Noting that "the web was built specifically to share research papers amongst scientists," Josh Nicholson and Alberto Pepe report on the dismal state of the web for accessing the most-cited… Read the rest of the article: 65 out of the top 100 most-cited scientific papers are behind a paywall, with a weighted average cost of $32.33/each
Back in July, Senator Mark Warner [D-VA, @MarkWarner, 202-224-2023] introduced S.1642 – The Protecting Consumers' Access to Credit Act of 2017, which bans states from capping the interest rates charged… Read the rest of the article: Senate Democrat is about to take the brakes off predatory payday lenders
Mich from ha.cking bought a $25 "S8 data line locator" device — a cellular spying tool, disguised as a USB cable and marketed to the general public — and did… Read the rest of the article: Teardown of a consumer voice/location cellular spying device that fits in the tip of a USB cable
Renee DiResta is part of an interdisciplinary group that has tracked disinformation campaigns online for years, advising the Obama White House on the use of social media to spread conspiracy… Read the rest of the article: Social media's "engagement"-based algorithms are intrinsically hospitable to conspiracies and fake news
Two leading European consumer groups — the UK's Which? and Germany's Stiftung Warentest — have published an advisory with the results of their lab tests on the security of kids'… Read the rest of the article: Consumer groups' labs advise parents not to buy connected toys, claim risk of strangers listening and talking to kids over the internet
Every Cards Against Humanity Christmas surprise box has been amazing, and this year, the company promises to do something that will save America and hints that it will annoy Trump… Read the rest of the article: Cards Against Humanity's Xmas Bullshit mystery gifts are once again on sale, will save America
If you're still using Facebook (I don't), your data is being used to profile you in seriously creepy ways; the best thing you can do is delete your Facebook account,… Read the rest of the article: Step-by-step guide to locking down your Facebook account
In 2012, Courtney Allen was having a difficult time in her marriage and she struck up an online affair with a gamer in her alliance named Todd Zonis; when her… Read the rest of the article: What it takes to actually stop a determined, vengeful cyberstalker
Compuserve's sprawling, paleolithic forums were acquired along with Compuserve itself by AOL in 1998, and their fossil remains were augmented, year after year, decade after decade, by die-hard users who… Read the rest of the article: Verizon is finally killing Compuserve Forums
The Republican Party has done the impossible: they've produced an unpopular suite of tax cuts, by designing a system that lards more than a trillion dollars onto America's debt while… Read the rest of the article: Congressional Republican candor: everyone hates our tax plan except the CEOs we depend on for campaign millions
A group of NYU and University of Illinois at Chicago computer scientists have presented a paper at the 2017 ACM Internet Measurement Conference in London presenting their findings in a… Read the rest of the article: A quantitative analysis of doxing: who gets doxed, and how can we detect doxing automatically?
Bluehands's Coin Box is a super-cute, spring loaded cardboard coin-box: put a coin in it and it bursts apart, flinging away your money to remind you that, thanks to the… Read the rest of the article: An "exploding" coin-box uses cuteness to remind you of the futility of saving
John Oliver is on fire (naturally) in his season finale segment on the first year of Trumpism, a year so busy and scandal-plagued that it really needs to this kind… Read the rest of the article: John Oliver's season finale: analyzing Trump's year of attacks on truth, decency and America
The Vietnamese security company Bkav says that a prototype mask costing $150 can reliably defeat Apple's Face ID authentication system. However, the company (which has a good track record for… Read the rest of the article: One week after release, iPhone X's Face ID reportedly defeated by a $150 mask
The Sackler Family are best known for philanthropy, but their real legacy is the opioid epidemic, which they engineered through their family firm, Purdue Pharmaceutical, which used a variety of… Read the rest of the article: The secretive wealthy family behind the opioid epidemic are using the same tactics to kill public education
Bernie Sanders writes in Politico in advance of the publication of the report of the Democratic Party's Unity Reform Commission — set up jointly by Sanders and Clinton — and… Read the rest of the article: Bernie Sanders: to fix the Democratic Party, curb superdelegates, make it easier to vote in primaries, and account for funds
The Agent Gallery of Chicago has bought a large lot of vintage dental training manikins and other gorgeous, nightmarish gadgets from the Hellraiserverse. (via JWZ)
There are 50 hospitals on 5 continents that use Watson for Oncology, an IBM product that charges doctors to ingest their cancer patients' records and then make treatment recommendations and… Read the rest of the article: Watson for Oncology isn't an AI that fights cancer, it's an unproven mechanical turk that represents the guesses of a small group of doctors
A pair of economists analyzed data aggregated from smartphone tracking apps to see how long Americans spent at Thanksgiving dinner and how far they traveled to get there, and compared… Read the rest of the article: Polarized political advertising led to shorter Thanksgivings in 2016
The Daily Show's Chrome plugin Make Trump Tweets Eight Again uses subtle orthography to remind us about the emotional, intellectual and attentional character of the 45th President of the United… Read the rest of the article: A plugin to display Trump tweets in crayon font
