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This morning, Duke Energy mailroom employees in Charlotte, North Carolina called police after noticing an unusual small package with a handwritten address on it at their facility. Police cleared the area, shut down roads, and deployed a K-9 unit. According to CBS17, "police and the bomb squad investigated the package, which contained a cassette tape by the band Journey." Read the rest

A single smut-addicted official at the US Geological Survey led to an IT crisis there, according to an official report, with more than 9000 computers ending up infected. The recommendations? Filter the web, and plug those damned USB ports. Read the rest

Having a great time, wish I was there!This video produced the NRK TV-program "Nordlandsbanen Minutt for Minutt", which shows ride on the train cabin driver's view through beautiful Norwegian landscape. (via Kottke) Read the rest

The Holy Stone HS100 is a drone on Amazon that has two interesting qualities. First, it's one of those undesigned generic gadgets resold by numerous brands with SEO-stuffed and bizarre product names (e.g. "Holy Stone GPS FPV RC Drone HS100 Camera Live Video GPS Return Home Quadcopter Adjustable Wide-Angle 720P HD WiFi Camera- Follow Me, Altitude Hold, Intelligent Battery Long Control Range")Second, it has thousands of glowing reviews. Thousands. Are they real? Are the Holy Stones any good? DroneDJ checks it out.The Holy Stone HS100 and HS100G are both rebranded versions of the SJRC S70W. The only places to buy the Holy Stone versions of these drones is on Amazon and on Holy Stone’s website. SJRC (also SJ R/C) is the brand of the original manufacturer. According to my source, the manufacturer is a Chinese factory called Apex.You might think that I am going to totally trash the HS100 as a terrible drone. I’m not going to do that. I have tested 100s of drones, many of which are pretty bad. For the most part, the HS100 (SJRC S70W) does what it is supposed to do. That’s more than can be said for many of the cheap toys you can find on Amazon and elsewhere online.Surprise! It's ok. But the reviews, it must be said, are definitely fake. Read the rest

Mass consumer spending season is nearly upon us. The perfect time to load your hard-earned cash into this wallet by Etsy shop DangerRan. No extra charge for the interior Dick Butt.Shut up and take my money ($60 of it)!(nopuedocreer) Read the rest

The New York Times reports that apps intended for children are "crammed" with ads, many of them disturbing, inappropriate and effectively impossible to dismiss. Dancing treasure chests would give young players points for watching video ads, potentially endlessly. The vast majority of ads were not marked at all. Characters in children’s games gently pressured the kids to make purchases, a practice known as host-selling, banned in children’s TV programs in 1974 by the Federal Trade Commission. At other times an onscreen character would cry if the child did not buy something.“The first word that comes to mind is furious,” said Dr. Radesky, an assistant professor of developmental behavioral pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School. “I’m a researcher. I want to stay objective. We started this study really just trying to look at distraction. My frustrated response is about all the surprising, potentially deceptive stuff we found.”95 percent of the tested apps marketed for kids under 5 had these ads in them. It's not a trend, or even the norm: it's the nature of the business of childrens' apps. It's been this way for years: here's a 2015 story from The Guardian about explicit sex ads in childrens' apps.A company promoting sexual liaisons using pictures of a naked woman has been reprimanded for running ads in a children’s smartphone game. The Advertising Standards Authority received complaints from parents after they discovered their children had seen the explicit ads, which included the line “wanna fuck?”, within the My Talking Tom app. Read the rest

Predpol (previoulsy) is a "predictive policing" company that sells police forces predictive analytics tools that take in police data about crimes and arrests and spits out guesses about where the police should go to find future crimes.Predpol has drawn sharp criticism for algorithmic discrimination, in which data from racist policing practices are laundered through an algorithm that gives them the veneer of empirical impartiality: feeding faulty data to a predictive algorithm produces faulty analysis. "Garbage in, garbage out" is an iron law of computing that has not been repealed by machine learning techniques.Even as Predpol and its competitors, like Palantir (previously) have expanded their operations, concerned citizens have successfully pushed for local laws requiring cities to engage in public consultation before procuring services that feed private corporations policing and surveillance data in order to direct policing operations. However, in most markets, Predpol and its competitors operate in obscurity. The cop who stopped you this week (or who didn't come to your neighborhood at all) might have been acting on orders from an AI oracle provided by Predpol to your local police, whose tax-funded revenues are a close-kept secret. An anonymous security researcher recently contacted me with what may be a list of Predpol's customers. This researcher had seen that Predpol assigns easy-to-guess subdomains to each Predpol customer, in the form of CITYNAME.predpol.com, for example, baltimore.predpol.com.This researcher wrote a script that combined the name of every US city and town with ".predpol.com" and checked to see whether this domain existed. Read the rest

