The Information reports that Google's self-driving automobile division is having trouble making progress and has blown at least one major deadline. Among the key problems: its vehicles have trouble turning left at intersections.The article is paywalled, but Amir Efrati sums it up: "The truth about Waymo in suburban Phoenix starts here, at a T intersection at East Fairview St. and South 56 St., the closest one to Waymo’s vehicle depot in Chandler. Waymo’s vans sometimes have trouble finding a gap in traffic to turn left, frustrating people who say they get stuck behind them."

We used to have a lot of guitars, ukuleles, and cigar box guitars leaning against walls, stacked in closets, and hiding under beds. I bought this four-pack of guitar hanger hooks for $8 in January, now they are priced at $7 for four (You can also buy two for $6 or six for $9). They come with wall mounting hardware. They're highly rated on Amazon.

Goaded by a tweet from writer Drew Olanoff, Tesla CEO Elon Musk again insinuated that the cave diver who mocked him during the Thailand cave rescue operation is a pedophile. (more…)

Cops use Stingrays—fake cellular towers that fool cellphones into connecting to them instead of the real thing—to track people and hack into their devices. Sen. Ron Wyden, in a publicized letter to the U.S. Department of Jusice, exposes the fact that these devices disrupt and disable attempts to call emergency services.

Over the course of my life, recently departed Senator John McCain has had me both cheering, and screaming, but he was absolutely due the same trappings as any other sitting US Senator who kicks the bucket.Via Talking Points Memo:

Oopsy.This lowered Toyota FR-S got stuck on a speed bump earlier this month at the Clean Culture ATL car meet in Duluth, Georgia. A bunch of folks stepped in to help the driver get his ridiculously low vehicle unstuck.Dumb question: How does this guy drive around town?(Digg)

Sadly for you, someone has already bought this rare Calcupen from Japan. But there's always another. From the Vintage Calculators Web Museum, which reports that it received weak reviews back in '75:

Of the 200 original Apple I computers ever made, only 60 or so are thought to have survived. One of them is now on the auction block. Expected to bring in $300,000, it includes an original Apple Cassette Interface and cables, Operation Manual, a period ASCII keyboard, a video monitor, and new power supply. Also, it works. From RR Auction:

Did you know that cats like to be squished? In this now-viral video, YouTube's Helpful Vancouver Vet, Dr. Uri Burstyn, shares advice on how to handle a cat. Introduce yourself and then be prepared to support and, yes, squish it.(MNN)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPTC-gJT1eM&feature=youtu.beA Magic:The Gathering pre-release kit [Amazon] is about $25 and contains six booster decks and a D20. What would you think if you bought 14 such kits from your local game store, received not one good card, then bought another kit at a grocery store and spotted that it was shrinkwrapped differently? To YouTube with the evidence!

There's no shortage of coding training online. But, if you're looking to get your skills to an employable level, you'll need to get your hands dirty creating your own projects. Taking a practical approach to coding education, the Interactive Coding Bootcamp not only teaches you the fundamentals of coding staples, like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript but makes you put your skills to use creating a number of web app projects that you can actually add to your portfolio. It's on sale today for $39.Across 400 lessons and 60 hours of content, this massive bootcamp walks you through the web development process from start to finish. Using the industry's essential development tools and languages, you'll build a number of real projects to refine your skills. You'll get exposed to object-oriented programming by creating your own browser-based tic-tac-toe game and gain firsthand experience integrating an API by building a cryptocurrency tracker. Plus, this bootcamp even has you create your own practice startup, so you can build a web app with features you'd find on Facebook or Dropbox.You can catalyze your coding education and add several powerful projects to your portfolio with The New & Improved Interactive Coding Bootcamp, on sale for $39.

"Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media," Trump tweeted this morning.

Jimmy Kimmel recently challenged Bill Hader to perform his most obscure impression, the one he knows few will appreciate. Hader turns to the audience and says "I love Dateline. You guys watch Dateline?"Previously: Saturday Night Live's classic parody of Dateline's Keith Morrison

NBC cutting abruptly from a solemn John McCain tribute to masturbating dolphin-masked comedians will go down in the annals of mind-bendingly inappropriate segues. But my favorite is this from DJ and actor Casey Kasem, who loses his temper at "coming out of a fucking uptempo record every time I do a God-damned death dedication."[h/t GhastlyGil]

John Oliver's big enough to admit when he's wrong. He's so damn large, in fact, that he sat down behind his gigantic desk just to post this series of retractions to YouTube.Thank you, Kaiju John Oliver, for taking your giant time to make these giant corrections. We, the small people of the earth, salute you.

