The Unimax U686CL is a cheap Android phone distributed in the USA by Virgin subsidiary Assurance Wireless as part of its federally subsidized Lifeline program, which is available to low-income… Read the rest of the article: Virgin's subsidized smartphones come with unremovable Chinese malware
Special Services Group makes surveillance crapgadgets for cops and spies: cameras and mics hidden in tombstones, vacuum cleaners, children's car-seats, and other everyday items. Muckrock's Beryl Lipton used a Freedom… Read the rest of the article: A company that makes spy-tech for cops threatened to sue Vice for publishing its sales literature (because Iran!)
Researchers in Illinois who receive federal funding are required to file paperwork disclosing potential conflicts of interest, but these handwritten forms just moulder in the NIH's filing cabinets…until now.
For years, Keith Ammann has maintained his blog, The Monsters Know What They're Doing, in which he carefully laid out the logical tactics that the monsters of Dungeons and Dragons would use in combat, based on their alignment, stats, and habitats, creating sophisticated advice for Dungeon Masters hoping to move their combat encounters from rote stab-stab-kill affairs into distinctive, memorable strategy-and-tactics affairs that created not just variety and challenges for players, but also depth and verisimilitude. Now, Ammann's work has been collected in the first of two planned volumes: The Monsters Know What They're Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters is one of the most interesting, thoughtful, smart RPG sourcebooks I've ever read.
Every year, veteran sex-advice columnist mounts (ahem) HUMP, an amateur, pornographic short film festival, which tours around Canada and the USA for a dazzling evening of smut, humor, tenderness, weirdness… Read the rest of the article: Coming soon to a city near you: HUMP, Dan Savage's amateur smut fest, banned from Facebook!
After Antiplagiat, a private plagiarism detection company, accused Russia's scientific and scholarly journals of being rife with plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplication and other misconduct, the Russian Academy of Sciences chartered a… Read the rest of the article: More than 800 Russian academic articles retracted after "bombshell" report reveals plagiarism and other misconduct
This week, the Communications Workers of America — one of the largest industrial unions in the country — launched the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), which seeks to unionize… Read the rest of the article: The Communications Workers of America is seeking to unionize tech and video game workers
Ring's response to a group of US senators who questioned the company about its privacy practices reveals that the Amazon subsidiary has had to fire multiple employees who were caught… Read the rest of the article: Multiple Amazon employees have been fired for spying on Ring owners' cameras
Kathryn Hughes's $19.95 CVS Receipt Scarf sends up the company's infamously absurd receipts — at 58" long, the handmade/hand-cut scarves are only slightly shorter than the real thing! (via Kottke)
Berkeley economics prof (and former Clinton deputy Treasury secretary) J Bradford DeLong (previously) has written a guide for reading "long, difficult books," in response to Andy Matuschak's "rant" Why Books… Read the rest of the article: How to read long, difficult books
Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist who has grown weary of the inadequacy of scientific discourse as a means of conveying the urgency of the climate crisis; instead, he's written an… Read the rest of the article: A beautiful timeline of a future in which the climate crisis is met and overcome
W Aaron Waychoff created these great diecut #DeleteFacebook stickers ($5 for 5); he sells them from his Etsy store where he also offers a bounty of other political stickers, pins… Read the rest of the article: Die-cut Delete Facebook stickers
Mike Resnick, a major figure in science fiction, has died after a brief battle with "a very aggressive form of lymphoma" that was diagnosed in November. He was 77.
Rogue Print's inaugural tee design for 2020 is a mashup Iain Banks (previously, RIP)/Black Flag tribute available as a baseball tee or a regular one — both ship with a… Read the rest of the article: Black Flag/Iain Banks mashup tee
In A Public Service, activist/trainer Tim Schwartz presents the clearest-ever guide to securely blowing the whistle, explaining how to exfiltrate sensitive information from a corrupt employer — ranging from governments to private firms — and get it into the hands of a journalist or public interest group in a way that maximizes your chances of making a difference (and minimizes your chances of getting caught).
Back in 2017, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) approved the most controversial standard in its long history: Encrypted Media Extensions, or EME, which enabled Netflix and other big media… Read the rest of the article: Three years after the W3C approved a DRM standard, it's no longer possible to make a functional indie browser
The Boeing 737 Next Generation has a gnarly bug: on instrument approach to seven specific runways, the six cockpit display units used to guide the pilots to their landing go… Read the rest of the article: Trying to land on some runways causes the Boeing 737's control screens to go black
The Canadian Broadcasting Coporation's annual Canada Reads prize is one of Canada's top literary prizes, ranking with the Governor General's prize for prestige and reach; it begins early in January… Read the rest of the article: Radicalized makes the CBC's annual Canada Reads longlist
Every year (20190, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014, 2012, 2010, 2007, 2005) Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky conduct a public salon with the users of The WELL on the "State of… Read the rest of the article: Welcome to 2020 and your annual State of the World discussion with Bruce Sterling, Jon Lebkowsky and The WELL
Long before 4chan and other anything-goes forums existed, every major online community had a similar community: the Well had its "weird" forum, Usenet had alt.syntax.tactical (among others), and Something Awful… Read the rest of the article: Something Awful's "Fuck You and Die" forum went from freewheeling jokesters to Nazi shitposters, so it's dead
