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Paul Barton (previously at Boing Boing) plays the piano for elephants and has been at it for many years. Here he is performing Beethoven's Quasi una fantasia, the Moonlight Sonata, for an old one who's led a rough life.

Mongkol is a 61-year-old former logging elephant. His captive-held life was spent hauling trees in the Thai forest. His body shape is deformed through hard labor, he lost his right eye and tusk in this brutal logging practice. Mongkol was rescued and brought to Elephants World to spend the rest of his days relaxing peacefully in freedom by the River Kwai. I discovered Mongkol is an extremely gentle, sensitive elephant who enjoys music, especially this slow movement by Beethoven which I play to him occasionally in the day and night.

For five months, University of Sydney PhD student Alexandra Green spent time in the field, literally, with 18 Holstein-Friesian heifers, recording and studying their sounds. While it's been known that cow moms and calves use unique vocalizations with one another, Green confirmed that cattle "also maintain individual voices in a variety of emotional situations," from chow time to periods when they are isolated from the others in the herd. From the University of Sydney:

Cows ‘talk’ to one another and retain individual identity through their lowing...

The conclusion of the research is that farmers should integrate knowledge of individual cow voices into their daily farming practices.

“We found that cattle vocal individuality is relatively stable across different emotionally loaded farming contexts,” Ms Green said...

“We hope that through gaining knowledge of these vocalisations, farmers will be able to tune into the emotional state of their cattle, improving animal welfare,” Ms Green said.

"Vocal individuality of Holstein-Friesian cattle is maintained across putatively positive and negative farming contexts" (Scientific Reports via Atlas Obscura)

image: Lynne Gardner/University of Sydney

(Thanks to University of Sydney for inspiring the headline!)

How definitely not to handle a hack.

The United Nations' IT systems were penetrated by hackers 6 months ago, but the UN didn't bother to tell the public or even its own staff about the July 2019 hack -- despite staff records having been compromised, reports Ben Parker at The New Humanitarian.

What's worse, the whole thing could have been prevented with a simple software patch.

One senior UN IT official called the matter a “major meltdown,” and TNH reports that staff records, health insurance, and commercial contract data were all compromised in the breach.

Excerpt from TNH:

On 30 August 2019, IT officials working at the UN’s Geneva offices issued an alert to their tech teams about a hacking incident:

'We are working under the assumption that the entire domain is compromised. The attacker doesn't show signs of activity so far, we assume they established their position and are dormant.'

The complex cyber attack on UN networks in Geneva and Vienna had started more than a month earlier but was only just being fully uncovered. Dozens of UN servers – including systems at its human rights offices, as well as its human resources department – were compromised and some administrator accounts breached, according to a confidential UN report obtained by The New Humanitarian. The breach is one of the largest ever known to have affected the world body.

The cyber attack – unreported until TNH’s investigation – started mid-July, according to the report. Dated 20 September, the report flags vulnerabilities, describes containment efforts, and includes a section titled: “Still counting our casualties”. The incident amounted to a “major meltdown”, according to a senior UN IT official familiar with the fallout, who spoke to TNH on condition of anonymity. This official provided TNH with the August 2019 alert above and several other alerts related to the breach.

In response to questions from TNH, the UN confirmed it had kept the data breach quiet.

Read more:

EXCLUSIVE: The cyber attack the UN tried to keep under wraps

[thenewhumanitarian.org, Ben Parker]

[via Techmeme]

While Google has been having issues with its multilingual speech-to-text algorithms, the company can generally be considered a cross-language processing pioneer thanks to its easy-to-use Translate app. The service is growing ever more powerful and has only recently seen improvements in offline accuracy and a better real-time camera-based translation. Behind the scenes, Google is already working on the next big thing for Translate and has demoed live transcriptions of translations, letting you listen to one language and read in another.

Google working on real-time multilingual transcriptions in Translate was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Oh, this gets me right in the feels.

This video was originally posted by Jossmar Castillo on Facebook.

Lost Dog Saved by Two Drivers

“I design Unnecessary Inventions for fun,” says IMGURian @rightcoastguy, who was challenged by fellow users to make this truly silly and wacky invention.

“Meet the SockNoMore.”

I like it.

I would... sheepishly buy it.

I design Unnecessary Inventions for fun, and Imgurian challenged me to make this - meet the SockNoMore.

Welcome to the roundup of the new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. Today I have the return of Tetris (now that EA has lost the license), a G.I.-Joe-themed strategy game, and an enjoyable football game all about avoiding zombies. So without further ado, here are the more notable Android games released during the week of January 20th, 2020.

