Makeup artist John Chambers' work on Planet of the Apes (1968) is a high point in Hollywood prosthetics. The characters don't look like real apes, but they have an interesting mix of ape and human. Combined with costume designer Morton Haack's outfits, the overall effect is spectacular and unforgettable. I learned that photographer Dennis Stock took a bunch of behind-the-scenes photos during the shooting of the movie, and you can browse them at Magnum Photos.

[via Flashbak] Read the rest

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Around 70 passengers booked on a China Southern Airlines flight from Nagoya, Japan to Shanghai refused to get on the plane when they found out 16 passengers from Wuhan, China were getting on the same plane. Worried that the Wuhan passengers could be infected with the new coronavirus – which has now killed 106 people and infected more than 4,500 people (but those numbers will will certainly climb within the next 24 hours, as they've been doing since the epidemic started last month) – the fearful passengers became angry and hostile. It took five hours for the airline to convince them to board the plane.

According to IBT:

Reportedly, 70 passengers who live in Shanghai tried to prevent the 16 passengers from Wuhan to board the flight. After a five hour delay, the airline was able to finally convince the protesting passengers. The travellers from Wuhan were finally able to board the flight and fly to Shanghai.

The Chinese government put the city of Wuhan under quarantine before the Chinese New Year. However, many residents of Wuhan remain locked out of the city. The passengers who were being disallowed from boarding the flight were heading to China even though they would not be able to enter Wuhan in the coming days.

Since the coronavirus spreads even before an infected patient starts showing symptoms, there is mass panic in the country. The passengers from Wuhan might have left the city before lockdown and they might be infected by the virus. Based on this fear, the Shanghai residents turned on their fellow passengers.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/TL9-mGDx058/70-passengers-refuse-to-board.html

In 2019 the Pennsylvania Attorney General published a 900-page grand jury report on sexual predators in the Catholic Church and the coverups the church and its official had undertaken; at the time, the church promised to end the coverup and engage in truth and reconciliation with the parishoners who'd been preyed upon by clergy.

Today, 178 Archdioceses have published lists of the priests they consider "credibly accused," according to criteria that vary widely from diocese to diocese -- the US Conference of Catholic Bishops says it has no authorities to dictate standards for these lists.

41 dioceses have not published lists. These dioceses serve more than 9,000,000 Catholics, and include the dioceses of Rockville Centre, NY (1.5m parishoners); Fresno, CA (1.2m parishoners); Miami, FL (790,000 parishoners), and San Francisco, CA (445,000 parishoners).

The quality of the cooperating dioceses' lists is highly variable: some exclude members of religious orders (like the Jesuits), who constitute 30% of the priests in America. Other lists don't include the names of priests whose survivors have received settlements from the church, but who are not themselves considered "credibly accused" apparently. Names appear and disappear from the list all the time.

Propublica has produced a searchable database of known accused priests, searchable by name/cit/diocese (they explain their methodology here), and they've made the data available for download.

The database is accompanied by an excellent, deeply reported story by Lexi Churchill, Ellis Simani and Topher Sanders.

It’s impossible to know how many accused clergy members dioceses have opted not to put on their lists.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/v-CT23FmJRc/credibly-accused.html

Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens come in a 2-pack for on Amazon. They look like pens, but instead of a nib they have a brush, which allows you to draw lines of varying widths. They’re a lot of fun to use. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/ZWW2U4HtIls/excellent-low-cost-brush-pens.html

When Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai used fraud and skullduggery to kill net neutrality, he promised that clearing away the allegedly burdensome regulation of delivering the data your customers request would finally spur investment in America's worst-of-bread, ancient network infrastructure.

Comcast was one of the great beneficiaries of Pai's regulatory welfare check, and then got billions courtesy of Trump's #TaxScam. Other network operators used the tax money for buybacks while slashing jobs (Verizon killed 10,000 jobs, AT&T cut 23,000 jobs).

Comcast, befitting its stature as America's most hated company, thanked Uncle Sugar for the handouts by slashing cable infrastructure investment by 10.5% in 2019, while its revenues rose by 3.7%, to $58.1b. It was the second year in a row for cuts to Comcast's infrastructure investment.

