Boing Boing

I'm in Berlin today, promoting the German edition of my novel Walkaway: the kindly folks at Otherland Books are hosting me tonight at a free event at DTK Wasserturm, where I'll be presenting with Marcus Richter. Hope to see you there! Tell your friends! Read the rest

The Nairobi neighborhood of Kibera is Africa's largest slum, and it's home to an unlikely, Silicon-Valley-style tech park operated by Samasource (motto: "Artificial intelligence meets human dignity"), who serves clients from Google to Microsoft to Salesforce, using clickworkers who get paid $9/day, compared to the going wage of $2/day in the region's "informal economy" (the company believes that paying wages on par with rich-world clickworkers would "distort the local economy").One major project at Samasource's Kibera office is producing training data for self-driving cars: workers carefully trace pixel-accurate outlines around road-features like signs, cars, license plates, etc. There are many ways in which Samsource benefits Kibera: workers are paid a living wage and enjoy better working conditions than are standard in Kibera, and women make up about half of the workforce, and can take 90 days' maternity leave and use a lactation room when they return. Workers who leave Samasource continue to thrive, pursuing higher education and/or "more formal work."But the work is still unpleasant in ways that are familiar from other places where this kind of work is done, from the poor ergonomics to the worker metric tools that encourage workers to skip breaks in order to make quota (Samasource said it would re-evaluate the ergonomics).More problematic is that Kibera's residents are unlikely to benefit from self-driving cars at any time in the foreseeable future -- while they could benefit from much lower-tech interventions, like clean water and sanitation.Samasource is a really good example of both the possibilities and limitations of the economic development for "lifting people out of poverty." Kenya is a rich country with many natural resources that has struggled with the legacy of colonialism: much of the wealth of the former colonizers can be traced to extraction from Kenya, and today, those colonizing powers turn a blind eye to the laundering of the billions extracted from the region by corrupt officials and businesspeople. Read the rest

In 2015, the Malaysian government collapsed after a scandal involving embezzlement from the state-owned 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund; the scandal shows no sign of slowing down, with fresh accusations against the country's business and political leadership surfacing regularly and one prime suspect, the financier and "tabloid party boy" Jho Low going on the run, a fugitive believed to be in China.The latest turn in the scandal is criminal charges against two former Goldman Sachs bankers who are accused of helping Low launder $4.5 billion. One of the Goldman bankers, Tim Leissner, has pleaded guilty and been ordered to forfeit $43.7 million. The other Goldman banker, Roger Ng, was criminally indicted in the USA this week.Low and Roger Ng, a Malaysian banker at Goldman Sachs, were indicted on three counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering, bribery, and circumvention of accounting controls, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Ng was arrested Thursday in Malaysia. Low, who is believed to be in China, remains at large.The government also unsealed a criminal complaint against Tim Leissner, Goldman's former Southeast Asia chairman. Leissner has pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the FCPA. He has been ordered to forfeit $43.7 million. Former Goldman Sachs bankers charged in multibillion-dollar money-laundering scandal [Reuters](via Reddit)(Image: Khairil Yusof, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

In late 2013, the United States Postal Service entered into an agreement with Amazon to deliver its packages alongside the regular mail and, on Sundays, to deliver their packages exclusively. Because the USPS receives no federal funding and was operating in a multi-billion dollar loss, it was thought that this agreement would generate much-needed revenue for them, and it has. However, not surprisingly, it's the USPS workers that are taking the brunt of this agreement for it to work. They are now often working Sundays, holidays, and not getting consistent days off. In a new Medium article, writer Brendan O'Connor interviewed a rural New England mail carrier about their working conditions.There were a few quotes that jumped out at me:"It’s a network [Amazon] can tap into and just feed their packages through without having to establish their own network. It’s the dependability… There’s also just no limit to how much [USPS will] make us work. There’s no limit on days worked in a row with the Postal Service—for RCAs [rural carrier associates] and CCAs [city carrier assistants] at least."I don’t know if the tendency to overwork the employees [happened] before Amazon, but the Postal Service just refuses to treat their employees like humans, and we deliver Amazon packages until we drop dead."We have a lot of instances of heat stroke. Every morning, when it’s gonna be hot, the postmaster walks around, reads his little spiel like, 'Stay hydrated. If you need to take a break, take a break in shade. Read the rest

On Thursday, civil rights activist and journalist Shaun King announced that he will be bringing back North Star, the abolitionist newspaper started by Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany 171 years ago, after receiving full permission and blessing from Douglass' family. He writes:In 1847, with slavery still in full force, two brave men, Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany (both pictured above), started an abolitionist newspaper called The North Star — named for the star, Polaris, that was often used as a guide for those seeking freedom in the North.Douglass and Delany knew then, as we know now, that in order to fight back against injustice, their stories had to not only be well told — with the color and dimension and nuance that was frequently missing elsewhere, they knew they needed a newspaper that represented the cause of liberation with urgency, clarity, heart, and soul...While The North Star was originally a print newspaper, we will be launching a news app, a full news website, a collection of podcasts, and an online nightly news broadcast. We’re not just here to change the news — we aim to change the world.King, with his friend Ben Dixon, are first gathering 100,000 people to assist in their November 15 launch through BuildingTheNorthStar.com. Since the announcement yesterday, over 61,000 people have signed up to help. By the end of 2018, they hope to have 25,000 people signed up as members of the new North Star.Go get'em, gentlemen!Thanks, Kristen! Read the rest

