A teacher working Straford upon Avon in England was banned from the profession for life after giving them a pen with a hidden camera. Matthew Udall, teaching science, suggested the child use it to "write in a journal" and encouraged them to "change their clothes" before writing. — Read the rest

The post Teacher banned for life after giving spycam pen to student and telling them to get changed appeared first on Boing Boing.

A new lawsuit sheds some light on all those CSAM problems with Elon "Pedo Guy" Musk's Grok: it claims Grok was trained on child pornography, resulting in the child pornography problems created by Grok.

The plaintiff, known as Jane Doe, was preschool-aged when men raped her and distributed images of the abuse. — Read the rest

The post Grok's child-porn nightmare just got worse appeared first on Boing Boing.

Proof that any crap can become a fad if you talk about sound quality: young people are buying CD players again. Popular models sell out, and CD sales are booming: the apocalypse is here.

Cassettes and CDs are back. It can't be about sound quality; we've heard that both suck since they were released. — Read the rest

The post Kids are buying CD players again, proving nostalgia has no standards appeared first on Boing Boing.

Eric Harshbarger, a mathematician at Auburn University, has created a set of 60-sided dice that never tie and allow up to five game players to have an equal chance of going first. From the Auburn press release:

There were breakthroughs along the way, including the discovery that the dice didn't even need to have the same number of sides.

— Read the rest

The post These 60-sided dice decide who goes first, and they can never tie appeared first on Boing Boing.

A street mural of snooker legend Ronnie O'Sullivan now graces the side of the Spot On snooker club in Sheffield, England, but locals and fans of the sport complain that it's terrifying and that he looks like a zombie.

One said: "My local snooker club has done a mural of Ronnie O'Sullivan.

— Read the rest

The post Mural immortalizing snooker legend Ronnie O'Sullivan makes him look undead appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Microsoft Visio Professional 2024 is a full diagramming program for Windows, and a lifetime license is now $39.97 (reg. $579.99).

Professional diagramming software usually requires a monthly subscription. Microsoft Visio is usually no exception, despite being one of the most popular data visualization tools available. — Read the rest

The post Microsoft's best design software is only $40 for life through September 1 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Illegal bread dumping is confounding park officials in Daisen, a small town in Japan's Tottori prefecture. Large numbers of loaves, totalling 39 kilograms, have appeared on the Daisen loop road near Daisenji Temple in recent days—a meal accompanied on one occasion by fresh, neatly arranged chicken livers. — Read the rest

The post Authorities in Japan baffled by illegal bread dumping appeared first on Boing Boing.

The highest court in France struck down a national ban on children under 15 using social media, ruling that it disproportionately limits free speech and fails to address privacy protections. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports a welcome win for free expression as governments across the world seek to restrict it under the pretense of protecting children from the big tech platforms they otherwise refuse to regulate. — Read the rest

The post Social media ban blocked by France's highest court appeared first on Boing Boing.

After storming the Kennedy Center, replacing the board with cronies, and slapping his name on the side, Diaper Don has found the artists quitting and the audience drying up. His Department of Justice is arguing that only putting his name back up will bring out the donors who can save the institution from its Trump-instigated disaster. — Read the rest

The post DOJ: Kennedy Center has a fever, and the only prescription is more TRUMP appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH the MAGAs are dreaming of a Right Wing Christmas

-> 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, plus lots of other stuff! — Read the rest

The post Tom the Dancing Bug: The MAGAs are dreaming of a Right Wing Christmas appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Turn academic books, journals, and texts into searchable, editable documents with this PDF Agile Premium lifetime subscription for Mac and PC for just $39.99 (reg. $119).

A good PDF manager goes a long way, especially if you're a student or working in academia. — Read the rest

The post Turn academic texts into searchable, editable files for just $40  appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Load-Bearing Vocabulary of Claude is an interactive dictionary of that language model's favorite turns of phrase. If the term "load-bearing" is the famous shibboleth of its presence, there are plenty of others that distinguish Claude's output. The runner-up "quietly" may be commonplace enough to escape notice, but "latent" and "genuine" are among the gongs. — Read the rest

The post Claude's "load-bearing" vocabulary charted appeared first on Boing Boing.

Reason, the actually-fun digital audio workstation, now has a free edition, though you'll need a different DAW to enjoy it. (Update: it does include a "A standalone version of the Reason DAW supporting up to 16 audio and/or MIDI tracks")

"Reason Free" is immediately available for download at Reason Studios' website. — Read the rest

The post Reason Free racks 15 synth and effects appeared first on Boing Boing.

If a country is about to get nuked, you can be sure the rich and powerful will hear about it before us huddled masses. They will jump into their helicopters and take their private jets to New Zealand to avoid getting turned into crispy critters like the rest of us. — Read the rest

The post Apocalypse Early Warning System counts the private planes in the sky right now appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1868 Henry T. Brown wrote a book called Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements. The subtitle is an apt description of the contents:

EMBRACING
ALL THOSE WHICH ARE MOST IMPORTANT IN
DYNAMICS, HYDRAULICS, HYDROSTATICS, PNEUMATICS, STEAM ENGINES, MILL AND OTHER GEARING, PRESSES, HOROLOGY, AND MISCELLANEOUS MACHINERY;
AND INCLUDING
MANY MOVEMENTS NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED
AND
SEVERAL WHICH HAVE ONLY RECENTLY COME INTO USE.

— Read the rest

The post Watch the mechanisms from an 1868 engineering book come to life appeared first on Boing Boing.

