Back in September, a Hyundai Glovis cargo ship capsized off the coast of Georgia. The 665-foot ship, called the Golden Ray, tipped over in St. Simons Sound, Georgia but fortunately every crew member was rescued. The ship was holding around 4,000 US-made automobiles that are now quite waterlogged. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources and other organizations are orchestrating environmental protection measures and disassembling the vessel to remove it in pieces via barge. This week, the St. Simons Sound Incident Response Unified Company will begin constructing an "environmental protection barrier" that includes "large floating containment barrier to help contain surface pollutants, as well as large netting to contain subsurface debris."

The Unified Command used LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology to create 3D images of inaccessible areas inside the vessel.

Follow the situation here: St. Simons Sound Response

image: Georgia Department of Natural Resources (photo release) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/24/images-from-inside-hyundais.html

The Manhattan Institute issued a report that reveals that a year of middle class wages no longer pays for major household expenditures.

From The Washington Post:

Lead author Oren Cass distills it as follows: “In 1985, the typical male worker could cover a family of four’s major expenditures (housing, health care, transportation, education) on 30 weeks of salary,” he wrote on Twitter last week. “By 2018 it took 53 weeks. Which is a problem, there being 52 weeks in a year.”

Image: Washington Post Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/24/this-chart-reveals-why-the-ris.html

Anderson Cooper hasn't been this pissed off since Hurricane Katrina.

On Friday, Cooper interviewed newly-sprung Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois who had a 14-year prison sentence commuted by Celebrity Apprentice host Donald Trump. In 2011, Blago was found guilty of federal corruption charges related to then-President Obama's vacant senate seat.

During his time in prison, Blago got woke. Comparing himself to fellow "political prisoner" Nelson Mandela, he railed against criminal injustice and the thousands of Americans waiting for clemency.

Cooper was NOT having it.

In which @AndersonCooper calls actual "bullshit" on Blagojevich in fiery interview pic.twitter.com/8oorGogs7s

 Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) February 22, 2020

Oh, and here's proof that we're living in the worst timeline. One of these people is now the leader of the free world and the other is the new Mandela.

Thinking about the time Donald Trump scolded Rod Blagojevich on the Celebrity Apprentice over inaccurate Harry Potter facts and inadequate Harry Potter research pic.twitter.com/rx7PH7qP4I

 Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) August 8, 2019

Image by United States Marshals Service - http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/celebrity/politics/rod-blagojevich, Public Domain, Link Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/23/anderson-cooper-isnt-a-fan-o.html

“Why is Chris Matthews on this air talking about the victory [of] Bernie Sanders, who had kin murdered in the Holocaust, analogizing it to the Nazi conquest of France?” asked Anand Giridharadas of his fellow MSNBC colleague when he appeared on MSNBC’s AM Joy.

From The Daily Beast:

Matthews’ latest remarks have led to progressives calling on MSNBC to fire the veteran host. The Hardball anchor isn’t the only one who has found himself in hot water over his anti-Bernie rhetoric. MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson faced swift and loud backlash after he dismissed the “island of misfit black girls” who supported Sanders.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/23/why-did-chris-matthews-say-ber.html

There’s often a logical disconnect between stories and the world they purport to represent in the tabloids, and this week’s offerings are no exception.

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/22/an-epstein-tell-all-a-vengefu.html

Mad maker, Peter Sripol, apparently got a zillion requests from his viewers to build an R/C model of an Ekranoplan, aka the Caspian sea monster, a Soviet-era ground-effects vehicle (GEV), a plane designed to skim over water.

The results are amazing, the footage of it flying, of the ground-effect in action, is some of the coolest R/C footage I have ever seen. It's amazing what amateurs can do these days, cinematically, with affordable camera drones and Go Pros.

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/22/building-an-r-c-version-of-a-s.html

When I was a teen devourer of sci-fi, I was obsessed with the spaceship designs on paperback book covers. I would buy any novel or short story collection, however sketchy the contents seemed, if I dug the ship on the cover. Conversely, I would pass over well-regarded books if I thought the spaceship art was crappy. Sometimes, the covers would make a more lasting impression on me than the contents.

