Birgit Schlosser specializes in spare, clean architecture photography, and that aesthetic is also in play in Volcanic Dreamscapes, a new series of works depicting the beauty of sparse volcanic ecosystems. (more…)

BBC got to be the first to tour Intel Studios, a state of the art greenscreen facility, with no suits, no motion capture, just a live performance captured in a green dome by hundreds of cameras. (more…)

I'm not sure how long this will last, but Andrew "bunnie" Huang's 2017 book, The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware is just $3.74 in the hardcover edition on Amazon with free Prime shipping. Huang famously hacked the Xbox in 2002 and Microsoft got really mad at him. In this book, Huang writes about all of his adventures as a hardware hacker, including interviews and essays about his work in Shenzhen, China.Background image: spainter_vfx/Shutterstock

Before Fallout 76 was a twinkle in Bethesda's eye, there were rumors of another Fallout MMO being whispered by gamers. Interplay, the company responsible for the now classic titles, Fallout and Fallout 2, had plans for a title called Project V13 – an installment in the Fallout franchise that would allow players to work together, online, to solve puzzles, finish quests and overcome overwhelming odds in the game’s post-apocalyptic universe. Other than some concept art (which later was used by modders to create some fabulous weapons and armor for Fallout 4), Project V13 never saw the light of day. Mostly.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mezOVvZxp7oFor a brief, shining moment (37 seconds, to be exact) there was hope. Project 13 was teased as Fallout Online. They even made a trailer announcing a beta for it.From The Verge:

This week, I sat down for an hour-long interview with the Yale Privacy Lab's Sean O'Brien (MP3); Sean is a frequent Boing Boing contributor and I was honored that he invited me to be his guest on the very first episode of the Lab's new podcast. (more…)

With a great guitar riff and a video as stylized as it is violent, "Corporation" will leave you guessing right up to the last funky chord. (more…)

Rex worked hard for this field. He was still making payments. To find lions laying there, rent-free, in his paddock? That simply would not do. A dressing down was in order.

A presentation today at Defcon from Drexel computer science prof Rachel Greenstadt and GWU computer sicence prof Aylin Caliskan builds on the pair's earlier work in identifying the authors of software and shows that they can, with a high degree of accuracy, identify the anonymous author of software, whether in source-code or binary form. (more…)

As one of the most important words in any language, having a baby utter "taco" as their first word is a massive parental victory.

The parade of evictions and rent hikes in Burbank's lovely, independent-dominated Magnolia Park retail district is up for debate: the Save Magnolia Park coalition is having a public meeting on Aug 13th at Geeky Tees (2120 W Magnolia Blvd) at 7PM (alas, I'll be in Edinburgh, but I'm there in spirit!).

The Trump administration's plan to bring back asbestos is right in line with Trumpist ideology that any science that interferes with profits is a hoax (Trump claims that the asbestos-cancer link is a conspiracy to help the mafia make money on asbestos removal contracts), and the fact that the leading Russian asbestos company (which has ties to Putin) put Trump's face on their packaging is just an extra too-shitty-to-be-true detail for all of us to ponder as we die of mesothelioma in a few years. (more…)

Matt "Metafilter" Haughey got a postcard from his home state of Oregon informing him that he'd been purged from his voter roll because his signature has drifted too much since he first signed up to vote, 15 years ago. He has to go through a bureaucratic process to re-register to vote. (more…)

Late last month, the Boston Globe published a blockbuster scoop revealing the existence of "Quiet Skies," a secret TSA program that sent Air Marshals out to shadow travelers who were not on any watchlist and had committed to crime, on flimsy pretenses like "This person once visited Turkey." (more…)

For years, the big social media platforms have used their market dominance to decide who could speak and on what terms: they forced drag queens and trans people to use their "real" names; kicked Black Lives Matter activists off their platforms; and allowed autocratic rulers to force opposition activists to expose themselves to arrest and torture as a condition of using their platforms. (more…)

Gotta give credit where credit is due, this beard trimmer gets the job done. (more…)

Marine Imaging Technologies CEO Evan Kovacs tested out his new HYDRUS camera in low-light conditions in the Cayman Islands. (more…)

YouTuber TriKdanG makes many cool kinds of unusual paper aircraft that really fly, like this Star Wars TIE fighter-inspired beauty. (more…)

Rolls Royce and Harvard University are exploring how tiny swarm robots could someday crawl through an airplane engine for mechanical check-ups and maintenance.