Now that everyone has a powerful camera with an array of filters and enhancements just a click away, anyone can be a photographer, right? Wrong. Practice alone won't make perfect. Whether you're hoping to transition into a professional career or just do those smartphone pics justice, the Hollywood Art Institute Photography Course & Certification can take you there.Refreshingly free of jargon, the Hollywood Art Institute distills field-tested techniques from Level 3-certified Pro Tutors into 56 hours of knowledge that you can access at your own pace. Many of the principles will apply equally well to point-and-shoot or DSLR cameras, and you'll be able to use what you learn to take better pictures your very first day. The 22-module course is packed with eBooks, video tutorials, flashcards, quizzes and a full slate of practical info you can access anytime - plus a free 5-year subscription to the HAI's Pro Article Database.A pro certification awaits on completion, and it's on sale now for $19. Get snapping with the Hollywood Art Institute Photography Course & Certification today. Read the rest

Trump intends to sign an executive order ending "birthright citizenship"—the right of people born in the United States to citizenship irrespective of their parents' status, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.MSNBC:Trump, in an interview with Axios, part of which aired Tuesday morning, said birthright citizenship “has to end” and that it would, “with an executive order.”"We're the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits," Trump said. "It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And it has to end.""It's in the process. It'll happen with an executive order,” he said, adding that he's consulted with the White House counsel on the matter.Making it up as he goes along, as usual. I can't speak to the trumpkin theory that the Fourteenth Amendment has its fingers crossed behind its back. But it's kinda annoying to watch him claim that the U.S. is the only country to have birthright citizenship and the Axios interviewers simply don't know and can't contradict him. Read the rest

A cat stole the show at the recent Esmod International Fashion Show in Istanbul, Turkey by preening itself, playfully attacking models, and actually walking the catwalk. Fashion designer Göksen Hakkı Ali told The Dodo, "Everybody was in shock." I'm dying, this is too good! Brb, gonna go watch it a hundred more times. Read the rest

I'm going to be in Berlin next week to promote the German edition of my novel Walkaway: I'll be appearing at DTK-Wasserturm from 20h-22h, sponsored by Otherland Books. Entry is free -- I hope to see you there! Read the rest

A new feature on the encrypted messaging platform Signal, "Sealed Sender," will hide your identity from Signal itself, so that if the company is ever compromised, it will not be able to reveal who sent messages to whom.Sealed Sender is cleverly implemented to fight spam and abuse; you can turn Sealed Sender on selectively, only allowing sealed messages where you and the other party appear in one another's address books (and you can also block sealed messages from specific individuals, even if they appear in your address book and vice-versa).Signal uses Amazon Web Services for hosting, and says that it is still working on finding a viable way to encrypt IP addresses and other metadata that could theoretically allow an attacker to perform certain types of user traffic analysis. And encrypted messaging still isn't a magic bullet, especially if you leave message threads on your device. But Green emphasizes that every incremental step is valuable. The difficulty of developing the technical frameworks for these steps is one reason WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton donated $50 million in February to support Signal's development. The more of a barren data wasteland it is inside of Signal, the better.Signal Has a Clever New Way to Shield Your Identity [Lily Hay Newman/Wired] Read the rest

FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly gave a speech to the Media Institute in which he falsely claimed that municipal fiber networks (which provide competitive services that are cheaper and better than those provided by commercial telcoms monopolies, and which are a major target for dark-money billionaire smear campaigns) have onerous terms of service that allow them to censor users' speech, and that they use this power to suppress right-wing political views.This is categorically untrue, and can be readily verified by reading the terms of service of the municipal broadband providers O’Rielly cited. “Municipalities such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, have been notorious for their use of speech codes in the terms of service of state-owned networks, prohibiting users from transmitting content that falls into amorphous categories like 'hateful' or “threatening,” O’Rielly claimed.Chattanooga, Tennessee, is home to EPB Broadband, which is owned and operated by the city’s power utility. A recent Consumer Reports survey of 176,000 Americans found the ISP was rated the highest in the country in terms of speed, value, and reliability.A perusal of the EPB terms of service shows no language that varies in any substantive way from the usual restraints on bad behavior and hate speech imposed by most ISPs country wide.The closest O’Rielly gets to supporting evidence appears to be a 2015 white paper written by Professor Enrique Armijo for the ISP-funded Free State Foundation. That paper similarly alleges that standard telecom sector language intended to police “threatening, abusive or hateful” language somehow implies community-run ISPs are more likely to curtail user speech. Read the rest

Bram Stoker's working notes for Dracula were discovered in 1913 (but not published until 2008); now researchers at the London Library have pulled the titles Stoker referenced and shown that these were the very books that Stoker used -- they can tell because he defaced the library books, circling the phrases he later made notes on.The markings range from crosses and underlinings against relevant paragraphs, to page turnings on key pages, to instructions to have someone copy entire sections into his typewritten notes.Some of the most heavily marked books include Sabine Baring-Gould’s “Book of Were-Wolves” and Thomas Browne’s “Necromancy - Divination of the Dead”. But the range of titles also sheds light on the detail of Stoker’s geographical and historical research – for example, AF Crosse’s “Round About the Carpathians” and Charles’ Boner’s “Transylvania”. The suggestion that Stoker was using the Library heavily is given added weight by the timing of his seven-year membership which coincides almost exactly with the period when he was working on Dracula and beginning to develop an active writing career alongside his already very successful role as theatre manager at The Lyceum Theatre. Earlier research by our Archive Librarian Helen O’Neill showed that he joined in 1890, the year he visited Whitby and first developed the idea for his vampire story, and he finally left the Library in 1897, the year Dracula was published. His membership form is seconded by his close friend Henry Hall Caine, a bestselling author of the day, a London Library member, and the man to whom Stoker dedicated Dracula, using Hall Caine’s nickname “Hommy-Beg”. Read the rest

When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker announced a $3 billion corporate welfare plan for a new Foxconn plant in his state, Foxconn watchers warned that the company had a long history of breaking its new factory promises after sucking up billions in taxpayer dollars.Walker didn't believe the warnings: instead, he started bulldozing Wisconsonites' family homes to make way for Foxconn's promised factory.Hey, guess what?The bill for Foxconn's taxpayer-funded subsidy has gone up to more than $4.1 billion. Also: Foxconn has scaled the factory plan waaaay back: instead of a $10 billion "Generation 10.5" plant, it will build a much smaller "Generation 6" plant.Nearly all the work in a Gen 6 plant is robotic. Foxconn is a notorious polluter, leaving behind uninhabitable toxic wastelands where it builds. Scott Walker has exempted Foxconn from state environmental laws, "allowing it to discharge materials into wetlands and reroute streams during construction and operation." Walker also waived the requirement for an environmental impact statement prior to construction.The plant will use 7,000,000 gallons of Great Lakes water. In retrospect, it’s clear that Walker had a strong hand to play in negotiations with Foxconn. The company had to locate in a Great Lakes state because of the huge amount of water needed to clean the glass used in manufacturing LCD screens. And no other Great Lakes state came close to offering the $4.1 billion Foxconn is getting. Michigan came the closest, offering $2.3 billion, but it was partly a tax subsidy rather than cash. Read the rest

Apple is holding a launch event on Tuesday, October 30, and the image shown on invitations is above. Here's what the smart guesses are on what they're going to announce. Apple will livestream the event here, start time scheduled for 10 AM Eastern time. Among the offerings said to be in store: new iPads, a purportedly leaked image of which is shown below from @onLeaks. “The new iPad Pros are said to feature USB-C and a new magnetic smart connector on the back.” New Apple Pencil, Upgraded iMacs, and a new Mac mini are also predicted.From 9to5Mac: iOS 12.1 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch will be available tomorrow as a free software update. The first significant update to iOS 12 brings a variety of features including Group FaceTime, dual SIM support, real time Depth Control for Portrait mode, new emoji, and more. iOS 12.1 is also expected to address the “beauty-gate” issue that affected the front-facing camera on iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.And from MacWorld: The highlight of the event is expected to be a pair of new iPad Pros. Rumors suggest they will feature iPhone X-style design with slim, perfectly even bezels all the way around the display. The display will have curved corners, and there will be no room for a Touch ID sensor—rather, Apple will include the TrueDepth module and Face ID.The bezels will be a bit wider than on iPhones, so there will be no need for a notch to house the TrueDepth module. Read the rest

More than 200 engineers at Google are said to be preparing a 'women's walk', in which people walk out of work, after claims that the company protected sexual harasser executives, and offered them generous payouts.The New York Times recently reported that Google gave Android creator Andy Rubin an exit package worth $90 million, even though it was proven that Rubin had relationships with subordinates and was accused of abusive sexual misconduct.From TechCrunch:The walkout, or “women’s walk,” as it’s been referred to in internal company forums, is planned for Thursday.Following the NYT report, Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai and its vice president of people operations Eileen Naughton co-signed a company memo admitting that 48 people had been terminated at the company for sexual harassment in the past two years, 13 of which held a senior management position or higher. None of them, according to the memo, received an exit package.“Today’s story in the New York Times was difficult to read,” they wrote. “We are dead serious about making sure we provide a safe and inclusive workplace. We want to assure you that we review every single complaint about sexual harassment or inappropriate conduct, we investigate and we take action.”I've talked a lot about how increasingly American culture is heavily influenced by work culture. It's also part of a deliberate movement to make workplaces more inclusive. People will continue to bring more of their values into the workplace. Bet on it. https://t.co/RCtJ5SjzV4— Marco Rogers (@polotek) October 29, 2018Googler to me this morning re: planned employee walkout: "Personally, I'm furious. Read the rest