This cute animated short looks at Pixar's in-house Halloween culture -- from the crazy costumes their employees wear to the unbelievably cool and completely unconventional prizes they receive for wowing the judges at the annual lunchtime contest.Pixar's Halloween Celebration emcee Michael Frederickson narrates the piece and says, "At Pixar, we take not being serious on Halloween pretty seriously. It feels like a bunch of kids playing in a place of work where, of course, you should be able to do that." Read the rest

Apple just had a really poor Q3 earnings report, with hardware sales falling off as people figure out that they just don't need to get a new phone every year or so; writing in Bloomberg, Leonid Bershidsky tries to soothe investors by pointing out that Apple is still seeing growth in "services" and that there's plenty more growth to be realized there.Bershidsky is refreshingly honest in his description of these services: he refers to repairs, sales through the App and Itunes stores, and cloud services as "collecting rent" on Apple customers and its suppliers. As Bershidsky points out, long-term Apple users are rather locked into its ecosystem by the tedious and potentially risky process of extracting their photos, music, etc to a rival platform. That means that the suppliers of things like music, ebooks, and videos are also locked into Apple's stores, unlikely to win a battle to establish rival stores that interoperate with Apple's Itunes and other apps, but which take a smaller commission on the sale of their products. Apple has inserted itself into the transactions for copyrighted works for the foreseeable future, passively creaming off a substantial portion of the profits from the sales not because their store is the best, but because they have used DRM and other proprietary tactics to lock out competitors.A Goldman Sachs report suggests that Apple aggressively turn the screw on the rent-collecting end of its business, using bundling and anti-competitive retail tactics to crush Dropbox and other cloud providers currently serving Iphone owners. Read the rest

Edward Gorey's "Gashlycrumb Tinies" is a much-beloved, macabre illustrated children's book that is a favorite of remixers of all kinds; but Mad Magazine's Ghastlygun Tinies dials up the "trenchant" knob to 11.The satire, written by Matt Cohen and drawn by Marc Palm, appears in Issue #4 of MAD (MAD rebooted earlier this year, and started numbering issues from 1 again), and, like Gorey's original, it depicts the proclivities of 26 children, one for each of the kids at Gashlycrumb Elementary.The gag in the Gashlycrumb Tinies is that each of them is obviously doomed -- "A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs" -- and that same menace hangs over Ghastlygun, but given that "gun" in the title, and as school shootings bifurcate America into the solemnly furious who want action, and grifters enabled by politicians deep in expensively purchased denial, the sense that there's something more going on with the Ghastlyguns gives it an air of ha-ha-only-serious menace.That menace pays off. As Patton Oswalt notes "The last panel of this will knock you down."He's right.There's a very interesting thing going on here with copyright and free expression that's worth noting. While US fair use is broad and "fact-intensive" (that is, it's hard to know what is and is not fair until a judge makes a ruling), there's a broad consensus that fair use protects "parody" (using a thing to make fun of itself) but not "satire" (using a thing to make fun of another thing). Read the rest

I've been researching looper pedals for my 12-year-old guitarist son and happened upon this video of Mick Bishop using his Boss RC-300 Loop Station to create a very fun cover of "Close To Me," perhaps my favorite song by The Cure. Read the rest

HGTV lined up all six Brady kids in front of their iconic television home (well, the LA property that served as the exterior shot) to kickoff the network's upcoming series, "A Very Brady Renovation." You may remember the network bought the Brady Bunch house earlier this year, outbidding N' Sync's Lance Bass. Now, it plans to restore the iconic home to its "full, resplendent, unabashedly ‘70s grandeur," according to a blog post.So, here’s the story. (Surely you didn’t think we’d pass up the opportunity to use that line.) Back in August, HGTV officially became the proud new owners of that quintessentially suburban split-level ranch seen in virtually every episode of The Brady Bunch. And you can rest assured that, with its penchant for magical, mind-blowing home makeovers, the network has some very special things in mind for this particular home transformation. It’s all part of — and will be documented in — a new series, A Very Brady Renovation (w.t.), scheduled to air on HGTV in September of 2019. And we suspect that even the most ardent Brady Bunch enthusiasts and purists will not be disappointed....For the first time in 14 years, all six siblings from the show’s original cast were reunited as they joined up with some of HGTV’s most well-known on-air talent. It was all part of an event to announce plans for the renovation and the accompanying series. TV siblings Barry Williams (Greg), Maureen McCormick (Marcia), Christopher Knight (Peter), Eve Plumb (Jan), Mike Lookinland (Bobby) and Susan Olsen (Cindy) gathered with Jonathan and Drew Scott (Property Brothers), Mina Starsiak and Karen E Laine (Good Bones), siblings Leanne and Steve Ford (Restored by the Fords), Jasmine Roth (Hidden Potential) and Lara Spencer (Flea Market Flip) for an on-camera walk-through of the home. Read the rest

Hey vintage typewriter nerds, there's a store in Carmichael, California (which is outside of Sacramento) that's selling off its machines. The unnamed store went out of business 10 years ago but the family who owns it is just now beginning to liquidate their inventory, according to Richard Polt of Typewriter Revolution. He writes, "There are lots of electrics, especially Selectrics, but also manual standards and portables. A Torpedo 18 in a case is on one of these shelves."Go to Richard's post to see more photos and to find out how to purchase machines.photo by Richard Polt Read the rest

I had no idea there was such a long and complicated debate over who owns Liberty Island and its crown jewel, the Statue of Liberty. Thank goodness CGP Grey is here to explain it all to us! Get a beverage and have a seat, it's quite a story. Read the rest

