Boing Boing

The gadgets of the past had gears, levers, clicky buttons, motors, and other noise-making components. Most of today's electronics have very few moving parts. The sounds they make are edited-in aural skeuomorphs. A website called Conserve the Sound has recordings of the sounds made by old phones, rubber stamps, pinball machines, cameras, typewriters, fans, video game consoles, and other products from 1910 onwards. They have an Instagram account, too.

On this International Day Against DRM, I've published an editorial for EFF Deeplinks setting out a theory of change for getting us to a world without Digital Rights Management, where all our devices obey us instead of betraying us. (more…)

Bert and Ernie made headlines today after Mark Saltzman, who wrote for the show for 14 years starting in 1984, said in Queerty interview: "I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert and Ernie, they were [gay]." (more…)

In 1970, JBL introduced the L-100 home hi-fi speakers based on the company's popular 4310 Pro Studio monitors. With their fantastic sound quality for the price, particularly for rock music, and their killer Quadrex foam grilles available in black, blue, or orange, the L-100 speakers became the best-selling loudspeaker of the era. And now JBL has revived them in modern form, the JBL L100 Classic. They're $4,000 a pair.I'd be curious to hear the JBL L100 Classics up against a pair of restored originals that can be had for a fourth of that price. If you have that opportunity, please roll a number, cue up David Crosby's "If I Could Only Remember My Name" on the turntable, and let us know how it goes.

For its 25th anniversary, Wired Magazine asked numerous luminaries to pick a figure from the digital world to celebrate; Edward Snowden chose EFF Pioneer Award Winner Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice and cofounder of the Media Action Grassroots Network, who is one of the leaders in teaching grassroots activists to resist government surveillance. (more…)

I'm a big fan of BioLite products, because they're well-designed and the company develops low-cost lighting and cooking tools for low-income markets in regions that don't have access to clean affordable household energy. BioLite sent me an early release model of its new HeadLamp and it is radically different from the typical headlamps you've seen before. It is so lightweight that I hardly notice it on my head. It spreads a wide circle of bright light. It charges via USB. The Kickstarter campaign started today with a goal of $40k and it's already at $144k. You can pre-order one for $49.

Google's WWWBasic project allows you to write web-page interactivity using a BASIC-like syntax that will be recognizable to anyone who grew up with early personal computers in the late 1970s and 1980s (it can be imported within Node.js, too, so you can mix Javascript and BASIC). (more…)

Researchers from the University of Toronto's outstanding Citizen Lab (previously) have published their latest research on the notorious and prolific Israeli cyber-arms-dealer The NSO Group (previously), one of the world's go-to suppliers for tools used by despots to spy on dissidents and opposition figures, often as a prelude to their imprisonment, torture and murder. (more…)

When a man tried to enter his own house, his Nest doorbell got suspicious and locked him out. Nest's facial recognition feature confused the man, B.J. May, with the Batman T-shirt he was wearing, and apparently even Batman isn't allowed through the front door without the owner's consent.

King County Council was ambushed by a series of surprise amendments to its meeting on Monday that resulted in $135,000,000 being diverted from hotel lodging tax funds earmarked for affordable housing, arts, and tourism boosting, to effect repairs to the Mariners stadium, despite the team being valued at nearly $1.5 billion. (more…)

Woke up with this in my head. Wonderama was a wonderful show.

It's been a decade since Marvel launched their shared cinematic universe with the first Iron Man movie. In all that time, they've never had a film with a female lead. That's about to change. In 2019, Captain Marvel will be coming to theaters. While this trailer only gives a quick taste of what we can expect, it's enough for me to feel hopeful for a great movie.

People are so boring! A new study shows there are only four clusters of personality. Why bother talking to folks?Via Ars Technica:

With Canada's legalization of cannabis consumption quickly creeping up on the calendar, the nation's Armed Forces decided that it might be high time to figure out where and when those with access to small arms, artillery and combat aircraft should be allowed to take a toke. From The CBC:

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been elbows-deep in the investigation of the Novichok nerve agent attack on Sergei and Yulia Skirpal. As part of their investigation into where the nerve agent may have originated, the OPCW sent samples of the chemical weapon to a number of independent labs. Using multiple labs provides a fail safe against false positive results and bias – two things you'd want to avoid considering the fact that the results of the tests could trigger a significant international incident. One of the labs that the OPCW may have used (I mean, they're not going to come right out and say that this is where they're sending dangerous shit) was Switzerland's Spiez Laboratory. Since Russia has denied that it had any role in the poisoning of the Skirpals and the other collateral victims of the Novichok attack, it's really really surprising to be surprised by the surprise expulsion of two Russian intelligence agents (surprise!) from The Hague, where OPCW is based. Apparently, they were trying to tinker with Spiez Laboratory's computers.From NPR:

Future Punk created retro logos and motion graphics for today's Internet companies if they existed decades ago. The artist was "inspired by great work of Sullivan & Marks, Robert Abel & Associates, Computer Image Corporation and various other early CG/Scanimate companies."And if you're not hip to Scanimate:

Punk, Algerian chaabi music, Rai, rock and techno: Rachid Taha had it all going on. He drew inspiration from the music of North Africa, New Orleans jazz, delta blues, The Clash and Elvis Presley. He cut his teeth spinning albums as a DJ and playing in a number of bands as he came of age in France. He worked with famed producers like Don Was and Steve Hillage and traveled in the same circles as David Bowie. In his later years, he was slowed down by muscular dystrophy, but he continued to rock, nonetheless. You've very likely enjoyed his music used in films and video games without ever knowing it. It's beautiful, fire-filled stuff.On September 12th, Rachid Taha passed away at the age of 59.