I can't imagine how high over the moon teenage me would be for YouTube channels like Spacedock. This excellently-produced channel is a collection of deep-nerdings over the minutia of spaceship designs found in sci-fi media. Episodes look at categories of ships across different sci-fi universes or they are deep dives into a specific class of ship from a world, or a single, iconic ship from a series.

The opinions are definitely those of the creator of the channel, and I don't always agree with them, but current me and teenage me are in love with the nerdiness of it all.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/22/nerding-out-over-sci-fi-spaces.html

If you remember your Norse mythology (or just watched Marvel’s Thor movies), you’re probably familiar with Heimdal, the god whose ever-watchful eye was entrusted with protecting the home of the gods in Asgard.

Back on Earth, Heimdal Thor is also the name of a security package from Heimdal Security, that’s actually dedicated to much the same principle: protecting your home or business computer systems from viruses, malware, and other potentially crippling online security threats. Right now, they’re offering some of their most powerful cyberattack preventative tools at up to 87 percent off.

First, Heimdal Thor Vigilance: Next-Gen Antivirus ($39.99; originally $249.75) is available as a first line of defense against online threats. Vigilance Home is lightweight, hassle-free software that uses both traditional and next-gen antivirus engines to root out cybercriminals, black malware, and stop viruses, APTs, ransomware, data leakage and a host of concerning digital problems that may infect your systems.

But sometimes, that may not be enough. Since the newest, most deceitful malware is created specifically to bypass most antivirus detection methods, Heimdal Thor Foresight Home: Malware Prevention Software ($49.99, originally $349.75) increases your protection.

Foresight Home gets proactive in the fight, assuring your systems are protected before they can ever be infected. It filters all internet traffic, blocks dicey sources that may distribute ransomware, throws another layer of security on your bank account and automatically spots and blocks any security holes found in your favorite apps.

Finally, Heimdal Thor Premium: All-in-One Security Suite ($59.99; originally $499.75) brings both Vigilance and Foresight’s reactive and proactive measures together in one package, along with some unique threat prevention features that will have your computer and all its valuable information protected at all times. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/heimdal-thor-cleans-up-viruses.html

Everyone's got their nose in a phone these days, and that doesn't seem like it's going to change anytime soon. With the increase in mobile device and e-commerce reliance comes increased need for developers who can build the apps we're all so glued to. In fact, employment of devs is expected to grow up to 13% by 2028, quite a bit faster than other occupations. Milk that for all its worth by snapping up the 2020 Mobile App Developers Bundle and teaching yourself these in-demand technologies.

With over 20 hours of beginner-friendly training, this bundle will teach you the skills you need to help market yourself for a $70K-ish salary, thanks to 7 courses presented by world-class e-learning platform Zenva Academy.

Across 265 lessons, you'll use simple text color selecting and input/output apps plus more complex weather forecasting, pet activity, and contacts apps projects as hands-on teaching tools. You'll learn how to build apps for both Android and iOS using Swift & Apple's integrated development environment XCode, Android Studio, XML, Kotlin, SQL database integration, RESTful APIs, Flutter open-source framework, Java, and Firebase (Google's cloud-based platform that allows you to build mobile applications without needing to write the back-end code).

The 2020 Mobile App Developers Bundle is available now for only $29.99, 91% off MSRP. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/unleash-your-mobile-app-develo.html

Here's a little public service announcement with a lot to unpack. Fatbergs are horrifying agglomerations of grease, excrement and fiber clogging the waterworks beneath our cities. Britain's ancient sewers seem especially vulnerable, providing an endless stream of "thousand-foot fatberg removed" stories, complete with nightmarish footage of yet another London lard shoggoth. Flushed wet-wipes are a key cause of the problem, as they do not break down and instead become fatberg rebar.

Hence the need for Andy Serkis to play a talking anus in an anti-fatberg PSA, begging Britons to stop flushing wet-wipes. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/andy-serkis-as-a-talking-anus.html

Canada's privacy authorities on Friday said they are investigating New York-based Clearview AI over concerns the facial recognition technology may not comply with Canadian privacy law.

“Clearview AI bills itself as a tool for law enforcement, scraping the internet for publicly available photos and using facial recognition to identify potential suspects,” reports Moira Warburton at Reuters, “Critics in both Canada and the United States have raised concerns about the lack of consent of those searched, and the potential for misuse of the service.”

