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While cannabis may now be legal to smoke, sell and possess across Canada, the demand for bammy is harshing the buzz of many an Albertan. According to the CBC, certified cannabis suppliers are having a hell of a time trying to keep up with demand. The problem is cropping up at a time when the provincial government continues to dole out licenses to operate dispensaries in the province, putting an even greater strain on the amount of marijuana available in big sky country. From the CBC:Not all retail stores are necessarily open this weekend — a shortage of stock on the AGLC's retailer website means some new stores aren't able to order any cannabis at all to stock their shelves, and those that have run out can't order enough to restock.The AGLC is the province's official supplier of cannabis, offering products from 15 licensed producers.In Edmonton, Numo Cannabis has closed its doors after running out of weed, according to a sign on its door. Another Edmonton store, Alternative Greens, was also closed Saturday after running out of cannabis.It's not just retail locations that are coming up with bupkis to sell. the AGLC's online portal doesn't have a shred of cannabis to sell, either. The shortage likely hasn't come as a surprise to anyone keeping tabs on the Canadian cannabis rollout: licensed resellers have been complaining about their inability to order product since September. Given that shops in Alberta are only able to order a weed resupply once a week, it could take some time before the province's dope supplier finds a way to keep up with demand. Read the rest

Using antibiotics to keep livestock healthy until they're chopped up and smooshed into burgers and chicken nuggets is not a great idea: we're already facing a bevy of antibiotic-resistant bugs hellbent on killing us. Throwing the drugs down our throat, in meat or pill-form, is only going to make things worse. Doctors are coming to understand this and, in many cases, are prescribing antibiotics as a last resort. The folks that produce meat for burger joint supply chains? Not so much. By pumping their livestock full of antibiotics, whether the animals are sick or not, is a great way to ensure that the the animals stay healthy until they're sent to the slaughter. Despite the dangers posed by overuse of these wonder drugs, a lot of burger joints are fine with this:From CNN:Twenty-five of the top US burger chains were graded on their antibiotic policies in a collaborative report released Wednesday. Only two chains received As, Shake Shack and BurgerFi; the other 23 got a D minus or F.Wendy's was given a D minus for a policy that the authors described as "while far from comprehensive ... a positive step forward." According to the company's website, Wendy's will get about 15% of its beef from producers that have committed to a 20% reduction in antibiotics used in their livestock and whose cattle's antibiotic use can be tracked and reduced.For their efforts, as weaksauce as they are, Wendy's scored the only D issued by the study. McDonald's, Burger King, Sonic, Hardee's, Whataburger, Carls Jr., Culver's, Steak n' Shake, In n' Out, White Castle, Smashburger, Checkers, Krystal, Freddy's, Habit, Rally's, Fuddruckers, A&W (in the U.S., anyway) Jack's and FarmerBoys all earned an F rating. Read the rest

It's been a while since I took the time to listen to Robert Plant's outstanding Band of Joy. Given everything that's happened over the past two years or even the past few days in North America, the album's second track, House of Cards, feels a little bit too real for Sunday afternoon listening. Read the rest

16 October, 2018My wife drops me at the airport in Calgary. I'm traveling to Chicago. A fancy audio hardware company called Shure invited me to the city to check out some of the new tech that they'll be releasing in the coming months. I pass through security with no issues. As I lace on my boots, I am certain that I have my passport. It is in my hand as I board my flight. I place my passport in a buttoned pocket in my jacket before sitting down on the plane. Standing up at the end of my flight, my passport is still there. Upon landing, I pay it no further mind. I'm on the hunt for a cab ride into Chicago's downtown core. "They say they don't have any money but Jesus: lookit alla this construction," my cab driver says to me. "It's alla the time." I tell him that we have construction season in Calgary, too. But yeah, the traffic headed into the downtown is weaponized bullshit. My smartphone says that the trip should take 35 minutes. Curb to curb, it is a 90-minute ride. I pay the driver his due and step out of his hack.In the hotel's front door to the hotel's front desk. I have my luggage. I have a reservation. I have a credit card for incidentals. I do not have a passport. I don't have a driver's license, either. I haven't had one for years: my PTSD makes my being behind the wheel a bad idea. Read the rest

Binding arbitration is corporate America's favorite dirty trick: to use a product, you are forced to give up your right to sue if the company hurts you, cheats you, or even kills you.But if you buy a Pixel 3, there's a bizarre, obscure option where you are given the chance to enter your device's serial number in order to opt out of binding arbitration.It feels like some kind of uneasy truce between different Google factions: the mustache-twirling villains who say, "Who cares if it looks evil? We're Google, fuck you!" and the more image-conscious ones who say, "OK, fine, but if we ever do end up in the middle of a shitstorm over this, we can point to this opt-out option and say, 'See? Everyone chose binding arbitration! There was a perfectly easy way not to choose it, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"In any event, if you have a Pixel 3, you should opt out of binding arbitration.(Thanks, Sean!) Read the rest

It started with a phone call. Heather Einhorn and Adam Staffaroni, the masterminds behind the entertainment creative house known as Einhorn’s Epic Productions, wanted to chat. Cool, I thought. I’d known Adam and Heather for a long time - we’d worked together years before and remained friends. It’d be good to catch up, for sure.But it was much more than that. Heather and Adam were always on the lookout to create new, diverse heroes, and they wanted to take that philosophy to the podcast platform. Would I be interested in co-creating a YA/crime fiction podcast starring a tough, smart latinx teen heroine?I couldn’t say "yes" fast enough.As a kid, I read a lot of comics, crime novels and science fiction - from Spider-Man to Batman to Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie to Star Trek and back again. I loved mysteries and adventure stories. But as a Cuban-American kid growing up in Miami, I often wondered - where are the heroes like me? When I created my own crime novels, starring my fictional private detective, Pete Fernandez, that was always front of mind. Getting the chance to do it again - in partnership with Heather and Adam’s team, iHeart Media, and co-writer Monica Gallagher, has been nothing short of fantastic.The end result will be in your earbuds on Oct. 29 and subsequent Mondays after that, in the form of Lethal Lit - a six-episode scripted podcast that presents listeners with a new, fictional "true crime" story, starring Tig Torres, a feisty NY teen who finds herself back in her hometown of Hollow Falls, where she must join forces with her new friends to face off against the perils of modern high school life, and a gruesome series of murders perpetrated by the Lit Killer - a serial murderer whose crimes echo stories ripped from the pages of English literature. Read the rest