The Swedish ISP Bahnhof has a strong historic commitment to free speech, so when the notoriously corrupt science publishing giant Elsevier (previously) sought to force the ISP to censor connections to the open access site Sci-Hub (previously), the ISP went to court to resist the order.Unfortunately for Swedes and for science, the Swedish Patent and Market Court (which never met a copyright overreach it didn't love) upheld the order, and Bahnhof, a small ISP with limited resources, decided not to appeal (a bigger, richer ISP had just lost a similar appeal).Instead, Bahnhof now blocks attempts to visit Sci-Hub domains, and Elsevier.com, redirecting attempts to visit Elsevier to a page explaining how Elsevier's sleaze and bullying have allowed it to monopolize scientific publishing, paywalling publicly funded science that is selected, reviewed and edited by volunteers who mostly work for publicly funded institutions. To as icing on this revenge-flavored cake, Bahnhof also detects attempts to visit its own site from the Patent and Market Court and redirects them to a page explaining that since the Patent and Market Court believes that parts of the web should be blocked, Bahnhof is blocking the court's access to its part of the web.This is the worst possible outcome for Bahnhof. TorrentFreak spoke to CEO Jon Karlung who describes it as a “horrifying” decision that “goes against the soul of the Internet.”The result, starting today, is that sci-hub.tw, sci-hub.mu, sci-hub.se, libgen.io, and several other domains are being blocked by the ISP. Read the rest

Slithering along like its namesake, Python has woven itself into nearly every aspect of web development since its inception the late '80s. Flexible and readable, the possibilities of this programming language are nearly limitless - with the right understanding. And the quickest way to that understanding is the Ultimate Python Programmer's Bootcamp Bundle.This comprehensive slate of six courses eases into the possibilities of Python quickly, with two lessons that will have beginners of any level able to write strings, functions, and variables in no time. Later lessons show how Python interacts with frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and PHP to build secure networks, or how coders can use time-savers like Django 2 on larger projects. By the end of the 45-hour bundle, you'll be solving practical exercises and building your own web apps from scratch.Get hands-on with this crucial tool by picking up the Ultimate Python Programmer's Bootcamp Bundle, now a full 95% off the cost of the individual courses at $39. Read the rest

A user called FBSaler is offering personal data for Facebook users at $0.10 each, claiming to have account data from 120,000,000 users to offer; to prove that they have the goods, they've dumped the private messages sent by 81,000 Facebook users; and account data from 176,000.Facebook says the data wasn't breached from its servers: it blames malicious browser plugins for sucking this data directly out of users' computers.An independent security firm, Digital Shadows, has verified that the leaked messages and account data are real, though it may be that the account data was scraped from public data posted by Facebook users, rather than breached (whether by hacking Facebook's servers or its users' browsers).The sample data (which was been taken down) was hosted on a server that appeared to be located in St Petersburg, Russia. The accounts seemed to mostly belong to Russian and Ukrainian users, with a smattering of US, Brazilian, British and other users.Personal shopping assistants, bookmarking applications and even mini-puzzle games are all on offer from various browsers such as Chrome, Opera and Firefox as third-party extensions.The little icons sit alongside your URL address bar patiently waiting for you to click on them.According to Facebook, it was one such extension that quietly monitored victims' activity on the platform and sent personal details and private conversations back to the hackers.Facebook has not named the extensions it believes were involved but says the leak was not its fault. Hack Brief: Someone Posted Private Facebook Messages From 81,000 Accounts [Louise Matsakis/Wired]Private messages from 81,000 hacked Facebook accounts for sale [Andrei Zakharov/BBC Russia] Read the rest

When I was a kid, we used to sing Merle Travis's Sixteen Tons in the car on long trips: it's a poetic masterpiece, capturing the clash between a worker's proud and indomitable spirit and his impossible, inescapable poverty trap (chances are you've heard Tennessee Ernie Ford or Johnny Cash perform it).The plight of the worker indebted to a company store analogizes regrettably well to the current student debt crisis: to get paid, you have to incur debt, but the debt is titrated so that it always exceeds your wage, so that you have to work as hard as you possibly can just to keep from sinking. And since student debt is the only debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy and the only debt that can be charged against your Social Security, it will literally haunt you until the day you die -- and then come back to make claims against your estate.So Steven Brust (previously) and Mark Hall's student-debt remix of the lyrics, "Sixteen Credits," is particularly apt, in a ha-ha-only-serious way.Some people say a man is made out of goreWell a student is just a credit scoreA credit score and a mind that’s spryA future that’s bleak, a bank account that’s dryYou take sixteen credits and what do you get?Close to your degree and deeper in debtSt. Peter don’t you call me cuz I must stayI owe my soul to Sallie MaeEnrolled one morning, it was drizlin rain“Get a degree” was the school’s refrainShould I study English, or should it be Math? Read the rest

The best letter to the editor in modern journalistic history was published yesterday by The Roanoke Times. [via Comfortably Smug]Please explain to me why Leslie Cockburn pronounces her name Coburn. There is no way you can get "co" out of "cock" and please don't tell me that the CK is silent. If she finds her name offensive for some reason or another, then why doesn't she just change it? Is it because she is a Democrat and doesn't know the difference? I know this won't be printed because the paper is liberal and never wants to print the truth.BILL KOPCIAL, ROANOKEHere's another ad for Cockburns, the portwine, via Maria Bustillos. A good trick for telling the true cineaste from the poseuer by the latter's pronunciation of the second "ck" in "Hitchcock." Read the rest

