Thursday 31 January 2019
Beatings—er, bonuses will continue at Palantir until morale improves
Morale is so bad at Palantir, they're slashing their stock price. In addition to cheaper stock options, the data-mining company is also handing out more internal bonuses, after a succession of shareholder writedowns and political controversies tied to company co-founder and Gawker sue-er Peter Thiel.
Lizette Chapman at Bloomberg reports that in 2015, Palantir’s private stock value plateaued, and by now, it has dropped to less than half the $20 billion valuation bestowed by Peter Thiel and other investors.
Excerpt:
So, in recent months, the data-analysis company took the unusual step of slashing the price of employee stock options to about $6 a share, which would value the business at about $11 billion, said people with knowledge of the matter. The revised stock plan in some cases allows employees to buy Palantir shares at a discount of more than $1 off their original option price. Last week, it also told workers they would be eligible for more generous bonuses this year paid in two increments, said one of the people, all of whom asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to discuss the moves.
The compensation changes were designed to boost morale, several people said. The response comes after years of private stock transactions with diminishing returns, shareholders writing down their holdings and a drumbeat of political controversies tied to Thiel. It could create a small fortune for staff, if a plan to take Palantir public this year is successful. Until then, recent employees are stuck holding rights to buy shares that still cost more than most investors are willing to pay today.
Palantir Slashes Its Own Stock Price in a Bid to Boost Morale
Stock art for a new Gilded Age
From Spitalfields Life, a scanned set of "elegant cartoons of Regency bankers from 1824 by Richard Dighton in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute testify," in the public domain and perfect for contemporary stock art for pieces about late-stage capitalism, clueless billionaires, the corrupting influence of wealth, and all those other zeitgeisty subjects.
Afrofuturist artist creates gorgeous portraits with Deep Dreaming
Wagner James Au sez, "AI algorithms, as AOC recently pointed out, often have a racial bias inherited by their creators, to the point where some can't even 'see' people of color. Afrofuturist Nettrice Gaskins teaches Deep Dream's AI to be aware of great black faces on a deep level."
“I used Deep Dream Generator's algorithm, which is inspired by the human brain," she tells me. "The generator uses the stylistic elements of one image to draw the content of another. The first picture defines the portrait I want to create and the second picture I upload gives the program a style to simulate. The process may include more than one pass in the generator, using different style images, until I get the image I want." This portrait of Sade, for instance, "[Is] a composite of multiple Deep Dream images."
Afrofuturist Artist Creates Stunning Portraits of Black Artists With Deep Dream AI Algorithms [Wagner James Au/New World Notes]
Don Jr.'s blocked phone calls before Russia meeting weren't to Trump. Who'd he call?
Don Jr.'s blocked phone calls right before that “Russian adoptions” meeting with Manafort and the sketchy Russians were not calls to his father Donald Trump, multiple reports today reveal. These phone calls were deemed suspicious by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who considered them concerning enough to investigate.
AXIOS, following up on reporting by the Washington Post, ABC News, and CNN:
The Senate Intelligence Committee has obtained phone records showing that President Trump was not one of the blocked numbers his son Donald Trump Jr. called before and after the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, CNN first reported and ABC News later confirmed.
The big picture: Trump Jr. made phone calls to two blocked numbers the same day he spoke with Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, who helped set up a meeting three days later with a Kremlin-linked lawyer claiming to have dirt on Hillary Clinton. He made another phone call to a private number several hours after the meeting. There has long been speculation that the calls were to his father, and that then-candidate Trump had advanced knowledge of the meeting — an allegation he has denied.
Three sources familiar with the calls tell ABC News that the blocked numbers belong to NASCAR CEO Brian France and real estate developer Howard Lorber, longtime Trump family friends who supported the president during the 2016 campaign. Lorber has extensive business dealings in Russia and brought Trump to Moscow in 1996 to explore real estate options, according to the Washington Post.
Mueller seized terabytes of data from Roger Stone
In a federal court filing making the rounds on Thursday, the office of special counsel Robert Mueller says the evidence seized from Roger Stone's residences is "voluminous and complex," and includes computer storage devices that contain “terabytes” of data representing decades of communication records from Stone's numerous mobile devices and online accounts.
His bank records, his text messages, and I'd imagine his passwords or encryption keys. This is only the beginning of what the feds will unlock, and what we will learn about Stone's activities.
It's likely that much of Stone's online or other telecommunications breadcrumb trail has already been snarfed up via providers.
But note this: if our initial read of reports is correct, and the haul from this week's raid of Stone's residences has yielded “terabytes” of mostly emails and texts? That's a lot of emails and texts.
From NBC News:
Robert Mueller's prosecutors, in a new court filing, described the evidence as "voluminous and complex" in asking a judge to delay his trial to give them more time to sift through the seized devices.
The court papers said investigators grabbed hard drives containing several terabytes of information, including "FBI case reports, search warrant applications and results (e.g., Apple iCloud accounts and email accounts), bank and financial records, and the contents of numerous physical devices (e.g., cellular phones, computers, and hard drives)."
The FBI is doing what it calls a "filter review" of the devices, setting aside any evidence that cannot be admissible in court because it is considered privileged.
During a press conference Thursday, Stone agreed that evidence is voluminous and complex, and said both parties had agreed to the language in the government's filing.
For context., Mueller likely already had almost all this stuff by serving subpoenas on the telecoms and tech providers and getting everything that crossed their servers or was stored in the cloud.
https://t.co/vIXYq0JPZC via @nbcnews
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) January 31, 2019
NEW: Mueller confirms he'll be turning over to Roger Stone's lawyers via discovery "the contents of physical devices recently seized from his home, apartment, and office," which are "currently undergoing a filter review by the FBI for potentially privileged communications." pic.twitter.com/WLJVdB7ZsQ
— Darren Samuelsohn (@dsamuelsohn) January 31, 2019
More evidence of confidence among co-conspirators that Trump would be elected: "A court filing by Mueller on Thursday said prosecutors had seized 'voluminous & complex' material including 'multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information.'" https://t.co/0SLNWYJTyX
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 31, 2019
Mueller's office also confirms in the filing that it recently seized electronic devices from Stone's home, office and apartment. pic.twitter.com/c1k33bjQgw
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) January 31, 2019
Charter slashes network spending by $2B, but makes up for it by charging its customers more
When Trump FCC Chairman (and former telcoms executive) Ajit Pai murdered Net Neutrality, he told us the slaughter was necessary, otherwise the ISPs wouldn't invest in their networks.
A year later, Charter has joined Comcast in announcing major cuts to its capital expenditures budget, slashing spending from $8.9 billion under Net Neutrality to $7 billion under Net Discrimination, which allows the company to extort funds from online services on pain of having their data slowed down when Charter customers request it.
But Charter isn't done! They're also raising prices an average of $91/year/customer.
Charter calls this hike "promotional rate step-ups and modest rate adjustments," which is grifterspeak for "higher prices."
I am an extremely unhappy Charter customer in a monopoly Charter territory. The speed, reliability and price of my Charter service is uniformly terrible. If I had a choice, I'd take it.
Charter's plan to lower capital spending in 2019 conflicts with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's claim that repealing net neutrality rules would cause ISPs to raise broadband capital spending. As net neutrality advocates have frequently said (and as ISPs have admitted to investors), broadband capital spending wasn't affected by the Obama-era net neutrality rules that were repealed by Pai.
