Julian Assange's lawyer told a London court that Trump offered to pardon the WikiLeaks founder if he agreed to say Russia was not involved in the Democratic National Committee email hack, reports The Daily Beast.

Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lawyer, said Wednesday that a message had been passed on to Assange by former Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

Fitzgerald said a statement produced by Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, showed “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange... said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”

Image by Espen Moe - originally posted to Flickr as IMG_4739, CC BY 2.0, Link Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/assanges-lawyer-says-trump-o.html

The latest episode of Two Minute Papers discusses a new video enhancement method called "Depth-Aware Video Frame Interpolation" to increase the frame rate of choppy videos. The breakthrough here is the way this neural network smoothly handles objects that appear from behind other objects.

Image: YouTube/Two Minute Papers Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/neural-network-turns-24-fps-vi.html

A fellow named Brett, aka "Slab," was having a beer with his buddies at the the Amble Inn in Corindi Beach, New South Wales, Australia, when he noticed a gecko in his mug. The gecko wasn't moving so Slab sprang into action, as seen in the video above.

Yes, geckos do sometimes play dead as a defense mechanism. But either way, good on ya, Slab!

(News.com.au) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/man-performs-cpr-on-gecko-floa.html

One of my favorite YouTube channels is Nippon Wandering TV, in which a guy walks and bikes around Japanese streets with a GoPro camera. In his latest video he bikes around Keisei Tateishi station in northeast Tokyo. and takes a look at an old neighborhood that is going to be plowed to make way for redevelopment. "Tokyo plans to redevelop this neighborhood and the retro street, old hidden bar izakaya will be all gone in the near future," he writes. "I miss these old alleys, but it can’t be avoided."

Image: YouTube/Nippon Wandering TV Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/video-of-a-cool-old-tokyo-neig.html

A gentleman on an easyJet flight from Manchester to Iceland apparently began disassembling and chewing up parts of his mobile phone, causing the battery to smoke and alarming passengers. Prior to this snack, Matthew Flaherty, 44, was simply acting like a drunk asshole violently threatening passengers and crew. The pilot diverted the plane to Edinburgh Aiport. Upon Flaherty's arrest, he screamed racist remarks to the police. The incident happened last year and Flaherty was just in court to face the music. From The Scotsman:

Solicitor Richard Souter, defending, said his client was “aghast at his behaviour” on the flight and had little recollection of the events due to mixing alcohol with painkillers he had taken for a trapped nerve.

Mr Souter said the combination of medication and alcohol had “an adverse effect on his behaviour”.

Sheriff Thomas Welsh QC said Flaherty had carried out an “extremely serious offence” and deferred sentence to next month for the preparation of reports.

The sheriff added: “This is an extremely serious case and you should prepare yourself for custody.”

image credit: Adrian Pingstone (public domain) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/gentleman-on-easyjet-flight-be.html

The LockPickingLawyer, who runs a YouTube Channel about recreational lockpicking, bought a Mofut Key Lock Box. Inside the box was a card offering $10 in the form of a gift card or cash via PayPal, in exchange for a 5-star review, which is a clear violation of Amazon's terms of service for sellers. The card even says, "Please DO NOT talk or post images about this rebate activity in your review content, otherwise it is invalid."

"To be clear," writes the LockPickingLawyer, "I’m not suggesting that Amazon is complicit in this review-buying nonsense. To the contrary, it seems to violate Amazon’s rules. As best as I can tell, this is the product of an unethical third-party seller."

Also, he shows how easy it is to defeat this lockbox with a thin metal shim. It looks like junk. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/this-sleazy-amazon-marketplace.html

Someone has been depositing pillowcases filled with live snakes outside of a fire station in Sunderland, northeast England. Last week, 13 pythons turned up and one has since died. The latest collection included 15 corn snakes and a carpet python. Fortunately, those snakes seem to be in decent health, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). From CNN:

"We were in the midst of Storm Dennis at the weekend when these snakes, who need heat and light in order to survive, were left outside in the cold with just a pillowcase to contain them," said (RSPCA inspector Heidi) Cleaver. "It would have been very stressful for the snakes to be in such close proximity to each other as well..."

The RSPCA has appealed for information about the mystery surrounding the snakes being repeatedly dumped in the area.

images: RSPCA Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/someone-has-been-dumping-bundl.html

SpaceX and Space Adventures have partnered to offer space tourists a trip to orbit on the SpaceX Crew Dragon space capsule. They expect the first flight to launch in late 2021 or early 2022. Around $50 million will get you a seat. From Spaceflight Now:

The mission would not dock with the space station, but would instead fly into an orbit above the station’s altitude of about 260 miles (420 kilometers) above Earth, according to Space Adventures, the Virginia-based company that arranged flights of seven wealthy space tourists on Russian Soyuz capsules between 2001 and 2009...

