Boing Boing

Hirotakaster's instructions for combining magnets and fidget spinners are a one-way ticket to glorious, chaotic motion, as complex systems emerge from grids of obsolete, post-fad plastic waste. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

Stalin's pose and expression in the propaganda poster makes it look like he's just noticed there's a goose coming toward him and it's dawning on him that he has no idea how to deal with geese. Read the rest

A year ago, Chinese white-label CCTV/DVR vendor Xiongmai announced a recall and security update for its devices, whose weak security meant that they had been conscripted into a massive, unstoppable botnet.A year later, Xiongmai's promises have been broken: the company has invested precious little resource into keeping its security current, and as a result the cameras and recorders it sells are routinely compromised by voyeurs (who use them to spy on their owners), criminals (who use them to case businesses and plan crimes) and cybercriminals (who take over the devices and use them to run bot attacks of various kinds, from denial-of-service to simply disguising the location of another attack by using a hacked device as a proxy).To complicate the matter, Xiongmai is a white-label vendor whose products are sold under hundreds of brand-names, making it nearly impossible to tell whether you are about to buy (or already own) one of their defective products. It may not matter: Xionmai's major competitor, TVT, is another white label CCTV/DVR giant, and its products are incredibly insecure and it, too has failed to take action to fix things.The exploits used to take over these devices are not supervillainry: thanks to weak default passwords, deliberate backdoors, and bad design decisions (like not forcing a password change during setup), they are taken over in their thousands by clumsy, amateurish exploits.The latest Xiongmai vulnerability advisory comes from SEC Consult (who previously revealed similar defects in Shenzhen Gwelltimes Technology Co., Ltd's constellation of white-label internet of shit gadgets): they explored vulnerabilities in Xiongmai's cloud management system, called the "XMEye P2P Cloud."Logins for this system are easily guessed because they are derived from Xiongmai products' sequential MAC addresses; the passwords use weak default usernames ("admin" and no password!), and every device has a second, hidden backdoor account whose login/pass is "default/tluafed."Once an attacker gains access to a device, they have the ability to flash its firmware, and because Xiongmai doesn't practice firmware signing, an attacker can load anything onto its products. Read the rest

Multinational companies have used the no-nonsense methodologies of Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma to oil a smooth-running operation for years. What is it? Six Sigma (and its offshoot, Lean Six Sigma) apply the principles of science to business, teaching managers to methodically target waste, maximize output and streamline the flow from producer to consumer. In a nutshell, it's a universal process that can work for any size company.The Complete Six Sigma Training & Certification Bundle teaches those principles for managers both prospective and practicing. In more than 75 hours of engaging lectures, exams, and hands-on exercises, you'll learn to identify the eight types of waste and use the patented DMAIC method to confidently tackle any project with any team. Users will progress through the yellow, green and black belts in both Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma and earn certified credentials with the included exam. It's an accomplishment that will pay dividends in any office and qualify you for top management jobs in a myriad of fields.Pick up The Complete Six Sigma Training & Certification Bundle for $59 today. Read the rest

I never know where our conversations are going to go when I get together with my friend Mark of Cardhouse. His tastes are more esoteric than the average person and I'm always surprised and amused by what he shares with me. So, we had lunch Wednesday. Somehow Dunkin' Donuts came up. He asked me if I had remembered when he posted about Donkey Donald's (in 2013). I hadn't. He explained.He cited a Tumblr written by two NYC concierges in which they shared funny stories about their job. The blog is called how may we hate you? and their "Donkey Donald's" story is as follows:Then he tells me that, back in 2013, he reworked the Dunkin' Donuts logo to become, of course, the Donkey Donald's logo (lead image). Then he says when Dunkin' Donuts changed its name to simply Dunkin' recently, he updated his Donkey Donald's logo to simply Donkey (because, of course):pic.twitter.com/a5JcbYUCQp— Cardhouse (@cardhouse) September 27, 2018Talk about playing the logo long game! Read the rest

Buy a single item at CVS and you can end up with a 4'-6'-long ribbon of register tape, a kind of orgy of coupons and come-ons.The phenomenon of the farcically long CVS receipt goes back to 2008 or so, when the company started buying data-mining services to plumb its customer loyalty card data, generating coupons on the fly.This apparently worked -- for a while. But stimulus regresses to the mean (AKA: we get used to stuff) and so CVS needed to do more to get the same yield, and other companies started printing their own super-long receipts, poisoning the well by getting us all more adapted to (and thus unimpressed by) the phenomenon.Register coupons have a long and weird history. Getting a coupon into the hands of someone who is likely to use it is hard because most people won't use most coupons. Consumer packaged goods companies like Unilever and P&G have spent decades experimenting with getting grocers to hand coupons out to people who are cashing out, on the grounds that someone who is buying groceries has a high probability of being the kind of person who buys groceries. But the problem is, someone who has just bought groceries is also likely to be someone who won't need to buy groceries for a while.There are lots of complicating factors here: the richer you are, the more willing you might be to try a new product (if you're poor and you buy a laundry detergent you don't end up liking, you can't necessarily afford to throw it away and go back to your old brand) -- but rich people are also less coupon-clippy, meaning that register coupons (intended to entice the purchaser into trying something new, because you don't need to convince someone to buy a product that they already routinely purchase) are more likely to go into their garbage than an envelope that is put aside for the next shopping trip. Read the rest