San Francisco has a homelessness epidemic that is both heartrending and a threat to public health, and it has only worsened for decades, and continues to get worse even now.There are many different factors behind this crisis, but one incontrovertible fact looms over every explanation: there isn't anywhere for homeless people to live, and housing is the most reliable solution to homelessness.Accordingly, the city of San Francisco's Prop C is proposing to tax its giant, super-profitable, tax-avoiding tech companies (with gross turnover exceeding $50m) to build housing for 4,000 homeless people. While some tech companies (like Salesforce) have backed the measure, Lyft and Stripe have made major contributions to fund the No-on-C campaign being run by the Chamber of Commerce's PAC.Lyft's CEO calls the company "woke" and it is often positioned as "fair trade Uber," an ethical alternative to the Ayn-Rand-inspired performative cruelty of Uber and its management. But Lyft's major investor is the human monster and Trump ally Peter Thiel who believes women shouldn't be allowed to vote and thinks that "democracy is incompatible with freedom," and every dime Lyft makes enriches Thiel and gives him more money to spend on achieving his apocalyptic extremist agenda.“We happen to believe, and a lot of donors to the No on C campaign believe, that over-taxation that is disproportionate can jeopardize jobs in San Francisco,” Lazarus told me. Mayor London Breed also came out strongly against the measure, trumpeting the same rationale — jobs, jobs, jobs.Yet an economic impact report by the San Francisco City Controller cast doubt on those claims, finding the overall impacts to jobs would negligible, amounting to a 0.1 percent difference in The City’s job market and gross domestic product over the next 20 years. Read the rest

A disheveled, rather soggy-looking white gentleman directed racial abuse and threats to a 77-year-old black woman during a Ryanair flight from Barcelona to Stansted. In the shocking video, captured by fellow passenger David Lawrence, a man can be heard referring to Mrs Gayle, a 77-year-old pensioner from East London, as an “ugly black bastard”. He appears to be refusing to sit next to her and threatening to “push” her if she does not sit elsewhere.But the flight's stewards refused to move him, forcing his victim to tolerate his harassment. She asks to be moved, giving the man an entire row of seats to enjoy all to himself. A steward returns to make sure he's happy now. He is.David Lawrence, who filmed what happened, told BBC Radio 5 Live: "Everything was calm, we were getting ready to take off. And then a man came on board and arrived at his seat, then spoke very harshly to a woman sitting in the aisle seat. That was what got my attention as it was very loud and very aggressive. He started to shout at the woman, saying 'get out of the way', 'move your feet', 'you shouldn't be sitting here'." ...Mr Lawrence said it was a "horrible, horrible situation" and that he was "shocked" that Ryanair "allowed something like this just to go unchecked". BBC presenter Jeremy Vine was among those saying the incident was "beyond belief", saying Ryanair "need to explain how this man's disgusting racial abuse of the black lady in the seat next to him ends up with HER being asked to move". Read the rest

Australia is about to radically expand its copyright and the publishing industry has forged an unholy alliance with authors' groups to rail against fair use being formalised in Australia, rallying under the banner of "Free is not fair."Rebecca Giblin (previously), one of Australia's leading copyright scholars and the founder of a project to examine the way that authors' interests diverge from their publishers' interests. She points out that giving Australian authors more copyright won't do them any good if the highly concentrated publishing industry simply demands that all that copyright be transferred to corporate balance sheets as part of their standard contracts. It's like giving your bullied kid extra lunch money: the bullies will simply mug them for the extra money you've handed over.Because even though writers' median incomes have fallen, publishing's profitability has risen. The publishing industry does not have a profitability crisis: it has a fair distribution crisis, and additional copyrights that make publishing more profitable just make them bigger and better situated to win contract negotiations with publishers.Instead of giving writers more lunch money for the publishers to take off them, Giblin talks about measures that will gives authors negotiating leverage, like rights reversions and European-style "bestseller clauses," as well as more accountability from the collecting societies that take in money on behalf of writers.Canada is going through a similarly backwards process to "fix copyright" that is headed on a collision course with the same bad outcomes that the Australian process is creating. Read the rest

A South Korean mania for shirts sporting the campaign logo from Jesse Jackson's presidential bid has spread across the Pacific rim, getting knocked off in China, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.The logo is prized for its "smart color scheme," "sensuous lettering" and "harmonized colors."The shirt was popular with celebrities and college students alike: Rapper Moonbyul, for example, wore the shirt in the music video for her May release, “In My Room.” After the Jackson shirts’ initial appearance in South Korea, they quickly spread to stylish women across Asia, sold in cheap shopping markets and on e-tailers from provincial China to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.An American campaign tee is trendy in Asia. Its popularity has nothing to do with the US. [W. David Marx/Vox](via Super Punch) Read the rest

Transparency reports are standard practice across the tech industry, disclosing the nature, quantity and scope of all the law enforcement requests each company receives in a given year.But there's a notable exception to this practice: the "smart home" companies who sell you products that fill your house with gadgets that know every intimate fact of your life -- all-seeing eyes, all-listening ears, all-surveillance network taps. The companies that sell these products refuse to say whether (or how) they are being suborned to serve as state surveillance adjuncts by law enforcement.What the smaller but notable smart home players saidAugust, a smart lock maker, said it “does not currently have a transparency report and we have never received any National Security Letters or orders for user content or non-content information under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),” but did not comment on the number of subpoenas, warrants and court orders it receives. “August does comply with all laws and when faced with a court order or warrant, we always analyze the request before responding,” a spokesperson said.Roomba maker iRobot said it “has not received any demands from governments for customer data,” but wouldn’t say if it planned to issue a transparency report in the future.Both Arlo, the former Netgear smart home division, and Signify, formerly Philips Lighting, said they do not have transparency reports. Arlo didn’t comment on its future plans, and Signify said it has no plans to publish one. Ring, a smart doorbell and security device maker, did not answer our questions on why it doesn’t have a transparency report, but said it “will not release user information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us” and that Ring “objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course.” When pressed, a spokesperson said it plans to release a transparency report in the future, but did not say when. Read the rest

