Who needs the darkweb when you can just go on social media, enter your drug of choice in the search bar, and buy whatever turns your crank? In this video, Vice's Tir Dhondy finds out just how easy it is to buy drugs on these platforms. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/its-easy-to-buy-drugs-on-sna.html

If you go to India, you might encounter a person there who quickly befriends you and tries to build up a relationship of trust over the next few days. It could be that they recognized you as a swell person deserving of their attention, or it could be they are setting you up for a long con involving fake gems, leaving you up to $60k poorer than before you got involved with them. This video has the details about this scam, which is reminiscent of an early Mamet movie. The takeaway: don't do business with people you don't know well.

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/how-the-infamous-india-gem-sca.html

The broken voting app that failed spectacularly in the Iowa Democratic caucus just hints at the fragility of the voting system in the U.S. This Verge video explores the reasons for and implications of an unreliable and exploitable voting system, as well as ways to mitigate the problems. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/06/the-us-voting-infrastructure-i.html

There's no shortage of CRMs out there for large corporations, e-commerce companies, and booming startups to utilize. Think Salesforce, for example. But if you're running a small business of ten employees max, there's no way it makes sense to invest in an expensive, robust option like that. You're better off using your old system of spreadsheets, emails, and Post-its.

Or instead, you can turn to a solution like Daylite. Not only is the pricing structure more small business-friendly, but it's actually designed for small teams, especially those just starting out. Use PCs and Android? It's probably not for you. Daylite is a native solution for Mac and iOS only. It's designed for companies that work with clients, like law firms, consulting firms, financial firms, and real estate brokers, but not for traditional e-commerce companies.

At its core, Daylite is a CRM, meaning it organizes all the client details and communications, deals, leads, and information that make your business run. It keeps all of the above organized, and incorporates project management tools to keep you on track. You can set automated reminders, delegate tasks, and link your calendar so that you never let anything fall through the cracks. And most importantly, it can be used by your entire team, so everyone has access to all of the information from anywhere (with permission controls to help you determine who's allowed to have access, of course.)

It's worth saying that Daylite is more focused on efficiency and project management than your average CRM. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/daylite-is-an-affordable-crm-s.html

Attention bookworms and rare book nerds. The Booksellers, opening in March, is a documentary celebrating bookstores and the peculiar business of collecting and selling rare books.

Literary Hub writes:

Have you ever dreamed of becoming an antiquarian bookseller? Or just wanted to get to know one better? Or maybe you just like old books a lot. Either way, this is the documentary for you. Directed by D.W. Young and executive produced by Parker Posey, the film features interviews with rare book dealers of all stripes, as well as collectors, auctioneers, and writers like Fran Lebowitz, Susan Orlean, Kevin Young, and Gay Talese—-true book believers all.

Read the rest on Literary Hub. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/watch-the-trailer-to-the-boo.html

Currently on heavy rotation at Chez Branwyn: Fiona Apple's cover of The Waterboys' brilliant "The Whole of the Moon." She covered the 1985 classic for the season finale of the Showtime series, The Affair.

Apple had written the show's theme song five years earlier and came back to close out the series. The trademark "big music" sweep of the track and Apple's intense performance are perfect for a curtain-closing ending.

And the lyrics to this song are among my all-time favorites:

I pictured a rainbow You held it in your hands I had flashes But you saw the plan I wandered out in the world for years While you just stayed in your room I saw the crescent You saw the whole of the moon The whole of the moon

Here's The Waterboys doing their original version.

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/fiona-apples-cover-of-the-wa.html

Have you seen Snowpiercer yet? My family watched it a few years ago and loved it. Like Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, it's a genre-defying thriller that explores class roles. If you have a Blu-ray player, Amazon has it on sale right now. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/bong-joon-hos-snowpiercer-bl.html

The East Coast has Camp John Waters and now, over Easter weekend, folks on the West Coast will get their own John Waters (live! in person!) event. On Saturday, April 11, fans of the filth elder can flock to the Madonna Inn, the famous pink palace in San Luis Obispo with over-the-top themed rooms, for Lethal Amounts' John Waters Easter. Talk about two mints in one!