London is increasingly a city on two wheels: it's huge, it's congested, and gasoline is comically expensive. Thieves are targeting bike couriers, taking their mopeds and scooters for single-time use in subsequent crimes (such as robberies), and this BBC investigation shows how violent they're getting with victims. We’ve all got used to having food delivered to our doorsteps at all hours of the day and night. But spare a thought for the delivery riders, because they’re frequently finding themselves the target of armed bike and moped gangs, who attempt to steal their delivery vehicles to use to commit further crimes. To reveal just how dangerous it can be out there, we armed some of these drivers with cameras. Chris Rogers has the story.As a former Londoner now living in America, I have to admit that I can't imagine this sort of casual, push-you-off-your-bike theft here. Americans call it a "polite society" but that's just their way of describing an "I will blow your head off if you come within 10 feet of my bike" society. The result is an insane yet normalized pandemic of gun violence, but hey, at least no-one is going to try and nick your motorcycle at the lights.Some of the scenes are so amazing it seems like fiction. The police are so useless that couriers themselves are forming gangs to retaliate against thieves. It's like the first scene of Akira, but on little scooters going "iiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" and all they want to do is deliver lunch. Read the rest

I've only scratched the surface of former NPR producer Ian Chillag's podcast Everything is Alive but I'm already tickled by it. The premise: serious interviews with inanimate objects. So far, Louis (a can of cola), Maeve (a lamppost), Dennis (a pillow), Tar (a bar of soap), Ana (an elevator), and Paul (a tooth), have had their time in the limelight. Listen in here.(Waxy) Read the rest

Someone checked in on Bing search and the results aren't pretty. At some point it became a sewer of racism, antisemitism, pedophilia and conspiracy theories—and that's just the recommendations.The BBC reports:In his investigation, Mr Hoffman looked up racially-themed terms and found that the majority of suggestions for further searches that accompanied results pointed people to racist sites or images.Racist memes and images were also returned for many of the words he tried."We all know this garbage exists on the web, but Bing shouldn't be leading people to it with their search suggestions," wrote Mr Hoffman.It is believed that the suggestions for further searches connected to these terms have emerged from a combination of user activity and concerted action by far-right groups to skew responses.Everyone's mad at Microsoft for not giving a shit (and it has promised to start giving a shit), but it is instructive to see such a huge-scale mirror image of what the algorithms think we want to see--and what we are are searching for.More fun Chris Hoffman found on Bing: Read the rest

Caltech researchers developed the illusion above to illustrate postdiction, a sensory phenomenon "in which a stimulus that occurs later can retroactively affect our perceptions of an earlier event." From Caltech Matters:"Illusions are a really interesting window into the brain," says first author Noelle Stiles (PhD '15), a visitor in biology and biological engineering and a postdoctoral scholar–research associate at USC. "By investigating illusions, we can study the brain's decision-making process. For example, how does the brain determine reality with information from multiple senses that is at times noisy and conflicting? The brain uses assumptions about the environment to solve this problem. When these assumptions happen to be wrong, illusions can occur as the brain tries to make the best sense of a confusing situation. We can use these illusions to unveil the underlying inferences that the brain makes...."Postdictive processing has been demonstrated within individual senses, but this work focuses on how the phenomenon can bridge multiple senses. The key to both of the new illusions is that the audio and visual stimuli occur rapidly, in under 200 milliseconds (one-fifth of a second). The brain, trying to make sense of this barrage of information, synthesizes the stimuli from both senses to determine the experience, using postdiction to do so. Read more in the researchers' scientific paper: "What you saw is what you will hear: Two new illusions with audiovisual postdictive effects" (PLoS ONE) Read the rest

Boston Dynamics has just released this astounding video of their Atlas humanoid robot doing parkour:The control software uses the whole body including legs, arms and torso, to marshal the energy and strength for jumping over the log and leaping up the steps without breaking its pace. (Step height 40 cm.) Atlas uses computer vision to locate itself with respect to visible markers on the approach to hit the terrain accurately. Unfortunately the engineers failed to outfit Atlas with a speech synthesizer to yell "Parkour! Parkour! Parkour!" like so. Read the rest

Voting rights advocacy groups are suing the state of Georgia to reinstate 53,000 blocked voter registrations, 70% of which are from African American voters, saying the current policy violates the U.S. Voting Rights Act and The National Voter Registration Act. BREAKING: We have just filed a lawsuit against Brian Kemp to end #Georgia’s exact match law, which has put as many as 53K voter registrations on hold ahead of the #MidtermElections.Joining us in this suit: @CampaignLegal @AAAJ_Atlanta @NAACPGA pic.twitter.com/JxXPAzGMoZ— Lawyers' Committee (@LawyersComm) October 11, 2018The Lawyer's Committee For Human Rights tweeted this afternoon, “We have just filed a lawsuit against Brian Kemp to end #Georgia’s exact match law, which has put as many as 53K voter registrations on hold ahead of the #MidtermElections.”Here's the lawsuit [PDF].So black Georgians are affected by this registration hold-up at a rate more than double their prevalence in the population... as Brian Kemp oversees his own election.This is outrageous enough that it seems almost impossible that the courts will allow this to stand. pic.twitter.com/T4v41A1MlO— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) October 11, 2018Tonya got her ID today in #Orlando #Florida! Her license expired while she was in the hospital battling cancer and she didn't have to funds to get it renewed when she recovered. But she got her ID & will be applying for a job with her local school district! @SpreadTheVoteUS pic.twitter.com/sJwJr9VyMa— SpreadthevoteFL (@SpreadthevoteFL) October 11, 2018Registration deadline for people in Randolph and Grady Counties, Georgia extended thru at least Monday, *October 15th*. Read the rest