Louis Rossman is one of the highest-profile independent Apple repair technicians, famous in part for fixing devices that Apple has declared to have reached their end-of-life, diverting these devices from landfill and keeping them in the hands of the people who paid good money for them. Rossman has to engage in lots of creative tactics to source parts for his repairs, including buying refurbished parts that have been removed from real Apple products; but Customs and Border Protection now seems to take the position that anything imported with an Apple logo on it must be counterfeit. They just seized 20 laptop batteries that Rossman had paid $1,068 for. Rossmann explained that there’s no authorized method for him to purchase the laptop batteries his customers need to keep their devices working. If they were to take the faulty devices to a Genius Bar, the Genius Bar would turn them away.“If I become an Apple authorized service provider and I wish to obtain parts to a machine they consider vintage, Apple will say no,” he said. “If I talk to somebody in China...they get taken by a company that’s using the power of the government to seize my stuff. Apple is working with the government to shut down those who mislead customers, aka trying to fix machines that they won’t fix because they consider them vintage after four or five years. Just around the time that your battery starts to die.”He’s right: Apple does not sell replacement parts to customers or to independent repair shops, and its “Authorized Service Provider Program” has strict limitations about the types of repairs that shops can perform. Read the rest

From the Open Markets Institute's Mat Stoller and Austin Frederick, who analyzed the FTC's panel, "The Current Economic Understanding of Multi-Sided Platforms," in which economic experts told the regulator that Big Tech's monopoly power just isn't a problem: "every single economist testifying on the issue of corporate concentration derived income, directly or indirectly, from large corporations. Beyond that, the hearing itself was held at the Antonin Scalia Law School, which is financed by Google and Amazon."Here's a tldr version of the economists' argument: Big Tech isn't big because we stopped enforcing antitrust, it's because of globalism, network effects and first mover advantage (AKA, "My problems aren't caused by my alcoholism, it's because the world is so screwed up") and, second, "Monopolies aren't as bad as you think they are" (AKA "What's so bad about needing a drink or three every night?").For instance, one panelist was MIT professor of management Catherine Tucker. She isn’t just a professor, though; she also moonlights at the economic consulting firm Analysis Group, has consulted for Microsoft and Facebook, and has received a $155,000 research grant from Google.Wharton Professor Katja Seim testified as well. She has a second job working for Vega Economics, which sells analysis to many of the major law firms in D.C., who in turn sell services to Fortune 500 companies. She stressed that one normal red flag for monopoly–“supra-normal” profit margins–should not necessarily concern regulators when it comes to tech platforms. (FF to 7:15-7:45).Also testifying was Boston University economist Michael Salinger, who also works at Charles River Associates. Read the rest

In PrinTracker: Fingerprinting 3D Printers using Commodity Scanners (Scihub mirror), a paper to be presented at the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security conference in Toronto this month, a group of U Buffalo and Northeastern researchers present a model for uniquely identifying which 3D printer produced a given manufactured object, which may allow for forensic investigators to associate counterfeit goods, illegal guns, and other printed objects with the device that manufactured them.The technique uses "slight imperfections" in infill created by the "printer's model type, filament, nozzle size and other factors" to uniquely identify a printer's output. The technique examines the output of stereolithography and extrusion printers, which produce lower-resolution, more fragile output than the more expensive selective laser-sintering. It's not clear whether a printer could be modified between prints to change the "fingerprint" it creates when it prints -- this could be a relatively easy countermeasure to defeat the forensic technique.To test PrinTracker, the research team created five door keys each from 14 common 3D printers -- 10 fused deposition modeling (FDM) printers and four stereolithography (SLA) printers.With a common scanner, the researchers created digital images of each key. From there, they enhanced and filtered each image, identifying elements of the in-fill pattern. They then developed an algorithm to align and calculate the variations of each key to verify the authenticity of the fingerprint.Having created a fingerprint database of the 14 3D printers, the researchers were able to match the key to its printer 99.8 percent of the time. Read the rest

Ajit Pai is a member of the Ayn Rand/James Buchanan cult that says that any government regulation is an unfair attack on the "freedom" of business, which is why his ascendancy to the Chairmanship of the FCC under Donald Trump was attended by an orgy of deregulation -- most of us know about his senseless slaughter of Net Neutrality, but that was just for starters.Among the rules Ajit Pai killed was one that required telcos rebuilding after natural disasters to quickly replace ruined telcoms infrastructure with equivalent systems. The rule dates back to Hurricane Sandy's devastation of Fire Island, when Verizon tried to weasel out of rebuilding service, saying that cheaper cellular towers could replace all that downed copper. Pai said that this rule got in the way of carriers laying down fiber (in reality, the biggest impediment to fiber rollout is the ban on competition from municipal fiber networks, a competitive pressure that often spurs carriers into action). He killed it. Ajit Pai has publicly slammed the carriers for dragging their heels in rebuilding Florida's telcoms infrastructure, but thanks to the dastardly shortsightedness of his archenemy Ajit Pai, he is unable to force them to pull their socks up and get to work.Similarly, Florida Governor Rick Scott -- a fellow deregulation neofeudalist -- signed a bill in 2011 (the 'Regulatory Reform Act of 2011') which ended Florida's oversight of residential phone service, including a mandate to connect everyone in the state. Scott killed recordkeeping of citizen complaints about poor phone service, so there is no data about how badly his rule screwed over the people of Florida. Read the rest

Just an emu in love.Taryn Smith is a “free flight bird trainer” who lives and works along the Sunshine Coast, in Australia. View this post on Instagram ❤️ SundaySquish. A very special EmuA post shared by Taryn Smith (@tbonesjones) on Aug 6, 2017 at 2:45am PDT [via] View this post on Instagram Rubbing shoulders with an Aussie icon 😍A post shared by Taryn Smith (@tbonesjones) on Jun 11, 2018 at 3:09am PDT Read the rest