Many of today's "red" states have historically had strong trade union movements -- think of Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin -- but after Citizens United opened the floodgates to dark money from the super-rich in state politics, the states saw their legislatures fill up with ideologue Republicans who passed anti-union laws designed to weaken labor and allow employers to pay their workers less, cut their benefits, fire them more easily, and subject them to less safe, less dignified working conditions. (more…)

From Gareth Smit's article in The New Yorker:

On the @movie_goofs Twitter account, a fellow named Sean posts brilliantly funny "movie goofs" that aren't actually goofs. And for additional fun, see the responses from folks who don't seem to get that Sean is just kidding.

Ingrid Burrington (previously) takes viewers on a guided tour of New York City's current surveillance matrix, from license plate readers and shotspotters to the Domain Awareness System. (more…)

By creating a surfactant that holds water in place, scientists are able to produce repeatable liquid 3D shapes in these nanoparticle "supersoaps" with modded off-the-shelf 3D printers. (more…)

Amateur fossil hunter Phil Mullaly was exploring Jan Juc in south Australia's Victoria's Surf Coast when he noticed a shark's tooth poking out of a boulder on the beach. According to paleontologists at Museums Victoria, that tooth and two others found are 25-million-years-old and came from a Great Jagged Narrow-Toothed Shark (Carcharocles angustidens), a species that could be as much as 30 feet long. From CNN:

Hong Kong's famed neons signs are slowly fading, replaced by other kinds of signage. Hong Kong Instgrammer Edward KB leads this whirlwind neon tour of some of the best remaining spots. (more…)

Mudslides cascading down from the steep Swiss mountains are common enough that locals knew to come out and watch them, but even jaded locals were surprised by the intensity of slides so big they didn't fit under the bridges. (more…)

You might be used to rolling your own smokes, but let's face it: it's not the cleanest or most eco-friendly way to enjoy your habit. Instead of fussing with papers, the Twisty Glass Blunt makes having a smoke as easy as packing your herb, twisting, and lighting up. You can get your own in the Boing Boing Store for $44.99 today.https://www.youtube.com/embed/pU6_F4gwCOcUsing this innovative blunt, you simply pack up to 2 grams of tobacco into the tube, twist the screw, and light the end. You'll get a 30% cooler hit thanks to the blunt's cool pull technology, which cools down the smoke as it travels through the corkscrew-like path, and cleaning is as simple as twisting the screw out and dumping the ashes.Enjoy a cleaner, eco-friendlier smoking experience with The Twisty Glass Blunt. It's available in the Boing Boing Store today for $44.99. Please note: it's intended for tobacco use only, and customers must be 21+ to order.

In a recent Rolling Stone interview, DEVO's Mark Mothersbaugh talks about the second time he and the band met The Rolling Stones:

This making-of documentary not only shows how much preparation goes into a YouTube-friendly high-octane stunt, but it's also an interesting explanation of why BASE jumper Sean Chuma goes to such great lengths. (more…)

On Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld drives famous comedians to various eateries to interview them over coffee. Now he's leaving humorous reviews about the restaurants he's visited on his show, reports Uproxx.

https://youtu.be/y_8q-K99RPMDogEden (DogeDen, surely?) is a doghouse designed to be mostly buried, with a tiny entrance above ground and a cavernous space beneath grade level. That way, the temperature is kept cooler in summer and warmer in winter, ensuring doge a more comfortable snooze. And when the fascist death squads come for you, they'll be a great place to hide the children!