The United States Postal Service (USPS) wants to raise the fees it charges Amazon.com and other internet commerce shippers by 9 to 12 percent. This comes just months after President Donald Trump criticized the USPS, saying it gives Amazon too good of a deal. I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018“The parcel select service, which is also used by United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx, is the last and typically the most expensive step in the shipping process that gets the packages to customers' doorsteps,”, writes Waverly Colville at NBC News, and “The USPS proposed a 9.3 percent increase on this service for packages weighing over one pound and a 12.3 percent increase to lighter packages.”Excerpt:Trump issued an executive order in April to set up a task force to examine the USPS, claiming that it was on an "unsustainable financial path." He's also tweeted that the USPS is Amazon's "delivery boy" and doesn't make money from Amazon's business.A USPS spokesperson said these proposed changes are not a response to Trump's criticism."The price increases reflect the best judgment of the Postal Service Governors, who are seeking to establish new rates that will keep the Postal Service competitive, while also providing the Postal Service with much needed revenue," the spokesperson said. Read the rest

“On Helen’s form, which was filled out with assistance from officials, there is a checked box next to a line that says, “I withdraw my previous request for a Flores bond hearing.” Beneath that line, the five-year-old signed her name in wobbly letters.”What the Trump administration is doing to these thousands of children is morally repulsive. We have to stop it.Here's an excerpt from a New Yorker feature on Helen, “a smart, cheerful five-year-old girl” seeking asylum from Honduras. She ends up in court, separated from her parents. The organization helping her is lupenet.org, and you should support their work. They managed to get Helen reunited with her mother, and out of Trump's brown kid prisons. But here's what happened to her:In July, Helen fled Honduras with her grandmother, Noehmi, and several other relatives; gangs had threatened Noehmi’s teen-age son, Christian, and the family no longer felt safe. Helen’s mother, Jeny, had migrated to Texas four years earlier, and Noehmi planned to seek legal refuge there. With Noehmi’s help, Helen travelled thousands of miles, sometimes on foot, and frequently fell behind the group. While crossing the Rio Grande in the journey’s final stretch, Helen slipped from their raft and risked drowning. Her grandmother grabbed her hand and cried, “Hang on, Helen!” When the family reached the scrubland of southern Texas, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended them and moved them through a series of detention centers. A month earlier, the Trump Administration had announced, amid public outcry over its systemic separation of migrant families at the border, that it would halt the practice. Read the rest

After K-pop group NCT 127 from Vancouver, Canada performed on KTTV-Fox 11's Good Day L.A., host Araksya Karapetyan gave one of the singers an odd compliment: "Very cool, your English is awesome. I love it." Here's the clip:“Your english is awesome , I love it” I mean he’s from Canada , what is he supposed to speak , moose? pic.twitter.com/goGiN4FDmR— leaf 🌱 (@haspuwu) October 9, 2018 Read the rest

It's taken M. Night Shyamalan close to two decades and three films to fully realize his vision of a world full of super-powered heroes and villains, but here we are! Eighteen years after Unbreakable popped and close to two after Split was released, Glass is here. Well, almost. It'll be hitting theaters on January 19th.I know that M. Night Shyamalan's plopped out a few turds over the years, but I have faith in his vision as a filmmaker and as a writer. Fingers crossed that Glass is just as good as it looks. Read the rest

On October 11, 1968, NASA launched the first Apollo crew into space. This mission, Apollo 7, opened the spaceways for the moon landing the following July. Apollo 7 had the following objectives: Demonstrate Command and Service Module (CSM) with crew performance; demonstrate mission support facilities' performance during a crewed mission and demonstrate Apollo rendezvous capability; demonstrate live TV broadcasts from space.From NASA:The Apollo 7 crew was commanded by Walter Schirra, with Command Module Pilot Donn Eisele, and Lunar Module Pilot Walter Cunningham. The mission consisted of an 11-day Earth-orbital test flight to test the Apollo command and service module. It was also the first time a crew flew on the Saturn IB rocket.Although Apollo 7 was a complete technical success, it was born out of a tragedy. After the fatal fire that took the lives of the Apollo 1 crew—Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White—the Apollo 7 crew took over the mission.Apollo 1 was supposed to be the first crewed Apollo mission. During a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy, an electrical fire broke out in the cabin. Because the cabin atmosphere was pure oxygen, the fire spread incredibly quickly. The fire also created intense pressure inside the cabin, and because the hatch could only swing inward, the crew was stuck inside.All further crewed missions had to wait until NASA could determine the sources of the mishap—technical and organizational—and ensure that nothing like it would happen again. In the 21 months between Apollo 1 and Apollo 7, the Apollo spacecraft and spacesuits were redesigned to more safely fly crews to space. Read the rest

Brennan Walker, a 14-year-old black boy, missed his school bus and tried to walk to school. Getting lost, he knocked on Jeffrey Ziegler's door to ask for directions. Ziegler, a 53-year-old white man, walked shirtless onto his porch armed with a shotgun and fired it at Walker. Though claiming the gun went off accidentally when he tripped, his own porch camera shows him calmly taking aim at the boy, who escaped unharmed. The video was released today in Ziegler's attempted murder trial. Also taking the stand Tuesday was Detective Shawn Pace, who said during his investigation, his assessment of what had allegedly happened at the Zeigler house — a home invasion attempt — changed as he watched the surveillance video.Ziegler is why black boys run. Pace is why black men kneel. Read the rest

This mysterious large object washed up last week on Seabrook Island in Charleston County, South Carolina. Apparently it has the consistency of foam and does not seem to contain any metal. The Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network posted this photo of it to their Facebook page generating many fantastic theories and a few boring ones. From UPI:Some have suggested the object resembles the shape of a damaged marine buoy like those used by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Seabrook Island officials had the object removed by a truck and trailer, but they have not commented on the identity of the unusual piece of debris. Read the rest

In a year of unprecedented involvement by women in politics, as candidates, as votes and as subjects of political debate and rancor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has an interesting proposal: women should quit social media for 10 days, right before the election.With a major election less than a month away, Nelson’s timing was particularly unfortunate for women involved in politics. Parker is a member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, a left-leaning group founded in the wake of the 2016 election to encourage LDS women to become politically involved. She is helping to organize a nonpartisan “voter prep party” in her neighborhood where women will gather to review the issues, with the goal of boosting turnout in the midterms. Her group had planned to distribute sample ballots and other mateials online before the party, but now they are handing out invitations and information by hand and hoping for the best. Tax them. Read the rest

