In 1997, Robert J. Bradbury proposed the matrioshka brain — a hypothetical megastructure of "immense computational capacity powered by a Dyson sphere." The name comes from matryoshka nesting dolls. The idea: wrap a star in multiple concentric Dyson spheres, each one computing with the waste heat of the sphere inside it. — Read the rest

The post A computer the size of a star would nest Dyson spheres like Russian dolls appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1971, Ron Morehead and Al Berry set up camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains to record evidence of Bigfoot. Morehead was a believer. Berry was a skeptic looking to debunk a hoax. On the tape, the two can be heard whispering to each other before distant howls begin. — Read the rest

The post In 1971 two campers recorded what a Navy linguist calls a nonhuman language in the Sierra Nevadas appeared first on Boing Boing.

At 2:25 a.m. on February 25, 1942 — less than three months after Pearl Harbor — air raid sirens sounded across Los Angeles County. A total blackout was ordered. At 3:16 a.m., the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade opened fire with .50-caliber machine guns and anti-aircraft shells. — Read the rest

The post In 1942 Los Angeles fired 1,440 anti-aircraft rounds at nothing appeared first on Boing Boing.

Russia currently has 44 publicly acknowledged closed cities with a combined population of approximately 1.5 million people. The government calls them "closed administrative-territorial formations," or ZATO. Seventy-five percent are run by the Ministry of Defense; the rest are administered by Rosatom, the state nuclear agency. — Read the rest

The post Russia has 44 secret cities with 1.5 million people that don't appear on public maps appeared first on Boing Boing.

JPMorgan Chase has terminated a senior executive seen on video taking a city trash can during the New York Knicks' championship parade, TMZ reported.

The bank told the New York Post it fired Angie Báez after reviewing footage from the June parade. — Read the rest

The post JPMorgan Chase cans executive who stole trash can appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Cigar Galaxy is a cosmic mess: warped, dusty, furiously making stars, and apparently photogenic enough that Webb stared at it for nearly three days and produced a 223-megapixel glamour shot.

The new image combines Webb's ability to peer through dust with Hubble's view of glowing gas and dusty structure. — Read the rest

The post Webb spent three days photographing one beautiful galactic mess appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Katanning All Ages Playground in Western Australia looks like so much fun. It features a large, free outdoor play space designed for visitors of every age, not just children. Some of the equipment looks more like a human-powered ride than a typical play structure, and I wish I could go visit right now. — Read the rest

The post Free all-ages playground in Western Australia has a 35-meter walkway and flying fox appeared first on Boing Boing.

This kitty roller coaster is completely virtual, and hilarious. The coaster involves a POV video on a TV of a ride down a part indoor, part outdoor track. The coaster is slow moving, and passes by other cats while Led Zeppelin plays. — Read the rest

The post Cat goes full rider mode watching POV roller coaster on TV appeared first on Boing Boing.

This video of a hot pot restaurant in Taiwan shows a video of a fan playing on a TV while people eat. The digital fan rotates back and forth in a way that is somehow convincing, even knowing it's just a video. — Read the rest

The post Taiwan hot pot restaurant plays a fan video instead of running AC appeared first on Boing Boing.

And they were doing so well, too! This must be part of that brand revitalization Xbox — oh, sorry, XBOX — has been bragging about since getting a new CEO. Stop me if you've heard this one before: the rising cost of components, propelled by the completely pointless AI boom, is forcing consumer hardware manufacturers to up their prices. — Read the rest

The post Xbox raises console prices by up to $150 starting August appeared first on Boing Boing.

I can't pretend I'm immune to Nintendo DS nostalgia, okay? Nintendo's little clamshell that could was the last true handheld console we ever got (well, to be technical, its eventual upgrade the 3DS was), and just looking at mine in its eternal closet prison is enough to transport me back to a simpler time when one device was for one thing. — Read the rest

The post Make your phone look and feel like a Nintendo DS appeared first on Boing Boing.

Truly, the turning of the seasons can be best measured by the rotating Steam sales. More than anything else, it feels like these are the factor most responsible for Valve becoming so powerful they feel like they can charge a thousand dollars for their underpowered cube: whoever you are, and wherever you are on the planet, you can get games for cheap on Steam. — Read the rest

The post Steam Summer Sale is back with Witcher 3 at $4, Cyberpunk under $20 appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1897, The Strand Magazine — the London monthly best known as the home of Sherlock Holmes — published a photograph of a polished green jade specimen under the heading "The Price of a Man." The caption described it as "of very considerable interest, not only on account of its beauty as a fine specimen of the green jade, now so rare, but also from the fact of its representing the price paid by cannibals of the Mare Islands, Polynesia, for a fat man for eating purposes." — Read the rest

The post The Strand once published a jade specimen worth exactly one fat man appeared first on Boing Boing.

In April 1993, Aum Shinrikyo — the cult that would gas the Tokyo subway two years later — purchased Banjawarn Station, a remote sheep ranch covering 404,680 hectares (about a million acres) in Western Australia, 500 miles northeast of Perth. — Read the rest

The post A Japanese doomsday cult bought a million-acre Australian sheep ranch to test sarin gas appeared first on Boing Boing.

Om Malik was a great tech blogger in the times when tech was fun. "Blogging is not about opinion but it is about viewing the world in a certain way and sharing it with others how you look at things," he once wrote, celebrating a decade at the console. — Read the rest

The post Om Malik, 1966-2026 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: For just $21.97 (reg. $49.99), you can get a portable charging tool that fits right on your keyring. Get the GoCable: 8-in-1 Keyring Cable before the sale ends tomorrow! 

Traveling with baggage is already a hassle before you add in the multiple security checks you have to go through at airports. — Read the rest

The post Cut cable clutter with this 8-in-1 keyring charging tool for $22 during Deal Days appeared first on Boing Boing.

Retroid announced details of its Retroid Pocket Nova, a horizontal handheld built around a 4.5-inch 1280×960 120Hz AMOLED display in the 4:3 aspect ratio that God intended.

Inside is Qualcomm's QCS8550 chip with Adreno 740 graphics, functionally close to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 but without the phone stuff. — Read the rest

The post Retroid's Pocket Nova takes a second shot at getting 4:3 right appeared first on Boing Boing.

ICE agents reportedly tracked down a Syracuse poll worker on Election Day to demand she remove an Instagram post, because apparently, federal immigration enforcement now includes showing up in person to do content moderation for hurt feelings.

According to Syracuse.com, Paigelynne Gonyea was working as a poll worker at the Central Library on Salina Street when two ICE agents contacted her, came inside, and handed her a warning letter over an Instagram account they claimed might violate federal law. — Read the rest

The post ICE does in-person Instagram moderation now appeared first on Boing Boing.

Generative AI was supposed to make computers smarter, but its most immediate consumer benefit appears to be making every other computer more expensive.

The Verge reports that Apple is raising prices across much of its lineup: the MacBook Neo jumps from $599 to $699, the iPad Air from $599 to $749, and the M3 Ultra Mac Studio from $3,999 to $5,299. — Read the rest

The post Apple raises prices because AI ate the RAM appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool mystery has everything: alleged vandals, a $16 million rush job, algae, peeling blue coating, and one enormous clue shaped like the presidential motorcade that drove across the freshly coated empty pool before it was refilled.

AP reports that the Park Service reported the damage to the U.S. — Read the rest

The post Ignoring tire tracks, NPS hunts mystery Reflecting Pool vandal appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Bob Ross painting titled Mountain Summit is headed to auction June 30, and the proceeds will benefit Ball State PBS, the Muncie station that helped turn Ross's soft-spoken landscape magic into public television immortality.

Ross created Mountain Summit for season 13 of The Joy of Painting. — Read the rest

The post A rare Bob Ross painting could sell for a happy little fortune appeared first on Boing Boing.

Shades of Death Road is a real two-lane road in Warren County, New Jersey, running 6.7 miles through forest and swamp. According to Weird NJ, residents have gone "so far as to smear the pole holding the street sign" with grease to stop people from stealing it. — Read the rest

The post New Jersey has a road called Shades of Death and residents grease the sign to stop theft appeared first on Boing Boing.

By the summer of 1858, three million Londoners were flushing their sewage into the Thames through an aging system that emptied directly into the river. Temperatures hit 48 °C (118 °F) in the sun. The water level dropped. Raw effluent sat on the banks. — Read the rest

The post In 1858 the Thames smelled so bad that Parliament fled and Disraeli called it a 'Stygian pool' appeared first on Boing Boing.

From July to September 2001, heavy downpours of red-colored rain fell across the southern Indian state of Kerala, staining clothes pink. Yellow, green, and black rain also appeared. Each milliliter of rain water contained about 9 million red particles. Scientists estimated that 50,000 kilograms of them fell in total. — Read the rest

The post Blood-red rain fell on India for two months and some physicists blamed a comet appeared first on Boing Boing.

In August 2008, German developer Armin Heinrich released I Am Rich on the App Store for $999.99 — the maximum price Apple allowed. The app displayed a glowing red gem. Press the gem and it showed a mantra: "I am rich / I deserv [sic] it / I am good, healthy & successful." — Read the rest

The post The $999.99 iPhone app that did absolutely nothing sold 8 copies before Apple killed it appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1847, a young Crow hunting party killed the wife of John Garrison Johnston, a former Navy deserter turned mountain man in Montana Territory. According to historian Andrew Mehane Southerland, "He supposedly killed and scalped more than 300 Crow Indians and then devoured their livers" to avenge her death, and "as his reputation and collection of scalps grew, Johnson became an object of fear." — Read the rest

The post A mountain man spent 25 years eating the livers of the people who killed his wife appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Leica SL3-P is its new full-frame mirrorless camera, landing in the middle of the L-mount SL line with a 44-megapixel sensor, plain black controls and no red dot. As discreet as a $7k-ish camera might be, then, it's aimed at working photogs in need of multishot frame-stacking, 14 stops of dynamic range, 8K open-gate video, and 5-axis stabilisation. — Read the rest

The post Leica's SL3-P loses the dot, gets 8K open-gate video appeared first on Boing Boing.

A while ago, we talked about the fact that Meta's employees were upset that Mark Zuckerberg wanted to watch them use their computers while they were on the clock. It's irony so delicious you wanna eat it with a ladle. 1,600 of Meta's minions signed a petition against being treated the same way that Meta has been treating Facebook users for years. — Read the rest

The post Facebook employee data exposed in Meta's own surveillance program appeared first on Boing Boing.

During Grandpa Puddin' Brain's first term, he declared that COVID-19 wasn't a big deal. He asserted that he wouldn't close the country down for a flu, so COVID wasn't gonna lock the doors either. He scoffed at how dangerous the coronavirus was at the time, downplaying the danger that the pandemic represented and said that it would simply "go away." — Read the rest

The post CDC buried this COVID vaccine study, so scientists published it anyway appeared first on Boing Boing.

Who ruined the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool?! Who took something that had been fine for decades and turned it into a national shitshow by farming out renovation work to their corrupt friends? Rest assured that Detective Trump is already hard at work exposing the gay Chinese deep-state radical Democrat secret agents responsible for his shoddy refurb job. — Read the rest

The post Trump's base has theories about who sabotaged the reflecting pool appeared first on Boing Boing.