The Nick Hotel was Nickelodeon's failed attempt to license their brand as a resort hotel focused on fans of their shows. Defunctland does a detailed autopsy. (more…)

Universal quantum computers have the potential for exponentially faster processing speeds. Seeker looks at where things stand in the race to build the first one. (more…)

Juan Carlos Bustamente, 62, is a Chilean political consultant living in Rome. On a recent trip to Venice he sat down at Caffe Lavena in the popular tourist area called St. Mark's Square and ordered two bottles of water and two espressos. The bill was €43 (about $50). He thought it was ridiculous and he posted the receipt to Facebook.Other people commented about being overcharged at Caffe Lavena. Then they headed over to TripAdvisor and left a lot of 1-star reviews, like this one from Jacob U of Orinda, CAe:

David Cerny (previously) created this wonderful kinetic sculpture of Prague's own Franz Kafka. (more…)

Jeffrey and Tracy Katz own a $25 million house in Laguna Beach, CA. The house is very close to the pounding surf of Victoria Beach, closer and lower than the neighboring houses. So they built a sea wall to prevent erosion of their house's foundation. Coastal officials ordered the Katz's to take the wall down because it degrades the quality of the public beach in front of it, and, as the LA Times reports, "Sea walls can obstruct the natural flow and replenishment of sand, leading to smaller and smaller beaches until the sand disappears altogether." The Katzes and the officials went to court and the Katzes were fined $1 million and ordered to take down the wall within 60 days. The Katzes are fighting the ruling, saying that orders to remove the wall are reducing the value of the home and the ability to rent it for $70,000 a month.Image: Patrick Pelster/Wikipedia. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license.

Florian Kohler (previously), aka Venom Trickshots, teamed up with bowling trick shot master Jason Belmonte for some pretty astonishing billiards-bowling hybrid tricks. (more…)

If Gas Station Encounters had been around in the 1980s, it would have run on Night Flight. This YouTube channel has an endless supply of videos depicting dumb stick-up men, con artists, bad drivers, and weird people. In the video above we see a small time grifter pulling a short change con on a cashier. The video includes narration by another cashier explaining how to spot this trick for the benefiy of those who share his profession. And below are a couple of videos showing people who used gas station dumpsters to dispose their garbage, only to have it returned to their driveway by a gas station employee:https://youtu.be/9EdGtYNYB80https://youtu.be/wZINq0Vc4xgThere are even videos of good samaritans, like this one where a guy parks his pickup truck in the parking lot and walks into the gas station store, failing to notice that his truck was rolling away. Another man standing in the parking lot made a heroic last minute save:https://youtu.be/RmeW-B2Gf-0

Thanks to climate change, folks living in regions that were once tick-free zones have had to begin getting used to the blood-thirsty little bastards. Just as these unfortunate souls were getting used to this new reality, it seems that the bugs, which up until now have been happy working solo, are ganging up for all new levels of blood-draining terror. According to Ars Technica, a species of tick that’s been a massive pain in the ass in Asia has made its way to North America. Currently doing its thing on the United States' eastern seaboard, the Asian Longhorned Tick travels in swarms and has the potential to spread all sorts of ugly diseases to livestock, pets and humans alike.From Ars Technica:

I upgraded to a 13” 2015 MacBook Pro with Retina display after a two-week working vacation in Costa Rica. The extreme heat laid on me during my time there was enough to fry the 11” MacBook Air that I’d brought with me in a way that made it all but impossible to use. There was just one problem: All of the accessories I had for my old MacBook Air were too small to use with my new MacBook. I had to invest in something new. The first item on my list: a classy-looking case for my stupid expensive new laptop. It would need to be able to protect my computer while I was out doing inadvisable things. It would also need to look good for the times when I pretend I'm a professional, attending meetings or press junkets. After shopping around online, I discovered Picaso Lab’s Classic Brown Leather MacBook sleeve. Three years in, I feel like it's one of the smartest investments that I’ve ever made.The sleeve is made from lined Napa leather which, on the outside, has a bit of a texture to it. This makes it easy to grip the sleeve. The texture is slight enough that the pebbling doesn't screw with the sleeve's clean lines. The leather is tough, but supple. When my laptop’s not in the sleeve, the leather can be bent, this way and that, despite being pretty thick. I’m betting that this is one of the reasons that the sleeve still looks so good after riding around in my backpack or the back of our Jeep for the past three years. The sleeve’s stitching still looks just as handsome as the day that I got the sleeve in the mail. One of the things that I really love about this case was that I was able to have it personalized, with a bit of engraving. “Now, I want you to go in that bag and find my laptop.”“Which one is it?”“It’s the one that says...”I half expected to get an email from Picaso Lab saying that they wouldn’t engrave it for me. Nope. In the time since I bought this sleeve, it looks like the company has added a number of new products to its lineup. If they’re anywhere as well made as my laptop sleeve is, then they’re worth every stinking penny being asked for them.Images via Seamus Bellamy