Billy McFarland, the 26 year old con-artist who organized a disastrous Bahamas music festival in 2017 was sentenced to six years in federal prison on multiple counts of fraud. Ticket buyers who paid $12,000 had been promised a "first class" experience on a private island with yacht rides, gourmet meals, supermodels, and luxury villas but instead received school bus shuttles, cheese slices on bread, feral dogs, disaster relief tents and no musical performances.From the New York Times:Prosecutors said that the music festival, which was to have taken place in 2017, was the product of an elaborate scheme. The festival’s website identified its location as Fyre Cay, a fictional place that was described as a private island that had once belonged to the drug lord Pablo Escobar.Actually, Mr. McFarland secured some land on Great Exuma just weeks before the festival and hired workers who scrambled to prepare for the event. But as ticket holders arrived, Mr. McFarland’s plans unraveled and the festival was canceled. His celebrity business partner in Fyre Media, the rapper Ja Rule, posted on social media that he was “heartbroken” about the chaos.From late 2017 until early 2018, Mr. McFarland ran a company called NYC VIP Access that sold bogus tickets to events like the Met Gala, Coachella, Burning Man and the Super Bowl. In one case, prosecutors said, two customers flew from Florida to New York for the Grammy Awards, only to be turned away at the door.In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors called Mr. Read the rest

Well this is fun: The United States Government Accountability Office released a report today that explains, in no uncertain terms, that the majority of the nation's new-fangled, high-tech weapons systems are hilariously vulnerable to cyber attacks. From the Washington Post:The report by the Government Accountability Office concluded that many of the weapons, or the systems that control them, could be neutralized within hours. In many cases, the military teams developing or testing the systems were oblivious to the hacking.A public version of the study, published on Tuesday, deleted all names and descriptions of which systems were attacked so the report could be published without tipping off American adversaries about the vulnerabilities. Congress is receiving the classified version of the report, which specifies which among the $1.6 trillion in weapons systems that the Pentagon is acquiring from defense contractors were affected.The Government Accountability Office used a team of hackers to see what sort of shenanigans could be caused with a little bit of access and a whole lot of digital kung-fu. The results aren't a good look for America's military. In one instance, the red team that the GOA used was pitted against Pentagon personnel tasked with holding the line against cyberintrusions. The security checks that the Pentagon were easily bypassed, thanks to the use of easy-to-crack passwords and "insiders" who were familiar with the program acting as meatspace backdoors to what would normally be secure systems. It gets worse: hackers working for the GAO reported being able to watch, in real time, a system operator's every move. Read the rest

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin were forced to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan this morning during their attempted trip to the International Space Station. The duo were on board a Russian-built Soyuz rocket, launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan when, according to early reports from NASA, the rocket's booster failed minutes after liftoff. NASA reported in a tweet that the “...Soyuz capsule is returning to Earth via a ballistic descent, which is a sharper angle of landing compared to normal.” A search and rescue team was deployed to pick up the astronaut and cosmonaut from the capsule's landing site, approximately 12 miles east of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, will be conducting a formal investigation into what went wrong with their rocket. Scary shit. Read the rest

Reginald Andrade is the consumer manager of disability services at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. On September 14 he was walking across campus to work. This scared a bystander who called the police. Andrade says the police were waiting for him by the time he arrived at work.From the ACLU:But on September 14, campus police were waiting for me when I arrived at the reception desk at Whitmore. I had no idea why, but I knew it couldn’t be good. My heart started pounding.Two university detectives sat me down me in an office and closed the door. Bewildered, I asked what was happening. They refused to answer as they peppered me with questions.“What time did you wake up?” “What were you doing at the campus recreation center?” “Did you come into the building agitated?” I felt confused, powerless, and scared, but I made sure to maintain my composure. I remembered that even unarmed Black people disproportionately get killed during police encounters, and it was incumbent on me as an innocent Black man to show that I wasn’t a threat.It wasn’t until the end of their interrogation that they revealed why I was being questioned. Someone had called the university’s anonymous tip line, reporting that they had seen an “agitated Black male” who was carrying “a heavy backpack that is almost hitting the ground” as he approached the Whitmore Administration Building. I — the “agitated Black male” — apparently posed such a threat that police put the entire building on lockdown for half an hour. Read the rest

Some parts of machine learning are incredibly esoteric and hard to grasp, surprising even seasoned computer science pros; other parts of it are just the same problems that programmers have contended with since the earliest days of computation. The problem Amazon had with its machine-learning-based system for screening job applicants was the latter.Amazon understood that it had a discriminatory hiring process: the unconscious biases of its technical leads resulted in the company passing on qualified woman applicants. This isn't just unfair, it's also a major business risk, because qualified developers are the most scarce element of modern businesses.So they trained a machine-learning system to evaluate incoming resumes, hoping it would overcome the biases of the existing hiring system.Of course, they trained it with the resumes of Amazon's existing stable of successful job applicants -- that is, the predominantly male workforce that had been hired under the discriminatory system they hoped to correct.The computer science aphorism to explain this is "garbage in, garbage out," or GIGO. It is pretty self-explanatory, but just in case, GIGO is the phenomenon in which bad data put through a good system produces bad conclusions. Amazon built the system in 2014 and scrapped it in 2017, after concluding that it was unsalvagable -- sources told Reuters that it rejected applicants from all-woman colleges, and downranked resume's that included the word "women's" as in "women's chess club captain." Amazon says it never relied on the system. There is a "machine learning is hard" angle to this: while the flawed outcomes from the flawed training data was totally predictable, the system's self-generated discriminatory criteria were surprising and unpredictable. Read the rest

