Amazon.com has banned the sale of over a million products in the last few weeks for inaccurate coronavirus health claims, the company told Reuters on Thursday.

The struggle is real. If you search for "Purell" or "N95 mask" on Amazon in the USA today, the supplies are gone, or the offers are ridiculously higher than normal.

Excerpt:

Amazon also removed tens of thousands of deals from merchants that it said attempted to price-gouge customers. The world’s largest online retailer has faced scrutiny over the health-related offers on its platform, and earlier this week Italy launched a probe into surging prices around the internet for sanitizing gels and hygiene masks while it battled the biggest outbreak in Europe. (...) One offer comparison site showed recent examples of higher-than-usual prices for masks on Amazon made by U.S. industrial conglomerate 3M Co.

A merchant Thursday offered a 10-pack of N95 masks for $128, a Reuters reporter saw when clicking through the buying options on Amazon. That was up from a recent seller average price of $41.24, according to the tracking website camelcamelcamel.com. The item was no longer available in a check later in the day.

A two-pack respirator was offered new at $24.99 earlier this week by a third-party seller, up from a recent average of $6.65 when sold by Amazon, the price-following site showed.

“There is no place for price gouging on Amazon,” a spokeswoman said in a statement, citing the company’s policy that product information must be accurate and that Amazon can take down offers that hurt customer trust, including when pricing “is significantly higher than recent prices offered on or off Amazon.”

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/coronavirus-amazon-snake-oil.html

AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon are among the telecommunications carriers facing hundreds of millions of dollars in fines from the Federal Communications Commission after a federal investigation found the companies didn't do enough to protect the location data of users.

The telecoms are expected to fight the FCC's decision.

From reporting by Drew FitzGerald and Sarah Krouse at the Wall Street Journal:

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in fines from the country’s top cellphone carriers after officials found the companies failed to safeguard information about customers’ real-time locations, according to people familiar with the matter.

The telecom regulator in recent weeks informed AT&T Inc., Sprint Corp., T-Mobile US Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. of pending notices of apparent liability, the people said.

Read more at the WSJ:

FCC Probe Finds Mobile Carriers Didn’t Safeguard Customer Location Data [via techmeme]

Drip, drip, drip...In January the carriers were found to be illegally disclosing customers' location data to 3rd party. Now, they weren't safeguarding the location data to begin with. Oops, it's only the real time location of millions of subscribers. https://t.co/TCnYomb06D

 Ramsey McGrory (@RamseyMcGrory) February 27, 2020

WSJ: FCC Probe Finds Mobile Carriers Didn’t Safeguard Customer Location Data

"the companies can still argue they aren’t liable or should pay less. It would ultimately fall on the U.S. Justice Department to collect any penalties."https://t.co/ZLkcZB2Ixm

 Hamza Shaban (@hshaban) February 27, 2020

AT&T and T-Mobile are among the companies facing hundreds of millions of dollars in fines after FCC probe finds that carriers didn’t do enough to protect location data, though the carriers will likely fight decision https://t.co/mNQL4Rutsk

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/att-t-mobile-sprint-verizo.html

BuzzFeed News reporters have seen leaked Clearview AI documents that show the company is “working with more than 2,200 law enforcement agencies, companies, and individuals around the world,” including Best Buy, Walmart, Macy's, ICE, DOJ, and the FBI, plus “a sovereign wealth fund in the United Arab Emirates.”

Wow.

Clearview AI is the facial recognition startup run by a right-wing internet personality that is reported to have a database of billions of photos scraped from social media and the internet.

Just a few hours ago, Clearview reported that its entire client list has been stolen.

From reporting by Ryan Mac, Caroline Haskins, and Logan McDonald at Buzzfeed News:

The startup, Clearview AI, is facing legal threats from Facebook, Google, and Twitter, as well as calls for regulation and scrutiny in the US. But new documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News reveal that it has already shared or sold its technology to thousands of organizations around the world.