16 new Android games from the week of January 20, 2020: Tetris, G.I. Joe: War On Cobra, and Zombie Football was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

"Proactive credit line increases" (PCLIs) are when your credit card company increases your credit limit without your asking for it; it was very common prior to the 2008 crisis, but the post-crisis rules largely put a stop to it. Now, banks have figured out regulatory loopholes that allow them to throw PCLIs at their most vulnerable customers, leading to record-high national levels of credit-card debt of $880b as of last September, higher than the pre-crisis high.

Credit cards are the most profitable loans that the finance industry originates, and 2019 was the best-ever year for the banks' profits from credit cards, with interest rates soaring to a 20-year peak. The US banks made $179b in credit card fees and interest in 2019, and 2020 is projected to be even better. Credit-card debt is the fastest-growing form of debt in the USA.

Much of this PCLI activity is subprime -- extending credit to people who are already overburdened by debt and who will likely miss payments, leading to high penalties, which are extremely profitable for banks.

The number of people aged 19-29 in the USA who are more than 90 days late on their card payments just reached a ten-year high.

But after the stock slipped in 2017, [Capital One] executives came under pressure to show they could meet growth targets. They eventually tweaked their models to offer increases to more customers, betting on a quirk in human behavior, according to the person with knowledge of the decision, who asked not to be named discussing the talks. The firm’sanalyses showed people tended to keep their card utilization steady, even after line increases. In other words, someone who used 80% of their credit line before the boost, would typically use the same percentage afterward, generating more revenue.

Other researchers had come to similar conclusions. For consumers who carry balances on their cards, “nearly 100% of an increase in credit limits eventually becomes an increase in debts,” according to a working paper by Scott Fulford and Scott Schuh for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. About half of U.S. credit card accounts carry a balance each month, the CFPB said.

Banks Are Handing Out Beefed-Up Credit Lines No One Asked For [Michelle Davis/Bloomberg]

(via Naked Capitalism)

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous three weeks or so. Today I have a fantastic gesture navigation tuner, a preview version of the Microsoft Launcher, and GitHub's return to the Play Store after a long absence. So without further ado, here are the more notable Android apps released in the last three weeks.

15 new and notable Android apps from the last three weeks including GesturePlus, Microsoft Launcher Preview, and GitHub (1/4/20 - 1/25/20) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

At the start of last week, Google introduced a new design for desktop Search that adds site favicons to every result. Some users reacted very vocally, and Google is now experimenting with new Search designs in response to the favicon backlash.

more…

The post Google responds to Search favicon backlash by experimenting with more designs appeared first on 9to5Google.

In 2018, London's Metropolitan Police Force announced trials of a facial recognition system that could be married to the city's legendarily invasive CCTV thicket; the tests failed 98% of the time and led to arrests of people who opted out by covering their faces.

Based on that dismal performance, and perhaps emboldened by the coming Brexit and its liberation from EU privacy rules, the Met have announced that they are rolling out permanent, citywide facial recognition. The system will use "bespoke" watchlists whose criteria are not disclosed, though they will include people "wanted for serious and violent offences."

The cameras will be placed in popular tourist and shopping spots.

When the camera flags an individual, police officers will approach and ask them to verify their identity. If they’re on the watch list, they’ll be arrested. “This is a system which simply gives police officers a ‘prompt’, suggesting ‘that person over there may be the person you’re looking for,’” said the Metropolitan police in a press release.

Operational use of the cameras will only last for five or six hours at a time, says BBC News, but the Met makes clear that the use of this technology is to be the new normal in London.

London police to deploy facial recognition cameras across the city [James Vincent/The Verge]

(Image: Cryteria, CC-BY, modified)

Welcome to the roundup of the new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. Today I have the sequel to Orange Pixel's fantastic roguelike Space Grunts, a quirky collection game from the creators of Peace, Death, and an exploration-focused roguelike platformer that contains an interesting monochromatic theme. So without further ado, here are the more notable Android games released during the week of January 13th, 2020.

20 new Android games from the week of January 13th, 2020: Space Grunts 2, Draw Chilly, and Chamber was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Chicago's Volante (previously) bills itself as "streetwear for superheroes," and I love their clothes. They've just released an addition to their existing canon of Star Trek-themed, cosplay-adjacent clothes: the Picard Sweater, a stretchy knit tribute to Jean-Luc himself, the perfect thing to wear while you're watching Wil Wheaton host "The Ready Room," which airs after every episode.

The massive scale and force of the ongoing bushfires in Australia is hard to comprehend.

The number of living creatures killed by flame, smoke, and habitat destruction fires is already staggering, and incomplete.