Capital spending rises and falls based on business needs and technology upgrade cycles, such as the DOCSIS 3.1 rollout mentioned by Charter. Despite Pai's statements that net neutrality rules lowered investment, Charter raised its capital investment in 2017 while the rules were in place.
As we reported last week, Comcast's cable division spent $7.95 billion on capital expenditures during calendar year 2017, but that fell to $7.72 billion in the 12 months ending on December 31, 2018.
Charter will spend less on cable network in 2019 but charge customers more [Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica] (Image: Ildar Sagdejev, CC-BY-SA)
Must-have travel gear - inexpensive zipper bags
Ever since I started using these nylon mesh zipper bags, my travel experience has improved. I have one bag for paper stuff and pens, one for medicine and first aid, one for tools and gear, one for cords and portable power, and one for snacks. When I get home I leave the bags in my suitcase, making packing much easier the next time I take a trip. The bags are see-through and very durable.
I just bought another set of these bags to hold components for Raspberry Pi projects. I think I have a total of 36 of these bags now.
Billionaire "centrist" Howard Schultz tweets column calling Elizabeth Warren "Fauxcahontas"
Howard Schultz, the Starbucks billionaire and aspiring independent presidential candidate, tweeted a link to a column describing Democrat candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris as "fauxcahontas" and "shrill" respectively. Then he deleted the tweet.
“Thank you @Rogerlsimon for a thoughtful analysis of what’s possible. #ReimagineUS,” Schultz tweeted, along with a link to an article on PJ Media by Roger L. Simon titled “Howard Schultz Could Actually Win the Presidency."
“Current frontrunner Kamala Harris is far from reassuring,” Simon writes in the column. “She’s a shrill (see the Kavanaugh hearings) quasi-socialist promising pie in the sky — Medicare-for-all, debt-free college, guaranteed pre-K, minimum basic income, confiscatory taxes — and she’s just getting started. Bernie [Sanders] and others will soon be following suit. Fauxcahontas already has, competing in a game of socialist one-upmanship.”
I've been thinking a bit lately about how Schultz embodies the appeal of a centrist pro-business candidate to a media obsessed with narratives of partisan extremism and which habitually poses itself at an equidistant point between opposed sides, and how this affinity contrasts with the visceral revulsion almost everyone has for his candidacy and the limitless wealth that could sustain it to the bitter end.
Thing is, though, Schultz is a moron.
The FBI invented a fictitious "abortion extremist" movement, then warned local cops about potential acts of domestic terror from it
Anti-abortion extremists are among the most violent domestic terrorists in America, having murdered and attempted to murder dozens of people using firearms, firebombs and traditional explosives.
Pro-abortion extremists don't exist, apart from a single, self-described individual, Theodore Shulman, who threatened to kill (but did not actually harm) two anti-abortion activists, and went to prison for it.
Despite these irrefutable facts, the FBI circulated a warning to local law enforcement, briefing them on the domestic terror threat posed by pro-abortion extremists.
The warnings were obtained by the transparency activists at Property of the People (previously) through Freedom of Information Act requests, and reported out by Anna Merlan for Jezebel.
The warnings are similar to other FBI domestic terror and violence warnings -- for example, on Black Identity Extremists and Juggalos -- in that they bear no relationship to reality, and target marginalized groups generally on the left, while ignoring or minimizing real, heavily armed, violent groups on the right who stand in opposition to the FBI's chosen targets.
It's a good reminder that the FBI is composed largely of right-wing, authoritarian ideologues and has a long history of serving the interests of ruling elites and white supremacists, activities that they continue to this day, and which they have never apologized for or reckoned with.
“I think a couple things are notable here,” Shapiro tells Jezebel, referring to the abortion one-sheet. “The FBI is treating the essentially fictitious category of terrorist pro-choice extremism as something that exists, and is apparently such a grave threat that even local law enforcement needs to be alerted to its supposed menace.”
Shapiro also points out that the idea of violent pro-choice activists is a far-right talking point, promoted by groups like Human Life International and ultra-conservative outlets like The Federalist. Its appearance in a law enforcement document is worrisome, he says, and raises questions about how it got there.
“Despite being unsupported by evidence, the notion that there’s somehow an unreported epidemic of violence committed by pro-choice activists has long been a far-right talking point,” he says. “It’s deeply troubling that the FBI appears to have now adopted this absurd and dangerous position.”
As for the document itself, the details it provides on what pro-abortion terrorists do is a bit thin, perhaps based on the fact that there are basically none of them.
Both pro-life and pro-choice extremists, the document claims, “engage in criminal activity and seek to further their ideology, wholly or in part through force or violence. The primary threat of violence from abortion extremists emanates from lone offenders.”
Exclusive: FBI Warned Law Enforcement Agencies of Threat Posed by Non-Existent 'Pro-Choice Extremists' [Anna Merlan/Jezebel]
What makes Ringo a great drummer?
A German drummer named Sina has a popular YouTube channel about drumming. In this video she demonstrates why Ringo Starr was a great drummer.
Interestingly, because Sina couldn't use The Beatles original recordings for copyright reasons (YouTube's Content ID algorithm doesn't care about fair use) she used recordings from a Beatles' tribute band her father was in, "The Silver Beatles." (Fun fact: The Beatles were once called "The Silver Beatles.")
Image: sina-drums/YouTube
Watch: Inebriated gentleman and 2 cops fight and tumble down arena seats during sports game
A 23-year-old gentleman at a Miami Heat game Wednesday who was arguing with people around him didn't take kindly to a couple of police officers coming around to see what the commotion was about.
According to NBC, they tried to talk to man, who was "behaving in an aggressive manner," and noticed "a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage in his breath." They then pull the man up (also a little aggressively, it appears) to escort him away from the crowd when things get a bit physical. Jump to 1:48 to see how the man and the cops suddenly get tangled up with each other and tumble down many rows of seats.
Mallwave: nostalgic synth music for imaginary and abandoned shopping centers
Mallwave is a microgenre of bedroom electronic music and smooth jazz meant to evoke nostalgia for the vibrant mall scenes of the 1980s and 1990s that many of the music's composers are too young to have experienced or at least remember.
Think of Mallwave as a hauntological soundtrack for an Orange Julius-fueled consumer culture where Suncoast, Merry-Go-Round, and Spencer Gifts anchored suburban reality. (Or, in the case of some of the moodier tracks, the kind of muzak that might play in your mind as you wander an abandoned mall in a Ballardian trance.)
From Hussein Kesvanio's feature in MEL:
“The nostalgia is so real you can cry and wish you went back in time,” reads one comment underneath the video “Neon Wave Mall (Vapor Mix).” “I feel a certain sense of… familiarity watching this footage. Almost like I myself have set foot in these places,” adds a viewer of “Corp Palm Mall.” Under the same video, another person opines: “Why wasn’t I born in this time? This video makes me realize how much things were not as advanced as we have now but it was better. I could be wrong, but sometimes I feel like living around the ‘90s sounds fun. Lifestyle is different, mindset is different and not as much laziness.”
According to writer Joe Koenig, this kind of feeling — a “nostalgia for a past you’ve never known” — is called anemoia. In his ongoing project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Koenig describes it as “the desire to wade into the blurred-edge sepia haze that hangs in the air between people who leer stoically into this dusty and dangerous future.”