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, is one of Asia's richest women. The self-made billionaire, age 47, is the owner of VietJet, Vietnam's first private airline. In recent years, VietJet has rebranded itself as the bikini airline, featuring women who wear bikinis on some flights. It was fined in 2012 for "hosting a mid-flight dance by bikini-clad beauty pageant contestants without first gaining permission." Despite receiving fines and warnings, the airline continues to employ scantily clad women. It seems to have been a profitable decision: it just placed a $6.5 billion jet order with Europe’s Airbus for 50 aircraft.The airline promised not to bikini-clad attendants on flights to Indonesia, so as not to offends sensibilities in that country. "VietJet is a budget airline and they will open a route to Indonesia without the bikinis," said Indonesia’s ambassador to Vietnam, Ibnu Hadi.Images: VietJet Read the rest

The Hands Resist Him has nothing on this strange painting, said to be by Édouard Manet, of a bone-white youth clutching a staring, mouthless mystery mammal. You had a chance of buying it at Sothebys, too, but it was withdrawn from auction at the last minute. Sadly, it's not because anyone who touches it has a sudden memory of touching it, a memory of sudden heat and formless whispers and of the places left empty after unspeakable events. Apparently there's an ownership dispute.Initially, Sotheby’s said in a statement that the “proceedings pending on a very limited number of lots” had been “fully resolved” and all of those lots were to be included in the evening sale on 30 October. However, the 19th-century painting was later withdrawn “at the request of the consignor”, according to Sotheby’s.According to a report in the French edition of The Art Newspaper, lot 544, presented as a “favourite” of Bergé, was at the centre of the litigation. The dispute reportedly relates to an agreement between Bergé and his fashion designer partner Yves Saint Laurent and an anonymous party, signed in the early 2000s, that entitled the anonymous claimant to a share of the profits should the painting ever be attributed to Manet.The full canvas: Read the rest

I bought a self-healing cutting mat in 1988 so I could cut paper when laying out issues of Boing Boing. I still have it and use it all the time. There is no better way to slice paper with a craft knife or rotary cutter. If you don't have one, Amazon has a 9" x 12" mat on sale (in pink or blue) for just $6.24. Read the rest

"Yeah, sure, sorry, whatever," muttered Twitter, while making the "wanking" hand motion."This phrase should not have appeared in trends, and we’re sorry for this mistake," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. "This was trending as a result of coverage and horrified reactions to the vandalism against a synagogue in New York. Regardless, it should not have appeared as a trend."Everything Twitter has said or done about trolls, abuse, harassment, threats, Nazis or "the health of conversations" treats it as someone else's problem. To Twitter these are PR issues, and its solutions are oriented to media coverage. This is why nothing ever really changes, least of all its enthusiasm for product features that might accomplish more. I suspect they can't do better because it is incomprehensible to them. Its understanding of its own product prohibits an understanding of what's bad about promoting "Kill All Jews" a week after 11 were slaughtered by a wingnut. Much that is human is alien to them. Read the rest

Poorly roasted Brussels sprouts are awful, nearly as bad as boiled ones. In this video, you'll learn how to cook them the right way -- "charred, dark, and with maximum crunch."Image: YouTube Read the rest

A photographer embarked on a multi-year project to photograph a kitten as it matured. Read the rest

I'll be here all week. Try the veal. Read the rest

Jason Antic's DeOldify is a Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Network-based machine learning system that colorizes and restores old images. It's only in the early stages but it's already producing really impressive results, and the pipeline includes a "defade" model that is "just training the same model to reconstruct images that augmented with ridiculous contrast/brightness adjustments, as a simulation of fading photos and photos taken with old/bad equipment."This is a deep learning based model. More specifically, what I've done is combined the following approaches:* Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Network (https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.08318). Except the generator is a pretrained Unet, and I've just modified it to have the spectral normalization and self-attention. It's a pretty straightforward translation. I'll tell you what though – it made all the difference when I switched to this after trying desperately to get a Wasserstein GAN version to work. I liked the theory of Wasserstein GANs but it just didn't pan out in practice. But I'm in love with Self-Attention GANs.* Training structure inspired by (but not the same as) Progressive Growing of GANs (https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.10196). The difference here is the number of layers remains constant – I just changed the size of the input progressively and adjusted learning rates to make sure that the transitions between sizes happened successfully. It seems to have the same basic end result – training is faster, more stable, and generalizes better.* Two Time-Scale Update Rule (https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.08500). This is also very straightforward – it's just one to one generator/critic iterations and higher critic learning rate. Read the rest

Film, television and theater are brutally competitive businesses. A lot of actors work to shape their bodies, pay to sculpt their faces and train as singers, dancers or martial artists — anything that'll make themselves stand out to casting directors. Some are more dedicated than others.From Task & Purpose:Actor Todd Lawson LaTourrette — whose credits include brief roles on TV shows Better Call Saul and Longmire plus a bit part in The Men Who Stare At Goats — publicly outed himself as faking military service to get his big break during an Oct. 29 interview with KOB4 news.But the story gets more bizarre, because of the lengths he went to do it: LaTourrette said that 17 years ago, he cut off his own arm, cauterized the wound, then made his own prosthetic, all so he could pass himself off as a war-wounded veteran.In a recent interview, LaTourrette stated that at the time that he decided to do away with his arm, he was being treated for a bipolar disorder and had gone off of his medication. After healing up, LaTourrette crafted a military backstory for himself and started attending casting calls. The film industry took the bait and started handing him film and television roles.Stealing valor is shitty. Cutting off your limb during a psychotic episode is sad. By talking about both, LaTourrette is trying to own what he's done. That's got to be worth something.Image by Rasbak - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Read the rest

The Beastie Boys Book, a meaty memoir penned by the band's Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, was released this week.Via the books' press junket, some of the stories within its pages are coming out.In particular, Rolling Stone shared an excerpt from the audiobook. Ad-Rock writes how the song "Sabotage" was inspired by the band's sound engineer Mario (who was known to "blow a fuse"), "I decided it would be funny to write a song about how Mario was holding us all down, how he was trying to mess it all up, sabotaging our great works of art..."...Saturday Night Live alum Tim Meadows tells the story of 1994’s “Sabotage,” reading from both Diamond’s and Horovitz’s perspectives as they recall how engineer Mario Caldato Jr. inspired the classic rage-out. Yes, that’s right: When Ad-Rock screams “IIIIIIIIIIIIII can’t stand it/I know you planned it,” the person he’s so pissed at in that moment is the Beastie Boys’ own good friend and recording partner...Listen: The book is available for $49.99 from the band's merch site, or $30 from Amazon.photo via Beastie Boys blog(COS) Read the rest

Some of the funniest products to come down the pipeline in years are Archie McPhee's line of squirrel feeders. By putting some food inside a tiny head (like a horse or a unicorn), a squirrel will unwittingly become part of a hilarious show. Now folks are making their own versions. We first saw the Donald Trump head squirrel feeder back in July and now, thanks to comic book artist Sean Chan, there's one that has the squirrel donning the spooky Ghostface mask from the movie Scream.It's never not funny: Read the rest

Double-taxation is bad news, for sure, but the use of offshore tax-havens and profit-shifting allows big companies, especially tech companies, to hide their profits from taxation, starving the treasuries of the countries they colonize and giving them an unfair advantage over their smaller, domestic competitors.Richard Murphy proposes a solution: the Alternative Minimum Corporation Tax (AMCT). Companies take stock of the number of customers (and staff and assets) they have in the countries imposing the tax, then pay 80% of the usual tax-rate on income generated from those customers. In addition to ensuring that profits are taxed for all firms, not just small ones, this largely eliminates double taxation, makes profit shifting a pointless exercise, makes tax-havens useless, it creates "tax certainty" and thus stability that shareholders can bank on, it focuses business's attention on the places where they do business, not where they pay taxes, and creates more transparency into earnings and profits.Using country-by-country reporting data the global profits of multinational tech companies should be apportioned to countries based on where their customers, staff and assets are. The formula should be weighted to customers since in the case of these companies they are clearly the major drivers of profit and they create the intangible worth of these entities.Then I would apply a tax rate of at least 80% of that charged as standard in the UK to this sum. That should more than allow for the impact of tech investing on current tax liabilities. Some may say I am being generous. Read the rest

In 2015, Australia created the most aggressive copyright censorship system in the world, which allowed the country's two major movie studios (Village Roadshow and Fox) along with an assortment of smaller companies and trolls to get court orders forcing the country's ISPs to censor sites that had the "primary purpose" of infringing copyright.When the legislation was passed, opponents said that it would not curb copyright infringement. After all, the only thing that had ever significantly reduced copyright infringement in Australia had been to bring Australian prices into line with those paid in the rest of the English-speaking world (instead of gouging, as had been customary), and bringing Australian release-dates into sync with other English-speaking countries (instead of imposing long delays, as had been customary). The data had showed that the vast majority of Australians were willing to pay for their media -- they just objected to getting ripped off by paying high prices for media that arrived months after all their internet friends had seen it.But the entertainment companies insisted that the censorship system in the 2015 law would drive people away from infringement and into legit markets. Three years later, they've admitted failure -- and rather than focusing on pricing and availability, the companies are now calling for much more censorship in a new copyright bill that is racing towards passage so quickly it might actually make it into law before the Australian government collapses (again).The new censorship rules would allow blocking orders against sites whose "primary effect" is infringement -- and we know from other lawsuits and proposed laws that this is content-speak for "a site with a lot of infringement," even if the infringement is a tiny fraction of the overall material available. Read the rest

Senator Ron Wyden [D-OR] (previously) has introduced the Consumer Data Protection Act, which extends personal criminal liability to the CEOs of companies worth more than $1B or who hold data on more than 50,000,000 people who knowingly mislead the FTC in a newly mandated system of annual reports on the steps the company has taken to secure the data.CEOs whose companies lie to the FTC about these measures will face 20 years in prison and $5 million in fines for breaches.This reminds me of the criminal liability regime in the Sarbanes-Oxley bill passed after the Enron scandal, which threatened jail sentences for CEOs who signed their name to false financial statements and had far-reaching consequences (for example, record labels had been routinely running "third shift" pressings to produce extra, off-the-books copies of popular CDs that would be sold in record stores but without sending any royalties to the musicians involved -- after SOX, this came to an abrupt halt).It turns out that when the CEO's freedom is on the line, businesses manage to create really effective policies to accomplish whatever it is the company needs to do to keep the CEO out of prison: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” From Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal to Verizon getting busted covertly tracking wireless users around the internet, it has become clear there’s not much in the way of genuine accountability or transparency when it comes to cavalier treatment of user data. Read the rest