But Comcast isn't the only major ISP cutting investment, as AT&T projects that it will reduce capital spending from $23 billion in 2019 to $20 billion in 2020. Charter Communications said in October that its capital expenditures excluding mobile services would total $7 billion in 2019, down from $8.9 billion in 2018. Verizon also reported a capital-expenditure decline in the first nine months of 2019.

Comcast slashed capital spending in cable division by 10.5% in 2019 [Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica]

(Image: Joe Ross, CC BY-SA, modified) Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/myadCeG_0V0/capex-is-for-little-ppl.html

United Airlines announced it would be canceling scheduled flights to China beginning in February, citing a "significant decline in demand," reports CNBC.

''We will continue to monitor the situation as it develops and will adjust our schedule as needed,” United said in a statement. United operates about 12 flights a day from the U.S. to mainland China and Hong Kong, and the changes will cut that number by three or four per day. The changes reduce flights to Hong Kong from San Francisco and Newark; to Beijing from Washington Dulles, Newark and Chicago; and Shanghai service from San Francisco, Newark and Chicago.

Meanwhile 20 US airports will soon start screening for coronavirus symptoms, up from five airports currently checking.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/f359cn6IDkM/united-airlines-reports-sign.html

A 19-year-old gentleman in Monroe, Louisiana asked a couple of guys at his gym if he could borrow some guns he noticed in their truck so that he could rob someone. He needed cash to skip town, and thought stealing it at gunpoint was his best shot (pun intended). But it was a botched scheme after the two men “flagged down an officer,” according to AP, and warned them about the fellow's plans. He was then arrested for possession of meth.

From AP:

[Landon Wayne] Duke had approached the men, whom he reportedly knew, in a Planet Fitness parking lot and noticed they had guns in their truck, according to a police arrest report obtained by The Monroe News Star. The men told investigators Duke said he wanted to borrow the guns to rob someone of enough money to leave town. The men said no and entered the gym, according to the report.

Duke allegedly followed and worked out with the men while continuing to talk about robbing someone, investigators wrote. Police later spotted Duke at nearby a gas station and found what they believed to be methamphetamine wrapped in a $100 bill in is pocket, the newspaper said.

Duke was booked into Ouachita Correctional Center on Sunday on one count of possession of a schedule II controlled dangerous substance. He remained in custody Monday, the News Star said.

Image: sfbaywalk / flickr Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/7uSOlRUqDFE/gentleman-asks-guys-at-his-gym.html

Network administration prof and infrastructure security architect Jan Schaumann has compiled a list of 88 "ops lessons we all learn the hard way" (e.g.: "Any sufficiently successful product launch is indistinguishable from a DDoS; any sufficiently advanced user indistinguishable from an attacker.")

It's one of those lists of how things go wrong that are fun to read ("Self-signed certificates beget long lived certs, which beget lack of certificate validity monitoring, which begets curl -k, which begets a lack of certificate deployment automation, which begets self-signed certificates."), but produce a sinking feeling at the same time as your realize just how likely it is that these are lessons you will likely have to confront in your own immediate future ("'Obsolete' doesn't mean it's not in use and relied on").

22. Ok, we all at times keep adding $, {, }, and @ in random places trying to make things work, but still.

23. Serverless isn't.

24. Y38K is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.

25. If you determine "human error" as the root cause, then you're doing it wrong. Your network team has a way into the network that your security team doesn't know about.

(A few) Ops Lessons We All Learn The Hard Way [Jan Schaumann/Signs of Triviality]

(via The Grugq) Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/CjJSYqB5ArM/etc-hosts-solves-nothing.html

Italian artist Umberto Romano painted the mural above in 1937 in the original Springfield, Massachusetts post office, now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts State Office Building. Titled "Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield," it's actually the first in a series of murals telling the story of Springfield's history from 1636 to 1936. More details at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum site. But if Romano painted this in 1937, how come the Native American in the bottom middle appears to be staring at a smartphone? From Brian Anderson's riff on the matter in Vice:

My introduction to the man came recently by way of New York City-based writer and historian Daniel Crown, who published an illuminating essay on William Pynchon in The Public Domain Review in 2015. Crown's piece makes one passing mention (in an image caption written by a PDR editor) to the object the man holds, noting how it bears a striking likeness to a smartphone. Romano, who died in 1982 at the age of 77, appears to have made no remarks specifically about the man; whatever clarity the artist could've offered he likely took with him to the grave. Crown's nod to the sitting man, near as I can tell, is the first and only such reference to date. I figured I'd start by reaching out to him.

"To put it in the kindliest possible terms, Romano's so-called 'abstract' aesthetic was willfully ambiguous," Crown told me over email. But it could very well be, he added, that the man quite literally sees himself in the handheld object, looking back at him.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/KM290iDROYg/man-in-1937-painting-appears-t.html

[My EFF colleague Bill Budington has a fantastic report on all the ways that Ring surveils its own customers. Caveat emptor, indeed. -Cory]

Ring isn't just a product that allows users to surveil their neighbors. The company also uses it to surveil its customers.

An investigation by EFF of the Ring doorbell app for Android found it to be packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Four main analytics and marketing companies were discovered to be receiving information such as the names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers, persistent identifiers, and sensor data on the devices of paying customers.

The danger in sending even small bits of information is that analytics and tracking companies are able to combine these bits together to form a unique picture of the user’s device. This cohesive whole represents a fingerprint that follows the user as they interact with other apps and use their device, in essence providing trackers the ability to spy on what a user is doing in their digital lives and when they are doing it. All this takes place without meaningful user notification or consent and, in most cases, no way to mitigate the damage done. Even when this information is not misused and employed for precisely its stated purpose (in most cases marketing), this can lead to a whole host of social ills.

Ring has exhibited a pattern of behavior that attempts to mitigate exposure to criticism and scrutiny while benefiting from the wide array of customer data available to them. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/UlE6iXrBVoI/ring-doorbell-app-packed-with.html

A 15th-century cesspit found under Somerset House in London has been lovingly recreated as a 3D model that you can explore in your web browser. [via Londonist]

Archaeologists from MOLA also uncovered a number of interesting objects from the pit:

"These include a rare 14th century ‘Penn’ floor tile – a decorating material of choice for palaces and monastic sites – pottery drinking vessels and tableware dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as a range of metalwork artefacts including a finger ring, iron spur, belt buckle, bone-handled fork and pendant."

Cess not included. But there's lots of other historical architectural delights on Sketchfab. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/voLsf8J9zFU/fecal-abyss-found-under-lo.html

For my latest podcast, I read my Guardian Cities column, "The case for ... cities that aren't dystopian surveillance states," which was the last piece ever commissioned for the section.

The Guardian commissioned the piece after reading my Toronto Life blurb about how a "smart city" could be focused on enabling its residents, rather than tracking and manipulating them.

In the article, I revisit my 2015 Locus column on the idea of an Internet of Things that treats people "as sensors, not things to be sensed" -- a world where your devices never share your data with anyone else to get recommendations or advice, but rather, where all the inanimate objects stream data about how busy they are and whether they're in good repair, and your device taps into those streams and makes private recommendations, without relaying anything about you or your choices to anyone else.

As I've often written, the most important thing about technology isn't what it does, but who it does it to, and who it does it for. The sizzle-reels for "smart cities" always feature a control room where wise technocrats monitor the city and everyone in it -- all I'm asking is that we all get a seat in that control room.

It’s a safe bet that the people who make those videos imagine themselves as one of the controllers watching the monitors – not as one of the plebs whose movements are being fed to the cameras that feed the monitors. It’s a safe bet that most of us would like that kind of god’s-eye view into our cities, and with a little tweaking, we could have it.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/FnqzM_kZeOk/podcast-the-case-for-citi.html

In the early days of the web, everyone wanted a .com domain for their site. As a result, all the good ones got snapped up. But .com no longer has the cachet it once did. In fact, many new businesses and individuals are opting for other top-level domain extensions. One of the most memorable is the .tech extension. It's short, it's memorable, and most importantly, it resonates very well with the field of technology. For example, a website on .tech clearly calls out that the website is about technology There are tons of great names on .tech available now, and you owe it to your company to at least check for your dream brand. Right now, you can save on your next domain for your next big idea with $7.99 for 1 year (down from $49.99), $24.99 for 3 years (down from $149.97) and $39.99 for 5 years (down from $249.95).