Download tracks at https://t.co/UpQbE5ofFa #vaporwave #synthwave #mallwave #deadmalls #retrowave pic.twitter.com/tPOTqwwBkP
— Mistaken for Robots (@mistakenrobots) October 13, 2018
50 examples of product packaging designed to deceive you
One lesson to be learned from this gallery of 50 evil packages is to peer through the transparent parts of the box at an angle to see what's hidden behind the opaque parts.
Biggest letdown I’ve had in a while tbh from r/mildlyinfuriating
I went ahead and exposed they ass. pic.twitter.com/6ZcbcN1J5G
— BOBBY SMIFF (@BobbySmif) November 15, 2018
Tea came in a pack of 4, faced forwards from r/assholedesign
Image: u/3cuas
This was the first US mainstream television commercial featuring a gay couple
In 1994, Ikea ran this television commercial in major East Coast US markets. (Interestingly, the commercial's art director was Patrick O'Neill who went on to be Chief Creative Officer at everyone's favorite Silicon Valley start-up disaster Theranos!)
From a 1994 article in the Los Angeles Times:
A few East Coast Ikea stores have been targeted by angry protesters who have jammed phone lines since last week. One store in Hicksville, N.Y., was briefly evacuated last week after a bomb scare. No bomb was found.
At issue is the homosexual relationship between the two men in the Ikea ad, who talk about how buying the dining room table together shows their commitment to each other. If it becomes clear to other major marketers that Ikea's business is not harmed--and perhaps even helped--by the ad, it could profoundly affect the way major advertisers speak to gays and lesbians.
Ariana Grande's amended tattoo now reads "BBQ finger"
Ariana Grande got a kanji tattoo on her palm she thought meant "seven rings," but actually means "small charcoal grill." In an effort to correct the tattoo, she added the kanji character for "finger." Now the tattoo reads "BBQ finger."
Ariana Grande "fixed" her tattoo
.
.
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Psych now it means bbq fingerpic.twitter.com/JfajJ09w95
— Kaii (@kaii03) January 31, 2019
Drug trafficker alters fingerprints with skin implants and evades capture for 15 years
A drug trafficker was able to hide from authorities for 15 years by, incredibly, replacing the skin on his fingertips with micro-implants. The procedure took several years to complete, according to The Guardian.
The man, whose name hasn't been released, was from Spain but was posing as both a Peruvian and sometimes Croatian citizen using fake ID.
Via The Guardian:
“The suspect had modified and changed his fingerprints to such an extent that they were no longer recognisable,” said the statement.
“As well as cutting and burning, he had used micro-implants of skin. He had also had a hair transplant to avoid being recognised.”
A police spokeswoman told the Guardian: “He’d used very sophisticated methods to alter the fingerprints of both hands so that he couldn’t be identified. He used skin implants to change the shape of his prints so that the scars beneath couldn’t be detected. It was a very sophisticated, specialist process that took place over a number of years.”
He was arrested on Tuesday while carrying two encrypted phones.
Image: By Frettie - Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link
In 4 minutes, 100 people explain how they got their scars
"My child bit me." "I had a boyfriend who punched me in the face." "I tried to cut myself." "Broke my femur bone in a car accident." "Breast implants." These are quotes from five of the one hundred people in this video talking about how they got their scars.
Image: The Cut/YouTube
Woman with wet hair walks outside in the midwest, hair freezes
Wattie Buchan no doubt envious of how easy it was for this woman to style her hair in subzero weather.
See Black Panther on the big screen for free
Black Panther, on the heels of its SAG win and seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, will play for free at 250 movie theaters for a week starting tomorrow (February 1). As part of the Black Panther celebrations, Walt Disney Company is also granting $1.5 million to the United Negro College Fund.
“In times of crisis, the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers," T'Challa said. "We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.”
Claim free tickets to see Black Panther (WeTicketIt)
As Macron and Merkel meet to rescue the #CopyrightDirective, the world's libraries call for its rejection
The EU's plan to censor the internet with algorithms that block anything that might be a copyright infringement has only days to go before it will be too late for a vote before the upcoming elections, and so far, progress has been stalled thanks to France's unwillingness to accept tiny, meaningless concessions that Germany feels they must win to retain political credibility.
Now, at the very last minute, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in talks with French President Emmanuel Macron to try to rescue the Copyright Directive.
But even if they strike a deal, the likelihood that this will get through Parliament is dwindling by the hour. Earlier this week, Europe's research libraries called for the deletion of the extremist clauses from the Directive, and now the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA, representing virtually every library in the world) has called for the deletion of Articles 11 and 13 as a condition of any future work on the Directive.
It's impossible to overstate the opposition to the Directive: the world's top technical and legal experts; the movie studios and sports leagues hate it; so do investigative and independent journalists, and the petition opposing it is the largest in European history, with more than 4.5 million signatures.
With insurgent parties gaining ground across Europe, the upcoming EU elections are a kind of poll on the legitimacy of the EU itself: does the EU serve its people, or deep-pocketed corporate lobbyists? If Merkel and Macron sell out the broad, deep coalition of opponents to this Directive, they risk the future of the EU itself.
Germans: here's where to contact the relevant officials in your government to head this off!
IFLA joins the call for deletion of articles 11 and 13 in the EU copyright reform [IFLA]
(Thanks, Gary!)
18 months on, kids' smart watches are STILL a privacy & security dumpster-fire, and a gift to stalkers everywhere
In late 2107, the Norwegian Consumer Council published its audit of kids' smart-watches, reporting that the leading brands allowed strangers to follow your kids around and listen in on their conversations; a year later, Pen Test Partners followed up to see if anything had changed (it hadn't).
Now, a year and a half later, Pen Test Partners have done another security audit of kids' smart watches and you'll never guess what they found! Kids' smart-watches are still a dumpster-fire: anyone can access the entire database of kids' data, including "real time child location, name, parents details etc," and since most leading brands use the same back-end from Gator, virtually every kid's smart-watch is vulnerable.
Gator patched the vulnerability Pen Test Partners discovered, but I will bet you an organ of your choosing that there are far more waiting to be discovered.
The Gator web backend was passing the user level as a parameter. Changing that value to another number gave super admin access throughout the platform. The system failed to validate that the user had the appropriate permission to take admin control!
This means that an attacker could get full access to all account information and all watch information. They could view any user of the system and any device on the system, including its location. They could manipulate everything and even change users’ emails/passwords to lock them out of their watch.
In fairness, upon our reporting of the vulnerability to them, Gator got it fixed in 48 hours.
GPS watch issues… AGAIN [Pen Test Partners]
18 months on, kids' smart watches are STILL a privacy & security dumpster-fire, and a gift to stalkers everywhere
In late 2107, the Norwegian Consumer Council published its audit of kids' smart-watches, reporting that the leading brands allowed strangers to follow your kids around and listen in on their conversations; a year later, Pen Test Partners followed up to see if anything had changed (it hadn't).
Now, a year and a half later, Pen Test Partners have done another security audit of kids' smart watches and you'll never guess what they found! Kids' smart-watches are still a dumpster-fire: anyone can access the entire database of kids' data, including "real time child location, name, parents details etc," and since most leading brands use the same back-end from Gator, virtually every kid's smart-watch is vulnerable.