It's really hard to keep up with how weird every news story is right now. The Huffington Post's Jessica Schulberg sums her new HuffPo report perfectly: “Before Robert Bowers killed 11 people in a synagogue, he offered to help the League of the South's Brad Griffin dox a journalist on Gab.”Gab’s CEO Andrew Torba has said that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect does not represent the site, but Torba reportedly spent years recruiting racists exactly like Bowers, promoted white supremacists and Nazis, and ignored racist death threats, all on Gab.Here's an excerpt, and scroll down for an amazing reaction:Torba, who likes to portray himself as a free speech warrior under attack by big tech, liberals and the media, describes Gab as a censorship-free version of Twitter. But as Gab’s CEO, he has rooted for prominent racists, vilified minorities, fetishized “trad life” in which women stay at home with the kids, and fantasized about a second American civil war in which the right outguns the left. And despite Torba’s supposed commitment to free speech, Gab often blocks its critics on Twitter and rails against journalists. White supremacists and members of the alt-right like Gab because Torba speaks their language: People who learn to embrace far-right politics have been “red-pilled,” people who know what’s going on are “based.” Even Gab’s logo is a nod to white supremacists: The green frog is clearly reminiscent of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that became popular in racist memes. Torba, who declined to be interviewed, wasn’t always sending those sorts of signals. Read the rest

U.S. military intelligence analysis documents obtained by Newsweek reveal that defense officials do not believe there are terrorists or other national security threats present within the so-called “migrant caravan.” Despite this, Trump has demanded that up to 15,000 military troops be dispatched to the border, to brace for an “invasion” that doesn't exist, just before the midterm elections.These documents show that U.S. troops are preparing for encounters not so much with the asylum seekers, but with armed white supremacist American crackpots at the U.S. border. Because they are ones with all the guns. Not the migrant caravan.“Preliminary intelligence assessments are preparing for encounters with a litany of groups from unregulated militias to transcontinental criminal organizations,” reports Newsweek:In a powerpoint presentation from Saturday, the Joint Force Land Component Commander Threat Working Group prepared an intelligence assessment for Pentagon officials as they begin to carry out Operation Faithful Patriot, the interagency operation with the Department of Defense and led by the Department of Homeland Security, that started Tuesday. The presentation is marked as “UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO//LES,” meaning, the documents are for official use only and are law enforcement sensitive. Newsweek obtained the operational planning documents earlier this week from two different Defense Department sources that have direct knowledge of U.S. Northern Command's mission on the southern U.S. border. The documents take a detailed look at the four-point of entry locations spread across the southwest border and assesses where the caravan might travel. Two areas of concern to U.S. intelligence officials involving points of entry and transcontinental criminal organizations is the point of entry in Brownsville, Texas, where the Rio Grande River is located between Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and the San Ysidro point of entry, separating San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico. Read the rest

In a letter published online today, 56 of America's largest corporations tell Donald Trump not roll back legal protections for transgender people, as he is threatening to do with the midterm U.S. elections one week away. What he appears to be trying to do, of course, is far more than that. Donald Trump says he wants to be the one who determines your gender. Companies spanning tech, financial services and consumer products that represent over $2.4 trillion in annual revenue and have almost 4.8 million employees signed the statement after a New York Times report said the Trump administration is considering limiting the definition of gender to birth anatomy.Airbnb, Amazon.com, Apple, Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Cisco, Google, IBM, Intel, Lyft, Microsoft, Dow Chemical, Uber, and Warby Parker were among the co-signers. The signing companies oppose "any administrative and legislative efforts to erase transgender protections through reinterpretation of existing laws and regulations.""We call for respect and transparency in policy-making, and for equality under the law for transgender people," the letter reads.“Transgender people are our beloved family members and friends, and our valued team members. What harms transgender people harms our companies,” the companies wrote.Here is the full text of the letter, and the signatories:We, the undersigned businesses, stand with the millions of people in America who identify as transgender, gender non-binary, or intersex, and call for all such people to be treated with the respect and dignity everyone deserves.We oppose any administrative and legislative efforts to erase transgender protections through reinterpretation of existing laws and regulations. Read the rest

Roger Stone today revealed that in 2016 he was in communication with at least one senior Trump presidential campaign official about forthcoming WikiLeaks leaks that would be damaging to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.Stone is a longtime Donald Trump consigliere, and former colleague of the currently jailed Paul Manafort. On Thursday, Stone confirmed what many of us already knew or suspected by way of an opinion piece for the right-wing Daily Caller, in which Stone revealed an exchange he had with Steve Bannon, who was at the time the chief executive of Trump's presidential campaign. Stone's Daily Caller op-ed with the Bannon/Wikileaks e-mails were published *just* before the New York Times story about those very emails went live. Very Roger Stone.NEW: Emails we've obtained show how Bannon considered Stone a conduit to Wikileaks .. how closely Breitbart was tied to the campaign .. and how Stone asked Bannon to have Rebecca Mercer send money for his efforts to undermine Clinton. https://t.co/0Ke7YnzE3u— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) November 1, 2018The NYT piece by Mike Schmidt et al details how Stone pitched himself to Trump campaign officials as someone who had connections and influence with WikiLeaks and Julian ASSange.From the NYT's preface to their archive of the Roger Stone/Wikileaks/Trump campaign emails:When WikiLeaks published a trove of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman a month before the 2016 election, it was widely viewed as an attempt to damage her standing, even as WikiLeaks defended the release as an effort to bring greater transparency to American politics. Read the rest