I am proud of me. My heart rate tracker, and my cadence sensor, both need their CR2032 batteries replaced from actual USE! (more…)

Obviously it won't do if you hand in work digitally, but old-school teachers will surely be fooled by Times Newer Roman, a clone of the default font that fills about 10% more space. A clever mix of wider letterforms and kerning is at hand, and you can be sure of getting away with it because if teacher knew enough about type to notice they wouldn't be insisting on Times New Roman and page counts in the first place. [via Lifehacker]

A group of women jobseekers, working with the Communications Workers of America and the American Civil Liberties Union, are "filing charges with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday against Facebook and 9 employers," reports the New York Times.It's a simple case, as least in abstraction: Facebook let job advertisers target users by gender, but it is a violation of federal law to discriminate on the basis of gender or to aid and abet such discrimination.

A unicorn of the sea somehow ended up separated from other narwhals. Luckily, the lost narwhal was welcomed into a pod of beluga whales, where they were spotted frolicking in the St. Lawrence River. (more…)

Great Whites travel months to visit what The San Francsico Chronicle describes as a "shark lair" in the Pacific Ocean. Mystified scientists took a deeper look.

FOLLOW @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.YOU can get every Tom the Dancing Bug comic at least a day before it's published. Join the INNER HIVE for exclusive early access to comics, exclusive commentary, extra comics, and etc.!GET Ruben Bolling’s new hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. Book One here. Book Two here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

There are Rube Goldberg machines and then there's Sprice Machines' Lemonade Machine, an elaborate, nine-minute-long exercise in dispensing cold lemonade. It impressively winds through an entire house (even the toilet has a role) and out through the backyard before reaching its refreshing conclusion.

Bravo, Twitter! Something that users are asking for made it in: "Twitter will now let you completely turn off its algorithmic timeline. So now you can revert completely to a reverse-chronological feed of only people you follow."

The Daily Beast reports on the president's deformed horror cock, as described by Stormy Daniels.

Senator Orrin Hatch has never found an accusation of sexual misconduct by a Republican he couldn't wave away. When asked about Professor Christine Blasey Ford's accusations of sexual assault by SCOTUS nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Hatch told Bloomberg News' Laura Litvan, "If that were true, I think it would be hard for senators not to consider who he is today. He has denied this and I feel bad that this happened to him."In addition to that pile of bullshit, Hatch told NBC Capitol Hill reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell that after talking to Kavanaugh, he thinks Ford might be "mixed up."If this sounds vaguely familiar, you might be recalling Hatch's comments on Anita Hill. In a 2010 interview with CNN, Hatch said,

When Hurricane Ike hit 10 years ago, Anderson Cooper did a segment where he walked around in floodwaters while being filmed from higher ground, which he pointed out to viewers. Don Jr. tweeted a still photo taken from the segment and implied it depicted Anderson kneeling during last week's Hurricane Florence to make its floodwaters look deeper than they were. So Cooper did a whole new segment about what a lying idiot Don Jr. is.

Since 1987, Doonesbury has been pricking Trump's bubble, and Trump hates it; Trump even instructed the ghost writer on "his" "book" Surviving at the Top to devote several pages to denouncing Trudeau as unfunny (you can read all of Trudeau's Trump strips in last year's Trump retrospective collection, Yuge!). (more…)

Elon Musk's SpaceX revealed the name of the person who is set to become the first private space tourist to travel to the moon: Yusaku Maezawa. (more…)

During the 2018 Emmys, Director Glenn Weiss proposed to his girlfriend Jen. (more…)

Here's my reading (MP3) of Today, Europe Lost The Internet. Now, We Fight Back, written for EFF Deeplinks on the morning of the EU's catastrophic decision to vote in the new Copyright Directive with all its worst clauses intact.MP3

https://youtu.be/IehtMYlOuIkI've watched this video twice because it is fascinating, both for the subject and for the aesthetics. This young man is being interviewed about why he was admitted to a mental hospital. He says it is because of the way he stands and the way he plays piano. He is obviously suffering greatly. The colors of the film, and the lighting on his face are striking, too, which I know isn't the point of the film, but they sure did a great job producing it. I would like to see the other videos in the series.From YouTube

A very good dog directs its human companion to give treats to its friends.

