Thailand's insane lese majeste laws make it radioactively illegal to criticize the royal family, reflecting a profound insecurity about the legitimacy of the ruling elites there that can only be satisfied through blanket censorship orders whenever one of the royals does something ridiculous, cruel or both (this happens a lot). Read the rest

[Update 5/9/2017: the head of communications at Purple posted a lengthy comment on Reddit about the powder and the lawsuit. In short, she says that "This powder is safe and there are lots of studies that support this," and that "we believe Ryan Monahan, owner of Honest Mattress Reviews, is not 'independent' as he claims, but is working with a competitor to disparage our brand." A vigorous thread of replies follows her comment.]

Ryan Monahan, who reviews mattresses (and used to work for a mattress company called GhostBed), is being sued by a company called Purple Mattress. Here's a video Monahan made about the lawsuit. Monahan says he's being sued because he publicly asked why Purple mattresses have white powder, what the powder is, and whether or not it is safe to inhale. Read the rest

Living treasure and outspoken atheist Stephen Fry has a classic bit from a two-year-old episode of RTE's "The Meaning of Life" in which he answers the question, "What would you say to God if you died and found yourself at the gates of heaven?" Read the rest

Real Alternatives organizes and funds the notorious, deceptive anti-abortion centers ("crisis pregnancy centers") that pretend to be abortion clinics, luring in women who wish to terminate their pregnancies with deceptive advertising and then lying to them about abortion procedures in an effort to coerce them into carrying their fetuses to term; they got $30,000,000 from the state of Pennsylvania and are now suing the state over an audit that was triggered by nearly $1M worth of unaccounted-for state funding. Read the rest

Mormonleaks is a whistleblower site dedicated to revealing corruption and hypocrisy in the Church of Latter Day Saints; over four months, it has published many documents that did just that, but when it published a leaked Powerpoint revealing the Church's view on "the roots of apostasy, such as pornography, campaigns to ordain women, challenges to church history and general 'lack of righteousness,'" the Church turned to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and a bogus claim of copyright infringement to get the document taken down. Read the rest

The Arkansas legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit "any books or other material authored by or concerning Howard Zinn" in its schools, on the grounds that Howard Zinn says means things about America, like, "It has the kinds of censoring, undemocratic state governments that ban all books by and discussions of critics of America and its actions." Read the rest

Joseph Talbot, a bank executive, was arrested by New York State Police on Dec 29 for DUI, and, as its custom, the Times of Wayne County published his name and mugshot -- something it's done for every local arrest for 28 years. Read the rest

ESNC, a German security research firm, discovered a critical flaw in PWC's enterprise software, which would allow attackers to hack into PWC customers' systems; when ESNC gave PWC notice of its intent to publish an advisory in 90 days, PWC promptly threatened to sue them if they did. Read the rest

Juno is a "driver-friendly" rideshare service that competes with Uber by paying its drivers more and giving drivers the ability to pick up a fare, get them to install the Juno app, and give them a discount. Read the rest

Banned Books Week has come and gone but we can be sure of one thing: the coming year will be marked by challenges to the same kinds of books that were controversial this year, and in years past.

Samsung's got problems: its Galaxy Note devices are bursting into flames, and have been banned from the skies. Read the rest

The Ecuadoran Embassy in London has confirmed Wikileaks' accusation that it terminated Julian Assange's access to its wifi network because it disapproved of Assange and Wikileaks' "intervention in the affairs of other states" by publishing material pertaining to the impending US election. Read the rest

Sitelock is a major player in online security; a rival, White Fir, thinks its products are subpar, and has published extensive articles explaining why White Fir's products are superior -- articles that Sitelock has targeted with fraudulent copyright claims. Read the rest

When pictures of the forthcoming sleeker PlayStation 4 "Slim" showed up on Twitter and NeoGAF, no-one knew if they were the real deal. But when Sony started making noise and having the images disappeared from Facebook, everyone knew they were the real deal.

Sony issued a takedown and had this post removed from my Facebook page: https://t.co/fIjP0buTdY

— Erik Kain (@erikkain) August 23, 2016

Eurogamer, having taken legal advice and removed video coverage of the box, confirms the story, with new high-resolution photos.

Bear in mind here that what Sony got taken down were not NDA-sealed marketing images or even photos surreptitiously taken in its private facilities: if the reports are to be believed, it's scrubbing images it does not own, of a console that was, supposedly, prematurely sold to a member of the public.

We can confirm that the PS4 Slim is real.

In our bid to confirm the veracity of the images that leaked online last night (more on that below), Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter visited the person who claimed to have bought the console from Gumtree.

ORIGINAL STORY: The PlayStation 4 Slim has leaked online.

The new console was first spotted on auction website Gumtree, before being picked up by NeoGAF.

Twitter user shortmaneighty2, who spotted the Gumtree listing, and NeoGAF user Venom Fox have posted multiple images of the console, showing it boxed, unboxed and compared to the original PS4 console.

It's "kind of ugly," writes Erik Kain at Forbes. Read the rest

Back in April, we learned that UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi had hired a sleazy "reputation-management" company to scrub her reputation and that of the university after the 2011 incident in which university police lieutenant John Pike hosed down peaceful protesters with pepper spray, jetting chemical irritant directly into their open mouths and eyes. Read the rest

Netsweeper sells "internet filtering technology" -- a tool that spies on users' internet traffic and censors some of what they see -- that is used by governments to control their populations, including the government of Yemen, which uses it to block its citizens' access to material critical of its policies. Read the rest

Less than a week after an officer from a nearby force shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop, leaving him to die in front of his child and girlfriend (and the world on livestream) the Minneapolis Police Department has perjured itself in issuing a copyright takedown notice to Youtube in order to suppress a controversial recruiting video that depicted the jobs of MPD officers as being a firearms-heavy shoot-em-up. Read the rest