Here is a new and frightening tweet that I don't understand.From the President of the United States:Check out tweets from last two days. I refer to Fake News Media when mentioning Enemy of the People - but dishonest reporters use only the word “Media.” The people of our Great Country are angry and disillusioned at receiving so much Fake News. They get it, and fully understand!5:14 PM - 29 Oct 2018The president next tweeted that he “will be interviewed by Laura Ingraham tonight at 10:00 P.M. on @FoxNews.”Enemy of the People “was adopted in Nazi Germany — ‘If someone wears the Jewish star, he is an enemy of the people’ — and, perhaps most famously, in the Soviet Union under Stalin, when being labeled an enemy of the people amounted to a death sentence.” https://t.co/Itnotrxyew https://t.co/v6Yri4wpzV— Tim O'Brien (@TimOBrien) October 30, 2018Interesting that he feels the need to spin this. Almost like he recognizes he has messed up the current moment, though he will of course still try to attack his way out. https://t.co/ws64FjAmZg— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) October 30, 2018Trump here refers to CNN as member of the "fake news business" which he then calls the "enemy of the people." Translation, CNN is the enemy of the people, per Trump. Really reprehensible tweet, particularly considering CNN has been on receiving end of actual bombs in last week. https://t.co/Rnabv9YCsY— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 30, 2018In Feb. 2017, @realDonaldTrump specified @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS and @CNN as "the enemy of the American People." Here's what @jseldin and I wrote about that: https://t.co/kp9cwVq4m2 pic.twitter.com/yrhDDtBGvH— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) October 30, 2018Here's who Trump has directly called "fake news" on Twitter: CNN, MSNBC, AP, New York Times, NBC, New Yorker, ABC, CBS. Read the rest

Americans are confident local poll workers will run elections smoothly and that votes will be counted accurately, but they are less sure about nationwide elections and worry about foreign hacking.

Watching John Oliver bring the noise to Fox News is a great way to start the week. Read the rest

M'm! M'm! Good! Tweeting conspiracy theories about George Soros is bad for your career. Just ask Campbell's Soup Company former vice president of government affairs, Kelly Johnston. On Monday, Johnston tweeted that the former hedge fund manager and current philanthropist's Open Society Foundation was funding troop carriers and vans to bring an army of migrants north to the Mexico/United States border. From Gizmodo:The company told CNN last week that Johnston’s remarks on Twitter did not reflect the position of the company. A spokesperson for Campbell’s told Gizmodo in a statement by email that Johnston’s last day with the company was Thursday.“Mr. Johnston and the company discussed in August that he would transition out of his role with his departure scheduled for early November,” the spokesperson said. “In the last few days, the company and Mr. Johnston agreed that under the current circumstances it would be best to accelerate the timing of his departure.”I'm sure that Johnston's severance package took some off the sting out of being shuffled on a wee bit earlier than anticipated. For their part, the Open Society Foundations stated that they had no idea what Johnston was talking about--and why would they? It's nonsense. Of course, that's never stopped far-right loons from spreading their top-shelf malarkey. After all, it's easier for scared, small-minded fools to accuse an asylum seeker that's not even entered the country than to swallow the notion that maybe, just maybe, their nation is being torn apart at the seams by hate, greed and fear of the other. Read the rest

Rapper 50 Cent says he bought 200 front seats to an upcoming Ja Rule concert just to keep them empty and psych out his longtime arch-enemy. 50 Cent posted the mocked-up image above to his Instagram.From CNN:"What a show," the caption to the picture on (50 Cent's) Instagram read. "I mean just f***ing great. Do it again my kid went to the restroom. LOL."Ja wasn't having it and started by tweeting, "I get under @50cent skin... I love it!!!"Ja Rule then moved on to some not-suitable-for-work postings which included doctoring a photo of 50 Cent and Young Buck to include a sex toy and some which featured 50 Cent photoshopped to be wearing makeup and a wig and looking like a woman. Read the rest

Surrealist art/fashion duo Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran (aka Fecal Matter) designed these deeply bizarre "skin shoes" as part of a Photoshopped image for a Vogue profile on their work last year. After the manipulated photo caused a stir, the artists have now made the shoes real and (sort of) walkable. From Vogue:Each part was made out of silicon that was shaped and molded to match Dalton’s leg. Skin hue, dents, moles, the arch of the foot, and even the hair mimics Dalton’s actual leg. (“There are little hairs!” she says.) The duo worked with the artist Sarah Sitkin, who specializes in creating replicas of bodies and body parts...The shoe is like when you are going to Chanel to get a wedding dress. You get the fittings and the customizations. For even me to get the shoe, I have to stand and each of my legs have to be perfectly molded,” says Dalton, while Bhaskaran adds, “It is like creating a custom art piece that is wearable.” The shoes, like anything Chanel, come with a hefty price: The starting rate for the thigh-high is $10,000.Fecal Matter’s philosophy behind the footwear reflects what they think humans will eventually look like as a result of body modification, social media, and advances in technology. View this post on Instagram Yes, they're walkable A post shared by Fecal Matter (@matieresfecales) on Oct 26, 2018 at 2:01pm PDT Read the rest

At Asbury Park's The Stone Pony last week, alt.rock icons The Breeders and Chicago noise pop band Melkbelly covered John Carpenter's "Halloween" theme. According to Kim Deal, the band was inspired by a recent viewing of the new Halloween film and worked out the tune at soundcheck. Read the rest