A man noticed an empty, broken-down house in Sydney, Australia and poked around the neighborhood to find out more about it. Turns out the occupant, who had been renting it since around the 1940s, had died earlier that year. So Bill Gertos, a tax accountant at the time, decided it was okay – and ethical – to pretend it was his. He fixed it up, changed the locks, and rented it out. This was 20 years ago, and now Gertos is the lawful owner. The real owners – heirs of the previous owner, who died in 1947 – tried to fight it in court, but Gertos won under squatters' rights, even though he wasn't the one squatting.According to the BBC:In New South Wales, squatters can be awarded ownership if they have occupied a property for more than 12 years.The court granted Mr Gertos those rights because he had repaired and maintained the property since 1998.Australian media outlets described the case as "bizarre" because the relevant law is typically used by those who move into a property themselves. Read the rest

Autodesk and Kickstarter have teamed up to create a downloadable test model that owners of 3D printers can download and print to make sure their 3D printer is in proper working order.From Core77:Autodesk research scientist Andreas Bastian has developed a test procedure designed to help creators better calibrate their machines and showcase their printers' capabilities to backers on Kickstarter. He developed a single, consolidated STL file that tests a printer's dimensional accuracy, resolution, and alignment. For example, poor execution of the "bridging" feature shown [above] will lead to a saggy and stringy print. A well-calibrated printer will make the horizontal feature with fewer of those issues.…As Braydon Moreno of Robo explains, with the new procedure "customers know exactly what to expect with the product. This also holds manufacturers accountable for the quality of the machines they are producing and gives them a benchmark to strive for… Other torture tests cover a variety of things, but this print seemed all-encompassing." Read the rest

It was with great jubilance at the Red Sox parade in Boston that a flying beer can smashed into the World Series trophy. Some of its flags were bent out of shape, but a team official says the damage will be fixed "right away." Via The Washington Post Read the rest

In my opinion, people drink too much water. Imagine a time traveler from the 1970s looking at all the people walking around carrying canteens. They'd wonder what happened. On the flip side, there are people who hate drinking water (and other liquids) so much that they end up in emergency rooms. Quinn Meyers of Mel investigates this odd breed of hydrophobes.I can only drink it when I’m about to seriously dehydrate. I can’t describe the taste, but I dislike it so much that when I know I should be drinking it, I have to force myself or convince myself I need it. If I do drink it, I almost have to shoot it so I don’t taste it — like I just try to get it over with.Moreover, I put all sorts of stuff in it to make myself drink it, like Emergen-C, Crystal Light and other flavored hydration tablets, because I can barely force myself to drink it plain.Even if there are absolutely no other options, I usually just opt to not drink anything, which is how I’ve gotten myself in trouble hydration-wise — I’ve ended up in the ER three times over the past 20 years from dehydration! The first time, I was at the gym and should have been hydrating while working out but didn’t. My heart started racing, and I got really lightheaded and got rushed to the ER.The second time, I had a really bad cold and wasn’t hydrating. The third time, I went into a full-on panic attack because I couldn’t breathe. Read the rest

Boing Boing friend Cosey Fanni Tutti of pioneering experimental/electronic/art groups Throbbing Gristle, Chris & Cosey, and Coum Transmissions will release a new solo album, Tutti, in February. This is her first solo record since Time To Tell in 1982. Above is the title track, a pulsing (throbbing?) soundscape of electronic rhythm, noise, and Cosey's glorious trumpet. Cosey composed these new tracks as the soundtrack to her autobiographical slideshow Harmonic COUMaction, part of last year's COUM Transmissions retrospective in Hull, England."Working on the COUM Transmissions exhibition also coincided with writing my autobiography - collating archive material and re-engaging with my past," Cosey told The Quietus. "My work is a continuum, the past feeding the present and vice versa. The album is an interpretation of my past and present, of my understanding the shifting perceptions of how they inform one another. One form creating another through a metamorphic process."A gentle reminder about a not-so-gentle book: Cosey's 2017 memoir "Art Sex Music," is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of avant-garde music, performance art, underground culture, radical living, and female empowerment. Read the rest

What animals have night vision and how the hell can they see in the dark anyway? (Nat Geo WILD via The Kid Should See This) Read the rest

George Conway, husband of White House advisor Kellyanne Conway, tweeted last night that Trump's words on immigration are "just drivel" and that "Clearly he has no comprehension of the words he’s using."To say that “illegal immigrants are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” is just drivel. Were that true, then the government wouldn’t be able to arrest them. Surely that’s not the President’s position. Clearly he has no comprehension of the words he’s using. https://t.co/LYlutDG73M— George Conway (@gtconway3d) November 1, 2018But this is nothing new. Just because Conway's wife is in cahoots with the president doesn't mean he can't have his own opinions, and that he does. Just yesterday he co-wrote with Neal Katyal an op-ed for The Washington Post titled, "Trump’s proposal to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional."And last night's tweet wasn't the first of its kind. In August, he corrected Trump when the often-wrong president criticized Ohio Governor John Kasich on how unpopular he was.Cincinnati Enquirer/Suffolk 6/6-11/18 OH statewide 500 LVUnfavorable opinion of > Donald Trump: 58.6% > John Kasich: 34.8%https://t.co/CLkIOda8aN https://t.co/hTldDq1ZD6— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 13, 2018And Conway's retweets are often against what his wife would try to defend on Trump's behalf.Ladies and Gentlemen... the undisputed world heavyweight champion of lying... the 45th president of the United States of America. What a disgrace. Inside What Even an Ally Calls Trump’s ‘Reality Distortion Field’ via @NYTimes https://t.co/MTjeLOlVMT— Dan Nathan (@RiskReversal) November 1, 2018Fact Check of the Day: From nonexistent riots to conspiracy theories about migrants to false claims about his popularity and job-creating record, President Trump has offered a litany of falsehoods in the midterm campaign https://t.co/HLRuDBX12b— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) October 31, 2018Wanting a president to be able to override the Constitution with an EO is not conservative. Read the rest