The United States Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said Friday it was responding to a data breach that exposed the files of about 75,000 people.Reuters:The agency said it detected anomalous activity in the Federally Facilitated Exchange’s (FFE) Direct Enrollment pathway for agents and brokers.The number of files accessed in the breach represented a small fraction of consumer records present on the FFE, the CMS said.Here is the entire US CMS press release on the breach, published late Friday:CMS Responding to Suspicious Activity in Agent and Broker Exchanges PortalEarlier this week, CMS staff detected anomalous activity in the Federally Facilitated Exchanges, or FFE’s Direct Enrollment pathway for agents and brokers. The Direct Enrollment pathway, first launched in 2013, allows agents and brokers to assist consumers with applications for coverage in the FFE.At this time, we believe that approximately 75,000 individuals’ files were accessed. While this is a small fraction of consumer records present on the FFE, any breach of our system is unacceptable.“Our number one priority is the safety and security of the Americans we serve. We will continue to work around the clock to help those potentially impacted and ensure the protection of consumer information,” said CMS Administrator Seema Verma. “I want to make clear to the public that HealthCare.gov and the Marketplace Call Center are still available, and open enrollment will not be negatively impacted. We are working to identify the individuals potentially impacted as quickly as possible so that we can notify them and provide resources such as credit protection.”CMS followed standard and appropriate security and risk protocols for researching and reporting the incident. Read the rest

Google [Alphabet Inc.] will soon charge hardware companies up to $40 per device to use Google apps, under a new licensing plan that will replace one struck down by the EU earlier this year as anti-competitive, reports Reuters.On October 29, the new fee will go into effect on any new smartphone or tablet that Google launches in the European Economic Area, running Google’s Android operating system, the company said Tuesday.The fee can be as low as $2.50 and rises depending on the country and device size, the person said. It is standard across manufacturers, with the majority likely to pay around $20, the person added.Companies can offset the charge, which applies to a suite of apps including the Google Play app store, Gmail and Google Maps, by agreeing to bundle Google’s search and Chrome internet browser and feature them prominently. Under that arrangement, Google would give the device maker a portion of ad revenue it generates through search and Chrome.The Verge reported the news earlier on Friday, citing confidential documents.Android manufacturers will have to pay Google a surprisingly high cost in Europe in order to include Google’s Play Store and other mobile apps on their devices, according to documents obtained by The Verge. A confidential fee schedule shows costs as high as $40 per device to install the “Google Mobile Services” suite of apps, which includes the Google Play Store. The new fees vary depending on country and device type, and it would apply to devices activated on or after February 1st, 2019. Read the rest

I'm very happy with this rotary tool I bought last May. It comes with 100 bits and has tons of power. Get one for $15 and grind your way to bliss. Read the rest

From "The Beatles (White Album) Super Deluxe Edition" coming next month, this gorgeous early acoustic version of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." From Rolling Stone:“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (Acoustic Version, Take 2) was recorded on July 25th, 1968, with just George on guitar and Paul on harmonium. It’s a dark and meditative draft of a still-evolving song, as Paul follows along, learning the chords. George tells the Abbey Road crew, “Maybe you’d have to give him his own mike.” (A previous run-through from the same day was on Anthology 3, but this take was just discovered during the research for this project.) George sings original lines he ended up discarding: “I look from the wings at the play you are staging / As I’m sitting here doing nothing but aging."....The Beatles didn’t go back to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” until three weeks after this acoustic draft. In the meantime, they toiled over George’s “Not Guilty” — a song that went through 102 takes and still got axed, which sums up the torment of the five-month sessions. (“Not Guilty” didn’t see the light of day until over a decade later, when an understandably traumatized George finally put it on a 1979 solo record.) “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” wasn’t finished until September, when he brought in a special guest on lead guitar — his best friend Eric Clapton. Read the rest

Hallmark's got a 50th Anniversary HAL 9000 Christmas ornament... with light and sound! The latest result in machine intelligence, the HAL 9000—thought to be the most reliable computer ever made and incapable of error—served as the brain and central nervous system for the Discovery One ship's ill-fated mission to Jupiter. Fans of "2001: A Space Odyssey" will want to bring home this special Christmas ornament that celebrates 50 years of the science-fiction masterpiece. Press the button to see the ornament light up as HAL says several memorable phrases.Side note: reviewers can't decide if it's actually Douglas Rain voicing HAL or not (you can listen to a sample of HAL's ornament voice via the video on the product's page.):Elizabeth: "I do believe these quotes on this ornament are the original Hal ... I played it against my lap top computer from the movie clips to compare. The difference is the speaker on the ornament is not great quality so it makes the sound of his voice a little off but the quotes are said the same way... I wish they would have added a few more fun quotes from the movie I like mine and glad bought it."Matt: Matt: "I just received this ornament today in the mail. The voice being used is not Douglas Rain's (Hal from the movies). This is not a minor issue for a product sold as "HAL 9000 50th Anniversary Ornament With Light and Sound." The use of another voice actor should have been disclosed as part of the product's description on this page. Read the rest

Oneboredjeu slams together Modest Mouse's "Float On" with Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" to great effect. Read the rest

In 1955, Cuban bandleader, pianist, and "Mambo King" Anselmo Sacasas and his orchestra released this prescient burner on King Records. TrumpCrazy! Read the rest

