Mixtape of the Lost Decade (2011)

Of those who remember, some reveal our secret history through unusual media such as fashionable tumblogs and private filesharing forums. By sharing elements of an intricate and rigorous symbology d… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Google ads look like search

Latest update blurs ads vs. search results line | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

GE fridges refuse to work unless water filter is 'official', via RFID chip

@ShaneMorris: “My fridge has an RFID chip in the water filter, which means the generic water filter I ordered for $19 doesn’t work. My fridge will literally not dispense ice, or water. … | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Instagram for Windows 95

Petrick Studio’s Instagram for Windows 95 imagines a world where nothing has changed, but for one app alone. Click through for the GIFs. | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Passengers with mobile WiFi network named “Remote Detonator” removed from plane

At Detroit Metropolitan Airport, police removed two passengers from a GoJet/Delta Connection flight because they apparently wouldn’t turn off a mobile phone that reportedly had a WiFi network… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

BoingBoing.net turns 20

Today is the twentieth anniversary of Boing Boing in its current incarnation. It looked like this in 2000. Here’s a brief history of Boing Boing, which actually goes back 33 years. Carla and … | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

20 Years of Blogging at Boing Boing

Twenty years ago today, Boing Boing became a blog. Mark Frauenfelder’s first post linked to Street Tech, a now-dormant gadget blog. Now there are 160,000 more posts just like it and the impos… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

The Typewriter, by Leroy Anderson

You may think you haven’t heard The Typewriter, but I bet you have! Wikipedia: The typewriter was modified so that only two keys work to prevent the keys from jamming. According to the compos… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Imagining a “smart city” that treats you as a sensor, not a thing to be sensed

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, an… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Information security and warfare metaphors: a toxic mix made in hell

I once found myself staying in a small hotel with a “State Department” family whose members clearly all worked for some kind of three letter agency (the family patriarch had been with U… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

The Parallel Computing Bubble

Yesterday’s column by John Naughton in the Observer revisited Nathan Myhrvold’s 1997 prediction that when Moore’s Law runs out — that is, when processors stop doubling in sp… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

JetBrains Mono is a free, open-source monospace font

JetBrains Mono is a new font designed especially for coders and developers. The lowercase characters are taller than the ones in other monospace fonts, improving readability. Consider this in contr… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Schneier: “It's too late to secure 5G networks”

Bruce Schneier’s Foreign Policy essay in 5G security argues that we’re unduly focused on the possibility of Chinese manufacturers inserting backdoors or killswitches in 5G equipment, an… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Expensive underground “sleeping pods” proposed to house San Franciscans

A housing development project hopes to put people underground in the cavernous depths of San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood. SFGate reports: Developer Chris Elsey of Elsey Partners in Manha… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Boing Boing Was Hacked

Dear Boing Boing readers — Around 11:30 EST on January 10th, An unknown party logged into Boing Boing’s CMS using the credentials of a member of the Boing Boing team. | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

RAWing in the Rain

It was raining hard and I came into work soaking wet. My Dr. Martens had that darker sheen around the toes where the water had sunk into the petrol-resistant exterior. The smell of damp and of dust… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Communications Workers of America seeking to unionize tech, video game workers

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 union… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Landing on some runways causes the Boeing 737's control screens to go black

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 suddenly black and they… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

W3C approved DRM standard makes it impossible to make a functional indie browser

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 compani… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

New demand for old farm tractors because they're low tech

Farmers are increasingly sick of high-tech tractors that are expensive to buy and usually impossible to fix yourself due to their integrated digital technology. According to the Minnesota Star Trib… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Iraq: Chevron evacuates staff from Kurdistan oil site, will Russia's Rosneft benefit?

Chevron said Monday it has evacuated all expatriate oil workers from Iraq, following last week’s Trump airstrike in Baghdad that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015)

How roleplaying games and fantasy fiction confounded the FBI, confronted the law, and led to a more open web | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Legendary sci-fi artist Syd Mead reported dead at 86

The futurist and artist Syd Mead died today, according to auto industry veteran John McElroy and other associates of his, but there’s no confirmation from official sources even as the legenda… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Sleuthing from public sources to figure out how the Hateful 8 leaker was caught

In 2014, Quentin Tarantino sued Gawker for publishing a link to a leaked pre-release screener of his movie “The Hateful Eight.” The ensuing court-case revealed that the screeners Tarant… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

“Harbinger households”: neighborhoods that consistently buy products that fail

In The Surprising Breadth of Harbingers of Failure (Sci-Hub mirror), a trio of economists and business-school profs build on a 2015 Journal of Marketing Research paper that claimed that some househ… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

H

Here’s what’s happened: first, ICANN (the legendarily opaque US corporation that runs the internet’s Domain Name System) approved a change in pricing for .ORG domains, run by the … | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Search-warrant demands that Google turn over account info, Android info etc.