Here is a new video from Reuters with more on a story we've covered here at Boing Boing previously -- NWS workers are dropping vegetables like carrots and sweet potatoes from aircraft, to feed displaced wallabies who can't find anything to eat because everything has burned.

Video: Reuters

PREVIOUSLY on Boing Boing:
• Australia fires: Carrots and sweet potatoes dropped from the air to feed starving animals

Last night, a lost horse was trotting around the busy A48 road in Cardiff, Wales. Police and passers-by weren't quite sure what to do but a kind Cardiff Bus driver stopped and offered to take the horse to meet its owners at a safe location. From BBC:

"The police arrived and we were all a bit flummoxed of what to do because we couldn't get a horse box there in time," (said Harley Stephens, a citizen who assisted in the rescue).

She said the Cardiff Bus driver suggested putting it on a bus, so they put the disabled ramp down and "it went on quite happily".

Accompanied by Ms Stephens the horse was then taken to the hospital Park and Ride stop, with one other passenger sitting close by.

"He was quite chill about it," she said.

Y NAKAJIMA posted this fully functional "Assault Type Thomas" to YouTube. Check out more photos at Badland Models. I dig the postapocalyptic Chp 'n' Dale.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook has halted its plans to introduce ads in WhatsApp's Status feed. Talk of advertisements in WhatsApp, and specifically interspersed among ephemeral statuses, has been going for over a year, with the service's VP confirming that in October of 2018. But those plans seem to be paused, for now at least.

WSJ cites "people familiar with the matter" who reported that the team responsible for finding ways to integrate ads into the service has been shut down, and its work has been deleted from the app's code.

Your WhatsApp Status feed will remain free of ads, for now was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

This is some pretty amazing and highly rare video -- seldom do you get footage of five, count 'em FIVE, California mountain lions all hanging out together. The big cats were captured on home surveillance video, in a rare gathering of the typically solitary critters.

“We shared the videos and photos with several of our wildlife biologists and none of them could recall ever seeing five mountain lions together in the same photo or video," said California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Peter Tira.

KTXL News broadcast this home surveillance video footage from a residence in Amador County.

Excerpt:

According to the biologists, the only time more than one mountain lion can be seen together is either during the mating season or when a mother is raising her cubs, but typically only three at most are seen together. “Extraordinary to capture five together for sure,” Tira told FOX40. “There’s one lion that clearly looks to be bigger and larger than the others, so we assume that to be the mother lion.”

Tira said mountain lions, also known as cougars, typically live solitary lives. During the mating season, two adults will meet but Tira said January is not mating season. “They’re not very tolerant of other mountain lions in their territories,” Tira said.

According to Tira, the other lions are likely the mother’s cubs but he does not believe all of them are from the same litter. “Potentially could be two different age classes, some yearlings and maybe a 2-year-old lion that she may have had earlier,” he said.

People who live in Amador County can learn more about protecting their animals and keeping mountain lions safe by visiting keepmewild.org.

READ MORE:

• Home surveillance captures rare footage of five mountain lions together in California [fox13now.com]

• Rare video shows 5 mountain lions together in California [AP]

Microsoft Edge, the web browser that replaced Internet Explorer with the release of Windows 10, has been given a dramatic overhaul in the last year or so to be rebuilt on the same Chromium source code that Google Chrome is based on. Today, the new version of Microsoft Edge, based on Google’s Chromium, has been officially launched on Windows and macOS.

more…

The post Microsoft re-launches Edge browser on Windows and macOS, now based on Google’s Chromium appeared first on 9to5Google.

The Upland Film Co. took a walk around Dublin with an old-timey cine camera loaded with Kodak film: "Shot a few rolls of 16mm in Dublin on the trusty ol' Bolex." The results are comforting yet uncanny, the new and the old in harmony and tension.

Watching the Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam is really quite a thrill!

It's pointed at a nest near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino National Forest (Southern California) occupied by Jackie and Shadow, a bald eagle couple waiting for their two eaglets to arrive. One of their eggs was laid on January 8 and the other just on Saturday. Jackie sits on the eggs the most, typical for paired eagles because the females are bigger and heavier. They simply provide more warmth and protection. But Shadow is doing his share, feeding Jackie, fluffing the nest, and, as in the past years, sitting on the eggs for stints in the daytime hours when it's not as cold. The incubation period for eagle eggs is 35 days, so the first eaglet is expected to hatch around Valentine's Day. My friend Heather was the one who showed me the cam and told me to gird my loins because (spoiler alert!) for the last two years, "the second / smaller chick always dies." Arggggghhhhh!