Peter Cullen, whose booming voice defined "hero truck" Optimus Prime, Knight Rider's KARR and intimidating characters in many other shows and movies, is dead at 85. TMZ was first the report the Canadian actor's death at his Los Angeles home. — Read the rest

The post Peter Cullen, voice of Optimus Prime, dead at 85 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: OneAir Elite tracks flight and hotel prices for savings up to 60 percent, and a lifetime subscription is now $99.99 (reg. $790).

Booking a hotel and watching the price drop the next day is a familiar frustration, and most travel sites give you no way to claw that money back. — Read the rest

The post For $100, you can avoid ever paying too much on hotels and airfare appeared first on Boing Boing.

After two severe hemorrhages in six days, Six Flags Magic Mountain finally shuttered one of its most famous rollercoasters. Though the park has not said what prompted the closure, these aren't the first injuries reported by people who rode the X2, and now CNN reports two decades of permanent disabilities, comas and even deaths. — Read the rest

The post Six Flags' head-banging X2 rollercoaster closed after two brain hemorrhages in six days appeared first on Boing Boing.

In June, Canadians bought more weed than Californians. Bong down, eh?

Canada's weed market is growing, while California's has fallen off its peak. While there are perhaps 2-3 million more Canadians than Californians, many of the Canadians are Québécois and probably not into it. — Read the rest

The post Canada out-weeds California appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Grab your lifetime license to Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 for just $29.97 (reg. $499.99). 

Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 is a 64-bit IDE built for professional developers and development teams in need of software that goes beyond simple coding. — Read the rest

The post Build, scale, and code faster for only $30 with MS Visual Studio Pro 2026 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Stories of gambling in baseball, when I grew up, were akin to original sin. Eight Men Out was a classic. Pete Rose got a very perma permaban. Man, when we were young, if you could hit a ball, you could also hit your wife, cheat on her, or be a poster child for substance abuse, but gambling threatened the integrity of the game itself. — Read the rest

The post Baseball's unforgivable sin is now a sponsorship opportunity appeared first on Boing Boing.

"Nobody would try to dismantle a pyramid by cutting a thin slice into one side." — History for Granite

In this fantastic video, History for Granite debunks another tentpole of Egyptology by examining the evidence. Consensus seemed to be, based on one account from the 1100s, that the great breach in Menkaure's pyramid resulted from an eight-month treasure hunt. — Read the rest

The post Who defaced that pyramid? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Every year since 1993, hackers, researchers, computer security specialists, and government intelligence employees have gathered in Las Vegas for the annual DEF CON. This year Clifford Stoll gave an energetic talk on the 40th anniversary of the hacker hunt behind his famous non-fiction thriller, The Cuckoo's Egg. — Read the rest

The post Cliff Stoll revisits the 75-cent glitch that caught KGB hackers, 40 years later appeared first on Boing Boing.

Seems Beverly Hills is still trying to usurp Huntington Beach's place as Southern California's MAGA safe zone.

As if getting into trouble with the California DOJ for illegally interfering with the opening of a women's health clinic, Weezer's favorite city now faces a lawsuit from a longtime substitute teacher claiming she was fired for posting her opinion of an on-campus MAGA rally. — Read the rest

The post Beverly Hills, fresh from blocking an abortion clinic, allegedly fires teacher for criticizing Trump appeared first on Boing Boing.

The 1960s are an endless source of fascination for me. No matter how many books I read about the decade, or the movies I watch or music I listen to, my curiosity doesn't wane. I just get more curious and want to dig deeper. — Read the rest

The post A countercultural film playlist for 1960s obsessives appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Trump administration has fast-track approved two new data center chemicals that can result in cancer, neurological damage, reproductive harm, and even sudden death, according to a lawsuit just filed by the Earthjustic nonprofit.

Tom Perkins writes in The Guardian:

"The two compounds approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for import and immediate use in facilities across the US are photoacid generators that also appear to be Pfas "forever chemicals", though it is unclear because much of the EPA documents are redacted.

— Read the rest

The post Trump's Environmental "Protection" Agency approves toxic data center chemicals appeared first on Boing Boing.

007: First Light has been out for months, IOI! You can stop making Hitman DLC! It's okay!

Hitman: World of Assassination is already one of the best stealth games ever made, but it gets just a little better (or at least funnier) with every celebrity that pops up in it. — Read the rest

The post New Hitman mission lets you assassinate Snoop Dogg appeared first on Boing Boing.

Oswaldo Pirela, the San Diego Padres' (Major League Baseball) minor league catching coordinator who was arrested last Sunday and held by ICE, was released on bond Monday.

He entered the U.S. legally from Venezuela in 2014, but the Department of Homeland Security claims he was authorized only to remain until 2018. — Read the rest

The post Padres coach held by ICE for over a week is released on bond appeared first on Boing Boing.

If I'd told you five years ago that The Witcher 3 would be getting a new expansion in 2027… well, you'd probably say "sounds about right." CD Projekt Red's masterpiece monster-hunting RPG received a veritable firehose of DLC in the wake of its 2015 release, including two full-sized expansions — one of which was good enough to go up for Game of the Year all on its own. — Read the rest

The post Witcher 3's Songs of the Past expansion gets its first gameplay reveal appeared first on Boing Boing.

Actor Tim Curry, star of classics such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, is dead at 80. TMZ was first to report the legendary film and TV's actor's death at his home in Los Angeles. — Read the rest

The post Tim Curry dead at 80 appeared first on Boing Boing.