A man in Peru was recently using Google maps to figure out how to get to a bridge in Lima. He moved the camera around the city's streets, when suddenly he noticed a woman sitting on a bench who reminded him of his wife. She even wore the same type of clothes – white open blouse, jeans, black boots with heels. He then zoomed in, and lo and behold, it WAS his wife, with a man's head on her lap. He confronted her, and yes, it was what it looked like – she had been having an affair with the man. The couple is now divorced. Ironically, Google had taken the photo of the woman and her fellow on the Bridge of Sighs.Via TechSpot Image: Google Maps Read the rest

Joshua Browder launched DoNotPay when he started his computer science degree at Stanford; at first the app automated the process of fighting traffic tickets, then it expanded to helping homeless people claim benefits, then he automated suing Equifax for leaking all your financial data, then navigating the airlines' deliberately confusing process for getting refunds on plane tickets whose prices drop after you buy them.The latest iteration of DoNotPay includes pushbutton lawsuits in small claims court: it uses IBM Watson to automatically format lawsuits claiming up to $25,000 in damages, based on a quick series of simple questions. The idea is to give equal justice to individuals who have been wronged by big corporations whose legal muscle makes them too intimidating to sue through regular channels. The app also creates a script for you to read aloud in court.Browder -- now 21 -- accepts donations and has received $1.1m in seed funding; he's contemplating charging down the line for more customized legal advice and services. His Equifax-suing tool racked up multiple victories for victims of Equifax's negligence, even when Equifax sent corporate attorneys to fight the suits.The app works by having a bot ask the user a few basic questions about their legal issue. The bot then uses the answers to classify the case into one of 15 different legal areas, such as breach of contract or negligence. After that, Do Not Pay draws up documents specific to that legal area, and fills in the specific details. Read the rest

Japanese artist Miyu Kojima's dayjob is cleaning up apartments whose occupants have died "lonely deaths" (kodokushi/孤独死), where someone socially isolated declines unnoticed for months or years; the scenes of their death are both sad and grisly, as often they lie dead behind closed doors for a long time before they are missed.As a kind of therapy, Kojima sculpts incredibly intricate miniature dioramas of the apartments she cleans, working from the photos she takes to provide documentation to the relatives of the deceased. She works from a mix of off-the-shelf dollhouse miniatures and items she sculpts herself, spending a month on each room she recreates.Kojima's estranged father died a "lonely death." Her visits with him while he was in his final coma made her regret the estrangement; the sculptures she creates are meant to serve both as a kind of public service warning to others and partly as her own attempt to reconcile her emotions.Kojima originally started working for the clean-up company after her father experienced a similar fate. When she was in high school her parents separated and her father was living alone. One day her mother went to visit him to discuss divorce proceedings when she discovered him collapsed after suffering a heart attack. He was rushed to the hospital and was sustained, but drifted into a coma. While unconscious, the doctors told Kojima that there was a good chance her father could hear her. And so, together with her mother, they spoke to him. The father never awoke from his coma but before passing away, tears rolled down his face. Read the rest

When Obamacare came into effect, Notre Dame and other religious institutions forced the administration into a baroque arrangement whereby the US government would insure birth control prescriptions for women otherwise covered by the institution, so that the institution could hew to a religious doctrine that abhors the idea of women controlling their own fertility.The arrangement was semi-stable, barring some wobbles when Trump began to erode the Affordable Care Act, but then Notre Dame -- and 73 other institutions -- secretly entered into an arrangement with Notre Dame to deny women coverage for their birth control.Notre Dame pitches itself to students and faculty as an "inclusive" institution and many women who attend and work there made that choice on the basis of their understanding that their health and fertility would not be trumped by religious bigotry and superstition.They were wrong.Michelle Banker, a lawyer with the National Women’s Law Center, said a clue was found in Jenkins’s February statement. In announcing the change, Jenkins mentioned in passing that the university’s long-standing legal challenge to the mandate had been “settled favorably.” Considering that the Trump rules had been blocked and negotiations over a new workaround had broken down, Banker wanted to know exactly what that meant. The NWLC filed a Freedom of Information Act request and received a copy of a 10-page settlement between several federal agencies and 74 religiously affiliated institutions, negotiated by the Department of Justice and signed on October 13, 2017.The settlement adopted language from the Trump rules — claiming that the contraceptive mandate impinged on the organizations’ religious freedoms and promising that they would never have to comply with it, at present or in the future. Read the rest

Amnesty International's new report on family separations reveals that the Trump administration stole at least 4,000 more children from their parents than the previous total of 2,500-3,000.The exact total can't be calculated because Customs and Border Protection is stonewalling on its official statistics, but we know that CBP separated about 8,000 "family units" (CBP won't say how many of those "family units" include children, but they say that Amnesty's report is "deeply flawed" -- though they will not provide any clarification).The Amnesty report describes an orchestrated campaign by the administration to seek “the full dismantling of the U.S. asylum system”: discouraging asylum-seekers with the threat of family separation, detaining asylum-seekers while their claims are heard in substandard conditions where they are incentivized to give up and agree to leave – and seeking to rewrite longstanding policy to make it harder for people to request asylum directly at the border.“These are not isolated aberrations. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has implemented these interrelated policies in unison,” the report says. “The Trump administration is waging a deliberate campaign of human rights violations against asylum-seekers, in order to broadcast globally that the United States no longer welcomes refugees.”The report also provides new firsthand accounts of how U.S. border officials have prevented asylum-seekers from crossing legally at ports of entry in order to make their claims, forcing them back into dangerous cities in Mexico. Mexican immigration officials described how the U.S. has enlisted Mexican authorities in that effort — encouraging them to check the status, detain, and possibly deport asylum-seekers that the Border Patrol had turned away from U.S. Read the rest