The Friends of the Big Bear Valley are doing a bang-up job on Facebook of narrating the day-to-day activities of these majestic raptors.

screengrab via Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam

Welcome to the roundup of the new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous couple of weeks or so. Today I have an interesting point-and-click adventure game that's played entirely in split-screen, a racer that's gone through many iterations throughout many ports that has returned to Android as a premium release, and en enjoyable outer-space-themed adventure game that plays out a lot like the classroom classic The Oregon Trail.

18 new Android games from the last two weeks: The White Door, 60 Parsecs!, and Table Top Racing: World Tour was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Following the EU's record antitrust ruling against Google back in 2018, the European Commission asked the company to give Android users the option to set other search engines as default. That prompted Google to take the opportunity to make even more money by auctioning which companies to feature as default search engine providers. The winners have now been published, and it looks like privacy advocate DuckDuckGo and meta search engine Info.com have taken the crown across the continent.

These companies have won Google’s alternative search provider auction in Europe was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Slice of Life is a crowdfunded fan film that takes place in a Blade Runner-like universe and is presented as a "love letter" to 80s sci-fi films in general. Years in the making, the team finally sent their Kickstarter backers digital copies over Christmas. As soon as all of their backers get their hard copies (DVDs and Blu-Ray), the film will be made available online.

During the production process, the Slice of Life team posted lots of great video diaries on YouTube, forming something of a master class in low-budget sci-fi film-making. In the above 35-minute video, Luka gives us an impressively informative run-through of the process of building and shooting miniature structures.

Starting with nothing more than a crappy cardboard box, some kitchen trash, electronic junk, and a few plastic model and 3D-printed bits, he builds a cyberpunk-y building and then shows how they went about filming and compositing everything into a final scene. Impressive.

Here's the trailer for the film:

[H/t Kevin Kelly]

Almost 100 people working for CollegeHumor in Los Angeles and New York were let go yesterday, reports Bloomberg. The owner, Barry Diller's IAC, sold the brand to its chief creative officer. Only "five to 10 people" remain employed.

CollegeHumor suffered the same fate as Funny or Die, which went through rounds of layoffs in recent years. Why did these media companies, which make good content, fail so spectacularly? Because they trusted Facebook, which wooed them to its platform with grossly exaggerated viewer metrics.  CollegeHumor and Funny or Die staffed up to meet the imaginary demand, then Facebook pulled the rug out from under them.

Adam Conover, who worked for CollegeHumor, explained the situation in a Twitter thread:

Facebook, which was sued by advertisers for cooking its stats, settled out of court for $40 million and steadfastly refuses to admit any wrongdoing.

These are just a small sample of Michael Schlegel's glorious photographs of trees in Fanal, the laurisilva forest of Madeira, Portugal. The otherworldly images reassure me with their quiet calm.

(via Kottke)

This capybara is excited, unlike all the other capybaras here.

Each winter, millions of Christmas Island red crabs mass migrate from the rainforest to the sea to lay their eggs. While the roads are closed during migration season to protect the crustaceans, a couple who live in this Australian territory still needed vehicle access to their two luxury eco-lodges. So, Chris Bray and his wife Jess attached sweeper "shoes" to their Toyota Land Cruiser tires to "gently push the crabs out of the way without harming them."

They call their invention the "crab mobile":

View this post on Instagram

The #crab mobile working a treat! The roads are thick with red crabs migrating to the coast for a refreshing dip in the #ocean. What an amazing time to be on #Christmas Island @christmasisland @parksaustralia

A post shared by Swell Lodge (@swelllodge) on Dec 29, 2019 at 7:44pm PST

(Nag on the Lake)

screenshot via Chris Bray Photography/Caters Clips

The infamous 11-f00t-8 bridge of Durham, North Carolina has damaged hundreds of trucks that are too tall to pass under it without getting their tops sheared off. Late last year, the city raised the bridge 8 inches over the objections of 11-foot-8 fans who enjoy watching videos of inattentive truck drivers who don't pay heed to the warning signs. It looks like their concerns were unwarranted, however, as the bridge is already claiming new victims. The latest is the driver of a Penske truck that was barely an inch too tall for the bridge.

Image: YouTube screenshot

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous three weeks or so. Today I have a soft-keyboard that brings an all-new layout for speed-based typing, an excellent open-source email client, and a couple of premium volume control apps that are indeed worth a look. So without further ado, here are the most notable Android apps released in the last three weeks.

12 new and notable Android apps from the last three weeks including Typewise Keyboard, FairEmail, and Knobby volume control (12/14/19 - 1/4/20) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.