So much of what we know about spaceflight, the moon and beyond can be attributed to mathematician Katherine Johnson. During the United States' race to the stars against the Soviet Union, Johnson served as one of NASA's "Human Computers," noodling out complicated math problems with nothing more than the brawn of her brains, a bit of chalk and an immeasurable amount of will. From Space.com:

Randy Rainbow is on a roll. Last year he took on Omarosa and this week he's going one on one with Trump. He sings a new parody song called "If You Ever Got Impeached" to the tune of the Wizard of Oz's "If I Only Had a Brain."

Not a good day for the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. (more…)

On Monday, the Burning Man Webcast team shot some amazing high-res footage of this year's Burning Man using a drone. (more…)

Roger Stone's Instagram sure is weird. In an Instagram video he posted today, longtime Trump consigliere Roger Stone said that a Ronan Farrow story soon to be published in The New Yorker reports that Stone explicitly told Donald Trump in October 2016 that WikiLeaks had obtained and was preparing to dump John Podesta's emails. (more…)

Senator John McCain, who died on Saturday at age 81 from an aggressive form of brain cancer, wrote a farewell letter to America. The letter was read by family spokesman Rick Davis this afternoon. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNTe_G-Xc0s?start=1019&w=560&h=315]Full text:

Baylor University infiltrated sexual assault survivor support groups, reports PR Week, using an employee to keep tabs on survivors and provide "PR strategy and talking points" to influence proceedings. Baylor, a private Christian university in Waco, Texas, faces a Title IX lawsuit.

Today Trump pretended to get rid of NAFTA, and the best part of the show was his attempt to get President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico on speakerphone to ceremonially announce the virtually identical imaginary replacement. Fortunately, he doesn't actually know how his phone works and an aide has to do it for him.

Ithaca's free alt-weekly The Ithaca Times printed a New York State voter registration form on their cover this week. The medium is the message.

New PhD student Samuel Gillis Hogan and colleagues at the University of Exeter are launching a deep study of 15-17th century spell books to understand how people attempted to summon fairies throughout history."Fairies were thought of as wondrous and beautiful, but mostly dangerous. But people wanted to summon them and harness that power for their own gain," Hogan told the BBC.Hogan, a lifelong fan of the supernatural (see photo above) and, yes, Harry Potter, received a fellowship to move to the UK after completing his master's degree at the University of Saskatchewan. His thesis topic? The history of chiromancy, aka palm reading.From the Canadian Press:

https://youtu.be/64X_G0R0MtII'm not really interested in catching mice, but I like learning how different kinds of no kill mousetraps work. This simple but ingenious trap attaches to a 2-liter soda bottle. The mouse crawls through an opening and has to push a plastic ball up to get into the bottle. One it gets past the ball, the ball drops and blocks the exit path, trapping the mouse inside. Shawn Woods tested one out and learned that it works as advertised.

Here's a stunning air guitar performance by Nanami Nagura, who won first place at the Air Guitar World Championships last week (she won the top prize four years ago as well). It's so cool, I had to watch it twice. From Digital Trends:

Asian Boss hit the streets of Tokyo to ask Japanese people what they thought of English curse words, oaths, insults, and epithets compared to Japanese ones. One person pointed out that English swear words are more direct (e.g., "Go fuck yourself"), whereas Japanese swear words are "more like insults and very indirect" (e.g., manuke, which literally means "out of rhythm" and is used to describe a loser). This is in keeping with the Japanese concept of aimai, which stresses implicitness over explicitness.

Neurologist Steven Laureys is an expert on the mysteries of consciousness. A researcher and clinician at the Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research he's known for testing comatose patients for any hidden signs of consciousness. From Scientific American's interview with Laureys:

Look at this rotating brush, called the Happycow. From the manufacturer's description:

Remember Susan Peirez, the jet passenger who screamed obscenities at a mother about her crying baby, then told the flight attendant that she was special because she worked for the governor of New York, then told the flight attendant she was going to get fired for not paying property fealty towards her, then got fired herself when a video of her behavior was posted to Youtube? Someone made a perfect Curb Your Enthusiasm style video of Peirez.Here's the original video:https://youtu.be/ZLcg0ON1bxIImage: YouTube screengrab

Geese and swans are mean birds by nature, and enjoy picking fights with humans and other large animals. Here, we see an especially nasty goose who decided that it wanted possession of a juvenile elephant's zoo enclosure. The diminutive pachyderm tried to discourage the goose by flipping water with its trunk, but the goose insisted on escalating the confrontation, proving the goose was both mean and stupid.

The flag at the White House was only left at half staff in honor of Senator John McCain until just after midnight Monday morning. This breaks with the tradition that the flag remains at half staff for a sitting senator who dies until the day of internment. McCain's funeral is set for Sunday.In fact, if petty Trump had his way, the flag probably wouldn't have been lowered at all. But "the federal code states that the flag shall be lowered on the day of death and the following day for a sitting member of Congress," according to ABC News.Trump also ignored a question about his thoughts on McCain's legacy when asked by ABC.