Responding to a question on Twitter about a possible price tag of $52 million per seat, (Space Adventures chairman Eric) Anderson tweeted: “Per seat price for a full group of four not quite that much (not dramatically less, but significant enough to note). Definitive pricing confidential, and dependent on client specific requests, etc.”

Anderson tweeted that the training regimen for the Crew Dragon flight will be “significantly less than the few months required for previous missions or ISS missions.”

“Dragon in this profile allows up to 5 days,” Anderson tweeted. “3 days is probably ideal, 40-50 orbits or so.”

image: SpaceX Crew Dragon (NASA, public domain) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/spacex-and-space-adventures-of.html

Burger King's switching to preservative-free ingredients, and chose to market this fact by showing what will now happen to its sandwiches if they are left out uneaten. Welcome to the intersection of advertising and earned media, puke bags are under the seats. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/burger-king-shows-whopper-deca.html

The broken ASCII-art "FUCK EPIC GAMES STORE" wasn't placed intentionally by Steam to show up as the store's description in Google search results, but there it is, all the same. Google and its algorithmic gods picked the phrase, a comment left by a user of the site, for reasons known only to itself. [Rock Paper Shotgun]

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/steams-google-result-reads.html

In the early 1800s, agents working for Thomas Bruce of Scotland, the 7th Earl of Elgin, conveniently “removed” about half of the remaining marble statues from the Parthenon, as well as a few other Greek sculptures, and brought them back to Britain in the name of art history cultural preservation colonialism. Bruce claimed to have permission from the Ottoman Empire to borrow these artifacts, but others have insisted that this is total bullshit. This has — understandably! — resulted in some strained tensions between the British Empire and the modern Greek government (post-Ottoman Empire) that’s gone on for about two centuries.

Now that Britain has left the European Union, Greece has renewed their effort to reclaim the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles. From The Times:

A draft negotiating mandate circulated among European governments in Brussels today hardened EU demands in key traditional trade areas, particularly fishing, but also included the unexpected “return and restitution” line.

“The parties should address issues relating to the return or restitution of unlawfully removed cultural objects to their country of origin,” said a newly drafted text that will be signed off by EU governments next week.

The Greek government has said that Brexit will shift the political balance within the EU to force Britain to return the fifth century BC marbles.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the British government is thus far refusing to cooperate. They seem to be under the impression that the marbles were legally acquired. I suppose this makes sense, on the grounds that the British government makes the laws by which the country abides, and thus, according to their own laws, they have acted in accordance with the law (that they made) in their decision to steal cultural artifacts from half the god damn world in the name of Imperialism. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/after-brexit-britain-may-fina.html

While we all love our iPhones and iPads, celebrating the releases of their latest and greatest versions, it’s amusing to consider how much we at the same time HATE the main item that keeps these little tech marvels powered up and working.

No, Lightning cables don’t exactly inspire feelings of awe and wonder. It’s more like...anger and frustration. That’s because we all know that in a matter of weeks, and in many cases, just days, that freaking cable will get kinked, peeled, or frayed to the point of uselessness.

Apple-approved cables are as fragile as eggs and like everything from Cupertino, not exactly cheap. Instead, try out this 10-ft cloth MFi-Certified Lightning cable now at over 60 percent off its regular price, only $14.99.

Crafted from flexible, tangle-resistant cloth fiber, this cable is sturdy enough to survive real-world use while still delivering reliable power to your thirsty devices.

These MFi-certified connectors can handle all the syncing and charging tasks you need to be handled. And thanks to its generous 10-foot reach, you’ll likely always have that extra little bit of cord needed to stay connected to your USB port or outlet even when it’s across the room.

Regularly priced at $39.99, this $25 discount might make this a good time to stock up on a couple for all your various charging locations. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/this-10-foot-cloth-lightning-c.html

Exhibit A: Boycycle, a music video by Vedran Rupic for Bosnian DJ Salvator Ganacci, who stars as the titular creature.

Exhibits B1 through B3: Progressive Insurance's "Motaur" ad campaign, with a similar if less grossly-rendered motif.

"Legs on the bottom, motorcycle on the top." Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/boycycle-v-motaur.html

Amusing yet unsettling and increasingly smooth, the deepfakes keep coming. Here's Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk's faces superimposed onto Star Trek's original 1965 pilot episode, with Bezos as the Talosian magistrate and Musk as Christopher Pike. It's by TheFakening, one of YouTube's deepfake masters.

