Category: Uncategorized

Mur Lafferty wrote a science fiction story about the DMCA to help EFF’s fair use for vidders campaign

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mostlysignssomeportents:

Every three years, the US Copyright Office asks America about the problems with Section 1201 of the DMCA, which bans breaking DRM even for legal reasons, and America gets to answer with requests for exemptions to this rule.

One of EFF’s requests this year is a for an exemption that lets anyone bypass DRM to make fair use of videos;
expanding the current exemption that gives that right to film
professors and a few other narrow categories to include the whole
universe of remixers, mashup artists and fan vidders.

2018 Hugo- and Nebula-nominated science fiction writer Mur Lafferty, author of the smashing Six Wakes, gave us a hand with this by writing The Unicorn Scene, a delicious and smart sf story about what’s at stake here.

Mur’s story joins John Scalzi’s short story about our Right to Repair petition.
We’ve got one more of these in the pipeline that I’ll be publishing
next week. Thank you, Mur and John, for helping us make America safe for
copyright law!

https://boingboing.net/2018/05/22/the-unicorn-scene.html

The military sysadmins in charge of Trump’s cellphones can’t get him to give up wildly insecure practices

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mostlysignssomeportents:

The White House Communications Agency, staffed with military information
security experts, is in charge of making sure that the President’s
cellular phone isn’t getting hacked by adversaries who might otherwise
be able to listen in on his calls, capture his messages, intercept his
search history, and remotely operate his camera and microphone. Donald
Trump routinely ignores their advice.

According to multiple internal sources who talked to a team from
Politico, Trump feels that the security advice he’s received is “too
inconvenient” and so he’s decided that he knows enough about “the cyber”
to just wing it.

Trump refuses to use hardened, secure cellphones. Instead, he uses
regular, consumer, off-the-shelf phones (one from Apple and the other
from Samsung) and routinely refuses to allow his security staff to
inspect them to determine whether they have been compromised (according
to one source, the President once made his staffers wait five months to
inspect his phone).

Trump also refuses to make secure phone calls using the WHCA’s internal
switchboard process because he likes to call people (possibly Sean Hannity) late at night from his lonely bedroom, which his wife refuses to share with him.

It is undoubtedly true that foreign adversaries continuously seek to
hack the communications of the White House and the President; Michael
Kelly’s cellular phone was already hacked during the transition (Kelly
ignored security advice to get rid of the hacked device and continued to
use it for several months before finally giving it up) (because he is a
dumbass).

https://boingboing.net/2018/05/22/whca-vs-400lb-hackers.html

Uncategorized

wings1295:

bobbycaputo:

Rephotographing Route 66: Animated GIFs Showing 1930-1970 Scenes Compared to Today

Route 66 is a famous highway that crosses the United States, connecting Santa Monica, California on the west with Chicago, Illinois toward the east. It was one of the original highways of the US Highway System.

The route is also the subject of a project by photographer Natalie Slater, titled “The Mother Road Revisited.” Slater found old photos of the route from decades ago and rephotographed them as they appear today.

(Continue Reading)

Sometime in the near future I plan on driving the whole length of Route 66. I’ve driven portions of it here and there but never the whole length. I just need to come up with some new and creative idea that hasn’t been done before to photograph my journey.

I love these. This is how ALL Before-And-After pictures should be done.

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scotchtapeofficial:

patron-saint-of-smart-asses:

taylor-tut:

taylor-tut:

y’all know that john mulaney quote “the things crazy people say mean nothing to them but everything to me?”

every time i hear that quote, i think about how i got this light-up pen

i got this pen four years ago when i was working as a barista at starbucks. I was on the registers and taking the order of this woman, who ordered a nonfat latte, because she was “watching her weight”

so this guy behind her, whom no one was talking to, for some fucking reason says “wathing your weight? but what about the wait for your watch?“ (which is a completely unhinged response. like just complete Mad Hatter nonsense)

anyway this lady gets really uncomfortable and of the five people (me, him, her, the other checker, and the customer at the other register) who were now sucked into the uncomfortable silence, i decided that i should alleviate the tension by saying “you can’t wait for a watch; you don’t have the time”

and then he said “oh, quick girl!”, gave me that pen, got out of line, and left without ordering anything 

You pleased a mad fae trickster

you solved his fucking riddle is what you did

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trilllizard666:

daisenseiben:

that-dork-you-followed:

lolnoodle:

¯_(ツ)_/¯

give them no attention.

I gotta say, he’s got a good point.

yeah. i think a majority of these shootings are caused by:

untreated mental illness and intensely disturbed people.

the promise from the media implicit in these obsessive news reports after any mass shooting that you’ll be famous if you go out and shoot some people! people will pay attention to you!

these non ideological or hate crime motivated mass shooters all have a profile of being profoundly disturbed people that exhibited bizarre and boundary disrespecting behavior and usually ended up being referred to disciplinary departments of whatever organization they’re a part of/in/enrolled in, got referred to the police/fbi/other law enforcement, who either couldn’t or just plain didn’t do anything that could’ve prevented anything, had an involuntary psych committal from threatening someone else or themselves or some mixture of these factors.

and another thing about many of these kinds of shooters are in many cases, they shouldn’t even have guns legally.

this latest shooter was 17 years old, and legally unable to own guns (he apparently stole at least one from his dad)

the texas church shooter from a good while back was dishonorably discharged from the air force after being convicted in a court marshal for domestic abuse against his wife. but he managed to get a gun because the air force, in horrifying incompetence, just forgot to put him in the database for people that should not be able to own guns

that one waffle house shooter had his guns taken away from him because he got arrested for trespassing at the white house and refusing to leave after the secret service told him he was in a restricted area, so they gave his guns to his dad, who gave them back to his son

dylann roof was able to buy a gun despite having been arrested for drugs because the paperwork was filed with the wrong arresting agency on it and slipping through the cracks

what we need in all honesty is several things

we need the media to back off this whole mass shooter thing and stop inadvertently encouraging these borderline people to go and commit these horrifying violent acts

we need THE EXISTING GUN LAWS to be enforced far better and far more consistently

and we need better, more compassionate healthcare for mental illnesses because america is pretty abysmal about this

Literally every episode of My Cat from Hell

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impuretale:

sinningsleepingandshitposting:

flotorshi:

Neatly summarized as: people not knowing how to properly take care of cats

The episodes that don’t conform to this formula are also always the most interesting. These situations include:

1) I Didn’t Know My Cat Had PTSD and Has Gone Blind.

2) Your Cats Fight Because One of Them Doesn’t Know How to Speak Cat, and They’re Both Kinda Mad/Confused About It. 

3) Your Cat Sprays Everywhere? Get Them Fixed. Surprise Twist: They Were Fixed But It Was a Botched Operation.

4) We’re Going to Rescue 50+ Kittens, Take Them to Vegas, and Adopt Them All To Loving Homes.

5) This is Not a Cat. This is a Dog.