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary screening of the classic film "Cry Baby" with live commentary by John Waters himself. Followed by Q&A with surprise special guests.

There will also be the first annual " Edith Massey Memorial Easter Egghunt" in the Madonna Inn enchanted gardens.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. on February 7 on Dice (an events app) for $96.05 each. Sadly, rooms at the Madonna Inn are already sold out, I checked. But don't let that stop you, there are other hotels in the area that are just a short drive away. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/spend-easter-with-john-waters.html

politics is a journy pic.twitter.com/Tt6zkfAOvG

 L Ron Mexico (@LRonMexico) February 3, 2020

I know this is supposed to be a joke, but it accurately captures the political journeys of people I know in real life.

Image: University of Illinois Library (CC 2.0) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/this-guys-journey-through-su.html

When I was writing my book, Jamming the Media (1997), while working on a chapter about pirate radio, I went deep down the rabbit hole of hunting down pirate stations, shortwave stations, police and military radio, and number stations. The latter are mysterious radio broadcasts of unknown origin where a series of numbers are read over the air. These are widely believed to be coded messages to spies in the field from the world's intelligence agencies.

I was surprised to run into this video on Curiosity Droid and to discover that number stations are still a thing. I would have thought that, in the age of encrypted digital communications, number stations would be archaic and unnecessary, but maybe entrenched government infrastructures are hard to dismantle, even when they're obsolete?

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/hey-remember-number-stations.html

The linked article has a fairly long list of places in West Los Angeles that unimmunized area folk might want to review.

NBC Los Angeles:

Los Angeles County health officials Wednesday confirmed five new cases of measles and warned of possible exposure at a series of locations over the past week.

According to the county Department of Public Health, the new patients are four county residents who were "exposed to an unimmunized, international visitor who was infectious with measles while in Los Angeles County."

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/5-new-cases-of-the-measles-in.html

Why is the average human body temperature falling by 0.05°F per decade? The short answer, is no one really knows! But Catherine Ley, a Stanford researcher who led a study to look into the curious phenomenon, has some hunches, which are laid out in this Vox article:

Healthier bodies have less inflammation, which can lead to increased body temperatures. Plus, we’ve eliminated some diseases that used to be common in the United States, and sources of fevers. “Getting rid of tuberculosis as a common infection in a population affects the overall population temperature,” Ley offers as an example. (Though the study did not directly compare average temperatures obtained in the US to areas where infections like tuberculosis are still common.)

But there could be other reasons for the change. Maybe it has to do with how we heat and cool our indoor spaces. In a well-heated home in the winter, the body may not have to work as hard to maintain a steady temperature, for instance. The proliferation of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (like ibuprofen), which reduce inflammation and can reduce body temperature, could play a role.

Photo by Manki Kim on Unsplash Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/why-is-the-average-human-body.html

Potok Philippe, a 28-year-old self-styled social media influencer, was charged with mischief after he told fellow plane passengers, "Can I get everybody’s attention please. I just came back from Hunan province, the capital of the coronavirus. I’m not feeling too well. Thank you." The plane made an emergency landing and Philippe was arrested.

From Metro UK:

He later said "it was simply a joke" and that he had hoped to go viral on Instagram with the prank, which saw him being escorted off the plane in a mask and gloves that airline staff made him wear. Potok was arrested and charged with mischief after the WestJet plane was forced to turn back and a second flight was also cancelled as a result.  The aspiring musician, who calls himself Potok Philippe and has more than 30,000 Instagram followers, told City News in Toronto: "It would be something else if I said 'hey guys I have a bomb strapped to me, I have a weapon on me,' people blew it out of proportion. To me it was simply a joke. About mid-way through the flight I stood up, pulled my video camera out – I was going to post it to Instagram, send it to 6ixbuzz so it goes viral." He said he was shocked when nobody laughed and said within 15 minutes cabin crew staff were wearing masks and put him in a mask and gloves as well.