Scott Budnick (producer of the “Hangover” movies) is embroiled in a complicated feud with an LA homicide cop named Sgt. Richard Biddle; Biddle has pursued his investigation against Budn… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Kathryn Spiers: 'I was fired last week by Google for organizing.'

Google denies claim of illegal and retaliatory firing | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Input, a new tech news site

Joshua Topolsky’s new techology news site, Input, just launched. The aim, in a crowded pack? To focus on the things that are neither speculative nor mass-market but which will shape lives in … | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Abbott Labs uses copyright law to shut down open diabetes monitoring software

Abbott Labs makes a continuous glucose monitor — used by people with diabetes to monitor their blood-sugar levels — called (ironically, as you’ll see below) the Freestyle Libre. | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Illuminatus trilogy to become TV series

According to the nerd media website, Bleeding Cool, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s crazed, over-the-top, post-modern sci-fi satire, the Illuminatus! trilogy is slated to become a TV se… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Chinese law professor's social media denunciation of facial recognition

Lao Dongyan is a professor specializing in Criminal Law at Tsinghua University; on Oct 31, she posted a long, thoughtful piece to their public Wechat account about the announcement that BeijingR… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Donated blood of poor Americans is now a leading export, bigger than corn or soy

America is one of the only developed countries in the world that pays people to donate blood, much of it sold abroad (70% of the world’s plasma is of US origin), and as commercial blood donat… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

We only have a few days left until Verizon kills off Yahoo Groups, and the volunteer archivists who’ve been battling with the company to preserve its legacy have just been dealt a crushing bl… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

The retreat of “scientific selfishness,” a literature review

Neoclassical economics was built on the straw-man of “homo economicus,” an inherently selfish utility-maximizing actor, and since the mid-1970s, we’ve been building systems and in… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Peter Thiel claims AI is “Leninist” and “literally communist”[..]

On November 13, noted vampire capitalist Peter Thiel gave a speech to donors at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research conservative think-tank on “The End of the Computer Age.” Ove… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Prasad's Law of Spending

In a recent installment of his Plenary Session podcast, hematologist-oncologist Vinay Prasad observed that “There are interventions that disperse wealth, … and they give people jobs, and they… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Veteran Boeing manager warns of 787 problems

John Barnett had a three-decade career as a Boeing quality manager, but after he was transferred to the Charleston, SC production facility for the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner,” he became a w… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance wants you to know everything is just fine

China-based technology company ByteDance is on a charm offensive, reports Reuters, ramping up efforts to distance its popular social app TikTok from the rest of its Chinese operations. | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Judge says Facebook users entitled to better security but not monetary damages

In a decision released late Tuesday night, a federal judge ruled that up to 29 million Facebook users whose personal info was stolen in a September 2018 data breach are not entitled to sue Facebook… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Cory Doctorow on Library Socialism

SRSLY Wrong is a “research-based comedy podcast” run by a pair of Canadian fellas with a background in radical politics, occupy, and the Pirate Party; in a three part series, hosts Aaro… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Spirit of The West’s John Mann dead at 57 years old

The music of Spirit of The West has been a part of my life since my early teens. The band’s lead singer and oft-time song writer, John Mann, was a joyful beast on stage. I saw SOTW live on a … | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Apple told TV Plus showrunners to avoid plots that might upset Chinese officials

In early 2018, Apple SVP of internet software and services Eddy Cue and SVP of internet software and services Morgan Wandell instructed TV creators it had commissioned to produce content for Apple … | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Private equity company acquires .org domain registry

A double whammy for those who use .org domains: ICANN removed price restrictions on .org domain names, and then the registry in control was promptly sold to a private equity group, Ethos Capital. W… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Foreigners visiting China are increasingly stumped by its cashless society

Technically, it’s illegal for Chinese merchants to refuse payment in cash, but this rule is hardly ever enforced, and China has been sprinting to a cashless society that requires mobile devic… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

GIF site Gfycat announces mass deletions, threatens Archive Team with lawsuit

Gfycat is a site that people upload GIFs to so they can share them with other people reliably. Used most conspicuously to host memes, clips from other media, and animated porn, it announced Wednesd… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

Doctorow on Sandworm: an essential guide to the new world of “cyberwarfare”

For years, I’ve followed Andy Greenberg’s excellent reporting on “Sandworm,” a set of infrastructure-targeted cyberattacks against Ukraine widely presumed to be of Russian o… | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago

The mysterious correlation between avocado and Bitcoin prices

For a while, I blamed myself. I had that noticed my paltry Bitcoin investment was doing well, so I threw some extra cash in, just to say what it would do. That was just this past July. Days later, … | Continue reading


@boingboing.net | 4 years ago