Gator patched the vulnerability Pen Test Partners discovered, but I will bet you an organ of your choosing that there are far more waiting to be discovered.
The Gator web backend was passing the user level as a parameter. Changing that value to another number gave super admin access throughout the platform. The system failed to validate that the user had the appropriate permission to take admin control!
This means that an attacker could get full access to all account information and all watch information. They could view any user of the system and any device on the system, including its location. They could manipulate everything and even change users’ emails/passwords to lock them out of their watch.
In fairness, upon our reporting of the vulnerability to them, Gator got it fixed in 48 hours.
GPS watch issues… AGAIN [Pen Test Partners]
(via /.) (via /.) smart watches,internet of shit,iot,kids,parenting,infosec,security,privacy,gator watches from techsixtyfour techsixtyfour
Great deals today on Logitech stuff at Amazon
Logitech stuff is sharply marked down at Amazon today, so I'm going to give you my recommendations and a couple of nopes too. The links here are all affiliate ones, so I'll get a cut.
1. The G-series mice are great. I have the basic model, the G603, and it makes me mad I ever bothered fooling around with other supposedly-premium brands. The "lightspeed" dongle wireless works so well I never have to think about it, but they have Bluetooth too if you don't want to sacrifice a USB port. You do, though, because Bluetooth is trash.
2. However, avoid the K-series and all the basic combo keyboards, with one exception (below). These are the bread-and-butter of the lineup and look OK, but the reality is that they're only marginally better than cheapo generic models. The squidgy, stiff rubbery keys of most of Logitech keyboards are neither one thing (the low-travel laptop fingertip numbers we're at least used to nowadays) or the other (the deep-travel mechanical or rubberdome switches of yore).
Instead, go for:
3. The Romer-G series or the Romer-K840. These may be controversial picks, because Romer is Logitech's attempt to muscle in on the effectively open-standard world of mechanical keyboards with a proprietary switch hardly distinguishable from the ubiquitous Cherry Brown. But they're good gadgets at good prices today, so here they are. (Logitech does makes a Cherry-switch keyboard, the Orion, but it's just OK and doesn't have a rainbow inside it)
4. The C922x streaming webcam is about the best on the market and is half off. This is a solid upgrade on virtually every built-in webcam; the next step up would be to external cameras and monitors and HDMI gadgets and all that bullshit.
5. Another antirecommendation: I don't like the little MX Anywhere mice that are so popular. They look great and work fine and are certainly an upgrade on the ergonomic pain puck that comes with a Mac, but they're too small for any sustained work. Don't hate your body: if you want a fancy mouse that matches your laptop, get the humungous MX Master. Sadly, the new MX Vertical mouse isn't on special and remains too pricey.
6. Another nope: Logitech's iPad keyboards just aren't all that even with discounts. They work, but it inevitably adds so much bulk that the Brydge is surely what you really want.
7. Last nope: avoid Logitech's stiff, workaday game controllers.
8. Final reco: all Logitech's computer speaker gear is high-quality yet inexpensive and will fit in with virtually any system. Its 2.0 Z-series speakers are the best low-end picks and have been for years. Annoying, the white ones are not on special today but I just impulse-bought them to go with my vintage polycarbonate iMac.
Glossary of Broken Dreams: now available to stream!
Johannes Grenzfurthner writes, "My film 'Glossary of Broken Dreams' (which is getting more and more relevant, given all the political turmoil currently around) (previously) is finally available on Vimeo on Demand (buying and renting).
Puppets! Pixels! Anime! Live action! Stock footage!
Lumpennerd Johannes Grenzfurthner gives an ideotaining cinematic revue about important political concepts. Everyone is talking about freedom! Privacy! Identity! Resistance! The Market! The Left! But, yikes, Johannes can't tolerate ignorant and topically abusive comments on the "Internet" anymore! Supported by writer Ishan Raval, in this film, Johannes explains, re-evaluates, and sometimes sacrifices political golden calves of discourse.
Not to be used with false consciousness or silicone-based lubricant.
Featuring: Amber Benson, Max Grodénchik, Jeff Ricketts, Jason Scott, Stefanie Sargnagel, Gerald Votava, Robert Stachel, Stuart Freeman, Katharina Stemberger, Conny Lee, Jolyne Schlien Schürmann, Hannes Duscher, Roland Gratzer, Alexander E. Fennon, Michael J. Epstein, Michael Smulik, Kudra Owens, Martin Auer, David Dempsey, Anna Behne... and many others.
Glossary of Broken Dreams [Johannes Grenzfurthner/Vimeo]
Bassoon Tracker: a fully-fledged 1990s-style music tracker on the web
For all the web's power, getting Javascript to time multitracked sample playback with the bare-metal precision of an Amiga-era tracking app is no mean feat. But Bassoon Tracker pulls it off with style, and can even load your old MOD files. It looks the part, too, with chunky sci-fi fonts and linear gradients galore.
Plays and edits Amiga Mod files and FastTracker XM files. If you have ever heard of Protracker or Fasttracker, then you know the drill, if not, then you are probably too young :-)
It needs a modern browser that supports WebAudio. It's tested to work on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Chrome on Android, mobile Safari and the Samsung Android Browser. It works best in Chrome.
Sadly it doesn't load Impulse Tracker files, so you are today spared having to listen to my teenage masterpieces. The code's on Github.
Sinkhole turns out to be tunnel to bank
Public works employees called to the scene of a sinkhole just north of Miami, Florida quickly found an electrical cord in the ditch. Turns out the, sinkhole was actually an unfinished 150-foot-long tunnel to a bank across the street. From the New York Times:
F.B.I. investigators found that the tunnel had a diameter of about 3 feet and opened up into a wooded area, Special Agent Michael D. Leverock said in an interview on Wednesday evening. It was so narrow that a person would have to lie on his or her stomach to navigate it, Agent Leverock said.
No one got into the bank, and no money was stolen, Agent Leverock said...
“Everybody here is just shaking their heads,” he said. “They could’ve been going for the A.T.M., they could’ve been going for the vault.” But after the would-be bank thief reached the ultimate destination, Agent Leverock speculated, then what?
Inside or near the tunnel, investigators found a wagon that had likely been used to haul dirt, as well as a power generator and a winch, which can be used to haul heavy loads, according to an F.B.I. news release.
What your name tastes like
Julie McDowall experiences synaesthesia, a cross-wiring of sensations where sights may have sounds, numbers may spark smells, or, in her case, words trigger tastes. What does your name taste like?
Catherine is a Rusk dipped in chocolate and coffee
Antonio is a bowl of Frosties, turning soggy.
Rebecca is shortbread and Feeney is a watery, weak onion
Paul...the fondant inside a Creme Egg.
Bryan is coconut caught between my teeth
Though literally experienced by McDowall thanks to an exceptional brain condition, her definitions are clearly just right. It reminds me of The Meaning of Liff. Someone should give McDowall a book deal to write The Meaning of Biff.