Davie504 tears his way through the famous orchestral interlude from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" (1899-1900). From Wikipedia:"Flight of the Bumblebee" is recognizable for its frantic pace when played up to tempo, with nearly uninterrupted runs of chromatic sixteenth notes. It is not so much the pitch or range of the notes that are played that challenges the musician, but simply the musician's ability to move to them quickly enough. Because of this and its complexity, it requires a great deal of skill to perform. Often in popular culture, it is thought of as being notoriously hard to play. Read the rest

JPL and NASA have tested their incredible 2020 Mars mission parachute three times. The video is a joy. Read the rest

As a result of noisy ship engines and the racket of ocean mining, bottlenose dolphins have slowly reducing the complexity and changing the frequency of their calls. According to new research from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and published in the journal Biology Letters, "the noise-induced simplification of dolphin whistles may reduce the information content in these acoustic signals and decrease effective communication, parent–offspring proximity or group cohesion." From YaleEnvironment360:“It’s kind of like trying to answer a question in a noisy bar and after repeated attempts to be heard, you just give the shortest answer possible,” Bailey said. “Dolphins simplified their calls to counter the masking effects of vessel noise.”Dolphins are highly social animals and use their calls to stay together as a group, talk as they feed, and call out their names when they meet new members of their species. Each animal has a distinctive whistle, which typically uses complex sound patterns with variations in pitch and frequency.photo: US Navy Read the rest

It's always good to have something to blog about first thing Monday morning.TO:inquiries@boingboing.netHi, victim.I write you because I buried a malware on the web page with porn which you have viewed.My virus captured all your private info and switched on your webcam which recorded the process of your masturbation. Just after that the malware saved your contact list.I will erase the compromising video and info if you pay me 350 EURO in bitcoin.This is address for payment : 16aFnAAFfeq4BhL98P8LAoaviUaYp7oTSrI give you 30h after you open my message for making the transaction.As soon as you read the message I'll see it immediately.It is not necessary to tell me that you have sent money to me. This wallet address is connected to you, my system will delete everything automatically after transfer confirmation.If you need 48 hours just Open the calculator on your desktop and press +++If you don't pay, I'll send dirt to all your contacts.Let me remind you-I see what you're doing!You can visit the police station but nothing can't help you.If you attempt to cheat me , I'll know it right away!I don't live in your country. So nobody can not track my location even for 9 months.bye. Don't forget about the disgrace and to ignore, Your life can be ruined.It turns out that the ESL Shame Wizard is randomly-generated! Our customer service email helpline received one with a slightly different wording:Hi, victim. Read the rest

Today Jimmy Carter, a former US President who also served as Governor of Georgia, has called for Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp's resignation. Kemp is accused of viciously robbing Georgians of their right to vote.Conveniently, most of the people Kemp is accused of disenfranchising are in demographics largely assumed to be voting for his opponent.Via NPR:In his letter to Kemp, Carter said it was his decades of experience assisting elections abroad that persuaded him to wade into the bitter dispute now roiling the Georgia gubernatorial race. Kemp has been under fire for deciding to purge tens of thousands of voters from the voter rolls — months after declaring his intent to run for governor."In Georgia's upcoming gubernatorial election, popular confidence is threatened not only by the undeniable racial discrimination of the past and the serious questions that the federal courts have raised about the security of Georgia's voting machines, but also because you are now overseeing the election in which you are a candidate," wrote Carter, who served as Democratic governor of Georgia himself before winning the presidency in 1976. Read the rest

Although I am a cat person, this trailer makes me want to rush out and get myself a dog. This docuseries by Netflix tells six stories of people and their dogs from around the world. It launches on Netflix November 16th. Read the rest

Mail bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc is all fired up at a February 2017 Trump rally in this footage shot by filmmaker Michael Moore. He shouts "CNN sucks!" and "Tell the truth!" as he holds a "CNN Sucks" sign above his head. Moore has just released this footage, which was shot for his Farenheit 11/9 documentary, never made it into the film. Read the rest

Anthony Vincent impersonates 42 well known singers perform their rendition of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," including Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, NWA, Abba, and Muse.Image: YouTube Read the rest

Another suspicious package addressed to CNN was found at the Atlanta post office this morning – the third one headed for CNN in one week. It looks identical to the two other packages sent by "pipe bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc, who was arrested on Friday," according to CNN.The other two packages addressed to CNN were apparent mail bombs. The first package arrived Wednesday morning in the mailroom at Time Warner Center, home to CNN's New York offices. It spurred a five and a half hour long evacuation of the building.That package was addressed to former CIA director John Brennan, who actually works for NBC. The second package was addressed to both CNN contributor James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence, and CNN. It was found Friday morning at a post office six blocks away. It was addressed to Time Warner Center.There was no immediate word from authorities on Monday about whether the suspicious package in Atlanta is linked to last week's wave of mail bombs.Since the first suspicious package found last Wednesday, all mail is screened before it enters CNN's offices.Image: Picryl/Public Domain Read the rest