Start searching for the perfect domain extension here and get your .tech site online today.

  Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/CW8H76dC7uE/every-tech-brand-should-be-usi.html

“I design Unnecessary Inventions for fun,” says IMGURian @rightcoastguy, who was challenged by fellow users to make this truly silly and wacky invention.

“Meet the SockNoMore.”

I like it.

I would... sheepishly buy it.

I design Unnecessary Inventions for fun, and Imgurian challenged me to make this - meet the SockNoMore.

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/l0DVPPEdVpA/clever-inventor-designs-sock-r.html

Oh, this gets me right in the feels.

This video was originally posted by Jossmar Castillo on Facebook.

Lost Dog Saved by Two Drivers

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/xj5i05sHm_A/lost-dog-saved-by-random-human.html

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/FZOpS_RB-Vo/these-stardew-valley-game.html

Most streaming fanatics have access to perhaps one or two go-to platforms that they use to binge-watch their favorite shows every night. But there’s always that elusive streaming platform that we secretly crave but never sign up for—leading to bitter nights filled with missed content.

So why not enter to win not only a 1-year subscription to the streaming service of your choice but also a free streaming device as well?

The Pick Your Streaming Service & Device Giveaway allows you to do just that, and it’s completely free to enter.

After you sign up, you’ll automatically be in the running to win one best-selling streaming device—ranging from an Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, Google ChromeCast, and more—along with a 1-year subscription to a popular streaming service of your choice (Hulu, Netflix, Showtime, Disney+, or HBO).

There’s no hidden cost to enter the contest, and you’ll be notified directly once a winner has been selected.

Sign up here today for absolutely free. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/bd2iG4XX6y8/enter-to-win-a-free-streaming.html

IMGURian @Sgraceoh shared these phenomenal images of their “Lord of the Rings themed wedding,” and it looks like a good time was had by all.

Truly enchanting, and what dedication to design.

Our Lord of the Rings themed wedding!

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/2vLucZoekLc/lord-of-the-rings-wedding.html

In the first couple of days of this time-lapse video, we see flies laying eggs on a dead fish. On the third day, maggots erupt and begin to eat the fish, paying special attention to the eye socket. At this time-frame, and without being able to smell the fish, it's not as gross as you might think.

Image: YouTube

[via Digg] Read the rest

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Some species of sharks have evolved to literally walk along the ocean floor (no, not on land) using their fins as feet. New research Conservation International’s Mark Erdmann and colleagues determined that walking sharks only evolved their unique capability 9 million years ago, "making them the 'youngest' sharks on our planet." Of course, a distinct species usually forms when some members of a species are physically separated from others. So how did that speciation occur in the case of the walking sharks? From an interview with Erdmann at Conservation International:

For most of the walking shark species, our findings support the idea that speciation occurred because the populations slowly expanded their range by walking or swimming, then some individuals eventually became isolated by environmental factors such as sea level rise or the formation of large river systems that broke up their habitats.

For the four walking shark species found at the Bird’s Head Seascape, we suspect that they actually hitched a ride — on a drifting island...

Q: Is there another mystery about walking sharks you hope to solve?

From a scientific perspective, there is still so much to learn from walking sharks. We know that the world’s species that exist today are basically the existing “genetic reservoir” (raw genetic material) we have to adapt to global changes. We also know that walking sharks are very resilient to warm water and that they have a tolerance for oxygen deprivation. Any time you have an animal or plant that can survive in these extreme conditions, there is typically something unique about their genes — a “special sauce”.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/zvD_QsCwYnQ/newly-discovered-sharks-that-w.html