Michael Avenatti, lawyer for Stormy Daniels and Julie Swetnick, one of the three Brett Kavanaugh sexual assault accusers, predicts with his usual confidence that Donny Trump Jr. will be indicted by the end of the year."Donald Trump Jr. will be indicted before his birthday on 12-31-18. If you doubt my prediction, please check my record over the last 7 months. #Winning"Donald Trump Jr. will be indicted before his birthday on 12-31-18. If you doubt my prediction, please check my record over the last 7 months. #Winning— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) October 11, 2018Of course, if Avenatti's prediction comes true, in the end it won't matter much. Papa Trump will fix it and make it all better for his mini-me. Image: by Luke Harold/Flickr Read the rest

Gone, obviously. Tom Scocca:Using our advanced technology, it is possible to look up the beaches in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Sea Level Rise Viewer, and to imagine what will happen if we visit them, or try to visit them, in the future—when the sea levels have risen three feet, or six feet, or more, if you want. You can use your pocket phone-computer to watch them move ahead through time below. Read the rest

If you're worried that your Airbnb host has hidden a camera in the place you've rented, because that is a thing that garbage people do, you can use these handy tips to spot it.Mostly they boil down to "look hard" but the top tip is to turn off the lights and use a flashlight to spot glimmering lenses.If you are really hell bent on preventing hidden devices from invading your privacy, you can invest in a hidden device detector. Cameras that use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to send or receive data will emit an RF signal. You can purchase an RF signal detector to pick up those signals and then locate a hidden camera. This RF signal detector, for instance, costs about $25 on Amazon and has five modes to help locate hidden surveillance devices: Laser detection, vibration (mute) detection, beep detection, LED display detection, and headset mode.You can buy other detectors for anywhere between $20 and upwards of $300. It just depends on the features and quality you’re looking for in a device scanner. No RF device is going to find hidden cameras 100 percent of the time though. If a camera is recording but not sending the data out, an RF detector will not pick up on the camera.You can also install certain apps on your phone that can scan for hidden cameras. These apps, like Hidden Camera Detector, may not be as accurate as an RF scanner, but for under $5 you can give them a try. Read the rest

I'm a sucker for a good horror movie, and even this trailer gives me goosebumps. This remake of Stephen King's Pet Sematary comes out in April 2019. From Esquire:The concept was so spooky King himself hesitated to publish his book in the first place. “I found the result so startling and gruesome that I put the book in a drawer, thinking it would never be published. Not in my lifetime, anyway.” he wrote in a 2000 introduction for the paperback, according to Entertainment Weekly.“I’m particularly uneasy about the book’s most resonant line… ‘Sometimes, dead is better,’” King wrote. “I hope with all my heart that that is not true, but in the nightmarish context of Pet Sematary, it seems to be. And it may be okay. Perhaps ‘sometimes dead is better’ is grief’s last lesson.” Read the rest

Although properly breaking open eggs isn't as hard as they show in the video, people with certain disabilities might find value in The Q's "DIY Simple Egg Opener" (or this one which is already on the market). This amazing kitchen gadget allows you to open any chicken egg in seconds! No more eggshell in your dish!All you need are plywood, popsicle sticks, 3 springs and small piece of sponge! Don't wait, build your own egg opener and make your morning easier :)(The Awesomer) Read the rest

Jennifer Howard, a professional writer and editor, found herself unable to re-read a Hermann Hesse novel she loved: the "grafted, spasmodic, online style" of reading has forced itself onto all of her reading, making immersion difficult and the text unsatisfying. So she knuckled down to review Maryanne Wolf's Reader, Come Home, a book about what's happening to our "reading brains."...the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day” — some 100,000 words’ worth of information. “Neither deep reading nor deep thinking can be enhanced by the aptly named ‘chopblock’ of time we are all experiencing, or by 34 gigabytes of anything per day,” Wolf arguesAnd...Even as it keeps one eye on the future, “Reader, Come Home” embodies some old-fashioned reading pleasures, with quotes from Italo Calvino, John Dunne, Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Elie Wiesel and other illustrious word-workers. It unfolds as a series of letters addressed to “Dear Reader” from “Your Author,” a call to remember that books come alive as exchanges between writers and readers.That structure can make “Reader, Come Home” feel — in a corny but charming way — like a throwback to an era already gone, if it ever existed. Wolf offers a persuasive catalog of the cognitive and social good created by deep reading, but does not really acknowledge that the ability to read well has never been universal.Make reading great again.Photo: Johnnydeezwax, CC-BY-SA Read the rest

Sandsifter throws random machine code instructions at microprocessors, just to see what happens. The sandsifter audits x86 processors for hidden instructions and hardware bugs, by systematically generating machine code to search through a processor's instruction set, and monitoring execution for anomalies. Sandsifter has uncovered secret processor instructions from every major vendor; ubiquitous software bugs in disassemblers, assemblers, and emulators; flaws in enterprise hypervisors; and both benign and security-critical hardware bugs in x86 chips.With the multitude of x86 processors in existence, the goal of the tool is to enable users to check their own systems for hidden instructions and bugs.I demand to see this scene in technothrillers pronto. Read the rest

Some strange things happened to papa-to-be Todd Cameron and his pregnant partner during their maternity photo shoot. It started off harmless enough, a nice couple in a field of pumpkins showing off that baby bump. But then it got weird... fast: Looks like "baby" isn't going to wait for the delivery roomOh dearBaby come back...!This wasn't the end. See what happens next by checking out their Facebook photo album with all the photos from the shoot. photos by Li Carter, used with permission Read the rest

