on a backpack, you name it. My computer always slides around, making it damn near impossible to type. What's more, a neck injury that I sustained eons ago makes it painful for me to tilt my head down for any length of time. This combination of poor conditions has forced me, up until now, to twiddle my thumbs for hours at a time, working only once we've come to a stop for the day.However, I think that I may finally have figured it out.RAM Mounts makes a wide variety of mobile work solutions to keep nerd stuff in one place while you're driving along. Cops use RAM Mount gear in their cruisers to keep their laptop secure. Their in-vehicle smartphone and tablet stands are, arguably, among the best out there. Read the rest

A speeder! A cop! A high speed chase ending in a police cruiser catching on fire!Honestly, this video has everything. Read the rest

In her forthcoming memoir, Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama wrote that Trump's racist birther lies about her husband put her family in danger. "What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family's safety at risk. And for this I'd never forgive him."In his typically sleazy style, Trump responded not by responding to the facts, but by attacking President Obama with another lie:"I'll give you a little controversy back, I'll never forgive (President Barack Obama) for what he did to our US military. It was depleted, and I had to fix it. What he did to our military made this country very unsafe for you and you and you." Read the rest

Hearing about Northern California's Camp Fire – or any fire for that matter – is scary enough. But seeing what it's like to escape for your life by driving right through a massive fire so that you can't see anything in front of you is absolutely terrifying. The fire spread so quickly – "80 football fields per minute," says The Guardian – that some people barely escaped, while others have died.This video was taken by Brynn Parrott Chatfield, from the town of Paradise, which has been destroyed by the fire. The fire, which started Thursday morning around 6:30am, has burned over 20,000 acres so far, forcing "about 50,000 people to evacuate," according to The Guardian.Via The Guardian:As CNN points out, over 2,200 firefighters are currently battling the Camp Fire and they face a tough road ahead. The combination of dry conditions and high winds are making this a particularly difficult fire to fight.Multiple fatalities have been reported but it’s not yet clear how many people might be dead. The exact number of injuries is also unknown and authorities still don’t know what caused the blaze. Read the rest

If quantum computing becomes practical, it will be able to crack encrypted data in an instant. Forbes has created a good two-minute video that gives a high level overview of quantum computation.If you want to know more, Simon Singh's fantastic The Code Book gives a much more in-depth (yet still easy to understand) explanation of how quantum computing works. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Read the rest

In 1993, Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails composed music for the first station ID for MTV Japan created by the inimitable Shinya Tsukamoto, director of cyberpunk/horror films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). Of course, Reznor later penned the below theme song for Tsukamoto's 2010 film "Tetsuo: The Bullet Man." (via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

What happens when you keep your television off for about two months? Sometimes, once you turn it back on, you'll find it has become home to an ant colony, at least for one guy who posted this video on reddit, showing a city of ants busying themselves behind his television screen. He asks the reddit world what he should do to get rid of them.One commenter suggested leaving the TV on with bright white light, which would supposedly encourage the ants to move to a darker place, while another commenter said he might try taking the television apart and cleaning it, but damaging the set would be a risk. Another said there was no other solution but to toss this TV and buy a new one.And why are there ants in the TV set? Maybe they are "raspberry crazy ants," which are drawn to electrical equipment. According to Wikipedia:Infestations of Nylanderia fulva in electrical equipment can cause short circuits, sometimes because the ants chew through insulation and wiring. Overheating, corrosion, and mechanical failures also result from accumulations of dead ants and nest detritus in electrical devices. If an ant is electrocuted, it can release an alarm pheromone in dying, which causes other ants to rush over and search for attackers. If a large enough number of ants collects, it may short out systems.It is unclear why colonies of Nylanderia fulva, like many species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment. They may sense the magnetic fields that surround wires conducting electric current, or they prefer the warmth produced by resistance to the currents in the wires. Read the rest

