https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxxI5BqbzfQ In the late 2000s, Jamaican authorities launched a crackdown on drug dealers, extraditing the country's most notorious crime-bosses to the USA; the power-vacuum was filled by telephone advance-fee fraud… Read the rest of the article: The growth of Jamaican phone-scamming caused a crime-wave and martial law in Montego Bay
Donalddaters.com is an app for people who want to have sex with white supremacists; it launched today and promptly leaked all 1600 of its users' data: "users' names, profile pictures,… Read the rest of the article: A dating website for Trump supporters leaked its customers' data ON DAY ONE
More on the story of how Epson tricked its customers into installing a fake "update" to their printers so that they would stop accepting third-party and refilled ink cartridges: not… Read the rest of the article: Epson is teaching the internet not to install security updates
Solderer writes, "Old-school humor Magazine The American Bystander was dropped by its printer, citing prurient content (i.e. humor). Publisher Michael Gerber describes the ongoing situation in terms that would doubtless… Read the rest of the article: Printer refuses humor magazine because "Christian owners" want to protect "the kids"
Alex Little writes, "The Parkland kids created a rube goldberg machine that shows the predictable domino effect of responses from politicians and media after every school shooting."
The Authors Alliance is a nonprofit that advocates for authors, libraries, readers and scholars (I'm on their advisory board); they've done a ton of great work, notably a tool for… Read the rest of the article: A sensible, free guide to negotiating book contracts
The Wannacry ransomware epidemic was especially virulent, thanks to its core: a weaponized vulnerability in Windows that the NSA had discovered and deliberately kept a secret so that they could… Read the rest of the article: Wannacry ransomware cost the British National Health Service £92m ($121m)
Shitty math kills: shitty math "proved" that being selfish produced optimal outcomes and torched the planet; shitty math rains hellfire missiles down on innocents; in the 1960s, shitty math drove… Read the rest of the article: What would a "counterculture of AI" look like?
Bruce Sterling's hour-long lecture to the Southern California Institute of Architecture is pretty good vintage Sterling: a seeming grab-bag of loosely related futuristic, ascerbic observations about climate change, Estonian e-residency,… Read the rest of the article: Bruce Sterling on the next 50 years of climate-wracked maker architecture
The combination of Chinese anti-corruption reforms and currency controls has China's storied "middle class" (a nebulously defined category whose size and wealth are the subject of multiple, conflicting accounts) scrambling… Read the rest of the article: China's panicked upper middle class are easy picking for offshore real estate scams
70% of global emissions come from 100 companies: Koch Industries' annual carbon emissions bill is 24 million tons.
US Senator David Purdue (R-GA/@sendavidperdue), a grown-ass human being elected to high office in the most powerful nation in the land, was asked a question about Brian Kemp, who is… Read the rest of the article: Georgia Senator, asked about voter suppression, mugs constituent for his phone
The University of Michigan's library recently acquired a copy of American Cheese, 20 Slices, by Ben Denzer, a book made from shelf-stable, plastic-wrapped slices of American cheese.
Robbo sez, "As a Canadian in my later years I benefit from my monthly Canada Pension Plan payments. As a Canadian and a human being I am disgusted that CPP… Read the rest of the article: Canada Pension Plan is long on US private prisons and immigrant detention centers
Back in 2014, David wrote up Jeremy Bell's prototype "ScrubBoard" that enabled a scratch-like effect with magnetic audiotape. Bell writes, "I've made a lot of progress on my device since… Read the rest of the article: New and improved gadget for doing vinyl-like scratching with magnetic audio-tape
The 78-member Congressional Progressive Caucus is meant to be the democracy-friendly, corporate-hostile wing of the Democratic Party, which is why the caucus announced a year ago that it would stop… Read the rest of the article: The Congressional Progressive Caucus is (still) awash in corporate money
Umair Haque (previously) is in the unfortunate position of being both inarguably correct and horribly depressing when he says "catastrophic climate change is probably inevitable."
When Obama took office, he took over from one of the least popular presidents in US history, 22% George Bush, a liar who tortured and spied his way through an… Read the rest of the article: Obama's policy on Bush's crimes is how Kavanaugh got to the Supreme Court
Abigail Disney is Walt Disney's grand-niece; she is an activist and documentarian and being the grand-daughter of Roy Disney, she is rich as hell.
An extremely funny prankster glued googly eyes to the statue of Revolutionary War commander Nathaniel Greene; the City of Savannah took to its Facebook page to insist that this was… Read the rest of the article: Against all evidence, city of Savannah claims googly eyes glued to Revolutionary War statue are "not funny"