While US Senator, and former SF Mayor, Diane Feinstein is no fan of Salesforce Tower, local Tolkien fans have found a way to turn the phallic wonder into a Halloween decoration.Why this is a one night only thing, I do not understand.Via Change.org:Dear San Francisco,We believe in the power of the internet as a gathering place for people to share ideas and affect real world change. Our goal is to create a breath of creatively fresh air amid an otherwise barren political landscape.Salesforce (or Boston Properties) has raised the highest flag in San Francisco, itself a beautiful piece of innovation, on which we mostly experience very pedestrian content. Often traffic, seagulls, and sometimes literal pedestrians. We invite the organization who has redefined the San Francisco skyline and, in the process, contributed to small and large business worldwide, to stand not only as a beacon for capitalist pursuit but to tip their hat to the people, culture, and community of this great city. A city built on creativity, exploration, and burning self-expression. We invite the organization to fly a flag for all who dare to dream, uniting the districts, strengthening the ties, and fortifying the bridges by lighting an LED fire atop this sanctuary city. In the process embracing a fun, artistic, and timely show of creativity that the whole city can enjoy - for one night only.It has been said that bonds are formed through shared experiences, the strongest of which are forged in fire. Read the rest

After a poor showing in regional elections this weekend, Angela Merkel says she plans to step down as chancellor of Germany in 2021. She's giving three years notice.She also said she would not seek re-election as leader of the centre-right CDU party in December. She has held the post since 2000. The CDU was severely weakened in Sunday's poll in the state of Hesse, the latest in a series of setbacks. Both the CDU and its coalition partners, the Social Democrats, were 10 percentage points down on the previous poll there - even though they remain in power in Hesse.Merkel's conservatives still won, but no longer dominates, while the center-left Social Democrats appear to have been severely punished for joining her government. Voters peeled off to the left and right: greens and fascists shared the votes her centrist coalition lost. On the left, the Greens’ share of the vote rose to around 20 percent, from 8 percent previously. The right-wing Alternative for Germany, or AfD, had a 12 percent share, a little below the 15 percent it has nationally.With Sunday’s results, the anti-immigrant AfD easily passed the threshold for entering the regional legislature for the first time, giving it representation now in all 16 of Germany’s state parliaments. Read the rest

His name is Tad Cooper, apparently, filmed here by Joseph Pannullo. I made a perfectly-looping GIF of the funky reptile for you: Read the rest

In this still-dawning age of the Internet of Things, there's a lot of demand for those who can bridge the gap between the internet and the things. For aspiring makers, there's one platform that's tailor-made for that task: Arduino. Find out for yourself with The Complete Arduino Starter Kit & Course Bundle.The bundle gets hands-on right away, supplying you with an Uno R3 microcontroller and a mad scientist's lab worth of sensors, wires, and circuits. The course teaches you to put that tech to work within the very first of six workshops, giving you all the programming know-how you need to create a motion sensor and LEDs. Successive workshops will dive deeper into Arduino's toolbox, allowing you to build RC cars, games, weather stations and even a light-chasing robot - all fully capable of being controlled and monitored through the web.All in all, it's 30 hours of content, projects, and lectures that you can explore at your own pace, plus a complete Arduino microcontroller board. Get creating with The Complete Arduino Starter Kit & Course Bundle for $89.99 today. Read the rest

As the price goes up and down, the generated audio tone changes in this interesting and insightful audio piece!I'd been looking for a used video card over the last couple of weeks, but gave up despite the amazing prices being listed. The eBayers are unresponsive to questions and the Craigslist sellers talk like drug dealers. That $225 GTX 1070 you have your eye on is being pulled from a mining rig where it's spent months running 24/7, accumulating all the grease, fur and pain that will be its only friends in the bubble mailer it will be sent to you in. I ended up ordering this from Amazon despite the still-outrageous price of new video cards. Read the rest

Social network Gab was the online sanctuary of Robert Bowers, the antisemitic killer of 11 Jewish people in Pittsburgh. Gab lost its payment processors Paypal and Stripe over the weekend. On Tuesday, it loses its webhost, Joyent. Godaddy, its domain name registrar, gave it the boot on Sunday. Gab co-founder Ekrem Büyükkaya, who once wrote that he'd be the first to leave if the site was seen to be right-wing, left Sunday.The Washington Post reports on the origins of white supremacy's online hangout.Gab is more than a platform. It’s also positioned itself as a key figure in the right-wing response to online crackdowns of extremist views, and has benefited directly from the white supremacists who flocked to Gab on the promise that their views would not be censored, according to Joan Donovan, the media manipulation and platform accountability research lead at Data and Society, who has followed the site’s growth.Torba has become a charismatic leader of the “alt-tech” movement which, among other things, dedicates itself to protecting and building tech to house “free speech” — including extremist ideologies that are increasingly unwelcome on mainstream sites. When James Damore was fired from Google in 2017 for writing a viral memo about women in tech, Torba capitalized on the case’s media attention to promote an “alt-tech revolution,” where conservative tech workers would rise up and topple Silicon Valley giants. Gab, of course, would be there to take their place.Gab complains:Gab.com is under attack. Read the rest