Liverpudlian Furlong Lee and Canadian Brittney Lorretta Katherine Schneider of Canada, both 23, are learning the hard way that getting caught spray painting graffiti on a 800-year-old fortress in Thailand is taken a bit more seriously than in their home countries. The pair face 10 years in prison for painting "Scousse Lee" and the letter "B" on the wall. (Scouser is the slang term for a person hailing from Liverpool, named after scouse, a kind of anything-goes stew.)From Metro:A manhunt was launched for Lee and he was arrested with Brittney Schneider, from Canada, who was with him at the time at the Mad Monkey Hostel. They said that they found the spray can on the ground and decided to spray the wall as a ‘prank’. The pair of 23-year-olds were frog-marched to the site where they confessed to the crime and have been told they could face up to 10 years in prison for desecrating a historical site. Lieutenant Colonel Teerasak Sriprasert: ‘The graffiti says “Scousse Lee”. This means “Scouser Lee from Liverpool”. The girl is called Brittney and she wrote a letter “B” on the wall. ‘Officers investigated the vandalism after it was seen on CCTV cameras. The offenders were tracked to a guest house near the same road as the wall. The accused will be investigated and prosecuted according to the law.’Image: Viral Press Read the rest

Like something out of a 1950s horror film, this giant Texan spider looks like it's about to devour the unsuspecting cop. But in reality, it's just a great optical illusion when the spider crawls right in front of a police car dashcam. Halloween is in the air. Read the rest

The Ecuador embassy in London is fed up with its obnoxious boarder, Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, who has been making a nuisance of himself there since 2012. The platinum blonde 47-year-old perpetual couchsurfer found a post-it note from his housemates stuck to his door, telling him to keep his goddamn bathroom clean and to look after his fucking cat.From the BBC:Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange has been given a set of house rules at the Ecuadorean embassy in London that include cleaning his bathroom and taking better care of his cat.The whistle-blower was sent a memo in which he was warned that his feline companion could be confiscated.He was also told to look after its "well-being, food and hygiene" in the set of guidelines, written in Spanish.Image of Vyvyan Basterd from The Young Ones, via BBC2 Read the rest

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service approved the growing of a new kind of cotton plant that's been genetically modified to be edible. The toxic chemical gossypol in the plant usually makes the cotton dangerous for humans to eat. Texas A&M biotechnologist Keerti Rathore and colleagues genetically stopped the production of gossypol in the cottonseed while not interfering with it elsewhere in the plant where it acts as a natural insecticide. From Reuters:“To me, personally, it tastes somewhat like chickpea and it could easily be used to make a tasty hummus,” Rathore said of gossypol-free cottonseed.After cottonseed oil, which can be used for cooking, is extracted, the remaining high-protein meal from the new cotton plant can find many uses, Rathore said.It can be turned into flour for use in breads, tortillas and other baked goods and used in protein bars, while whole cottonseed kernels, roasted and salted, can be consumed as a snack or to create a peanut butter type of paste, Rathore added.(via Daily Grail) Read the rest

Republican Rep. Jason Lewis mocked a woman who complained of sexual harassment by affecting a traumatized feminine voice during a radio segment where he made quite clear that "she wasn't raped." In another recorded segment, Lewis complained about not being able to "call her a slut" anymore when "they behave as a slut."https://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/comeon.mp3Here's the full clip, from a 2012 edition of his radio show, as posted by CNN:A transcript:LEWIS: How traumatizing is it? How many women at some point in their lives have a man come onto them, place a hand on shoulder, or maybe their thigh, kiss them, and they would rather not have that happen, is that really going to be seared in your memory, that you'll need therapy for, that you'll never get over tHe MoSt tRaUmAtIziNg ExPerIeNce? COME ON. She wasn't raped.CNN's Andrew Kaczynski reports that Lewis threatened to sue them for copyright infringement if they posted the recording. Read the rest

Todd Bol died yesterday of fast-moving cancer at the age of 62, less than a month after receiving his diagnosis; he was the founder of the wildly successful Little Free Library movement (previously).Bol insisted that Little Free Libraries should be a nonprofit venture in order to "protect the mission" from pressure by investors. I have one of Bol's libraries on my own front lawn. Bol was inspired to start Little Free Library when he read Martin Luther King's answer to the question, "What would you do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?" I would plant an apple tree.But more and more, Bol sees the libraries as hubs, nudges, fulcrums. Books to get people reading — but also talking, listening, transforming. Little Free Library now works with law enforcement, turning police cruisers into bookmobiles. It launched Action Book Club last year, which encourages members to read books on timely topics, then do service projects together. The organization is also talking tutoring these days, because why not?“Wouldn’t it be cool if every Little Free Library could connect you with tutoring?” Bol said, his eyes wide behind horn-rimmed glasses. “There are so many different ways of using Little Free Libraries as a spark within the community.”Those big goals explain why Bol founded Little Free Library as a nonprofit in 2012, said his brother Tony Bol. After working with Little Free Library for five years, Tony is stepping into Todd’s speaking and public relations roles. “Everyone was trying to talk him into being a for-profit company,” Tony said, which would have allowed more flexibility and less accountability. Read the rest

Circuitmess's fully funded Makerphone kickstarter is raising money to produce open source hardware smartphone kits to teach kids (and grownups) everything from soldering to programming.The Makerphone is a pretty sweet-looking gadget, and it comes ready to be programmed with Scratch and python, providing a good progression from a fully graphic programming environment to a command-line language that's still beginner-friendly.$94 gets you a kit and the tools to assemble it; $99 gets you an assembled phone. The project's runners have previously delivered on kickstarted open source hardware kits, which bodes well for getting something for your money.We’ve learned A LOT from manufacturing and shipping over 6000 MAKERbuino kits in the past year and here’s a short list of most notable changes and improvements that we’ve implemented in MAKERphone:* A color screen* Better microcontroller with our custom software* Python programming language compatibility* Scratch programming language compatibility* Dedicated DAC and electronic volume controller for sound regulation and mp3 playback * 8 individually programmable RGB LEDs for a lightshow in your palms* Better PCB architecture for easier soldering* New prettier box with a black touchy cut-out sponge (IMPORTANT!)* The thing can now make calls, has a SIM card, and built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth* RTC (real time clock) - MAKERphone now keeps time and wakes you up!Makerphone [Circuitmess/Kickstarter] Read the rest

Salim Fadhley writes, "Portals of London, an urban exploration blog, presents an alternative geography of London. It's a catalog of the weird, decrepit and slightly crumpled - things the author posits might plausibly be portals to alternative universes, but then again might not." Read the rest

