Last June Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept published and reported on a massive trove of explosive leaks that revealed that top prosecutors and the judge who eventually became the justice… Read the rest of the article: Brazil's authoritarians charge Glenn Greenwald with cybercrime for publishing leaks that revealed corruption at the highest levels
Microsoft maintains the fiction that it has sold its most valuable copyrights and other intangible assets to a tiny factory in Puerto Rico, where, thanks to promising to hire a… Read the rest of the article: The sordid tale of Microsoft's epic tax evasion and the war they waged against the IRS
When Jeff Bezos accused the National Enquirer of blackmailing him over personal messages he sent to his lover while married to his then-wife, many pointed the finger at his lover's… Read the rest of the article: Forensics team accuses Prince Bone Saw of hacking Jeff Bezos's phone to obtain kompromat and force Washington Post silence on Khashoggi
Smarter people than me have pointed out that "work-life balance" says the quiet part out loud, implicitly confirming that you stop living when you're at work. Miles Matrix's Dungeons and… Read the rest of the article: Play: Dungeons and Deadlines, "an epic game of work-life balance"
Boeing's cursed 737 Maxes are no longer in production.
Sonos has warned customers who bought speakers five or more years ago that it will no longer provide software updates to their property, and that they will cease to operate… Read the rest of the article: Sonos warns customers that their older speakers will shortly be e-waste
The China Law Blog (previously) is one of my favorite sources of insight into the secret workings of the businesses that produce the majority of the world's daily-use goods.
Boda Bodas are the ubiquitous motorbike taxis of Nairobi; Boda Boda drivers are in an arms-race to produce the most elaborately decorated motorbikes in order to differentiate themselves from the… Read the rest of the article: Boda Boda fashion show: equipping Nairobi motor taxi drivers with outfits to match their glorious bikes
Major cities in China will undertake a staged withdrawal of single-use plastics between now and 2022, with plastic cutlery and take-out containers going by the end of 2020; disposable plastics… Read the rest of the article: China announces ban of single-use plastic bags and straws
Today on Oh Joy Sex Toy (previously) guest-artist Alex P Perkins offers us a graphic memoir of her breast reduction surgery in 10th grade, and the way it put her… Read the rest of the article: Heartwarming comic about breast-reduction surgery
Writing in Wired, Boing Boing contributor Clive Thompson discusses the rise and rise of "Edge AI" startups that sell lightweight machine-learning classifiers that run on low-powered chips and don't talk… Read the rest of the article: "Edge AI": encapsulating machine learning classifiers in lightweight, energy-efficient, airgapped chips
I was a anti-nuclear arms proliferation activist from a very young age, 10 or 11, and took it seriously, nearly getting kicked out of school and organizing classmates to attend… Read the rest of the article: Greta Thunberg has a crisply articulated demand
Bruce Schneier writes in the New York Times that banning facial recognition (as cities like San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Brookline and Somerville have done) is not enough: there are… Read the rest of the article: Facial recognition isn't just bad because it invades privacy: it's because privacy invasions fuel discrimination
Sweary historian Eleanor Janega writes on her Going Medieval blog (previously) that there was never a time in medieval Europe when bestiality was socially acceptable, and brings the receipts in… Read the rest of the article: Bestiality was not socially acceptable in medieval Europe
Frontier is the bottom-rung of the top-tier of US ISPs, serving customers in 29 states. Despite enjoying monopoly control over its customers' online lives, and despite massive government handouts and… Read the rest of the article: Frontier, a terrible company, is going bankrupt
Last week, Roberto Alvim, gave a speech in his capacity as Brazil's culture minister: backed by a Wagner aria, Alvim gave a speech about reforming Brazilian art that literally plagiarized… Read the rest of the article: Brazilian authoritarian Bolsonaro fires his culture minister for giving a speech plagiarized from Joseph Goebbels
New York's luxury real-estate market has been in freefall for years, and now the city's super-luxe buildings are sitting empty — even as property prices in the city remain stubbornly… Read the rest of the article: Manhattan: a city of empty luxury condos and overflowing homeless shelters
Late last year, the nonprofit Internet Society abruptly announced a deal to sell control over the Public Interest Registry (which manages all .ORG domain registrations) to Ethos, a newly created… Read the rest of the article: Angelenos! I'm speaking in Culver City tomorrow about the sale of .ORG to private equity
Chicago's Volante (previously) bills itself as "streetwear for superheroes," and I love their clothes. They've just released an addition to their existing canon of Star Trek-themed, cosplay-adjacent clothes: the Picard… Read the rest of the article: The Picard sweater
The editors of Guardian Cities (previously) saw my Toronto Life blurb about how a "smart city" could be focused on enabling its residents, rather than tracking and manipulating them, and… Read the rest of the article: Imagining a "smart city" that treats you as a sensor, not a thing to be sensed