Philippe's remoreless, narcissistic self-promotion reminds me of the Imperial Stars, an execrable music group that shut down a major freeway in Los Angeles to play a set to a captive audience sitting in stalled cars. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/social-media-influencer-who-fa.html

It should come as no surprise that more and more IT professionals are scrambling to earn Microsoft Azure certifications. With the average Azure developer earning around $130,000 a year, these in-demand certifications drastically increase your earning potential and career flexibility, open up opportunities for advancement, and provide a greater understanding of some of the world’s most popular and powerful cloud computing infrastructures.

And the good news is that you don’t have to dish out an absurd about of money in order to prepare for these valuable certifications since the Complete 2020 Microsoft Azure Certification Prep Bundle will get you to where you need to be for just $43.

With eleven courses that are structured to help you ace the exams for the most important Azure certifications, this bundle is your one-stop resource for becoming an in-demand cloud computing pro.

You’ll prepare for the Azure Fundamentals, Administrator, Architecture, Developing Solutions, and Architect Design certifications through training that focuses on everything from the basics of cloud computing to the more advanced elements of network implementation, coding, cybersecurity, and more.

You’ll also be able to take advantage of a variety of test-prep materials that ensure you’ll be ready for the actual exams.

Start earning six-figure salaries as a cloud computing professional with the Complete 2020 Microsoft Azure Certification Prep Bundle for just $43—over 95% off MSRP today. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/prep-for-the-microsoft-azure-c.html

“They identify an issue that they know that the American people feel passionately about on both sides and then they take both sides and spin them up so they pit us against each other. And then they combine that with an effort to weaken our confidence in our elections and our democratic institutions which has been a pernicious and asymmetric way of engaging in affect information warfare.”

— FBI Director Chris Wray, Feb. 5, 2020

On Wednesday, FBI Director Chris Wray said Russia is targeting Americans with an ongoing “information warfare” campaign that is likely to intensify as the nation heads into the 2020 presidential election.

Wray said FBI has not yet spotted election infrastructure attacks by Russia as happened in 2016, but that Russia has greatly intensified its campaign of online disinformation and psychological operations against US voters.

Speaking before the House Judiciary Committee, Wray said just like Russia did in 2016, they're again relying on covert social media campaigns that intend to divide American public opinion and sow discord and distrust.

Even if Russia does not end up targeting our election systems, Wray said, efforts by Vladimir Putin to interfere in the democratic process through disinformation and “fake news” hasn't slowed down since 2016, but rather increased.

Wray said social media injected “steroids” into the ability for Russia to wage information warfare on the U.S.

From the Associated Press's coverage of his remarks on Capitol Hill today, by AP reporter Eric Tucker:

That effort, which involves fictional personas, bots, social media postings and disinformation, may have an election-year uptick but is also a round-the-clock threat that is in some ways harder to combat than an election system hack, Wray said.

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/disinformation-2020-fbi-warns.html

Reuters today published a report about an email hacking operation targeting journalists and their connected sources, and the scam appears to be associated with Iran.

The scam is this: send cleverly disguised emails that impersonate prominent journalists, in an effort to get the recipient to give up valuable data and access.

Here is an example.

IMAGE: Screenshot by researchers at the London-based Certfa Lab shows a bogus, Farsi-language interview request that appears to have been sent by journalist Farnaz Fassihi. The message was one of several malicious emails sent in the name of real journalists working for CNN, Deutsche Welle, and others. The reporters had nothing to do with the messages, which Certfa says were sent by Iran-linked hacking group 'Charming Kitten'. [Certfa/Handout via REUTERS]

“The incidents come to light at a time when the U.S. government has warned of Iranian cyber threats in the wake of the U.S. air strike that killed Iran’s second most powerful official, Major-General Qassem Soleimani,” report Raphael Satter and Christopher Bing at Reuters:

In a report published Wednesday, London-based cybersecurity company Certfa tied the impersonation of Fassihi to a hacking group nicknamed Charming Kitten, which has long been associated with Iran. Israeli firm ClearSky Cyber Security provided Reuters with documentation of similar impersonations of two media figures at CNN and Deutsche Welle, a German public broadcaster. ClearSky also linked the hacking attempts to Charming Kitten, describing the individuals targeted as Israeli academics or researchers who study Iran. ClearSky declined to give the specific number of people targeted or to name them, citing client confidentiality.