Repairnator is a bot that identifies bugs in open source software integration and creates patches without human intervention, submitting them to the open source project's maintainers under an assumed human identity; it has succeeded in having five of its patches accepted so far.Repairnator's creator, Martin Monperrus, has found that human software maintainers have a bias against accepting patches generated by bots, but will willingly accept the same code if its author is identified as another human.To demonstrate that program repair is human-competitive, a program repair bot has to find a high-quality patch before a human does so. In this context, a patch can be considered to be human-competitive if it satisfies the two conditions of timeliness and quality. Timeliness refers to the fact that the system must find a patch before the human developer. In other words, the prototype system must produce patches in the order of magnitude of minutes, not days. Also, the patch generated by the bot must be correct-enough, of similar quality — correct and readable — compared to a patch written by a human. Note that there are patches that look correct from the bot’s point of view, yet that are incorrect (this is known as overfitting patches in the literature [6, 3]). Those patches are arguably not human-competitive, because humans would never accept them in their code base.Consequently, for a patch to be human-competitive 1) the bot has to synthesize the patch faster than the human developer 2) the patch has to be judged good-enough by the human developer and permanently merged in the code base. Read the rest

The new parental controls in Ios 12 have all the same problems that all parental controls have: they overblock legit material (with a bias for sex-ed, especially sex-ed targeted at girls and queer kids, including Teen Vogue) and underblock all kinds of other material (neo-Nazi publications like The Daily Stormer and Reddit's pornographic /r/Gonewild are not blocked).The parental controls are a perfect storm of badness: kids whose parents are sexphobic or homophobic don't get to see the sex-positive sites that might help them navigate their own sexuality (but they do get to see misogynistic pornography); parents who trust the filters to keep their kids safe from violent, racist propaganda discover the hard way that the filters aren't working as advertised. The filter in question “limits adult websites” on Safari. When Motherboard tested this filter, we found several similarly blocked searches and websites: The searches “how to say no to sex,” “sex assault hotline,” and “sex education” were all restricted, but the results for the searches “how to poison my mom,” “how to join isis,” and “how to make a bomb” were allowed. 4chan and 8chan are blocked, but Reddit—including many NSFW and porn-focused subreddits, are not. The subreddit r/gonewild, which is pornographic, is not caught by the filter, which even allows users to click through Reddit’s own age-gating.“Where does this leave kids? Incredibly vulnerable,” Andrea Barrica, founder of O.school, wrote on the site’s blog about this issue. “Not only can’t they access medically accurate information about sexual development and sexuality, or find out how to report abuse, they are told that such information is dangerous. Read the rest

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London for years to avoid being arrested by British cops for skipping bail. But Ecuador is sick of him being there and recently demanded that he clean up after himself, quit his political grifting, and look after his pet cat better. So Assange is suing his hosts.WikiLeaks has announced founder Julian Assange is to launch legal action against the government of Ecuador accusing it of violating his "fundamental rights and freedoms"⬋ FREE CAT Read the rest

Nick Clegg's leadership of the UK's Liberal Democrats brought it briefly into the halls of power only to be destroyed by political incompetence and ambitious indifference. He started out commanding a quarter of the popular vote in a three-party system and left it with just 8 MPs, marginalized for a generation. Let's hope he can do the same thing for Facebook as their Head of Global Affairs.Facebook has hired Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, to head its global affairs and communications team as it faces escalating problems over data protection and the threat of greater government regulation.Mr Clegg, 51, will move to Silicon Valley in January to succeed Elliot Schrage, who announced he would leave Facebook after 10 years in June.His recruitment will be as much of a surprise to the British political establishment as it will be to Silicon Valley, where few European politicians enjoy a high profile in the insular tech industry."Months of wooing by Mark Zuckerberg," the Financial Times says, but you may recall this recent licking of the boot from Clegg, who just last month called criticism of Facebook "outright Luddism."Mark Zuckerberg et al are regularly criticised for not doing enough to stop fake news and extremism, and doing too much to mine our data for the benefit of advertisers, but a threat to the continued existence of humankind? Hardly. ... It’s time we pause for breath before everyone charges off in a stampede of condemnation of tax-dodging-fake-news-extremism-promoting-data-controlling tech firms. Read the rest

Robin Sloan is a programmer and novelist whose books like Sourdough and Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore are rich and evocative blends of self-aware nerdy playfulness and magical speculation.Earlier this year, Sloan published some preliminary information on a machine learning system for writing prose that he was noodling around with.Since then, the system has expanded and he is now using it to generate prompts as he writes his next novel, invoking it midsentence to get suggestions for completing the thought.The system was trained on an exotic corpus of old Wired articles, the Internet Archive's storehouse of old short stories from If and Galaxy, novels by "John Steinbeck, Dashiell Hammett, Joan Didion and Philip K. Dick," the poetry of Johnny Cash, oral histories of Silicon Valley, and, of course, "the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fish Bulletin."Sloan invokes the ML system's predictions to get strange, oracular autocompletes for his prose, like "The slow-sweeping tug moved across the emerald harbor."It's reminiscent of my favorite sly joke from Orwell: Julia was twenty-six years old... and she worked, as he had guessed, on the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department. She enjoyed her work, which consisted chiefly in running and servicing a powerful but tricky electric motor... She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the final product. She "didn't much care for reading," she said. Read the rest

China's move into a "mixed economy" has created a wealth inequality crisis to rival any nation's; wildcat workers' strikes (aided by Young Communist movements) have become increasingly common, though they are not often reported in the news (it helps that Chinese state media and the country's official censors suppress these reports).The Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin maintains a map of all these strikes, which you can drill down into for news and other detail. As Naked Capitalism notes, it's instructional to view the map as a time-series by filtering it by year; looking at the rise and rise of strikes from 2011 to 2018 paints a picture of a country in real upheaval.You can also export the data from the map in a structured format, which should be very useful for a certain kind of scholar or activist. Read the rest