In its quest to create a global biometric identification system to span both public and private sectors, Clearview has signed paid contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, and Macy’s, according to the document obtained by BuzzFeed News. The company has credentialed users at the FBI, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Interpol, and hundreds of local police departments. In doing so, Clearview has taken a flood-the-zone approach to seeking out new clients, providing access not just to organizations, but to individuals within those organizations — sometimes with little or no oversight or awareness from their own management.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/clearview-ai-clients-best-buy.html

Website building apps are all about one thing — helping you craft a great-looking, fast-running website without having to mess with all that back-end code. However, nobody wants their site to look just like a template, so customization is all but a must. So how easy is it to make those changes and still not get sucked into the programming code weeds?

A lot simpler than you might think with the aid of services like Weblium Website Builder. A previous holder of a #2 Product of the Week ranking on Product Hunt with over 200,000 users around the globe, Weblium has carved out a place as a website builder that makes executing your specific vision of your website in detail with remarkable ease.

Getting started with Weblium begins with choosing from the more than 180 available site templates. There are 20 different site categories to sample, so you’ll pretty much always find a tone or style that matches the vibe you seek for your new site.

This is the stage where the nitty-gritty truly kicks in, and with Weblium’s block design aesthetic, it’s hyper-intuitive to just pick and choose from over 200 different drag-and-drop content blocks to position on your pages any way you like. The Weblium AI Design Supervisor offers dynamic edit capabilities, so you’ll always be able to see the exact changes you’re making to a block show up immediately in your build with no guesswork later.

Just add an FAQ section in one corner of your page, comments in another and maybe a social media feed along the right side — each move is as simple as point and click. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/weblium-helps-you-build-profes.html

Created by Promobot, a startup in Russia, this electronic Arnie isn't going to be murdering its way through all the Sarah Connors in the L.A. phonebook. It might find its way into a few nightmares, though.

Below, the same Arnie headbot on the CES 2020 show floor.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/arnold-schwarzenegger-robot-wo.html

It's seems likely that Covid-19 will be a pandemic, maybe on the order of the 1918 Spanish Flu (listen to this podcast episode of The New York Times' The Daily for a persuasive argument as to why). It might be a good time to prepare your home for an outbreak. This NPR article, "A Guide: How To Prepare Your Home For Coronavirus," has good advice.

Here's a summary:

Make sure you have a supply of daily prescription medication on hand, as well as over-the-counter fever reducers. Have sufficient nonperishable foods to last your family for two weeks. Have soup, crackers, and Gatorade or Pedialyte on hand should anyone in the house get sick. Clean surfaces frequently with soap and water. Wear a mask if you get sick. Telecommute instead of going to an office, if possible. Have a plan in place for kids and older family members. Wash hands as soon as you enter your home. Cough into your elbow.

Image by tatianawillmann from Pixabay Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/nprs-no-nonsense-guide-to-pr.html

In the 1920s, Frederick Banting, one of the scientists who co-discovered insulin (and won a Nobel Prize for it) said, “Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.” He and the other scientists sold the patent for making insulin to the University of Toronto for $3.

And yet today, this drug, which is needed to keep millions of people with diabetes alive, costs 700% more than it did two decades ago and many people can no longer afford it. What happened? It comes down to two reasons: a "lack of pricing regulations and lack of competition," says James Dinneen in his article, "There’s No Excuse for the Insulin Crisis."

There's no law stopping the three major insulin manufacturers (Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi) from charging whatever they want for the drugs they make. And since diabetics will die without it, insulin makers gouge them for all their worth. So why isn't there a low-cost generic version? The manufacturers came up with a clever way to stop that from happening.

From the article:

That lack of competition isn’t an accident. Though the original patents for most of the insulin formulations on the market expired years ago, the big three insulin manufacturers have extended their monopolies by patenting incremental changes to their products and manufacturing processes. Those patents can then be used to tie-up potential generic competitors in long, costly legal battles. In addition, they have been shielded from competition from generics by stringent federal regulations around “biologics” like insulin, which is a complex molecule produced by living cells.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/why-the-price-of-insulin-has-s.html

Watch this coach's incredible reflexes as a young gymmast misses her landing during a recent competition in Nashville, Tennessee.

ViralHog quoted the girl's parent:

"This was my daughter's first run on vault and when jumping back on her back handspring she went sideways and could've badly hurt herself but her coach saw that she wasn't aligned and ran in to catch her before she hit the ground."

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/watch-this-gymnastics-coachs.html

If Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan really want to attain the financial independence they desire, they could do worse than launching a weekly Royal Scandal magazine.