Resident Evil 2 with the facial animation exaggerated 500%
Resident Evil 2 is a just-released remake of the Capcom classic, updated with ultra-realistic performance-captured animation. DPO23 hacked the game's configuration to exaggerate characters' facial movements 500%. It's an unsettling illustration of what lies beneath cutting-edge graphics tech—and far scarier than the zombies. (See DP023's YouTube channel for more)
Table saws are dangerous
Crappy little table saws are marketed as cheap gifts and impulse buys by hardware stores, right there alongside drills and shop vacs. But they are uniquely dangerous and I got rid of mine after an alarming experience made me sit and think about the forces in play—and how close our heads and hands are to them.
This video illustrates the problem well and debunks, in passing, some of the myths about the dangers. A SawStop won't stop kickbacks. For almost any task short of ripping lumber, other tools will do the job just as well. [via]
Wednesday 30 January 2019
Apple’s next iPhones and iPads: Triple camera, 3-D back camera for AR, new Face ID, iOS 13 Dark Mode, new cheap iPad
Rumor has it that Apple is testing a triple camera system for iPhones in 2019, plus other improvements including 'dark mode.' Less expensive iPads and an updated iPhone XR are also said to be in development.
Here’s Apple’s Plans for 2019, 2020 iPhones and iPads — Triple camera for extra pixels, 3-D back camera for AR, new Face ID, iOS 13 Dark Mode, codenames, Live Photos revamp, new cheap iPad and iPad Mini, and many more details: https://t.co/vZ14mO7Uyq
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) January 30, 2019
Bloomberg was first with the goods today, wrapping up where all the 2019 product rumors are headed.
A third camera on the back of the 2019 iPhone will help the device capture a larger field of view and enable a wider range of zoom. It will also capture more pixels so Apple software could, for example, automatically repair a video or photo to fit in a subject that may have been accidentally cut off from the initial shot, according to the people familiar with the plans. The company is also planning an enhanced version of its Live Photos feature, which pins video from before and after each shot to the photo. The new version will double the length of the video from three seconds to six seconds.
The laser-powered 3-D camera could debut first on an upgrade to the iPad Pro currently planned for as early as spring 2020, according to one of the people. Apple isn’t expected to release a major iPad Pro update this year like it did in 2018. It typically upgrades the line in the second half of the year. Apple in the past has launched major new features on the iPad before the iPhone, including 4G internet connectivity in 2012.
Apple is also testing some versions of this year’s iPhone line that includes a USB-C connector instead of the Lightning port that has been used on iPhones since 2012, indicating that the company plans an eventual switch, according to one of the people. Moving to USB-C would make the new models compatible with chargers used for hundreds of other devices, like Android phones.
This year’s iPhone models will include an upgraded Apple processor and use an updated Face ID sensor for unlocking the device and approving payments, the people said. The handsets will otherwise look similar to the current models with larger changes expected as early as 2020 to accommodate plans for 5G networking capabilities, Bloomberg News reported last year.
Beyond iPhones, Apple plans to release an updated version of its lower-cost iPad with a roughly 10-inch screen and a faster processor as early as this spring, according to people familiar with the plans. That device is expected to retain the Lightning port, according to one of the people. The company is also readying a new, cheaper iPad mini, its smallest tablet that hasn’t been updated since 2015, the people said.
Apple’s next operating system update, iOS 13, will include a dark mode option for easier nighttime viewing and improvements to CarPlay, the company’s in-vehicle software. There will also be iPad-specific upgrades like a new home screen, the ability to tab through multiple versions of a single app like pages in a web browser, and improvements to file management. The company will also integrate two new services, including a magazine subscription service and its original video content efforts, via iOS updates this year.
Huh the new iOS 13 home screen might be for iPads onlyhttps://t.co/L16cyCe8Dp pic.twitter.com/xqhJUFAe2w
— Felix Lapalme (@lap_felix) January 30, 2019
Looks like Apple is rolling out its rebuilt Maps in additional areas. Got a notification in LA (!). Was previously Northern California only. Anyone getting the notification in other areas?
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) January 31, 2019
Lawyers for Kentucky governor says Kim Davis must pay $225,000 in legal fees
When Kim Davis was the county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky, she refused a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Her illegal shenanigans ended up costing the state a lot of money in legal bills, and now lawyers for Governor Matt Bevin say she has to pay it back to the tune of nearly a quarter million dollars.
From the Lexington Herald Leader:
“Her local policy stood in direct conflict with her statutory obligation to issue marriage licenses to qualified Kentucky couples. The local policy also undermined the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s interest in upholding the rule of law,” Bevin attorney Palmer G. Vance II wrote in one brief.
“Davis had an independent and sworn duty to uphold the law as an elected county officer,” Vance wrote. “If fees are awarded, they must be the responsibility of the Rowan County clerk’s office, which should be deterred from engaging in conduct that violates civil rights — and leads to costly litigation.”
Don't feel sorry for Davis, a MAGAfundme campaign will undoubtedly come to her rescue.
Image: Mugshot of former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis from the Rowan County Sheriff's office
Trump's pastor to flock: Give me your January salary or God will punish you
Donald Trump's “prosperity gospel” spiritual advisor Paula White, a pastor who is reported to reside in an 8,000 square foot house and travel on a $2.6 million private jet, is commanding her congregation to cough up their January salaries to her or else God is seriously going to punish them so hard.
Classic cult grift. No wonder Trump, the cult grifter, likes her.
Not linking to her Pentecostal payout, but she accepts PayPal.
Paula White, who heads up the president’s evangelical advisory committee, suggested making a donation to her ministries to honor the religious principle of “first fruit,” which she said is the idea that all firsts belong to God, including the first harvest and, apparently, the first month of your salary.
"Right now I want you to click on that button, and I want you to honor God with his first fruits offering,” she said in a video shared to her website, in which she encourages her followers to donate to her ministries to get blessings from God.
“If God doesn’t divinely step in and intervene, I don’t know what you’re going to face—he does,” she said.
(...) In her newest video, the pastor encourages people to send her money, stating, “Each January, I put God first and honor him with the first of our substance by sowing a first fruits offering of one month's pay. That is a big sacrifice, but it is a seed for the harvest I am believing for in the coming year. And God always provides!”
Read more: DONALD TRUMP'S SPIRITUAL ADVISER PAULA WHITE SUGGESTS PEOPLE SEND HER THEIR JANUARY SALARY OR FACE CONSEQUENCES FROM GOD, Harriet Sinclair, Newsweek
[via @RobertMaguire_]
Another Apple engineer accused of stealing autonomous vehicle secrets for China
For the second time in 6 months, the FBI is accusing a Chinese national engineer who worked for Apple of stealing Apple trade secrets related to self-driving cars, to help a China-based competitor.
Apple began investigating Jizhong Chen when another employee reported seeing the engineer taking photographs in a sensitive work space, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed this week.
Chen, according to the complaint, allowed Apple Global Security employees to search his personal computer, where they found thousands of files containing Apple’s intellectual property, including manuals, schematics, and diagrams. Security personnel also found on the computer about a hundred photographs taken inside an Apple building.
Apple learned Chen recently applied for a job at a China-based autonomous vehicle company that is a direct competitor of Apple’s project, according to the complaint. A photo found on Chen’s computer, which Apple provided to the FBI, showed an assembly drawing of an Apple-designed wiring harness for an autonomous vehicle.
Chen was arrested just one day before he was scheduled to fly to China, according to the complaint.
Last July, former Apple employee Xiaolang Zhang was arrested by federal agents for allegedly stealing proprietary information related to the company’s autonomous vehicle project. Zhang was accused of trying to bring Apple’s trade secrets to China-based XMotors.