Tenants in California have received threatening letters from their landlords promising massive rent hikes if Proposition 10 (previously), which restores rent control, passes.It's part of a national, lavishly financed attack on pro-tenancy measures, which has coincided with the entry of large private equity firms into the rental property market, skyrocketing rents and evictions, and a calamitous decline in the safety and quality of rental housing.In Boston, landlord lobbyists killed a modest measure that would produce public statistics on evictions and educate tenants about their rights in law. Oregon has a new super PAC that is pre-emptively campaigning against any future rent control measures; New York City's bid to freeze rent on rent-stabilized apartments was killed by a seven-figure lobbying campaign.Paid California signature-gatherers have been caught lying to people they approach, telling them that a pro-rent-control measure was anti-rent-control. Opponents of rent control often cite a Stanford business-school study that purported to show that rent control has the opposite of the intended effect, but that study has deep flaws, and also shows that rent control prevents evictions of existing tenants, especially people on fixed incomes and families struggling to get by.These efforts are part of a massive attack corporate landlords have been waging on rent control across the state. And though they claim to be speaking for the mom-and-pop landlords of California, the leaders of this campaign are some of the largest property owners in the country. Blackstone, the world’s largest real estate management firm, has spent nearly $7 million to defeat Prop 10. Read the rest

A batch of internal Harvard admission-related emails have come into the public domain as part of a lawsuit alleging that Harvard discriminates against Asian applicants, and they reveal that the admissions process is tilted in favor of members of families who are major donors to Harvard.The emails reveal members of the admissions committee and the Dean's office discussing the inclusion in the "Dean's Special Interest List" for applicants whose families have made recent donations, as well as applicants whose families used to donate, but have not made donations in recent years, with the implication that these families might restart the flow of cash once their young scions are enrolled at Harvard.The existence of the Dean's Special Interest List became public last summer. It is one of several lists of students who are bumped ahead in the Harvard admissions queue, joining legacy students, faculty kids, recruited atheletes -- all "overwhelmingly white."Harvard has been tight-lipped about who earns a spot on that list and why. On Wednesday, Hughes pressed for answers. He asked Fitzsimmons whether the list includes the “children of donors” and “other relatives of donors.”“It could be,” Fitzsimmons said.Hughes also grilled Fitzsimmons on how applicants wind up on the dean’s list. Fitzsimmons said the University Development Office — an office that solicits alumni donations — sometimes offers names to the dean. Summer court filings suggested the dean regularly sits down with Development Office employees and senior admissions staff to discuss specific high schoolers.Fitzsimmons defended Harvard’s special treatment of applicants linked to top donors as “important for the long-term strength of the institution.” He said this tactic secures funding for scholarships, among other things. Read the rest

Fold N Fly is a website that neatly categorizes and ranks paper airplane designs, with easy-to-follow and crystal-clear instructions for making each one. You'll need US Letter size paper! A4 won't do! [via] Read the rest

YouTube personality Casey Neistat took a break from his paternity leave to open and test his new (not a) toy, the Boring Company's "Not a Flamethrower." As you may know, the Boring Company is an Elon Musk entity. Its $500 propane torch (the "flamethrower") is, as Neistat describes it, Musk's "$10 million dollar joke." He notes that it's simply a roofing torch encased in a plastic air gun shell topped with a bike water bottle holder (to hold the tank of propane), parts he says you can get on the internet separately for much less. Still, he thinks it's "hysterical" and gives it a whirl, melting the cover to his microphone. Previously: The Boring Company's Not a Flamethrower is a joke compared to actual flamethrowers, Build your own Boring Company flamethrower! Read the rest

Twitter today pulled down a disinfo bot network that was amplifying pro-Saudi talking points about disappeared journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who is presumed to have been tortured and killed on orders of the government of Saudi Arabia.NBC reports that Twitter became aware of the crisis Thursday, when an NBC News reporter presented the social media firm with “evidence of coordinated activity” in the form of “a spreadsheet of hundreds of accounts that tweeted and retweeted the same pro-Saudi government tweets at the same time.”You'd think by now Twitter would be ahead of such things, rather than reporters alerting them with the smoking gun. You'd be wrong.This is all pretty nuts to read. I noticed intense, seemingly coordinated pro-Saudi activity on Twitter starting Monday of this week, and I wasn't the only one talking about it and suspecting a state-sponsored campaign. Now we know more. Excerpt from the NBC News report by Ben Collins and Shoshana Wodinsky:The list was compiled by Josh Russell, an Indiana-based information technology professional who has previously identified foreign influence campaigns on Twitter and Reddit.A Twitter employee, who asked not to be identified because the employee was not authorized to speak publicly, said the company was aware of the influence operation and had already suspended even more pro-Saudi government accounts before they were caught by researchers. The employee said the accounts are being pulled down for violating rules about spam, and referred to it as a routine spam operation takedown.Twitter has moved to crack down on bot networks in recent months, claiming to have purged millions of fake accounts. Read the rest

Facebook is working very hard right now to prove it can be trusted to protect users from malicious fake news, political disinformation, and cyberattacks intended to throw the 2018 midterms. What Facebook is not doing: providing details. The social media giant invited reporters yesterday into what they're calling their “war room” (ugh), a new workspace at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters in which data scientists, threat investigators, and other experts from 20 Facebook teams are apparently very hard at work protecting America.Why so few specifics on what, if anything, they're doing to address the fact that their platform has been successfully weaponized against elections, again and again? Why so few details, and so much emphasis on the optics? Oh right. Because Facebook.From the Guardian's Sam Levin:The press briefing provided minimal new information about Facebook’s specific strategies and impacts when it comes to combating foreign interference and false news. The corporation has been eager to publicly demonstrate that it is taking abuses on its platforms seriously amid an avalanche of scandals. That includes a vast data breach, government inquiries across the globe, new ad fraud allegations, and the continuing stream of viral fake content and hate speech.The stakes are high as the US approaches critical midterm elections in November and the 2020 presidential race. WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging service, has also been linked to widespread false news stories that have led to violence and mob lynchings in India. The platform has further struggled to mitigate harms it is causing in Myanmar, where an explosion of social media hate speech has contributed to violence and genocide. Read the rest

