Yesterday I posted about Finger on the App, a game in which players must keep their finger on their smartphone screen (and occasionally move it to a new spot indicated by the app, to prevent cheating). The last person to keep their finger on the app wins a prize of up to $25,000. Over 48 hours later, 15 players are still vying for the prize. The game started with 1.3 million players. Yesterday morning about 80 players remained. As of now (12:55 p.m. Pacific time) 15 players are left.

MrBeast is keeping track of the activity.

Below, a "montage of people losing the $25k finger on the app challenge on livestream when viewers trick Siri to open."

A montage of people losing the $25k finger on the app challenge on livestream when viewers trick Siri to open. from r/Wellthatsucks

Image: Twitter Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/after-48-hours-only-15-player.html

What is Arduino? It's a credit card size electronics prototyping platform that lets artists, designers, and others add interactivity to their projects. (My book Maker Dad, has a useful Arduino tutorial.)

This Arduino UNO clone starter kit is very inexpensive and has the following components:

  Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/791863.html

“The guitar has a kind of grit and excitement possessed by nothing else.” - Brian May

If someone was assigned to turn raw sexiness into an actual, physical real-world object, it would have to be a guitar. The sound. The fit. The swagger. The allure. The longing. It’s all right there in 38 inches and those six magical strings.

Learning to become a guitar hero is the dream of any kid who has ever seen a performance and wanted to bask in that kind of artistry and fame. And even if you don’t dream of the spotlight, the expression and therapeutic nature of playing has its own benefits. With the training found in The Complete Learn to Master the Guitar Bundle, anyone can take some time and learn how to play.

And this is no simple bland tutorial. This collection features 14 different courses that can help even a complete guitar novice start learning the basics, then progress into understanding a host of different playing styles and even the music theory that drives every classic song.

Even if you don’t know a guitar pick from a nose pick, this package gets you started the right way, including four beginner courses in acoustic, rock, and blues guitar playing that will run you through all the basics. 

After learning how to master the fretboard in six easy steps and even some simple strumming patterns, you’ll be off and running. From there, you’ll move into improving your technique, learning exercises to help your hands move with more speed and efficiency between chords. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/finally-learn-how-to-play-the.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/kellyanne-conways-15-year-ol.html

A Joe Rogan lookalike thought he could win a chess game by intimidating his 16-year-old opponent through insults, and gaslighting, and patronizing disdain. Unfortunately for the mouthy gentleman, the kid, who said almost nothing during the game, whipped him. When he was checkmated, the loser said to the kid, "You know what, you're not nice," and stormed off. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/trash-talking-chess-players.html

The Professional Advertising Regulatory Authority (ARPP) of France has banned the airing of a television commercial for VanMoof electric bikes. From a statement by VanMoof (Via Core77):

According to the ARPP, certain shots of the car's reflections "discredit the automobile sector [...] while creating a climate of anxiety." It is notable that the ARPP rejected what would have been one of the first bike ads on French TV, despite recently pledging to reinforce the sustainability aspects of their policies.

The [banning] decision comes at a time when the French car industry is in trouble, with sales plummeting due to COVID-19 and widespread economic decline on the horizon. In a bid to support the sector – responsible for almost a third of the country's greenhouse gas emissions – the government recently introduced a recovery plan worth €8 billion.

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/france-bans-bicycle-commercial.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/america-set-to-be-nuked-anarc.html

Bartosz Ciechanowski makes web pages with interactive visuals to explain things like gears, four dimensional cubes, the orbit of the earth around the sun, transparency in digital imaging, lights and shadows, and RGB color spaces. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/amazing-explainer-websites.html

Coffee YouTuber James Hoffman reviewed the 9Barista stovetop espresso machine.

Here's a half-section illustration from the  9Barista website so you can see what's going on. It has two boilers, a heat sink, a coiled heat exchanger, and a spring-loaded valve:

It's available from the 9Barista espresso website for $385. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/review-of-the-fantastically-co.html

I'm reading Matt Alt's fantastic new book, Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World. Early on in the book, he points to Sony's TR-63 transistor radio (introduced in 1957) as the beginning of Japan's gargantuan influence on the world through consumer electronics, toys, entertainment, and other aspects of popular culture.

I was curious about this transistor radio so I looked it up online and learned that IFixIt did a teardown of the radio back in 2009.

The TR-63 was introduced in 1957 - it was the first "pocket-sized" transistor radio ever made and the first Sony-branded product exported to North America, by the then-named Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo company (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). It became a huge commercial success, over 100,000 units were sold.

It seems "pocket-sized" was a bit of a marketing gimmick at the time - although smaller than any competing product, the TR-63 was a bit too big to fit into a standard shirt pocket. So story has it that company salesmen wore custom-made shirts with slightly bigger pockets to show off the TR-63's small size. But unlike desktop radios of the day which were promoted under the idea of "a radio in every home", the TR-63 was uniquely marketed as something each person could own and carry with them. A foreshadowing of the Walkman and iPod, perhaps?

The TR-63 contains a whopping 6 transistors. By comparison, the Cell processor chip in the PS3 contains two to three hundred million transistors. That's an indication of the progress made in the electronics industry in the past 50 years.

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/teardown-of-iconic-sony-tr-63.html

Voiced by a Russian actor, "Fellow Traveler" is a Lincoln Project anti-Trump ad that is narrated in Russian.

"The most important endorsement Donald Trump received in 2016 was not from your Senate leader, Mitch McConnell," starts the ad. "And not from your Congressman, Paul Ryan...No, Donald Trump received the most important endorsement in 2016 from our great leader Vladimir Putin."