Read/Watch the full report: 'Another Apple Engineer Accused of Stealing Autonomous Vehicle Trade Secrets'
Kickstarting a gorgeous slipcased edition of Crime & Punishment, illustrated by Dave McKean
The next tranche of Beehive Books' Illuminated Editions are being crowdfunded now: three gorgeous, slipcased, deluxe illustrated hardcovers, including a new edition of Crime & Punishment, illustrated by Dave McKean, well-known for his work on Sandman (he also did the original cover for my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town); the books are $100 each, and are superb. The other two titles are The Blazing World, illustrated by Margaret Cavendish; and Peter Pan, illustrated by Brecht Evans.
Google+ accounts and pages will be shut down April 2nd, says Google
Google announced last fall it's killing off Google+ because of the social network's laughably “low usage” and “challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations,” plus revelations of serious security vulnerabilities.
In a blog post and related support page that went live today, Google explained how the shutdown will unfold, and the important part for most 'consumer' users is this: they're gonna delete all your posts, photos, videos, and comments, starting on April 2.
From today's official Google blog post:
In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download your photos and other content.
On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted. You can download and save your content, just make sure to do so before April. Note that photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.
The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted.
As early as February 4th, you will no longer be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities or events. See the full FAQ for more details and updates leading up to the shutdown.
If you’re a Google+ Community owner or moderator, you may download and save your data for your Google+ Community. Starting early March 2019, additional data will be available for download, including author, body, and photos for every community post in a public community. Learn more
If you sign in to sites and apps using the Google+ Sign-in button, these buttons will stop working in the coming weeks but in some cases may be replaced by a Google Sign-in button. You’ll still be able to sign in with your Google Account wherever you see Google Sign-in buttons. Learn more
If you’ve used Google+ for comments on your own or other sites, this feature will be removed from Blogger by February 4th and other sites by March 7th. All your Google+ comments on all sites will be deleted starting April 2, 2019. Learn more
That's April 2.
Because April 1 would have been too hilarious.
[via VentureBeat. Picture illustration taken February 24, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard]
How to: make up swears
The power of fuckbonnet, shitsquib, fuckstumbling, douchenozzle, Fuckface von Clownstick, shitwhistle, cockbucket, can be captured through a simple formula: the "pyrrhic foot" of a "familiar profanity compounded with a non-profane word of two unaccented syllables."
The formula is especially good for coming up with nongendered swears that are not slurs, which is useful if you're trying to insult an individual, rather than give offense to a whole demographic category, gender, or nationality.
The best of these mean nothing, but sound wonderful, evocative and fun to say. They are deployed by "swear nerds," a coinage of New York Times Magazine story editor Willy Staley, meaning people who like their profanity fresh, imaginative, and exciting.
“Fuckbonnet” is a swear-pyrrhic compound. The double-n in the middle and stop consonant at the end make it fun to say, but — and this is crucial — the insult itself does not say anything. What is a fuckbonnet, exactly? Is it something you wear when you get…? Is it a hat that has fallen out of fashion and is now only good for…? There’s no discernible meaning behind the word; it only expresses contempt and the author’s vain originality. I submit that this aspect of the new swears is a feature, not a bug. The reason this formula has become so popular in our time is that it conveys the author’s outrage without running the risk of actually insulting anybody.
The rise of the swear nerds [Dan Brooks/The Outline]
(via Kottke)
Hoover killed JFK, RFK & MLK, Brad Pitt’s private hell, and Mick Jagger’s mental disorder, in this week’s dubious tabloids
Reality packed its bags, cancelled the mail, put its dog in a kennel and boarded a plane to take a long flight as far away as possible from this week’s tabloids.
Former FBI chief "Hoover Ordered Kennedys & MLK Murdered!” screams the National Enquirer front page, promising “Explosive PROOF That Will Change History.” Don’t rewrite the history books yet. Their “proof” is a memo from FBI archives in which J. Edgar Hoover wrote of his dislike for civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Hardly a smoking gun, and about as new as the Gutenberg Bible. Why doesn’t the Enquirer answer the really hard question: Did Hoover kill JFK, RFK and MLK because he hated acronyms?
“Prince Philip, 97, DIED & Came Back to Life!” in his recent car crash, proclaims the Globe cover. The Queen’s consort allegedly died before the accident, and the impact restarted his heart. The Globe presumably knows this because the tabloid has the Prince wired to an EKG at all times, transmitting real-time info to its reporting team, trained cardiologists every one of them. That would explain why Prince Philip was taken to the hospital and released the same day, because that’s standard medical procedure for someone who just died and was brought back to life.
"Robert Wagner blocks bid to exhume Natalie!” reports the Enquirer. It’s hardly shocking that Hollywood veteran Wagner might not want wife Natalie Wood's remains disturbed, but he doesn’t have a say in the matter – Wood’s exhumation could be ordered by the Los Angeles County Coroner, the LAPD or the Sheriff’s Department regardless of what Wagner thinks. That they haven’t done so is an indication of how worthwhile they believe an exhumation would be in gathering any new evidence about her demise, and isn’t necessarily evidence that Wagner has anything to hide.
The Enquirer laments Brad Pitt’s “Private Hell – 935 days without his kids.” Of course Pitt has seen his children, often and at length, during the past three years. What the Enquirer means is that the paparazzi haven’t seen Pitt with his children for 935 days. And we can all share the rag’s genuine sympathy and sadness for those poor lensmen deprived of a lucrative photo of Pitt and children because of the actor’s callous disregard for the snappers’ welfare.
“Stalkers & Swingers Scare Off Meghan & Harry!” says the Enquirer. Yes, the heavily-pregnant Royal duo have decided to break the lease on their rental in Britain’s Cotswolds, and yes, the difficulty of securing the site has been speculated as a possible reason. But the Enquirer has decided that because there are country lanes and “quiet spots nearby” they must be gathering points for “couples, gay men and voyeurs.” Nothing homophobic to see here, move along, move along . . .
“Mick Jagger, 75, battling mental disorder!” reports the Globe. What dire mental illness has the Rolling Stones frontman in its grasp? He’s germaphobic, the Globe reveals, “constantly using hand sanitizer.” Oh, the horror. So what does that make President Donald Trump, a reported germaphobe who has been seen slathering his tiny appendages with hand sanitizer?
Us magazine’s cover promises to tell readers "All About the Royal Baby! Yes, there are celebrity nursery designers, a doula for the delivery (if I had a doula for every time I’d heard that, I’d be rich), and no nanny at first because Meghan’s mum Doria will move in and do nanny duties (which I predict the Enquirer will pounce on next week as proof that the young Royals are cash-poor and can’t afford a nanny). But what do we actually learn about the baby? Nothing, of course, not even its gender, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the Globe doesn’t have the first in utero interview any day now.
Anne Hathaway graces the cover of People magazine, with her tale of "Life, Love & Surviving Hollywood.” Once “Hollywood’s Most Hated Woman” she’s been usurped by Gwyneth Paltrow, and claims she’s happy, she’s older, and she wishes her critics would put “some intelligence behind it . . . Be witty, maybe pun a little bit.” You have to admit, she hathaway with words.