In the not too distant future Elon Musk will save us from the captivity of Jeff Bezos' Amazon illusion.

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/jeff-bezos-and-elon-musk-star.html

Minimalism isn't just trendy, it's also wise. Clearing clutter and keeping things simple in your home is great for both your mind and for the earth. Bring that movement to your bedside when you replace just about everything on and around your nightstand with the Tree of Light: Wireless Charger + Bluetooth Speaker + LED Lamp.

This 3-in-1 essential home accessory that doubles as a work of art will help you bypass switches, tangled cords, power strips, and the random mishmash of items you need to keep nearby at night. The LED lamp features a sleek cherry wood shade, striking tree sculpture, sleep timer, and adjustable brightness via touch control right on the base.

Also on the base? A Qi-enabled wireless charging pad to keep your phone powered up and ready to go in the morning. Plus that's where you'll find the touch controls for track selection and audio volume of the built-in Bluetooth neodymium speaker. Pair your device and listen to your favorite playlist, podcast, or meditation to help you fall asleep or get ready for the day ahead.

Bring an eclectic mix of form and function to your bedroom for 13% off MSRP when you buy the Tree of Light Wireless Charger + Bluetooth Speaker + LED Lamp for $129.99. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/18/bring-art-to-your-bedside-with.html

President Trump today announced that he is commuting the prison sentence of Rod Blagojevich, a former Illinois governer jailed for corruption, and pardoning Bernard Kerik, the former New York Police Commissioner jailed for tax fraud.

Blagojevich attempted to sell Barack Obama's senate seat; Kerik was found to have accepted a $250,000 bribe from a billionaire while a member of the interim administration of Iraq following the second Gulf war.

By commuting the sentence, the president would free Mr. Blagojevich from prison without wiping out the conviction. Republicans have advised the president against it, arguing that Mr. Blagojevich’s crime epitomizes the corruption that Mr. Trump had said he wanted to tackle as president.

The president’s decision came the same day that he pardoned Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., a former owner of the San Francisco 49ers who pleaded guilty in 1998 to concealing an extortion attempt and eventually surrendered control of his team.

Also pardoned was Michael R. Milken, an investment banker convicted of securities fraud. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/18/trump-commutes-sentence-of-cor.html

When Maria Marten disappeared from the English village of Polstead in 1827, her lover said that they had married and were living on the Isle of Wight. But Maria's stepmother began having disturbing dreams that hinted at a much grimmer fate. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Red Barn, which transfixed Britain in the early 19th century.

We'll also encounter an unfortunate copycat and puzzle over some curious births.

Show notes

Please support us on Patreon! Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/18/in-1828-ann-marten-began-to-h.html

In Gainseville, Florida, a routine crawlspace inspection turned up jars of preserved human tongues that date back to the 1960s. Police are currently investigating whether the tongues were related to research conducted by the home's previous owner, Ronald A. Baughman, a University of Florida professor emeritus whose work focused on oral medicine and surgery. (WCJB)

More in this Reddit post by RandoSurfer77: "I found human remains today in a crawlspace under a home."

(image: imgur) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/18/florida-man-stored-jars-of-pre.html

The New York Times remembers Barbara Remington, who created the cover illustrations for Ballantine Books' 1965 paperback editions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit. Remington's covers will always be the canonical covers for me, because these editions were in my junior high school library when I first encountered Tolkien.

From the article:

Ms. Remington, who designed other book covers for Ballantine as well, was asked to illustrate the 1965 editions of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” on a tight deadline.

“Ballantine was in a hurry to get these books out right away,” she said in an interview for the literary journal Andwerve. “When they commissioned me to do the artwork, I didn’t have the chance to see either book, though I tried to get a copy through my friends.

“So I didn’t know what they were about,” she continued. “I tried finding people that had read them, but the books were not readily available in the states, and so I had sketchy information at best.”

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/18/rip-barbara-remington-illustr.html

In case you don't know, HackSpace is a terrific monthly maker magazine from the U.K. Published by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, HackSpace includes articles by bunnie huang, Andrew Lewis, Marc de Vinck, Sophy Wong, Bob Knetzger, and many other authors you many recognize from the pages of Make: magazine and other domains of the maker movement. I contribute a monthly tips and tutorials column.

One of the great benefits to HackSpace is that it has always been a free PDF for those who can't afford the high (over $100/year) international subscription rate. Well, good news, everyone! You can now get HackSpace for $60 a year (12 issues) and your sub comes with an Adafruit Circuit Playground Express (worth $25). Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/18/hackspace-magazine-lowers-its.html