Snip:

Several police forces in Ontario have publicly acknowledged they have used Clearview’s services, including the police force in Toronto, Canada’s most populous city.

The privacy commissioners of Canada and of the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Qu'ebec will jointly investigate whether the company’s practices are in compliance with Canadian privacy legislation.

The investigation was initiated as a result of media reports that “raised questions and concerns about whether the company is collecting and using personal information without consent,” said a joint statement from the commissioners’ offices.

Read more at Reuters: • Facial recognition company Clearview AI probed by Canada privacy agencies

Previously at Boing Boing:

• Clearview AI founder linked to Trump world and Far-Right, NYPD denies facial recognition firm's boast that it helped catch terrorist suspect

• Twitter tells facial-recognition app maker to stop scraping photos, Clearview AI used by 600+ US law enforcement agencies

• The answer to the Clearview AI scandal is better privacy laws, not anti-scraping laws Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/canada-investigating-facial-re.html

In the days leading up to the U.S. presidential election and on Election Day, YouTube's homepage will reportedly be advertising only one candidate: Donald Trump.

The impeached president’s re-election campaign bought out YouTube's costly advertising space for early November, and the deal ensures Trump will be all anyone sees on Google's YouTube during the critical days when voters get ready to head to the polls on November 3, reports Bloomberg News:

While the bulk of digital ad spending typically focuses on targeting specific messages to certain audiences, the top spot on YouTube is more akin to a Super Bowl TV ad. About three-quarters of U.S. adults say they use YouTube, exceeding the reach of even Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center.

Ads on the YouTube masthead—as the video on the top of the homepage is known—generally run for an entire day. The exact duration of Trump’s ad buy and financial details were unclear, but estimates for the space range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million a day.

YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, lets advertisers target users based on a variety of factors, though it recently limited those options for political content. The Trump campaign bought the digital real estate nationwide, one of the people familiar with the deal said, both of whom asked not to be identified.

Read more at Bloomberg News, Business Insider, and CJR. [via MediaGazer]

Donald Trump’s re-election committee will take over YouTube’s homepage in early November in the immediate run up to Election Day through advertising space it has purchased from the Google streaming video website.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/trump-campaign-buys-1m-a-d.html

Ethos, the private equity firm owned by Republican billionaires that is trying to buy the rights to operate the internet’s .org domain range, said on Friday it will cap price hikes, and will agree to create an advisory board with veto powers to partly address some of the concerns of the nonprofit community.

Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow and Jason Weisberger wrote previously about this story on Boing Boing, for those catching up:

• ICANN hits pause on the sale of .ORG to Republican billionaires' private equity fund [12/2019] • We need to save .ORG from arbitrary censorship by halting the private equity buy-out [12/2019] • Private equity take-over of .ORG domain delayed [1/2020]

Here's what happened today, from AP:

Ethos Capital has offered $1.1 billion to buy the Public Interest Registry, the nonprofit corporation that runs the databases containing more than 10 million .org names registered worldwide. Organizations ranging from the Girl Scouts of the USA and Consumer Reports to the American Bible Society have opposed the sale, warning of potential price gouging and censorship. California’s attorney general has also requested information to evaluate a deal’s potential impact to nonprofits.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the concessions are enough to satisfy critics. The cap on price hikes, for instance, will expire in eight years, and most of the advisory board’s initial members will be appointed by the Public Interest Registry’s board.

Domain names such as apnews.com have historically been used by computers to find websites and send email, and their value grew as companies and groups adopted them for branding.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/dot-org-drama-new-promises-fr.html

Facebook is reportedly considering making it just a wee bit clearer that pro-Bloomberg political campaign posts come from paid staffers on Michael Bloomberg's political campaign. Yes, 2020 is bonkers.

Facebook is considering ways to show when a paid campaign staffer shares a political post on the site, reports Julia Boorstin at CNBC.

“This comes after Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg’s campaign said it was paying staffers to post on social media on its behalf.”

Oh.

Excerpt from CNBC on Friday:

Facebook is concerned about a lack of transparency in how Mike Bloomberg’s field organizers are using the platform to advocate for his presidential campaign, without identifying that they work for him, according to a source at the company. The source said Facebook is considering taking steps to make it clearer that the people posting messages of support are paid employees.