Princess Kate laments in People about the rigors of motherhood: “It’s so hard.” Poor thing. I can’t imagine how she copes with all those nannies, servants, equerries, chauffeurs, courtiers, ladies-in-waiting and bodyguards.
Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Victoria Justice wore it best, that TV’s The Bachelor suitor Colton Underwood never wore underwear until he appeared on the show, and that the stars are just like us: they drink smoothies, snap selfies, and feed parking meters. All while wearing underwear, one hopes.
After years of seeing stars fill their purses with erudite works of literature, elite cruelty-free artisanal fragrances and healing crystals, it’s a relief to see actress Adrianne Palicki in Us mag’s regular feature “What’s In My Bag?” admitting that the contents of her Rebecca Minkoff M.A.B. tote are “a disaster.” She’s one of the rare few who doesn’t look like she’s hired a lifestyle consultant and New Age guru to curate her bag’s contacts: old movie stubs, an aging iPhone 7 with a cracked screen, an eight-year-old Wonder Woman flashlight, a photo of Freddy Mercury circa 1985, along with small packets of almonds and a crumpled $20 bill. Where’s the fancy book on economic theory or international politics to prove she’s an intelligent modern woman? “I'm not reading anything right now,” she says. Bravo!
The Globe brings us “!0 Things You Don’t Know About Tichina Arnold.” Let me stop you right there – I don’t even know who Tichina Arnold is, let alone ten things about her.
If you’ve ever wondered whether tabloid readers even know what day it is, along comes proof in the shape of a full-page ad in the Globe for a 3-foot-tall faux Christmas tree decorated with miniature CDs celebrating Elvis Presley, alongside the headline “Happy Holidays from Graceland.” To paraphrase Bob Geldof: Do they know it’s not Christmas?
Onwards and downwards . . .
Ex-NSA American mercenaries for UAE used 'Karma' to hack journalists and human rights activists
Former NSA spies have been working for the government of the United Arab Emirates as hacker mercenaries, helping the UAE attack journalists, dissidents, and human rights activists. This is a great read, and a shocking story from Reuters.
With the help of former U.S. intelligence operatives, United Arab Emirates hacked into the iPhones of activists, diplomats, and foreign adversaries. Targeted in the attacks: the former deputy prime minister of Turkey, a Qatari emir, and a Nobel Laureate of Yemen.
Joel Schectman and Christopher Bing of Reuters report that the UAE's use of the spying tool 'Karma' in 2016 “shows how potent cyber-weapons are proliferating beyond the world’s superpowers and into the hands of smaller nations”:
The cyber tool allowed the small Gulf country to monitor hundreds of targets beginning in 2016, from the Emir of Qatar and a senior Turkish official to a Nobel Peace laureate human-rights activist in Yemen, according to five former operatives and program documents reviewed by Reuters. The sources interviewed by Reuters were not Emirati citizens.
Karma was used by an offensive cyber operations unit in Abu Dhabi comprised of Emirati security officials and former American intelligence operatives working as contractors for the UAE’s intelligence services. The existence of Karma and of the hacking unit, code named Project Raven, haven’t been previously reported. Raven’s activities are detailed in a separate story published by Reuters today.
The ex-Raven operatives described Karma as a tool that could remotely grant access to iPhones simply by uploading phone numbers or email accounts into an automated targeting system. The tool has limits — it doesn’t work on Android devices and doesn’t intercept phone calls. But it was unusually potent because, unlike many exploits, Karma did not require a target to click on a link sent to an iPhone, they said.
In 2016 and 2017, Karma was used to obtain photos, emails, text messages and location information from targets’ iPhones. The technique also helped the hackers harvest saved passwords, which could be used for other intrusions.
Whether the Karma hack still works isn't clear. The former operatives interviewed by Reuters say Apple's iOS security updates rendered Karma less effective by late 2017.
You gotta wonder how many security advisories cause screams of pain at some spy shop. The UAE used CVE-2016-463 to hack hundreds of iPhones, including those of activists and journalists, until @TalosSecurity spoiled the fun. https://t.co/CiAimbwHUT https://t.co/MwDhl4rryr pic.twitter.com/GnnrezoRzu
— Kevin Poulsen (@kpoulsen) January 30, 2019
READ MORE: 'Exclusive: UAE used cyber super-weapon to spy on iPhones of foes'
[via @humeyra_pamuk, illustration based on Reuters photo ofNobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman of Yemen at a news conference against mining in the town of Casillas, Guatemala, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria]
Watch: Tourist in Australia picks up a "pretty octopus," not realizing he could die in minutes if stung
A tourist in Australia picked up a beautiful tiny octopus and originally posted it on TikTok with "What a pretty octopus" written in Mandarin. But what the tourist didn't seem to know is that he was holding a blue-ringed octopus, which "carries enough venom to kill 26 full grown adults in a span of minutes," according to Gizmodo.
Via Gizmodo:
The venom of the blue-ringed octopus, which contains the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin, causes paralysis and the sting is so small that most people have no idea that they’ve been poisoned until it’s too late.
To make things even more horrifying, there’s no anti-venom available for the blue-ringed octopus. The only known treatment is to massage the victim’s heart until the venom works its way throughout a person’s body in a matter of hours.
And from Traveller:
Marine ecology expert Michael Keough from the University of Melbourne said picking up an octopus exposes the hand to the beak, a few millimetres-long horny barb located on the bottom of the octopus between its tentacles.
"It can only bite if it's on top of something," he said.
Designed to pierce the exoskeletons of crabs, the octopus's beak releases a neurotoxin from its glands that causes paralysis, causing its prey to stop breathing and die "within an hour".
Reversible Micro USB cables back in stock
In early December Tod Kurt of ThingM recommended these reversible Micro USB cables. I bought a 3-pack on Amazon. They really work and have held up for the nearly two months I've had them. Both the USB male plug and the micro plug can be inserted without regard to the orientation, like a USB C plug. There is no "right side up." They were out of stock on Amazon for a while, but they're available again.
Colorsupplyyy, a perfectly simple color picking tool for designers
We've written about various color-wheel and pallette-generating widgets over the years, but colorsupplyyy is the best I've seen. It's extremely straightforward, doesn't get bogged down in "science" or extraneous options, and continuously updates a set of icons and other graphical examples with your tinkerings. Perfect.
A would-be robber goes up to the teller, loses confidence and rips up her note
A wanna-be bank robber without a solid plan got as far as the teller, but cold feet got the best of her.
The woman, wearing a black fleece jacket, black knit hat, and black glasses headed straight for the teller. But once she was face to face with the teller, she hesitated. "Give me a minute," she said.
She then went to a counter and scribbled something on a piece of paper, before tearing it up and throwing it away. She then promptly left the bank. Good move.
Because of her strange behavior, the bankers pieces together her note, which read, "Give me the money."
Via Miami Herald
Image: Surveillance image released on Facebook by the Fall River Police Department
Here's a bunch of notes left on windshields of bad parkers
Here's a gallery of notes found on the windshields of problem parkers. It's interesting to note that some of the notes are printed on a computer, as if the person who left the note has a stack of them in their car, and is eager to find reasons to issue them.
Closeness lines
Kottke spotted Olivia de Recat's curiously affecting illustrations of how relationships change over time and I can't help but signal boost. Hopefully she'll be taking orders for prints again soon: "In the meantime, you can take a look at some of her other cartoons (mostly for the New Yorker), peruse her shop, or follow her stuff on Insta."