"Our special services worked overtime to elect Comrade Trump," it continues. "We manipulated your voters to spread our glorious propaganda. And you, American dogs, were set against each other."

"Comrade Trump's campaign wisely accepted our help." He "gladly accepted the help of Mother Russia...Congratulations, Comrade Trump!"

One of Comrade Trump's first assignments to help puppet master Vladimir Putin came early with his "Make America Great Again" slogan. His base bought it. As The Lincoln Project tweeted yesterday, "Add ‘America First’ to the laundry list of scams Trump has sold in his life. It’s clearly Trump first, Russia second, and America last."

American soldiers’ lives are in danger and Trump has done nothing to stop it.

Add ‘America First’ to the laundry list of scams Trump has sold in his life. It’s clearly Trump first, Russia second, and America last. pic.twitter.com/sqiRyqtJBE

 The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 1, 2020

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/this-lincoln-project-ad-congra.html

A Black woman at Miami International Airport told a Miami-Dade police officer, Antonio Rodriguez, that he was acting like he was white. So rather than deescalate, he took offense and slugged her. He continues to aggressively manhandle her, but the video becomes too much of a blur to see the details. He has been "relieved of duty," as of yesterday.

Via Miami Herald Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/miami-dade-cop-aggressively-pu.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/woman-arrested-after-pointing.html

"He's dead, Jim."

(via Laughing Squid) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/the-original-star-trek-crew-vi.html

Pegged on the reopening of many hotels, Inside Edition investigated whether New York City hotels including the Hyatt Place Times Square, the Hampton Inn Times Square Central, and yes, the Trump International Hotel & Tower are consistently changing bed sheets between guests. The answer appears to be (gulp) no. A spokesperson for the Trump International Hotel and Tower responded that "the claims made by Inside Edition are categorically false." Watch the video and decide for yourself. Meanwhile, Hyatt and Hampton Inns report that they are investigating to make sure appropriate cleaning protocols are followed. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/inside-edition-report-trump-i.html

Live auctioneers are literally fast talkers but the skill is much more nuanced than just speed speaking. You want to build excitement and keep the bidders engaged without putting them into such a trance that they stop raising their paddles. What does it really take to be a master auctioneer? Writer Katy Vine attended an eight day America’s Auction Academy training held at the Addison Radisson hotel near Dallas. From Texas Monthly:

“You have to sound melodic, but you don’t have to do a lot. If you roll it out right, it sounds like you’re doing a lot of work, but you’re not, really,” he said. He stressed that the chant needed to fit the situation. “If you’re doing a charity auction and you go too fast, you’ll lose your crowd. In real estate, you’ll scare them to death.” [...]

That morning, like we did every day, we warmed up with tongue twisters and number drills, our forearms outstretched like a droning choir of capitalists. “You need to have hands out, asking for money,” Jones said on the first day. “That’s your number one job. No lazy arms. Put your hands out.” We needed to appear natural, moving one hand out in the direction of a possible bidder. Where is the bidder? What’s your current bid? What’s the bid you want after that and the one after that? Where are your hands? How’s your rhythm? Are you projecting from the diaphragm? Is your chant melodic? Quit swaying from side to side!

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/what-its-like-at-americas.html

Ghislaine Maxwell, the British heiress and longtime confidant of billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, is in FBI custody. She was arrested in New Hampshire, reports NBC News, and charged with conspiracy to sexually abuse children.

The six-count indictment in Manhattan federal court alleges that Maxwell helped Epstein groom girls as young as 14 years old, going back as far as 1994.

"In some instances, Maxwell was present for and participated in the sexual abuse of minor victims," the indictment says. The daughter of media baron Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine was a one-time girlfriend of Epstein's and was at the high-flying investor's side for decades. But she was also alleged to have helped Epstein groom teen girls for sex with the rich and powerful. One of those teens, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, leveled that charge against Maxwell in a 2015 defamation suit, as have a number of other women.

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/epstein-confidante-ghislaine-m.html

In September 1977 at the 4eme Festival de la Science Fiction in Metz, France, surrealist author Philip K. Dick delivered an astounding address with the title, "If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others." He wasn't joking. The speech spanned the themes that define Dick's work and also his life: visionary experiences, d'ej`a vu, the simulation hypothesis, and the nature of reality. Far fucking out. Here are a few choice bits:

The subject of this speech is a topic which has been discovered recently, and which may not exist all. I may be talking about something that does not exist. Therefore I’m free to say everything and nothing. I in my stories and novels sometimes write about counterfeit worlds. Semi-real worlds as well as deranged private worlds, inhabited often by just one person…. At no time did I have a theoretical or conscious explanation for my preoccupation with these pluriform pseudo-worlds, but now I think I understand. What I was sensing was the manifold of partially actualized realities lying tangent to what evidently is the most actualized one—the one that the majority of us, by consensus gentium, agree on.

We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs. We would have the overwhelming impression that we were re-living the present - d'ej`a vu - perhaps in precisely the same way: hearing the same words, saying the same words.

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/philip-k-dick-if-you-find.html

The Toledo Hemp Dispensary in Ohio is offering free CBD dog treats this week to help reduce animal anxiety triggered by fireworks. Every treat contains 10 milligrams of CBD. Good for the dogs and for the business, it seems.

"Most people come back every year and tell their friends so they come and try it," dispensary manager Payton De Moe told 13ABC. "Most people if they try it on the first, come back and get a bag for the next few days because with it on the weekend people are going to be doing (fireworks) the whole weekend."

Ooooh. Ahhhh.

image: modified version of "Kintamani dog white" by lmk0278 (public domain) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/cannabis-dispensary-giving-fre.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/02/spend-a-relaxing-hour-watching.html