I like bright yellow and orange equipment because it's easy to find. I'm less likely to leave something on a hotel room bedside table if it isn't black. I always thought pencils were yellow because it made them easier to spot on a cluttered desk, but the real reason turns out to be a lot more interesting.From The Little-Known Reason Pencils Are Yellow, by Gabrielle HickA number of pencil manufacturers, including Hardtmuth, now sourced their graphite from Siberia—the vast Russian province which shares borderland with China. That geographic proximity was key for Hardtmuth as it devised its marketing scheme.In China, yellow had long been tied to royalty. The legendary ruler considered the progenitor of Chinese civilization was known as the Yellow Emperor; thus, centuries later in Imperial China only the royal family was allowed to wear yellow. Eventually, the shade came to represent happiness, glory, and wisdom.Hardtmuth settled on yellow to communicate the graphite’s geographical origins, while also linking its product to the long-held Chinese associations of royalty, and therefore superiority.To further emphasize the point, Hardtmuth dubbed its new line of yellow pencils “Koh-I-Noor” after the world-famous diamond from the British Crown Jewels. “Diamonds are graphite, and the name Koh-I-Noor—being the name of such an exquisite diamond—was deliberately chosen to suggest the quality of graphite in the pencil,” Petroski noted. So popular was its yellow pencil that the company actually changed its own name to Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth. Image: Shutterstock/Valentin Kundeus Read the rest

A rare and beautiful Mandarin duck, native to East Asia, has turned up in New York City's Central Park. The bird spends most of its time entertaining curious on-lookers in a pond near 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. City official plan to leave the duck alone so long as it's safe. From CBS News:(Bird enthusiast Dave) Barrett said he's checked with every zoo in the city and none are missing a duck. It leads the bird-watching community to believe it was a domestic pet, which is illegal in New York City."It might have got away or someone might have got tired of it and dumped it," Barrett said.It also may have flown to Manhattan from a neighboring town. Read the rest

Judge Andrew Napolitano sat down with his friends at Fox and Friends this morning to let them know why Trump's plan to end birthright US citizenship to babies whose parents are non-citizens or unauthorized immigrants is uninformed. "Look, the president can’t change the plain meaning of the Constitution with the stroke of a pen," the Fox News senior judicial analyst explained. Earlier this week, in a clip from the upcoming Axios on HBO, Trump boasted how he would change the 14th amendment with an executive order. This clip makes for a great explainer video not just for Trump (who needs it most), but for anyone who wants to understand how US constitutional law is supposed to work.“The President can’t change the plain meaning of the Constitution with the stroke of a pen.” -@Judgenap weighs in on debate over birthright citizenship pic.twitter.com/aN2xiwlJaE— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) November 1, 2018Via Daily Beast Read the rest

Welcome to your new job. Please do not be late on your first day.

Former Google executive Andy Rubin was credibly accused of "coercing" a colleague into oral sex. Google believed the victim and quietly forced Rubin out with a $90m payoff, according to a bombshell story in The New York Times. Staff at Google offices worldwide walked out in protest today.The employees are demanding several key changes in how sexual misconduct allegations are dealt with at the firm, including a call to end forced arbitration - a move which would make it possible for victims to sue.Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has told staff he supports their right to take the action."I understand the anger and disappointment that many of you feel," he said in an all-staff email. "I feel it as well, and I am fully committed to making progress on an issue that has persisted for far too long in our society… and, yes, here at Google, too."Remember James Damore and his fable of totalitarian feminism at Google? It will always be more real to those guys than any of this. Read the rest

Watch as two houseplants, and Oxalis and a Maranta, move throughout a 24-hour period in this cool timelapse video by Instagrammers houseplantjournal.Watch it in its entirety here.If you liked that one, watch this from a few years ago. It shows a plant come back to life after watering it:(Geekologie) Read the rest

Just days before the horrific mass murder at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue, my Institute for the Future colleagues Sam Woolley and Katie Joseff published a deeply upsetting study on how social media bots and computational propaganda are being used to instigate and amplify anti-semitism online and manipulate public opinion. From the paper:This report explores the ways in which online propaganda, harassment and political manipulation are affecting Jewish People in the runup to 2018 U.S. midterm elections. In the course of our research, members of this group have described a marked rise in the number of online attacks their community is experiencing. This is proving especially true during electoral contests and major political events. Correspondingly, our analyses suggests that tools like social media bots, and tactics including doxxing, disinformation, and politically-motivated threats, have been used online during the 2018 midterms to target Jewish Americans. According to interviewees, veiled human users—rather than automated accounts—often deliver the most worrisome and harmful anti-Semitic attacks. As part of the wider paper series focused on “humanizing the effects of computational propaganda” this empirical work details the ways in which the Jewish socio-religious population in the U.S. is being disproportionately targeted with disinformation and abuse during this crucial political moment. We use a mixed methods approach in this research, deploying both qualitative and quantitative analysis in order to generate both a culturally deep and statistically broad understanding of how computational propaganda is being leveraged against this community...Analysis of 7,512,594 tweets over a period from August 31, 2018 to September 17, 2018 shows the prevalence of political bots in these efforts and highlights groups within the U.S. Read the rest