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/charmingkitten.html

Shares of Tesla Motors were down 19% on Wednesday after a senior executive with the electric vehicle company warned of delivery delays for Model 3 cars made at its Shanghai plant, because of the ever-worsening coronavirus outbreak in China.

Novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV has disrupted life and commerce throughout China. The Chinese government says 65 more people died of the virus as of Tuesday, the highest daily total yet.

From Reuters:

Tesla Vice President Tao Lin said on the Weibo social media platform that car deliveries from its new Shanghai plant would be temporarily delayed and that the company planned to restart production on Feb 10.

The $2 billion factory is a key part of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s plan to make more than half a million automobiles this year.

Tesla last week said it expected a delay of up to a week and a half in the ramp-up of Model 3 production at the plant after the government ordered it to shut the factory due to the outbreak.

Read More: Tesla tumbles as coronavirus weighs on Shanghai factory [reuters.com, Noel Randewich, February 5, 2020 / 11:27 AM] Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/coronavirus-outbreak-to-delay.html

Zamira Hajiyeva has 28 days to appeal a court order to seize her $20 million London mansion after she was unable reveal the source of her wealth, reports The Telegraph.

Hajiyeva's husband was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2016 after he was found guilty of stealing almost $3 billion from the International Bank of Azerbaijan, where he had served as chairman.

From the article:

As well as spending more than lb16 million in Harrods over a ten-year period, Mrs Hajiyeva also bought the Mill Ride golf and country club in Ascot for lb10.5 million. She is also said to have owned a lb35 million private jet and had a wine cellar stocked with some of the world’s most expensive vintages.

Image: by Diliff - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/wife-of-banker-who-stole-billi.html

More Americans fleeing the coronavirus outbreak are being evacuated from Wuhan, China, to the U.S. On Wednesday, 2 State Department-chartered jetliners carried an estimated 350 U.S. citizens from Wuhan, China, to a U.S. military base in California.

All of the recent arrivals will be quarantined for 14 days, said the U.S. Defense Department.

First, the two planes landed at Travis Air Force Base, which sits about half way between San Francisco and Sacramento. Then, one of the two planes continued on to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego, after refueling.

The still-spreading Novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak has killed 490 people in China, most in and around Wuhan, and has infected more than 23,000. Two deaths outside of mainland China have been reported, and at least 11 confirmed cases have been reported in the US.

From Reuters:

KGO television in the San Francisco Bay area showed video of people in white coverall suits getting off the plane in the predawn darkness at Travis Air Force Base. San Diego television stations showed video of the second plane landing at Miramar.

The evacuees at Travis will be housed in a hotel on the base, the base said in a statement on its Facebook page. As in other places, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will take charge of the care, transportation and security of the evacuees.

“A safety cordon will be established, away from residential housing, to ensure the Travis mission can safely continue,” the statement said.

The Pentagon said it also preparing Camp Ashland, an Army National Guard base in Nebraska, to receive up to 75 people for quarantine.

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/about-350-more-wuhan-coronavir.html

Remember the 1991 episode of The Simpsons, called "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington," in which a tearful Lisa tears up an essay she wrote after she witnesses government officials engaged in corrupt behavior? Well, U.S. Secretary of State remembers that episode, too, and he cleverly chose it to show his solidarity with Senator Pelosi for ripping up Trump's State of the Union address. Trump and his delusional followers will think Pompeo is making fun of Pelosi, but everyone else is in on the sly message of support from inside the walls of Trumpistan. Well played, Mike!

pic.twitter.com/AaopLt8f9f

 Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) February 5, 2020

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/mike-pompeo-issues-a-clever-tw.html