Patrisha Organo (24) is a Philippine Airlines flight attendant. She was working on a flight on November 6 when she heard a baby crying, "a cry that will make you want to do anything to help," she wrote on Facebook. She asked the mother what the matter was and the mother told her that she'd run out of baby formula. Organo led the mother and baby into the galley and breastfed the baby. "I saw the relief on her mother’s eyes," she wrote. "I continued to feed the baby until she fell asleep. I escorted her back to her seat and just before I left, the mother sincerely thanked me."Image: Facebook Read the rest

In the 1980s, Pennsylvania-based Michele Mercure was composing music for theater, film, and TV animation. After a trip to the Netherlands, she became inspired by the German kosmiche music scene of Kluster, Tangerine Dream, and the like. But Mercure cut her own path into experimental electronic music, weaving her synthetic, rhythmic soundscapes with strange samples and cut-up vocalizations, resulting in tracks that move between abstract and ambient dreamscapes and mechanized intensity. For decades, Mercure's self-released cassettes (under the name Michelle Musser) moved through underground trading circles but many of those recordings will now reach a wider group of heads. Beside Herself is a gorgeous 19-track Michele Mercure retrospective released today by the esteemed curators at RVNG Intl. and Freedom To Spend labels. To celebrate the release, Mercure and Mary Haverstick created the wonderful "Electronumentary" above. Below, one of the album tracks. From RVNG:Mercure’s artistic path never ran through creative meccas New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles. Raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, and then moving to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in her twenties, Mercure was already an adept musician when she encountered a local and lively theater scene, and was asked to score an unorthodox performance of Waiting for Godot. The experience was pivotal in marrying music and image for Mercure, and so she began making music for film, television, dance, and theater. It wasn’t until a long sojourn in Eindhoven, however, that she became transfixed by electronic music (ala Conrad Schnitzler, whom she would correspond with for years) that would inform her music to come. Read the rest

If you're bored with fugu, give feseekh a try. According to Great Big Story, "Feseekh, or fermented mullet fish, can cause poisoning or even death if not prepared properly."Image: YouTube Read the rest

For readers, Scribd has long been a fount of content, and it's only growing. With 40 million titles to choose from, this service has plenty to offer to its more than 750,000 subscribers.Whether you're into audiobooks, novels, nonfiction or magazines, Scribd is the only subscription service with access to titles from all "Big 5" global publishers. That's more than one million books from the classics to new releases, accessible on your browser or mobile app. The more you use it, the more Scribd stokes your curiosity with curated reading lists and personalized recommendations. Create your own virtual bookshelf, download your favorites - it's all there for bookworms to burrow into. Even if you plow through two books a day, you'd never get to the bottom of Scribd's deep well of content.Various options are available, but there are discounts on a 1-year subscription to Scribd ($85) or 6 months ($45). Give it a spin and start reading today. Read the rest

Leave it to Texas to have high school varsity teams dedicated to barbecuing. Here's a story about how some students at a high school in northern Texas are learning to compete with meat. WFAA reports:Horticulture teacher Tommy Copeland helped start his team at [Ennis High School] after discovering an annual state tournament in Burnet where over 100 schools compete...At Ennis High, the barbecue team is like a Texas hybrid of metal shop and home economics. The students fabricate and weld their own cooker together then use it to compete.Copeland and other vocational teachers assist the students in learning how to be pitmasters. Teachers or instructors aren’t allowed to help students during cook-offs, and they’re judged on best beef brisket, pork ribs, ½ chicken, best beans, dessert, best pit, most school spirit, and best t-shirt....he only requirements to be on the barbecue team? Maintain a passing average and be a senior.However—that doesn’t stop Copeland from mentoring aspiring juniors who have interest in the team like Marshall Sladecek.Before Ennis’ home football game against Corsicana, he and some other juniors got some ‘ribs practice’ outside the stadium. “We all barbecue, why not take it to the competition level?” Sladecek said. “Every guy needs to know how to do it.”...“When these boys leave here, they are kings of their grills,” Copeland said. Read the rest