Last minute geek

1. She's back! RBG returns to the Supreme Court
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... the Supreme Court Friday to participate in the regular closed-door conference meeting among the nine justices, the court announce. This marks the 85-year-old Ginsburg's first time back at the court since ...

2. Blockchain Wikipedia is a dish best served cold
(English/engadget)

"You really shouldn't be interviewing me. I don't want to fuck it all up again." We're standing in a greenroom for panelists at StartEngine ICO 2.0, a blockchain conference ...

3. Microsoft's Build developer conference starts May 6th
(English/engadget)

Early May is going to be particularly busy in the tech world. Microsoft has announced that the 2019 edition of its Build developer conference will take place in Seattle between May 6th and May 8th. In ...

4. Harvard Humanists troll the elites who fund the Harvard endowment by awarding Anand Giridharadas a prize
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... Humanist Association have given Giridharadas their Rushdie Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture, which is presented at a big "social enterprise" conference put on every ...

5. Consultants will train the crew of your super-yacht to take care of your fine art collection
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... when guests come on board … It acts as an icebreaker, and says volumes about their taste,” she told an audience of more than 100 people at the Superyacht Investor conference in the Landmark Hotel. “But ...

6. Conducting "evil" computer research, in the name of good
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

The next CHI (computer-human interaction) conference is being held on May 5 in Glasgow, and will include a workshop called CHI4Evil, "Creative Speculation on the Negative Effects of HCI Research," in ...

7. Look at South Carolina's Attorney General spout nonsense about marijuana
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... press conference today on medical marijuana. Some Republicans and Democrats are trying to legalize cannabis for medical purposes this year in South Carolina. pic.twitter.com/UwZ9NlSRTN — Andrew Brown ...

8. Billionaire pharmaceutical founder bribed doctors to push addictive fentanyl spray, says US prosector
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... court on the opening day of a trial against Kapoor and four other Insys executives. Reuters reports that Lazurus told jurors Insys set up sham conferences and paid doctors up to $275,000 to speak at the ...

9. Google's next I/O conference begins May 7th
(English/engadget)

If you're a fan of all things Google, you already have a date to mark on your calendar for 2019. Developer Till Kottmann has 'cheated' Google's I/O conference puzzle to reveal that ...

10. The online conference that might change video games for good
(English/engadget)

Language is a tool, and just like any tool, it has equal capacity to inflict both good and bad on the world. Language is a beautiful, human thing; the connective tissue that transfers culture, knowledge ...

11. Google, Facebook and Microsoft were the top sponsors of a conference that featured climate change denial kooks
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Libertycon is the annual conference of Students for Liberty, a libertarian youth group, held in DC; at this year's conference, Google was the $25,000 platinum sponsor, while Facebook and Microsoft were ...

12. To do in Boston Mar 23/24: The Free Software Foundation's Libreplanet conference
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

The Free Software Foundation has announced the keynotes for its 2019 Libreplanet conference: Debian pioneer Bdale Garbee; Micky Metts from the MayFirst People Link Leadership Committee, Solidarity Economy ...

13. Facebook’s simplified Messenger app interface is rolling out to users
(English/engadget)

Facebook teased a Messenger redesign at its F8 conference back in May and then started slowly rolling out the simpler interface last October. Now, The Verge reports, the redesign is becoming available ...

14. That first plant grown on the moon? Already dead.
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... froze to death during the lunar night. From GBTimes: Liu Hanlong, head of the experiment at Chongqing University, said at a Chongqing government press conference on Tuesday that the temperature inside ...

15. LA teachers' strike: Charter school teachers walk out, too
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... Schools said more than a year and a half of negotiations with school management failed to yield a contract. At a morning news conference, teachers and their supporters chanted and waved signs outside Accelerated’s ...

16. Rome and the Catholic Church fighting over change tossed into the Trevi Fountain
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... Italian bishops' conference. "I still hope it will not be final."The newspaper ran a scathing article on the move in its Saturday edition, headlined "Money taken from the poorest". City councillors have ...

17. Tesla offers Model 3 as a reward to security researchers
(English/engadget)

The annual Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, Canada usually ends with security researchers taking home the laptops they've exploited. This year they could take home a Tesla.  ...

18. A conference room full of holograms is the future of work
(English/engadget)

Sure, you can play immersive games and watch whales come out of the floor with Magic Leap, but another potential use case of AR is teleconferencing and work collaboration. That's mostly done via avatars ...

19. A history of the sprawling personality clashes over RSS
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... some of they key players (I volunteered for several years as a conference committee member for the O'Reilly P2P and Emerging Tech conferences, where much of this played out). That all said, I think Target's ...

20. Unemployed 20-year-old who lives with his parents confesses to massive German political dox
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... If the target reuses the same password across all their accounts, even better. Child’s play, really. The idea that the federal police should hire the hacker, a proposition raised during the press conference, ...

21. Samsung's 'Bots' and exoskeleton hint at the future of care
(English/engadget)

At Samsung's press conference, the day before CES officially opened, there was the usual parade of smart home gadgets and appliances. Then right at the end, almost as an aside, the company revealed ...

22. I want Sony's 360 Reality Audio to be the future of music
(English/engadget)

Sony's CES press conference didn't offer many surprises, aside from a lot of discussion around Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and a cameo by Pharrell Williams. The singer and producer was ...

23. Watch NVIDIA's CES press conference in 13 minutes
(English/engadget)

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24. Panasonic's GZ2000 4K OLED is for color accuracy fanatics
(English/engadget)

After alluding to it during its press conference, Panasonic has unveiled the GZ2000, a 4K OLED TV aimed at folks who want very accurate colors. Available in 55- and 65-inch models, it'll support both ...

25. Watch Samsung's CES 2019 press conference in 8 minutes
(English/engadget)

This year at CES Samsung celebrated 50 years in the electronics business, and seemed intent on blowing things out with a combination of smart home products, AI and 5G. Besides taking a victory lap ...