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/your-dollar-bills-could-kill-y.html

Last night, someone stole a Lincoln Navigator hearse with a body inside. The police search just ended this morning with a high-speed pursuit on the 110 freeway that ended in the Lincoln Navigator crashing. They apprehended the suspect and the body was still inside the vehicle.

According to CBS Local, the SUV "was stolen from out in front of St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Church in unincorporated Pasadena. A casket holding a woman’s body was inside the vehicle at the time of the theft."

News video below.

To the suspect(s) driving around in a Black Lincoln Navigator stolen from the 700 blk of Rosemead Bl just after 8PM today in uninc #Pasadena:Out of all the bad decisions you have made, at least make one good one & bring back the deceased person & casket inside the Navigator. pic.twitter.com/Dvo7u94zL1

 LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) February 27, 2020

UPDATEThis is what we can confirm. -The Black Navigator is the stolen vehicle involved in the grand theft auto from last night.-There is one suspect in custody-One casket with one deceased has been located inside the vehicle pic.twitter.com/JRrKRqYnyv

 LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) February 27, 2020

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/los-angeles-police-capture-sus.html

I consider myself to be a skilled parallel parker, mostly because I spent my younger years driving my mom's 1975 Oldsmobile Delta 88 land yacht. I'm not sure if I follow the steps laid out in this video by Jalopnik's Andrew Collins but his does seem like a methodologically sound approach that's infinitely better than the dreaded "park by touch" technique. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/how-to-parallel-park-perfectly.html

This Anker PowerCore Slim 10000 portable charger can be recharged with a USB-C or Micro USB cable. I have a number of Anker products and they work really well. If you use code ANKER299 at Amazon checkout, you can get this at a great discount. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/good-discount-on-anker-powerco.html

In 1983, Cyndi Lauper transformed Robert Hazard's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" into a new wave pop anthem that Gillian G. Gaar described as a "strong feminist statement", an "anthem of female solidarity," and a "playful romp celebrating female camaraderie" in her book She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll (2002). Above, listen to Lauper belt it out in the isolated vocal track from the recording session.

Also worth a listen, the original "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" as sung Hazard.

(via /r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/listen-to-cyndi-laupers-incr.html

I count myself as one of the superfans of horror auteur Jordan Peele, so I'm superexcited to see his remake of Candyman, a 1992 cult-favorite about an urban legend that turns out not to be a legend. Peele produced and co-wrote the screenplay, and it comes out June 12, 2020.

From the synopsis:

For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II; HBO’s Watchmen, Us) and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris; If Beale Street Could Talk, The Photograph), move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials.

With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini Green old-timer (Colman Domingo; HBO’s Euphoria, Assassination Nation) exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifyingly viral wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/heres-the-trailer-for-jordan.html

Disney is seeking an Admiral for their Galactic Starcruiser, Halcyon. That means there's an open position for general manager of the Star Wars theme hotel at Walt Disney World, Florida. From the Job Summary:

Are you ready to command a Galactic Starcruiser, the Halcyon, where you will take passengers on an adventure to a galaxy far, far, away? Be the first Admiral (GM) to manage this fully immersive, luxury resort, where guests and crew are part of a Star Wars story, including encounters between Resistance forces and the First Order.

We are seeking a seasoned hotelier with extensive senior leadership hospitality experience on land or at sea to serve as Resort Manager / Hotel Director. He/she will drive and execute a unique immersive “cruise-like experience” aligned with our Star Wars franchise. This experience will operate as a two-night journey and be the world’s first multi-day immersive adventure. The ideal candidate will have a passion for bringing ideas to life, creativity, value a non-traditional work environment, and balance a traditional hotel experience with immersive entertainment.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/help-wanted-admiral-for-disne.html

"To the suspect(s) driving around in a Black Lincoln Navigator stolen from the 700 blk of Rosemead Bl just after 8PM today in uninc #Pasadena: Out of all the bad decisions you have made, at least make one good one & bring back the deceased person & casket inside the Navigator," tweeted the LA County Sheriff's department last night.

The suspects have not been identified and are still at large.