After this weekend's anti-Semitic mass-shooting at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue, President Donald Trump blamed the victims, implying that if they didn't want to get murdered, they should have paid for armed guards.What Trump has notably not said is that the white supremacist movement he has legitimized and fueled with his anti-Muslim, anti-Mexican, anti-disabled, anti-LBGT statements, is connected to anti-Semitic violence -- from the "good people" who marched in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us" to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style demonization of George Soros.Trump's omission is not subtle. People have noticed. Among them is a coalition of Pittsburgh's Jewish leaders who have published an open letter to the President telling him that he is "not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism," "not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all minorities," "not welcome in Pittsburgh until you cease your assault on immigrants and refugees" and "not welcome in Pittsburgh until you commit yourself to compassionate, democratic policies that recognize the dignity of all of us."(Image: Dllu, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Chris and Dana White went on a three-day Caribbean cruise out of Mobile, Alabama, only to find a camera hidden in the bundle of wires off the TV set. "I said, 'Is that what I think it is?' " Chris White said. "And she looked at it and she became concerned. And we were just really flabbergasted that there's a camera in the room and it's plugged up and it's working."The couple called Carnival security and used their cellphone to film an employee who inspected and disassembled the device. "I was thinking, 'I can't believe this is actually happening to us,' " he said.In a statement to USA TODAY, Carnival acknowledged a "video transmitter" was found during a full investigation by the shipboard team, but notes it "was not connected to an electrical source and not capable of recording." Read the rest

In the wake of a piece of shit murdering 11 individuals celebrating Shabbos today in Pittsburgh, PayPal has cut off all payments to accounts associated with Gab: a chatty haven for far-right extremists, bigots and other affiliated filth to spew hateful rhetoric, without fear of punishment. Paypal donations from Gab's user base was one of the social network's primary sources of income. Paypal's move comes a month after the payment gurus at Stripe closed up Gab's accounts.In an emailed statement to Gizmodo, Paypal's PR team said that "PayPal has canceled the Gab.Ai account. The company is diligent in performing reviews and taking account actions. When a site is explicitly allowing the perpetuation of hate, violence or discriminatory intolerance, we take immediate and decisive action."Not long after the Pittsburgh massacre, Gab plopped out a statement on Medium, defending their social network:Gab.com’s policy on terrorism and violence have always been very clear: we a have zero tolerance for it. Gab unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence. This has always been our policy. We are saddened and disgusted by the news of violence in Pittsburgh and are keeping the families and friends of all victims in our thoughts and prayers.The post goes on to talk about how important free speech is to Gab and that "...if people can not express themselves through words, they will do so through violence. No one wants that. No one." I'm pretty sure that this is slime-talk for "Lordy, don't kick us off our servers or otherwise shut us down." Gab's proclamation of love for free speech doesn't seem to extend to anyone that has anything resembling criticism for their online community. Read the rest

There's a lot of text out about how, for better or worse, playing computer games will mess with your brains. Instead of adding to the pile of words already scrawled on the subject, WIRED's Peter Rubin took it upon himself to work up a video that examines how gaming messes with his brain in particular. Read the rest

One of the most controversial elements of the EU's new Copyright Directive is Article 11, the "link tax," which requires paid licenses for links to news stories that contain "excerpts" (more than a single word from the story or its headline, depending on which draft you're reading).But link taxes go even farther than merely requiring paid licenses: the accompanying "Recital 32" suggests that copyright owners won't be allowed to waive this right, and will have to negotiate a separate license for every platform that wants to link to them. The thing is, some of the largest and best news organisations in the world already permit free excerpting, linking and republishing, by choosing Creative Commons licenses and other open access licenses for their work. These organisations like ProPublica, Global Voices and others -- want their news spread far and wide, partially because they want their investigative work to be part of the global conversation and partly because they rely on charitable donations from readers to support their work and offering open access is a powerful way to convince donors that their gifts support the public good.The Copyright Directive is mostly composed of some reasonable, broadly supported technical updates to EU copyright rules, but at the last minute, a German MEP called Axel Voss crammed a pair of incoherent, controversial and extreme clauses into the draft that was to be voted on by Parliament.Now, months later, the whole directive is in danger of going down in flames, and if it does, it will be because of outrageous garbage like this. Read the rest

Filmmaker and designer Helen Stickler of Providence, RI has repurposed vintage matchbook propaganda art into swell political memes supporting #VoteBlue, #GOTV, and Democrats.She writes that she'll be posting them individually on her Facebook page until the midterm election.I'm particularly sweet on this one:Thanks, Margot!Previously: Street artists leave 'Please Clean Up After Your Democracy' signs to encourage voting Read the rest