"Can't take the insanity anymore?" asks the official trailer for Michael Moore's newest feature-length documentary Fahrenheit 11/9.

Stepping into a wardrobe was the way to get into Narnia. Stepping into the blue portable toilet (in a row of green ones) was the way get into a hidden rave at UK's Eastern Electrics Festival. Are they implying the DJ's shitty? https://twitter.com/persandwichman/status/1026032955167334400And, this isn't the first time this has been done. A music festival in Hungary did this last year:https://youtu.be/xiqJzWhwaW8

Of all the service industries, tattooing naturally seems like a good one for crazy client stories, but some of these doozies would make even the most jaded inkslinger raise their eyebrows. (more…)

Alas, here is the trailer for Michael Moore's new anti-Trump documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9, a title that references the day that Trump won the electoral vote (and, of course, a play on the title of his other documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11). Fahrenheit 11/9 will be released September 21.

I have had one of these rolling boxes ever since I was a teen.I do not know why I can not roll a joint. It isn't for a lack of trying, or practice. I just can not do it. I can however reliably pop a joint out of this rolling box. After 20 years or so my last one just died of a broken belt. If this $6.15 box lasts 1/2 as long, I'll be thrilled.Any brand rolling paper will work.1 X 70mm Metal Cigarette Roller & Storage Box via Amazon

A new study revealed that monthly page visits to the user-hostile social media site Facebook have dropped from 8.5 billion to 4.7 billion since 2016.From CNBC:

Brandon Li captures the dazzling excitement and beauty of Seoul and its environs in seven minutes. The transitions and camera work are stunning. He shot two terabytes of data and spent three months, off and on, editing it.He also made a director's commentary version of the video, which you can see here:https://youtu.be/S9kLihqA7jA

A fire that broke out at a plastic tray factory in Derbyshire, England caused a spectacular fire tornado to form. Also known as a fire whirl or firenado, the rare spectacle could be seen from 25 miles away and took 12 hours to put out. No one was injured.Via The Independent:

The Air Carrier Access Act, written back in 1986, was kind of lazy in how it defined ‘what a service animals is, to the point where almost anything goes. As such, there’s been a whole lot of folks of late bringing their animals on board of airplanes claiming that they’re emotional support animals. This peacock is an example of that sort of thing. Maybe some help calm their owners on what would be a harrowing in-air experience, without them. But for individuals with verifiable medical conditions who have been given specially-trained psychiatric service animals to help them better navigate their lives, it’s a serious pain in the ass. With travelers and airlines alike getting tired of people attempting to bring their ‘comfort’ and ‘support’ animals on flights with them, the idea of bringing along an animal for legitimate medical reasons, even one that comes with documentation from a doctor or mental health professional, can cause a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety. That’s not OK. It’s a problem that can be especially prevalent with veterans afflicted with PTSD. Many rely on their service dogs to ground them during a flashback, make them feel like someone is watching their back in public places or wake them from reoccurring nightmares. It's not the sort of tool that you want to leave at home when you travel.Thanks to a pair of new registries currently in development, the epidemic of false service animals that’s cropped up in the news of late could come to an end while, at the same time, helping those with a legitimate medical need to have their prescribed pooches with them on a flight do so, with less hassle. From NPR:

Elia Saikaly decided to film Mount Everest at night: "While most climbers slept, I attempted to capture some of the magic that the Himalayan skies have to offer while climbing to the top of the world." (more…)