The highly secretive Silicon Valley-based data company Palantir is reported to be considering an initial public offering.The firm was founded by Peter Thiel, and is known for ability to analyze extremely large data sets for intelligence agencies and governments worldwide. The U.S. government credits Palantir with help assassinating Osama bin Laden, and disrupting various terror organizations.A Palantir Technologies Inc. IPO could be one of the biggest we've seen this decade, reports Rob Copeland at the Wall Street Journal:Palantir is discussing with investment banks Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley plans to go public as soon as the second half of 2019, the people said. Some bankers have told the firm it could go public with a valuation of as much as $41 billion—depending in part on the timing—or twice what it was most recently valued by private investors, the people said.People familiar with the plans said they remain in flux, and that Palantir could ultimately decide to stay private or offer shares at a lower price to what is being discussed.The discussions come amid a gusher of technology giants charging toward newly volatile public markets. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that ride hailing firms Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. are eyeing public debuts. Uber received proposals to go public at a staggering $120 billion valuation, nearly double its value in a private fundraising round just two months ago.Other well-known startups considering IPOs in the months to come include workplace instant-messaging app Slack Technologies Inc. Read the rest

A report from The Web Foundation, which was founded by internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee, shows a stark decline in the worldwide growth of internet access. Around the world, an estimated 3.8 billion people don't have internet access, the report shows. The so-called 'digital divide' is still here, and it's worse than ever for people in isolated locations, poor people, and women. “In poor urban areas, men can outnumber women on the internet as much as two to one.” The internet revolution remains a distant dream for billions of people on Planet Earth in 2018. And most of all, for women.The Guardian got an exclusive look at the data before publication. From their report:The striking trend, described in an unpublished report shared with the Guardian, shows the rate at which the world is getting online has fallen sharply since 2015, with women and the rural poor substantially excluded from education, business and other opportunities the internet can provide.The slowdown is described in an analysis of UN data that will be published next month by the Web Foundation, an organisation set up by the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The data shows that growth in global internet access dropped from 19% in 2007 to less than 6% last year.“We underestimated the slowdown and the growth rate is now really worrying ,” said Dhanaraj Thakur, research director at the Web Foundation. “The problem with having some people online and others not is that you increase the existing inequalities. Read the rest

In a video released Wednesday, Banksy revealed the "Girl With Balloon" shredding stunt malfunctioned at Sotheby's, noting that it "worked every time" in rehearsals. Also revealed: the mechanisms inside the frame that supposedly shredded the art were more complicated than the originally shown X-acto blades. Its new owner, a woman in good standing with the auction house, paid £1.04m for the pre-shredded work and will keep it. The ribboned piece is now called, "Love Is in the Bin." Previously: Myth-busting the self-shredding Banksy painting Read the rest

Apple invited consumer technology reporters to an event scheduled for next Tuesday, October 30, at New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music, Howard Gilman Opera House. The late-October event will presumably feature something different from the September iPhone-centered event.Bottom line: New iPad Pro models are anticipated by reporters who follow Cupertino closely. Also expected: MacBook updates. Whatever they're doing starts at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. From Juli Clover at Macrumors:Apple sent out multiple different Apple logo designs on the invitations that it sent out to members of the media, all of which feature the tagline "There's more in the making." We're still awaiting multiple product refreshes before the end of 2018, including updates to several Mac models and the iPad Pro, which are likely to see a debut at the event. 2018 iPad Pro models are expected to adopt an iPhone X-style design with no Home button, slimmer bezels, and a TrueDepth camera system that will enable Face ID for biometric authentication. Read the rest

Just when you thought things couldn't get stupider, they do. Former Donald Trump senior campaign aide Jason Miller is suing Will Menaker, co-host of the politi-comedy podcast 'Chapo Trap House,' over a tweet in which Miller is described as a "rat face baby killer." Okay.They're going after a Gizmodo Media Group and Splinter News reporter, too. From Asawin Suebsaeng at The Daily Beast:Court documents reviewed by The Daily Beast show Miller and his legal team have added Menaker to a $100 million defamation lawsuit against Gizmodo Media Group and Splinter News reporter Katherine Krueger. (The documents can be viewed at the bottom of this article).The amended suit filed Thursday cites a tweet that Menaker, who is dating Krueger, posted earlier this week, blasting Miller. It read: “rat faced baby killer and Trump PR homunculus, Jason Miller, is suing my girlfriend for $100 million, cool!”Miller is seeking unspecified damages for what the suit calls “Menaker’s misconduct.” Menaker declined to comment and it was unclear if he has yet been served with the complaint.Miller, who worked for Trump during the campaign and the presidential transition, filed the original suit on Monday, alleging that Splinter, one of Gizmodo’s news websites, colluded with his ex-lover A.J. Delgado, another former Trump campaign adviser, to plant a false story that Miller dropped an abortion pill into the smoothie of a pregnant stripper.The Daily Beast reported earlier this week that Mr. Miller is represented in this matter by Ken Turkel and Shane Vogt, longtime members of Charles Harder's team. Read the rest

A woman in charge of a toddler, whose mother was in the hospital, was supposed to drop him off at his father's house. But when the father wasn't home, the woman – who is a friend of the mother's (hopefully not anymore) – instead drops him off on the porch of a stranger's house. The way she carries him by only one arm can't be comfortable for him. She knocks on the door and scrams, leaving the little guy standing there all alone.Fortunately, someone, who was trustworthy, was home. According to The Washington Post:A woman answered a knock at her door to find the small boy standing there alone and called 911, Spencer said. Sheriff’s deputies canvassed the neighborhood, knocking on every door nearby, including the father’s, officials told reporters, according to the Chronicle. The father was not at home at the time.The child’s father, Willie Simmons, spoke to reporters on Thursday.“If that was her child, she wouldn’t have left him,” he said, according to the Chronicle. “Just imagine if my nice neighbors weren’t there. My son would have wandered in the street and got hit."The toddler, who wasn't hurt, will be reunited with his family. Read the rest

David Firth's YouTube channel won its millionth subscriber this week, and our reward is a new short animation of Salad Fingers, his most splendid and notorious creation. Read the rest