Facebook has taken a range of steps to improve transparency around political advertising since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March 2018. A New York Times report revealed that the political consulting firm improperly obtained information about Facebook users, then used that information to target political ads supporting Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Among other changes, Facebook now tags all political and issue ads, keeps a library of them and has built an interactive database of all political and issue ad purchases.

Read more:

Facebook is considering making clearer that pro-Bloomberg posts come from paid staffers [Published Fri, Feb 21 202011:14 AM EST] Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/facebook-allows-pro-bloomberg.html

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/google-resisting-giving-up-ema.html

Drug dealer Clifton Collins, 49, invested his earnings in bitcoin, eventually racking up $60 million. For safekeeping, he printed the PIN codes to access his accounts and stored them in a fishing rod case at his house. But after Collins was busted on a weed charge and sent to jail, his landlord had all of Collins's stuff hauled to the dump. From The Guardian:

According to the Irish Times, which first reported the story, workers at the dump told the Irish police force, the garda'i, they remembered seeing discarded fishing gear. Waste from the dump goes to Germany and China to be incinerated. The fishing rod case has never been found.

Collins, 49, has apparently told the garda'i he has come to terms with the loss of the fortune and considers it punishment for his own stupidity.

The high court in Dublin ruled this week that Collins had forfeited the accounts because they were proceeds from crime...

The Criminal Assets Bureau thought it had hit the jackpot when it confiscated the accounts. Authorities hope they may some day access them.

"Irish drug dealer loses lb46m bitcoin codes he hid in fishing rod case" (The Guardian)

And in case you missed this excellent tale:

• "‘I Forgot My PIN’: An Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 in Bitcoin" by Mark Frauenfelder Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/drug-dealer-lost-his-bitcoin-p.html

This iron-on three-inch patch, inspired by Untitled Goose Game, features an angry or perhaps merely determined goose preparing to commit crimes. It's on the etsy store of Roamin Bison Workshop, which specializes in cool animal pins. [via]

Be Goose Do Crime design!

3x3 inch circle Iron-on backing

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/knife-wielding-goose-patch.html

Portland Laser Co. offers a puzzle based on Joy Division's famous cover to Unknown Pleasures, a plot of signals emitted by pulsar CP 1919. Yours for $50.

One of the most iconic album covers of all time, made into a puzzle.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/unknown-pleasures-puzzle.html

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission was founded in 1972 with the purpose of "protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with the use of the thousands of types of consumer products." And since they brought on Joseph Galbo as a social media specialist in 2016, the department has grown increasingly infamous for its delightfully weird Twitter account.

You know, things like this.

As the Squirrel Realm believes pic.twitter.com/9HQr0HcqRi

 US Consumer Product Safety Commission (@USCPSC) February 21, 2020

At least there's one part of the federal government that's still improving the quality of our lives. And now I'm going to subscribe to these recall emails.

How a Government Bureaucrat Became the King of Internet Memes [Taylor Lorenz / The Daily Beast]

The U.S. Government's Weirdest Twitter Account Is Postmodern Internet Art [Emma Roller / Splinter]

Why a government agency is spreading memes about dogs riding pigeons [Rachel Becker / The Verge] Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/us-federal-government-agency-i.html

Whether you love cooking at home or you swore this was going to be the year you curbed your DoorDash addiction, you know you can't get the job done well without the proper tools on hand. For all your recipe and meal prep needs, this 3-piece Sukasu Osami Chef's Knife set will do you right and look pretty sweet in your Insta stories to boot.

Forged from ultra-durable 3CR13 stainless steel with a cool-as-heck wavy pattern etched into the blades and set in gorgeous pakka wood handles, the 8" chef's knife, 5" utility knife, and 3.5" paring knife will have you slicing, dicing, chopping, peeling, cubing, and julienning even the toughest fruits, veggies, and meats.

This cutlery set is built to last with better-grip 18/0 bolster handles and blades from 2 to 2.5mm thick. Plus, it comes in a sleek storage box, making it great for gifting to that friend who just got his first roommate-free apartment.

Iron Chef your way through your next meal! The Sukasu Osami 3-Pc Chef's Knife Set is available for 60% off at $39.99. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/slice-and-dice-like-a-professi.html