What's got 100 BPM and can save lives? All the songs on New York Presbyterian Hospital's "Songs to do CPR to," of course.Their fact sheet explains how music can save lives: Song examples include “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, “Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z, “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira” or “Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash. People feel more confident performing Hands-Only CPR and are more likely to remember the correct rate when trained to the beat of a familiar song.When performing CPR, you should push on the chest at a rate of 100 to 120 compressions per minute, which corresponds to the beat of the song examples above.The most apropos song on the list? Probably The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive":(Kottke, @juliareinstein)photo by No Barriers USA Read the rest

Police in the small English town of Burnham publicized bodycam video of an arrest they made earlier this year. Owen Pellow, 42, had called emergency services to report that his ex-partner, Lisa Marie Thornton, hurt herself. But they knew from Pellow's weird, shocked demeanor that he had hurt her and arrested him immediately. It's very creepy and unsettling. I can't quite place why it doesn't trigger apprehensions of intoxication, grief and other things you'd normally presume and I figure that's why it's so disturbing. A human wall of fear, regret, evasion and subsided rage that announces what happened as soon as the door opens.As PC Ryan Dinham informed Pellow that he was arresting him, Pellow repeatedly asked: 'Can we save her life, can we save her life, can we save her life?'He asked the officer: 'Is she still alive, can we go up? It is not good.'And PC Dinham replied: 'It is not good, mate.'Thorton died from 39 stab wounds. Pellow was convicted of murder in May. Read the rest

Burning Man has announced its theme for the 2019 event in the Black Rock Desert: Metamorphoses:Burning Man is routinely described as transformative. At the personal level, a transformative experience. At the group level, a transformative event or culture. What does that really mean?From “It changed my life” to “it’s changing the world,” Burning Man is a million stories, and the through-line across them all is change. Mutability. A tempering or annealing, like metal in a forge or glass in a kiln. Shedding the dross, revealing the true nature within. A crucible of souls...This year’s theme is a celebration of change, and an exploration of uncertainty. As such it invites a consideration of time; not its circular nature, or its attendant ritual, but in this case the relentless flight of time’s arrow, and an embrace of the elusive now. Memory is fickle, and the future is uncertain. None of us knows what they will become, but we can seek to understand where we are at this point in our transformative trajectory, this fleeting chord on the strings of existence.Transformation happens whether we believe in it or not; but if we have learned anything in our Burning Man experience it is that we do have a say in our own futures, that agency is ours if we choose to pursue it. While we may never know the ultimate outcome, there is a shared belief that our dreams matter, and that together and as individuals we have the power to shape our own stories and transform ourselves in positive ways. Read the rest

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered an operation to lure Washington Post contributing journalist Jamal Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia where he was to be detained, U.S. intercepts show. The whole torture, dismemberment, and death inside the Saudi embassy thing that apparently happened was a rendition gone bad, according to this report.From Shane Harris at the Washington Post, whose reporting is based on descriptions of U.S. intelligence intercepts of Saudi officials discussing the plan:The intelligence pointing to a plan to detain Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia has fueled speculation by officials and analysts in multiple countries that what transpired at the consulate was a backup plan to capture Khashoggi that may have gone wrong.A former U.S. intelligence official — who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter — noted that the details of the operation, which involved sending two teams totaling 15 men, in two private aircraft arriving and departing Turkey at different times, bore the hallmarks of a “rendition,” in which someone is extralegally removed from one country and deposited for interrogation in another.But Turkish officials have concluded that whatever the intent of the operation, Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate. Investigators have not found his body, but Turkish officials have released video surveillance footage of Khashoggi entering the consulate on the afternoon of Oct. 2. There is no footage that shows him leaving, they said.The intelligence about Saudi Arabia’s earlier plans to detain Khashoggi have raised questions about whether the Trump administration should have warned the journalist that he might be in danger. Read the rest

You will definitely want to unmute this one. And be prepared to freak out your dogs.“I’m getting bigger and finding my voice,” says @penelopefauxfrenchie. She's a French Bulldog, or a Frenchie. OK, sound on! Listen: View this post on Instagram I’m getting bigger and finding my voice. . . . . . . . #dogsofinstagram #fauxfrenchie #frechie #puppy #frenchbulldog #frenchie #frenchbullies #frenchbulldogpuppy #frenchiefan #frenchiesofinstagram #frenchton #frenchtonsofinstagram #frenchtonpuppy #puppiesofinstagram #puppies @frenchie.fans @frenchie_bulldog @frenchie.world @frenchbulldog.love #french_bulldogs #frenchievids @frenchievids @frenchietalk @thedodo #thedodoA post shared by Penelope Faux Frenchie (@penelopefauxfrenchie) on Sep 27, 2018 at 10:58am PDT Her humans are the Neistadt family of Pendleton, OR. View this post on Instagram SOUND ON! I met my forever Mommy last week and I tried to tell her all about my first three weeks. . . . . . . #dogsofinstagram #fauxfrenchie #frechie #puppy #frenchbulldog #frenchie #frenchbullies #frenchbulldogpuppy #frenchiefan #frenchiesofinstagram #frenchton #frenchtonsofinstagram #frenchtonpuppy #puppiesofinstagram #puppies @frenchie.fans @frenchie_bulldog @frenchie.world @frenchbulldog.love #french_bulldogs #frenchieweekend #easternoregon #oregon #dogsoforegon #puppiesoforegon #traveldog #dogtravelA post shared by Penelope Faux Frenchie (@penelopefauxfrenchie) on Sep 30, 2018 at 2:54pm PDT Below, a video of Penelope's first three weeks. View this post on Instagram Good Morning! I hope everyone has a great weekend. I know I will. I have 27 naps scheduled. . . . . #dogsofinstagram #fauxfrenchie #frechie #puppy #frenchbulldog #frenchie #frenchbullies #frenchbulldogpuppy #frenchiefan #frenchiesofinstagram #frenchton #frenchtonsofinstagram #frenchtonpuppy #puppiesofinstagram #puppies @frenchie.fans @frenchie_bulldog @frenchie.world @frenchbulldog.love #french_bulldogs #frenchieweekend #puppiesA post shared by Penelope Faux Frenchie (@penelopefauxfrenchie) on Oct 6, 2018 at 8:41am PDT View this post on Instagram Coming at the weekend like...I need a nap. Read the rest