It has been years since internet sensations Radiskull and Devil Doll have graced our screens. Joe Sparks has brought them back. It is time to do evil again!I AM THE RADISKULL!!!!!!

This inflatable bed is as comfortable as a regular mattress, and stores away in a corner of my closet. (more…)

Sacha Baron Cohen posed as a "billionaire playboy" as he interviewed O.J. Simpson in yesterday's finale of Who Is America?. Sacha's character gleefully hinted that he'd killed his own wife, and O.J. went along with it, joking about how lengthening a bungee cord would help get the job done. The interview was cringe-worthy, to say the least.

It would appear that indicted Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA)'s party boy lifestyle won he and his pals a cute name on 'the hill,' congressional aides knew them as 'the bro caucus.'Via Talking Points Memo:

Classic skateboarding movie with one of the absolute greats, Natas Kaupas.Full movie.

Around a month ago, Ebola popped back up in the Democratic Republic of Congo, scant days after the World Health Organization had declared that another outbreak of the disease had come to an end. Trying to contain the Ebola virus, which is transmitted via bodily fluids, can be a nightmare for healthcare professionals, especially in areas where medical resources and the infrastructure required to rapidly deploy field investigators, ship HAZMAT gear or refrigerate vaccines is non-existent. Doing it in a war zone? So much worse. But that’s where the latest outbreak is going down. Congo’s North Kivu Province is hotly contested by a number of militant groups, vying for control over the region’s mineral resources. There’s a lot of shooting. There’s a lot of blood. The local population, fearing for their lives, is highly mobile. This makes it hard to track Ebola or treat those who risk further spreading the virus. In the midst of this untenable situation, even those brave enough to risk their own lives to keep the disease at bay are now proving vulnerable.From The Guardian:

A study entitled "Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016" has determined that no one should ingest any alcohol. It leads to death, kinda like life.Via The Lancet:

Popcorn didn’t always used to be a thing in Japan. As a matter of fact, when I arrived in 1990 (and for many years afterward) it was one of my please-send-me items for anyone willing to mail me a care package. A couple of years ago, though, something happened and now popcorn is accepted and more or less embraced by the Japanese snack culture. I still don’t come across the loose, pop-it-yourself-at-home kernels variety and I hardly ever see microwave popcorn, but pre-popped and already flavored bags, those are out there. Frito Lay Japan has a popular snack called Mike Popcorn, and it has some of interesting but not entirely surprising flavors. There’s butter soy sauce, sweetened soy sauce, and salted seaweed. All quite delicately flavored and delicious in their own way. Then I ran across shrimp popcorn. I love shrimp and I love popcorn. What could possibly go wrong? The answer is nothing. This savory shrimp-flavored popcorn was divine. It even made me go to the Mike Popcorn website to see what else they had. But I stopped before I got into the different flavors, because I was intrigued with how they're marketing popcorn in Japan. [caption id="attachment_655750" align="alignnone" width="600"] Photo: Thersa Matsuura[/caption]It seems to touted as a healthy snack. They're pushing the "one bag has two-heads of lettuce worth of fiber" bit. I mean, not to disrespect iceberg lettuce and all, but we all know it’s mostly water. You want fiber, let's talk cabbages. Another cute -- and very Japanese -- idea is the list of different popcorn recipes that are recommended on the site. One of those that feels a little more healthy -- but I'm not sure I'd want to try -- is called the Fancy Morning Meal Basically, the recipe consists of plain yogurt sprinkled with chia seeds, nuts, fruit (in this case sliced bananas), coconut powder and, yes, you guessed it popcorn. They don't say, but I'm hoping they’re recommending the regular-flavored stuff, not the shrimp-flavored kind.Photos: Thersa Matsuura

Esteemed tricker Nick Fry lands his first amazing standing double backflip.

Sleepy wolf Alawa is "hands down the laziest howler we've ever known," writes the Wolf Conservation Center on its YouTube Channel.

Given a choice of which controller I’d rather use to play games, my response is always Xbox One. I like how beefy it feels run my hands. I bought one for playing Steam games with a while back and have never regretted the decision. I’ve never felt the urge to use it with my smartphone—I do my gaming on the go with a PS Vita or Nintendo Switch. But I totally get the appeal: Being able to rock emulators using physical controls or play games developed for Android without being driven mad by how lousy an input device a display can be at times, could be pretty sweet. Up until now, gaming on an Android device with an Xbox One controller was a wonky experience as there were mapping problems galore. Thanks to Google, that’s all about to change:From The Verge:Google is now officially supporting Xbox One controllers with Bluetooth in its latest Android Pie release. XDA-Developers reports that a Google engineer has closed a long standing bug report on the Xbox One controller mapping issues, noting that they’re fixed in Android Pie.“This bug should be fixed in P… therefore, marking this as fixed,” says the unnamed Google engineer. The fix has been placed into the core of Android Pie, so all releases of it will include it. A variety of games support Bluetooth controllers in Android, and CNET reports that even Fortnite will be getting support soon. That will make playing Fortnite on Android a lot more interesting on the go, especially if other game developers start to see mobile as more of an opportunity to include controller support.Image via Flickr, courtesy of Mack Male

We live busy lives, and while it would be nice to enter into a clean home every night, keeping your space tidy is one of those responsibilities that tends to fall through the cracks during the week. Thankfully, it's 2018, and robot vacuums are a thing. The ECOVACS DEEBOT Slim2 Robotic Vacuum Cleaner is perfect for keeping your living space clean, and you can start it remotely via your smartphone.Designed for hardwood floors, the ECOVACS DEEBOT removes hair, dirt, and debris with tangle-free suction and dry mopping. It can maneuver around obstacles and recharges on its own. Plus, you can schedule it for weekly or daily cleanings and activate it in a pinch with your smartphone, ensuring your space still gets cleaned whether you're stuck in traffic, running errands, or staying late at work.The ECOVACS DEEBOT Slim2 Robotic Vacuum Cleaner is on sale for $140, 29% off its usual retail price.

Law firms are singularly bad at technology, yet present a singularly delicious target to hackers. One particular vulnerability comes from all their abandoned domain names, which Gabor Szathmari writes "pose a significant cyber risk to the legal profession."

This is one of those genius "I can't believe this hasn't been done already" kind of things. An architect from Indiana has photoshopped recognizable modernist homes into the overly sentimental, idyllic world of a Thomas Kinkade painting, making for a funny mashup series.It all started with this tweet from another architect, Donna Sink, where she instigates, "Does anyone do paintings of Modern buildings in the style of Thomas Kincade?"https://twitter.com/DonnaSinkArch/status/1030653974637096961Indianapolis-based @robyniko answered her call, writing, "I'm in. Let's start off easy with one of Kahn's beautiful boxes (eg the Fisher house)..."Here's that one (the wishing well is a nice touch!):Then someone requested he do architect Philip Johnson's historic Glass House next. He calls his creation "Philip Johnson's Glass Cottage," (emphasis mine) a nod to Kinkade's use of cottages in his paintings:On this one, he writes, "Ok i really have to stop now. Merry Corbsmas:"But he didn't stop. He then tackled the Farnsworth House (which I included as the lead image above).A couple days later he was still at it. On this one, he writes, "Pack your bags for a rocky seaside getaway at the Gehryhaus! You'll love the *squints at copy* homey chain link fence & softly weathered *checks notes* corrugated steel siding while you eat a homemade breakfast in the soft glow of the *deep sigh* aggressively geometric sun room."You can follow how it all went down in this thread:https://twitter.com/robyniko/status/1031000496608292872(ArchPaper)images via @robyniko, used with permission

While walking the aisles of the supermarket this evening, a friend spotted some green tea-scented toilet paper, with lovely embossed tea leaves, too. Photo: Richard Pavonarius

Milo Yiannopolous is having a very bad week and just wants to eat his sushi in peace, you ungrateful bastards. A little backstory. Last week, Politicon (think Comic-Con but with less cosplay) announced the lineup for its 2018 convention to be held in October in Los Angeles. Milo was included in that lineup, with his appearance touted as an opportunity to “speak at length about the institutional Left’s systematic protection of sex offenders who share its politics, as well as his experiences being wrongly smeared as an advocate for a crime of which he is in fact a victim. The appearance marks his return to the front lines of the American culture wars.” Less than 24 hours later, Yiannopolous was disinvited from Politicon after social media threats of a boycott. One speaker, comedian Cameron Esposito, canceled her appearance after learning of his involvement and others threatened to do likewise. When Yiannopolous found out he was disinvited, he told Mediaite “I subject myself to this continuous hell because unlike the needy, vacuous, desperate grifters of conservative media, I actually care about my fans and the stuff I talk about. No amount of cancellations from now until the end of time will ever deter me from trying. Next!”
Fast forward to Friday night. Yiannopolous posted a short video of himself with his husband at sushi restaurant on Facebook. The comments were less than laudatory, accusing Yiannopolous of fleecing his aforementioned fans out of money they paid for the VIP membership to his website which promised a daily podcast that apparently hasn’t been updated for weeks, if not months. 
And that’s when Milo lost his shit. Such a snowflake![Photo: Wikimedia Commons]