In space no one can hear you snore: Alien facehugger CPAP mask
Author and science fiction fan Jared Gray needed a CPAP machine to treat his sleep apnea so he decided to have some maker fun with the machine. So he carved out a foam replica Aliens Facehugger to integrate his CPAP mask.
"I’m happy with it as a prototype, but I think it would need additional refinement before I started making these things for other people," Gray says."Other than making it even less comfortable to lay on my side, it’s not all that much worse than just wearing the CPAP mask on its own. I could probably sleep with this thing on, at least for a couple hours. If nothing else, it helps keep the light out of my eyes."
CPAP Facehugger (via Laughing Squid)
American prisoners coerced or tricked into providing voice-prints for use in eternal, secret, unchecked surveillance
American prisoners are being forced -- on pain of losing access to the prison phone system -- to provide training data for a voice-print recognition algorithm that private contractors are building for biometric surveillance system that listens in on prisoners' calls.
Some prisoners are secretly "enrolled" in the program when their voices are recorded during phone calls; the people they speak to on the outside are also sometimes "enrolled" without their knowledge or consent.
The software is being provided by Securus, a notoriously abusive private security firm with a track record for gross privacy violations, as well as gouging prisoners and their families.
Securus's voice surveillance tool is called Investigator Pro, and it was developed through a $50,000,000 gift from the US Department of Defense, on the promise that it would be used to listen to millions of phone calls and identify the voices of terrorists.
New York’s contract proposal with Securus states that outsiders’ voice samples can be used to “search for all other calls” in their recorded call database to find where those voices occur. In an email, New York prison officials confirmed that this program will give investigators the ability to extract a voice print from an outside caller and use it to “identify that a call recipient has participated in multiple phone calls.” They added that the program will not have names associated with outsiders’ voice prints.
In a statement, Pinal County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Navideh Forghani also confirmed this outsider voice-tracking capability, noting that while their software does not identify non-incarcerated people by name, it can track “suspicious activities,” such as “multiple inmates speaking to one person on the outside on a reoccurring basis.”
With this technology, a press release for Investigator Pro notes, an investigator can now answer questions like, “What other inmates are talking to this particular called party?” and “Are any of my current inmates talking to this released inmate?”
Prisons Across the U.S. Are Quietly Building Databases of Incarcerated People’s Voice Prints [George Joseph/The Intercept]
(Image: Cryteria, CC-BY)
Charming handmade unicorn pin
I spotted this charming 1.5"-wide unicorn pin at Amazon Handmade, crafted by Cynical Redhead in Illinois and sporting a delightful and timely message for the new year.
Man spent more than a month in jail for heroin that was actually laundry detergent
Last month, Matt Crull, 29, of Martin County, Florida, was sleeping in his van when police came to investigate what they described as a “suspicious van." Martin County Sheriff’s deputy Steven O’Leary found a plastic bag of white powder, claimed to run a field test on it, and arrested Crull for possession of 92 grams of heroin. Crull went to jail where he sat for over a month. Thing is, the heroin was actually laundry detergent. From the Miami Herald:
“(It’s) very surreal when you’re sitting in jail with a half a million dollars bond,” Crull told WPBF25, “and you can’t go anywhere knowing that you didn’t do wrong..."
Sheriff William Snyder says (O'Leary) has been fired after an investigation uncovered that at least 11 people he put in jail for drug charges were found innocent, the TV station reported.
“No matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, just based on the law of possibilities there’s always a possibility that one bad apple will slip through,” Snyder said, according to WPTV. The TV station reported that Crull may sue for damages.
Image: Laundry powder / Uncy at Slovenian Wikipedia
Great 10-minute video about the history of movie poster design
James Verdesoto is the movie poster designer responsible for some of the more memorable posters of recent decades, including Pulp Fiction, Girl, Interrupted, and Training Day. In this short video, he gives a terrific presentation about the design aesthetics of movie posters from the 1930s to present day. I learned a lot from this; it was 10 minutes well-spent.
Image: Movie Poster Remakes vs. Originals, Explained | Vanity Fair YouTube video
KFC's new 'Cheetos Sandwich' not my first choice either
A magazine named after something kids shouldn't eat REALLY hates on a sandwich.
And then you see something like KFC’s new Cheeto Sandwich, and you remember how it feels to take one look at a promotional image and feel the tiniest bit of vomit rising in the back of your throat.
Good god, KFC. What hath science wrought on this one?
Books collect an artist's daily grotesque Trump portraits
Warren Craghead writes, "I wanted to let you know about my TRUMPTRUMP drawing project and the new collection that Retrofit Comics that was just published. Since Trump got the nomination for president in July 2016 I’ve been drawing a grotesque portrait of him and his minions every day - you can see them at here. Retrofit Comics published a collection of the first six months of drawings last year, and the new collection is out now - 200+ pages of drawings. 
Salad Fingers returns for eleventh episode
It's been a while, Hubert Cumberdale. The year two thousand and thirteen marked our last adventure. Before the war. (Previously)
Animator David Firth:
Salad Fingers is back for the first time in 5 years in this nightmarish new episode. Salad Fingers decides it’s time for Hubert Cumberdale to become a real boy.
After $4.1 billion subsidy, Foxconn cancels plan to build Wisconsin "factory," now proposing a small R&D facility
When GOP darling Scott Walker offered to hand billions in subsidies to Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn, he was warned: the Foxconn MO is to suck up billions in public money for ambitious megafactories, then scale them back into small, largely irrelevant facilities (or cancel them altogether).
But that didn't convince Walker: instead, he got right to business, seizing and bulldozing Wisconsinites' homes to make way for the "factory," and allowing the price-tag to rise by more than a billion dollars without blinking, even as the company started to hedge about the scale of the factory it would build in exchange for Walker's huge welfare handout.
Now the other shoe has dropped: Louis Woo (special assistant to Foxconn chairman Terry Gou), who negotiated the Wisconsin deal, has told Reuters that "In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory. You can’t use a factory to view our Wisconsin investment."
Instead of the planned megafactory with its 5,200 blue-collar jobs by 2020, now the company proposes to hire 1,000 skilled R&D researchers -- who will likely come from out of state.
But they still get more than $4 billion: so if the 1,000 jobs ever materialize, each one will have cost the state $4.1 million.
See folks, that's why you want to elect businessmen to run your governments: they know how to get real value for money!
Earlier this month, Foxconn admitted that hiring for the plant was going slowly. The company originally promised to create some 13,000 jobs in the state, but it has already fallen short of modest targets. Instead of creating a promised 260 jobs in 2018, it only created 178, making it ineligible for tax credits. The company originally promised to employ 5,200 workers by the end of 2020, but Reuters now reports that this figure is closer to 1,000.
As well as the number of jobs diminishing, the type of work is changing, too. Instead of focusing on factory work, Foxconn claims it will create higher-skilled, R&D occupations. Woo told Reuters that about three-quarters of the jobs Foxconn will create in the state will be so-called “knowledge” positions.
Foxconn may not build a factory in Wisconsin after all, says top company exec [James Vincent/The Verge]
Deepfake of Jennifer Lawrence with Steve Buscemi's face
"Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?” ― John Lennon