All of Hong Kong was devastated by the violence of Super Typhoon Mangkhut this week, but there's something really striking about the damage to Hong King Disneyland -- a perfect little jewel of a themepark. It's in the contrast of the very carefully maintained surface veneer of the park and the damage from the storm. (more…)

Since 2011, Andy Gracie has been selectively breeding flies to thrive under the harsh environmental conditions on Titan, Saturn's largest moon: dark, cold (-179.2C), and with very low atmospheric pressure. (more…)

California's best-in-America Net Neutrality law goes a long way to restoring the protections that Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai destroyed when he unilaterally and illegally repealed the FCC's national Net Neutrality rules. (more…)

Redditor AbeFroman21 posted that he and his family are without power or internet due to Hurricane Florence, and that Verizon has throttled their internet access to an unusable trickle, offering to unblock them if they pay for a higher tier of service. (more…)

A guy named "Aaron" has been pitching Reddit moderators and other influential Redditors on their participation in a lucrative scam to inflate the popularity of posts about different cryptocurrencies, using massive farms of bots that post and upvote through a network of proxies that make them seem like they're distributed all over the world. (more…)

With nativism and xenophobia on the rise, Americans are increasingly required to "prove" that they are actually Americans: whether it's at a border checkpoint (far from any border), or in a government office. (more…)

Canada has legalized pot for recreational use. But the United States still considers it a deadly drug, on par with heroin. If a Canadian pot smoker entering the US through Washington state (where pot is legal under state laws) tells a US Border agent that they have smoked pot even once in their life, they will be turned away. If they lie and the agent finds evidence on social media that they are fibbing, they will be barred from entering the US for life.From Splinter News:

Robert Falck from Vancouver built a 1989 Cadillac Brougham limousine onto a Bombardier Skidozer snowcat. You can own this fine vehicle for $6,000. According to the Craigslist ad, it was "last used 2 years ago." From Jalopnik:

Honestly, I forgot that Arby's was still around, but apparently they are, and they've got a Sandwiches for Life PR stunt that might make permanent banner ads out of some folks.If you're really, really into Arby's sandwiches, or you just want a tattoo – no matter what it is – for free, now's you're chance to get inked at Arby's expense. This Saturday, Arby's is giving away free tats at Port City Tattoos in Long Beach, California. The only glitch is that you have to choose one out of the tattoos shown in the box above.You can get the details at the Arby's site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=82&v=TcJZx6dMR1UOakland, like San Francisco, has an out-of-control homeless crisis fueled by out-of-control housing prices; like San Francisco (where aid for homelessness can include tents to make outdoor sleeping more comfortable and safe), Oakland is supplying "temporary housing" for homeless people that institutionalizes a kind of living that has heretofore been viewed as a problem in and of itself. (more…)

In the early 1960s, pedal steel guitar virtuoso Pete Drake (1932-1988) played his instrument through a talk box to record a fresh cover of the song "Forever." A talk box essentially routes an amplified instrument's sound from a small speaker into the musician's mouth via a rubber tube so they can shape the tone as if they're speaking. (Of course in the rock arena, Peter Frampton made the talk box famous a decade later on tracks like "Do You Feel Like We Do.")Interestingly, the talk box concept dates at least as far back as 1944 when Alvino Rey used a microphone on his throat to modulate the sound from his electric guitar. Rey called his approach the "singing guitar" and almost certainly inspired Drake's "talking steel guitar."

https://youtu.be/EPZWGRcoleM"I never considered that the wild turkey was a playful bird, but in fact they are playful," says Joe Hutto, who raised 16 wild turkeys from egghood to adulthood. In this video from BBC Earth we see Hutto's turkeys playing with a young deer.Image: BBC Earth video screengrab

I remember 1985's Return to Oz as pretty creepy, having re-watched it I love the Wheelers.I was looking for puppet-y movies of my youth, from before the time of massive CGI. Return to Oz fits the bill!Tik Tok the robot is pretty wonderful. The Wheelers are terribly cool, and Jack Pumpkinhead is certainly worth getting reacquainted with.

If you're into non-sequiturs, existential angst or having a creeping hand of dread gently caress you in all your secret places, you'll adore David Lynch's Rabbits. Filmed in 2002, Rabbits is a brooding work of art that only Lynch could call a sitcom with a straight face. Over the course of 45 minutes, Lynch, through the use of disjointed dialogue presented by three humanoid rabbits, oppressive lighting, a laugh track, demonic visitations and a haunting musical score by Angelo Badalamenti, manages to outdo all of the nightmares that I've ever been a part of... with the possible exception of those three days I spent in Burgos hopped up on painkillers, orange Fanta and gin.I don't think I'm quite ready to talk about that one, yet.

Design studio Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell animated how it may be possible to build a lunar base with today's technology. They based the video on articles in New Space: The Journal of Space Entrepreneurship and Innovation. See you on the dark side?

Between 1947 and 1954, avant-garde dancer and experimental filmmaker Maya Deren visited Haiti and immersed herself in vodou. Supported with a Guggenheim Fellowship grant, Deren intended to study and film the trance dancing of vodou ceremony. Ultimately, Deren became an active participant in the rituals. She documented her experiences in the 1953 book Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo (Living) Gods of Haiti and the footage that resulted in the entrancing 1981 film above, completed two decades after Deren's death by her third husband and his wife. Now, the Psychic Sounds Research & Recordings label has remastered and reissued Deren's audio recordings from Haiti on vinyl. Audio sampler below. From the label: