Andrew Warkentin has spent over twenty years collecting old operating systems and getting them to run. The result is the Virtual OS Museum, a launcher and Linux VM that boots 570-odd operating systems on top of QEMU, VirtualBox, or UTM, with everything pre-installed, pre-configured, and rolled back to a known-good state by a snapshot tool when an install breaks. — Read the rest

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Larry Bushart, a Tennessee retiree who spent his career in law enforcement, will receive $835,000 from Perry County and Sheriff Nick Weems to settle the federal civil rights case he filed last December, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression announced today. — Read the rest

The post Tennessee man jailed 37 days for a Trump meme wins $835,000 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Of all the monkeys and apes scientists have studied, no species shows a population-level hand preference. Individual primates often have strong biases, and chimpanzees, gorillas, and a few other species lean slightly to the right or left as groups, but not nearly as much as humans. — Read the rest

The post Humans are the only primates with a lopsided hand preference appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Fooducate Pro is $40 (reg. $199.99) and combines meal tracking, barcode scanning, food grades, ingredient analysis, and nutrition tools in one app for new users.

Grocery packaging has become its own weird dialect. Everything is "natural," "smart," "light," "clean," or otherwise trying very hard to sound innocent.  — Read the rest

The post This $40 food-tracking app may tell you more about your groceries than the box does appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Connecticut village of Moodus lies over a seismic fault that produces shallow microearthquakes that cause weird booms, rumbles, and cracks. The Algonquian peoples named the area Matchitmoodus. ("the place of noises")

The biggest Moodus Noise on record was an intensity-7 earthquake on May 16, 1791. — Read the rest

The post H.P. Lovecraft borrowed from this real Connecticut seismic phenomenon appeared first on Boing Boing.

"What could he possibly be hiding?" is, admittedly, not the reassuring question we're all thinking.

While Todd Blanche was apparently busy testifying before the Senate about other matters, the Justice Department reportedly posted a one-page addendum that — if accurately described — permanently shields Donald Trump, his family, and associated entities from IRS examinations of previously filed returns, which is one of those sentences that sounds made up even while you're typing it. — Read the rest

The post DOJ quietly slips Trump what looks a lot like permanent audit invisibility appeared first on Boing Boing.

This is what happens when you do not care.

Everything about this image says "wow, AI really went nuts here!" and not "we should use this to represent the United States Department of Education," until you look at who is running the United States. — Read the rest

The post Incredible AI slop from the Department of Education appeared first on Boing Boing.

Thirteen major publishers — Penguin Random House, Elsevier, HarperCollins, and ten others — won a $19.5 million default judgment against the shadow library Anna's Archive on May 19, handed down by federal judge Jed Rakoff in New York's Southern District. The publishers claimed that Anna's Archive isn't just sharing pirated books with readers — it's become "a primary training data hub for AI companies like Meta and NVIDIA." — Read the rest

The post Anna's Archive hit with $19.5M judgment and global domain order appeared first on Boing Boing.

The real question here is what speech or words are being displayed on the teleprompters, as convicted felon, real estate fraudster, and over 26 times credibly accused of sexual assault, Donald Trump babbles on about unimaginable "things" happening. It is literal babble. — Read the rest

The post Grandpa Pudding Brains free associates a commencement address appeared first on Boing Boing.

The 2021 Toyota Sienna is a three-row AWD minivan that gets 34 mpg city and highway — beating its nearest rivals by more than 50%. Most people assume the batteries and electric motors explain that number. Alec Watson at Technology Connections has made a 55-minute deep dive on why that assumption is wrong, and the actual answer goes back to 1887. — Read the rest

The post What actually makes hybrid cars fuel-efficient? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Bowling Green is the oldest park in New York City. The park was established in 1733 as, well, a bowling green, and leased from local businesses for the cost of "one peppercorn a year," or a nominal fee.

The Charging Bull has attracted the most attention from tourists since its installation at the northern end of the park in 1989. — Read the rest

The post Protesters tore the crowns off NYC's oldest fence in 1776 appeared first on Boing Boing.

China has done a lot to appear impartial whenever Russia's invasion of Ukraine comes up. Maybe "impartial" is the wrong word: the People's Republic of China has even talked up the idea of finding a peaceful outcome to the war. But it looks like all that has been a very successful attempt to blow smoke up Europe's ass. — Read the rest

The post China secretly trained Russian troops, and some have since fought in Ukraine appeared first on Boing Boing.

Hey! Do you have $650,000 to spend? Not interested in pissing away that cash on feeding a school full of kids lunch for a few years or helping a couple of families off the street? Then you, friendo, could soon find yourself riding around in your own giant, transformable mecha. — Read the rest

The post Would you spend $650,000 to ride a transforming mecha? appeared first on Boing Boing.

For years, Plex has been an inexpensive, easy way for folks to organize and stream their media collection. Starting in July, Plex will still be an easy way to do that, but it won't be cheap: for the second time in as many years, the service is raising the cost of its lifetime membership, and boy howdy, is this price hike steep. — Read the rest

The post Plex lifetime pass is jumping from $250 to $750 in July appeared first on Boing Boing.

Victorian hair jewelry, like the ones in these photos, was one of those old traditions that feels both beautiful and maybe a little eerie today. At the time, though, it was considered deeply sentimental and romantic. Hair didn't decay the way flowers or paper did, so it became a lasting keepsake people could carry with them for years. — Read the rest

The post Victorian hair jewelry: bracelets and rings woven from the dead appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tom the Dancing Bug: The Shadow Docket comes out of the shadows!

-> Please join the team that makes it possible for your friendly neighborhood comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug to exist in this hostile Trumpverse! JOIN US IN THE INNER HIVE, and be the first kid on your block to get each week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic – before it's published anywhere. — Read the rest

The post Tom the Dancing Bug: The Shadow Docket comes out of the shadows! appeared first on Boing Boing.

The whimsical and erotic puzzles of William Accorsi capture the free-spirited vibe of 1960s and '70s folk art. His sculptural puzzles are playful and colorful, with tiny details that make the images feel alive. These are the fidget toys I wish I had on my shelf. — Read the rest

The post Erotic wooden puzzles from 1960s spark joy appeared first on Boing Boing.

The old clown photos in TASCHEN's The Circus. 1870s–1950s are incredible. A lot of the clowns look more fantastical than funny, with smeared makeup, giant costumes, and intense expressions. Some of the photos are charming, and others feel haunting yet beautiful. — Read the rest

The post Vintage clown photos capture old circus culture appeared first on Boing Boing.

Remember Darksiders? No, not Darkstalkers, the fighting game series that's kind of weird about women. No, not Dark Souls, the ARPG series that's also weird about women but in a far more esoteric way. I mean Darksiders, the surprisingly well-produced series of God of War knockoffs that managed to stand out by having you slay your way through Christian mythology instead. — Read the rest

The post Darksiders remaster costs PlayStation players $10, Xbox gets it free appeared first on Boing Boing.

At this point, I'm convinced that Aaron Westberry is less a standard comedian and more an avant-garde performance artist whose genius will only be properly appreciated in a few decades. After writing about his bit in which he told the same joke repeatedly for the duration of a five-minute set, I delved deeper into his oeuvre — and surprise, surprise, it's full of similar absurd performances twisting the established format of standup comedy in any number of creative ways. — Read the rest

The post What happens when a prop comedian refuses to touch his prop? appeared first on Boing Boing.

I'm convinced that fifteen years without a sequel is doing bad things to the Skyrim player base. Give them enough time, and they won't even need an Elder Scrolls 6.

Case in point: when recent developments in the modding scene made it possible to insert other games into Fallout 4, I thought it was a fun curiosity. — Read the rest

The post Someone modded Skyrim into Fallout 4's Pip-Boy games appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get a Grade A refurbished Apple MacBook Pro (2020) with the Touchbar for only $399.99 (MSRP $1,580) with all the tools you need.

For practical techies, a refurbished laptop is the smart decision to add a MacBook to your roster. — Read the rest

The post This MacBook Pro is only $400 — yes, really. appeared first on Boing Boing.

Today's enormous shadow libraries — Sci-Hub, Library Genesis, and the rest — trace back to Soviet samizdat, the underground practice of typing forbidden books onto carbon paper and passing the copies hand to hand. Russian scholars who grew up inside that culture started digitizing texts in the 1990s, and the through-line from clandestine typewriters to today's gigantic online archives is direct. — Read the rest

The post Sci-Hub and Libgen descend from a Soviet tradition of smuggled science appeared first on Boing Boing.

Most AI assistants send your conversations to someone else's server. Outcry, a free app from Micah Bornfree, PhD, takes the opposite tack: the model lives on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple silicon Mac, and nothing it discusses with you is ever transmitted anywhere. — Read the rest

The post Occupy Wall Street co-founder built an AI organizing mentor that runs offline appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get Microsoft Office 2024 Home and Business and Windows 11 Pro for life for $134.97.

Microsoft 365 costs around $100 a year, which means if you've been subscribing since it launched, you've probably spent more on it than a decent piece of furniture. — Read the rest

The post Microsoft 365 is almost $100/year, but you can get Microsoft Office and Windows 11 Pro for life for only $135 appeared first on Boing Boing.

In the summer of 1997, NOAA's underwater microphone network — a Cold War-era array of hydrophones originally built to track Soviet submarines and later repurposed to monitor earthquakes and whale migrations — picked up something strange off the coast of southern Chile. — Read the rest

The post In 1997, NOAA recorded a sound louder than any known animal appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ethan Mollick, the Wharton professor who studies AI adoption, ran "The Serpent in the Grove" through Pangram — an AI-detection tool that claims 99% accuracy — and got 100% red flags. The story had been selected from 7,806 entries as a Caribbean regional finalist for the Commonwealth Foundation Short Story Prize and published in Granta. — Read the rest

The post Granta published a likely AI-written story as a prize finalist appeared first on Boing Boing.

"Numerous water safety violations" is a spectacular phrase when discussing a pickup truck.

A Texas man reportedly looked at Tesla's "wade mode" feature, absorbed whatever meaning he wished from those two words, and drove his Cybertruck directly into Grapevine Lake, where the vehicle promptly demonstrated its lesser-known "become expensive artificial reef" setting. — Read the rest

The post Tesla Cybertruck owner, intending to test "wade mode," learns about "sink mode" appeared first on Boing Boing.

In what appears to have been a pilot program for "colonialism, but make it weirdly condescending," Trump emissary Jeff Landry reportedly tried to win over Greenlanders with MAGA merch and cookie promises, receiving in return a remarkably clear statement of local sovereignty. — Read the rest

The post Greenlanders offer Trump envoy the universally understood finger gesture for "no to annexation" appeared first on Boing Boing.

In August 1960, something washed ashore on a remote beach in western Tasmania, about two miles north of the Interview River. It was 20 feet wide, 18 feet long, weighed somewhere between five and ten tons, and had no eyes. Instead of a mouth, it had what witnesses described as soft, tusk-like protuberances. — Read the rest

The post The 1960 blob that gave all mystery blobs their name appeared first on Boing Boing.