To the suspect(s) driving around in a Black Lincoln Navigator stolen from the 700 blk of Rosemead Bl just after 8PM today in uninc #Pasadena:

Out of all the bad decisions you have made, at least make one good one & bring back the deceased person & casket inside the Navigator. pic.twitter.com/Dvo7u94zL1

 LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) February 27, 2020

Image by Michael Kauer from Pixabay Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/cops-ask-hearse-thieves-pleas.html

People are tossing old mattresses faster than ever before, thanks to online mattress peddlers who offer easy returns and 100-day guarantees. (It's not surprising -- the last time I visited a brick-and-mortar mattress store it had the same vibe as a sleazy used car joint.) The upshot -- tons of tossed out mattresses clogging landfills and the rise of scammy recyclers who collect filthy, vermin-infested mattresses, give them new covers and resell them as new.

The Guardian reports:

One scam involves fraudsters posing as reputable mattress recyclers. They set up an official-looking website and start offering their services to residents and businesses. When people bite, the fraudsters collect the mattresses, pick the ones in good condition, replace the outer casing, and then wrap in new covers that often have the logo of a reputable manufacturer on it. These secondhand mattresses are then sold as new. “Some of the mattresses you get from the general public are disgusting,” warns Allsopp. “If you strip the outer polycotton layer off a mattress, underneath it’s just a horror,” Scollick agrees. “That, unsanitised, is going into supposedly brand-new mattresses.”

It is easy to fall victim to mattress scammers: a member of Fitzsimons’ own family was duped. “I was agog!” he says. “In spite of all my stories over the dinner table!” A common scam involves a man with a van – often with the name of a reputable firm on the side – who goes door-to-door in residential neighbourhoods. He was meant to be delivering mattresses to a hotel, he’ll say, but there was a problem with the order, and they have surplus, high-quality mattresses.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/online-mattress-sales-have-giv.html

In our modern world, our usual first approach to combating an oncoming cold is to medicate it into oblivion. Sometimes, that carpet bombing pharmaceutical attack plan can knock out the congestion and discomfort of an illness before it settles in. But there’s always something to be said for trying to put down the effects of a cold or allergy irritation with a more natural, holistic method.

As opposed to drug remedies, steam inhalers go at sinus issues with good old fashioned water vapor. You can enjoy the benefits of this time-tested technique with the AVYA Portable Steam Inhaler, which is now over 30 percent off its regular price at just $129.99.

Boiled water or saline solution produces a heated steam aerosol that travels deep into the nasal passages, thanks to Avya’s patented technology. The vapors break up congestion, clear sinuses and relieve irritation or inflammation while draining mucus caused by colds, allergies, sinusitis or even the flu.

Even if you’re just suffering from nasal or throat discomfort due to cold weather conditions, the AVYA inhaler can help hydrate and moisturize those airways and soothe those sensitive areas with an ancient and safe remedy.

Battery-operated and weighing less than 8 ounces, you can use the AVYA anywhere to get breathing relief instantly. The AVYA was backed by a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $344,000 and with a 4.2 out of 5 star Amazon rating, the unit is definitely winning over converts with its simple approach to nasal relief.

Of course, the right saline solution can help make a real difference in achieving that relief, so you can also choose from standard AVYA Nasal Saline Solution ($8.99, Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/the-avya-steam-inhaler-combine.html

Clearview, the shady facial-recognition firm with links to law-enforcement and alt-right internet trolls, reports that its entire client list has been stolen.

In the notification, which The Daily Beast reviewed, the startup Clearview AI disclosed to its customers that an intruder “gained unauthorized access” to its list of customers, to the number of user accounts those customers had set up, and to the number of searches its customers have conducted. The notification said the company’s servers were not breached and that there was “no compromise of Clearview’s systems or network.” The company also said it fixed the vulnerability and that the intruder did not obtain any law-enforcement agencies’ search histories.

Not a good look for any security company--especially one that prides itself on scraping private information from Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the web, irrespective of whether they're permitted to, and repackaging it for government and the police to identify and track individuals through surveillance. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/clearview-client-list-stolen.html

Chris Pattle's The Simpsons in CSS is exactly as promised: thirteen of the show's characters rendered and animated using style sheets: no javascript or image files to be found.

(In Firefox on Windows, you can see some artifacts that hint at how the characters are built from geometric shapes.) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/27/the-simpsons-in-pure-css.html