Bernie Sanders and Yanis Varoufakis (previously) (the "libertarian Marxist" former Greek finance minister who split with his party and resigned over their embrace of austerity) have announced the formation of a new global organizations called "Progressives International," designed to serve as a check to the rising cult of ultra-nationalist authoritarian groups.The movement will fight "austerity for the many and socialism for the bankers," calling for a European Spring to reform the EU and put more power in the hands of elected representatives instead of bureaucrats largely drawn from the ranks of the industries they are nominally in charge of regulating.Varoufakis described the initiative in part as an attempt to counter the work that Steve Bannon, who also made an appearance in Rome last month, has been doing to help nationalists forge a united front in elections for the European Union’s parliament next spring. Varoufakis also accused immigration critics like Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of being part of an extremist alliance.“The financiers are internationalists. The fascists, the nationalists, the racists — like Trump, Bannon, Seehofer, Salvini — they are internationalists,” Varoufakis said. “They bind together. The only people who are failing are progressives.”Bernie Sanders Is Partnering With A Greek Progressive To Build A New Leftist Movement [J. Lester Feder/Buzzfeed](via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

The Hillsborough County Republican Party hoped people would pay up to $20,000 for tickets to dine with Steve Bannon, and no less than $125 for the cheap seats. Due to demand, however, the tickets are now on sale for $0.Last week it cut the prices to $5,000 for the 10 "chairman's table" seats with Bannon, $300 for VIP seats, and general admission at $50. Announcing the price cuts, the party said in a Facebook posting, "We want to pack the house!!!"Those prices have now been reduced to zero. The event is to commemorate the anniversary of Trump being elected president. Read the rest

We narrowly escaped the skeletal knights patrolling the darkness. We arrived to the relative safety of the Burrows where an angry hag was seated at the end of a long table, lost in her thoughts. We made this dangerous journey at the request of a Blackheart Hunter named Killian, who asked us to help find a cure for the darkness infesting the land. She gave us a pair of black river stones and told us to have Mother Nature, who had become the cursed hag, inscribe them with runes of protection for use in the cure. We swallowed our fear and stepped forward to ask for her help.I've been anticipating Evermore since Ken Bretschneider, the CEO and founder, first announced it at Salt Lake Comicon in the fall of 2013. He told a packed panel room about his idea of a theme park for live-action role players and the room went nuts. Finally someone with vision who shared our passion for embodying a character and wanting to give it the environment it deserved. At each successive convention he had a little more to show, from concept sketches, to a park model, culminating this year in standing up an entire building in the middle of the show for his park. It's taken five years and a couple of pauses but he's delivered on that initial promise.My own LARP experience began when I happened upon a Belegarth and Amtgard group at my city park. I built some flat boffer swords, a foam shield, sewed some tunics and wrap pants. Read the rest

Earlier this month, Bloomberg published a terrifying, detailed story claiming that Chinese spies had, for years, been sneaking hardware backdoors into servers used in data-centers run by companies like Apple and Amazon, as well as Congress, the Senate, the White House, Navy battleships and more.The story drew rare, detailed denials from the companies involved and prompted lots of skeptical rebuttals. Bloomberg, meanwhile, stood by its story.Now, Patrick Kennedy has written the most detailed technical rebuttal to the story to date, pointing out plausible reasons why the Bloomberg story couldn't be true.For me the greatest mystery here is how Bloomberg could be so sure of its facts and how the companies it has accused of being hacked could be so thorough and public in their denials. Bloomberg says it's spoken to sources in the companies involved with direct knowledge, implying that either Bloomberg has been very sloppy in its work, or that there's a huge, elaborate conspiracy among current and former employees in several companies and branches of the US government to hoax Bloomberg -- or that all these companies and agencies have all conspired in their denials, despite the eventual crisis of trust that will break out when the truth is finally known. Baseboard management controllers or BMCs are active on crashed or turned off servers. They allow one to, for example, power cycle servers remotely. If you read our piece Explaining the Baseboard Management Controller or BMC in Servers BMCs are superchips. They replace a physical administrator working on a server in a data center for most tasks other than physical service (e.g. Read the rest

Michigan's brilliant businessman governor Rick Snyder has slashed the state's budget over and over, in service to an electorate who would vote for a smear of roadkill if it would promise to knock a dollar off their tax-bills.The result is a state whose cities can't afford policing, and have become increasingly reliant on volunteer "police reservists" who get guns and badges and patrol with real cops, sometimes shooting people when they forget which gun-shaped thing is a gun and which one is a tazer.Many states use police reservists to help out for things like big sports-matches, but they typically have state-wide oversight of reservists, with background checks and sufficient training.Not Michigan: the same austerity that prevents the state from hiring enough cops to fulfill core policing duties also means that the state can't fund the agency that is supposed to oversee the 3,000+ reservists toting guns and handcuffs and driving around in cop cars. Each city is allowed to make up its own rules about how much background checking and training each reservist gets before being armed and sent out among the citizenry. The minimum allowable amount of both is zero.Which is how Michigan cities and towns have armed and deputized literal Nazis (the Barry Township Police force actually disbanded its reserve force when it realized it had allowed a violent Nazi named John Raterink to become a reservist; when Barry later reinstated the reserve force, it gave Raterink a gun and let him return to duty). Read the rest