Do not judge me when I am feeling the music.all the drugs[via, no identities or photographer credit provided] Read the rest

I maintain emergency kits for my home and jeep. There are a number of bug out essentials in the pack I carry with me anytime I leave the RV. I've written a lot about emergency preparedness gear for several outlets over the years. Keeping folks safe during an emergency was a big part of my old life. Despite all of this, I have a hell of a time finding a flashlight that doesn't cost a mint that I feel comfortable recommending to folks for their emergency preparedness kits. I hate hand-cranked flashlights, despite loving the idea of objects capable of providing their own power. Not a single hand-cranked torch that I've tested over the years has lasted me more than a few hours of use before showing signs of impending mechanical failure. In an emergency, solar powered gear is great to have... provided there's enough light to provide an adequate charge to the battery that you've got connected to your panels. Depending on where you live or what sort of disaster has knocked out your home's lights (there's not a of a lot of sunlight during a hurricane), it might not be a great solution for many people. Happily, it looks like Panasonic has developed a flashlight for their Japanese customers that can use damn near any battery you might run across during an emergency. Panasonic's Any-Battery LED Flashlight BF-BM10-W, as its name suggests, can make use of any number of different batteries to provide you and your family with enough illumination stay safe and provide some much-needed comfort during an emergency where the power grid goes down. Read the rest

Last month, the Canadian Armed Forces announced its strict but reasonable policy surrounding the use of cannabis by service personnel. With Canada's decriminalization of cannabis nearly upon us, a lot of companies and organizations that deal with dangerous tasks or complicated hardware are following suit. Earlier this week, one of Canada's most popular air carriers, WestJet released its policy for when their employees will be allowed to use cannabis. The short version of the rules: If you're a WestJet employee doing anything other than riding a phone for the company's customer service line or working at an airport check-in counter, chances are that you won't be allowed near the stuff.From the CBC:Spokesperson Morgan Bell said employees were notified of the changes on Tuesday morning.She said cannabis is being treated differently than alcohol, which is banned for certain staff members within 12 hours of coming on duty.Bell said WestJet's list of affected positions would be similar to Air Canada's, which includes flight and cabin crew members, flight dispatchers, aircraft maintenance engineers and station attendants.The new WestJet policy also includes a prohibition on possession or distribution of cannabis on company property while on duty or attending a company social function. Air Canada, Canada's flag carrier, has pretty much the same policy on dope, which makes me happy. In almost all instances, 12 hours is long enough for the blood alcohol level of most drinkers to dip back down to safe levels. Despite all the criminal bullshit that we've laden cannabis down with over the years, we still know comparatively little about what it does to a user's reflexes or how long it may continue to have an effect on judgement. Read the rest

The world has long celebrated the "critical hit" D20 face, the elusive 20 that doubles the damage and sets the players around the table baying with elation; but consider its opposite face, the lowly 1, the "critical failure" that lets a sadistic DM dream up all kinds of pratfalls and own-goals to punish the luckless player with.Consider no more: Los Angeles's Mars Dice sells 25mm Critical Failure dice in silver and gold.(via Geeks Are Sexy) Read the rest

President Donald Trump wrote an op-ed for USA Today about healthcare, attacking Democrats and touting his own vague plans. At the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler points out that most of it is misleading and false, going through each and every sentence.Here, omitting not just outright lies but sentences that mix fact and falsehood, I present the entirety of Trump's 820-word column that remains truthful.As a candidate, I promised that we would protect coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions and create new health care insurance options that would lower premiums.123 Democrats in the House of Representatives — 64 percent of House Democrats — as well as 15 Democrats in the Senate have already formally co-sponsored [Democratic] legislation.The truth is that the centrist Democratic Party is dead. Read the rest

The EU's catastrophic new Copyright Directive is steamrollering towards completion, and that should worry every internet user, not just those in the EU.Article 13 of the Copyright Directive requires online services to crowdsource a database of "copyrighted works" (anyone can add anything to these databases, with no penalties for falsely claiming copyright over public domain works, or works that don't belong to you).If a user tries to post something that appears to match an item in the blacklist database, the service has to censor that user's post.The problem is that the online platforms don't have "European services" and "non-European services," they just have services, and users from the EU and outside of the EU freely mix there, posting material and commenting on it. So if you're Twitter and one of your US users posts something that has to be censored in Europe, you can either censor that just for EU users, or for the whole world. If you do decide to just censor the post in the EU, then you have users in (say) Canada replying to that US post, and now you're showing your EU users the replies to the post, but not the post itself. Indeed, you might get Europeans posting things that can't be displayed in Europe, but which the rest of the world is allowed to see -- do you censor those posts in the EU (including from the people who made them) or in the whole world?To make this all the scarier, the EU rules provide for massive damages if a platform lets a copyrighted work slip through the cracks -- so in the event that a platform isn't sure if a work is going to be shown to a European user, they'd be nuts to take a chance on it. Read the rest

IT'S PERFECT.Full image below, click for large size. Christine McConnell wins cake porn internet with this incredible creation: A Freddie Mercury chocolate cake, to honor the singer of 'Queen'.Here's Christine on Reddit.Via REDDIT/IMGUR. Read the rest