A UK food delivery app called Just Eat has been using AI to generate photos for restaurants that don't provide images for their offerings. People started noticing odd photos, including a glass of soda with bacon and an egg floating in it. — Read the rest

The post A food delivery app's AI turned a breakfast sandwich into bacon soda appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Keep your cat busy with a self-rolling Cheerble Ball for $26.90.

Most cat toys stop moving the moment your cat stops swatting them, and a laser pointer only works while you're holding it. Cheerble Ball rolls and bounces on its own as soon as a nose or paw touches it, and it's available for $26.90. — Read the rest

The post Retire the laser pointer and let this $27 self-rolling ball tire out your cat appeared first on Boing Boing.

OpenAI researchers tried to keep AI agents from communicating with each other by putting them in their own environments on the same computer, not connected to a network or to each other. But they figured out how to communicate with each other through a shared resource, the CPU cache. — Read the rest

The post OpenAI's isolated AI agents talked to each other through the CPU cache appeared first on Boing Boing.

I just saw the new stop-motion animated movie from Laika Studios, and it is absolutely stunning. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and the fact that it's achieved through stop motion puppets and physical sets is a wonder. And that's all in service to an emotional and thrilling story. — Read the rest

The post Wildwood is a magnificent achievement in moviemaking appeared first on Boing Boing.

Walter Koenig, famed for his role as the villainous telepath Alfred Bester in Babylon 5 and as Star Trek's Pavel Chekov, is dead at 90. A representative confirmed his death this morning.

Koenig was born in Chicago in 1936; the child of Russian Jewish immigrants, he did not pursue acting until after college.

— Read the rest

The post Star Trek star Walter Koenig dead at 90 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Babbel is a language learning app with 14 languages and 10,000+ hours of lessons, and a lifetime subscription is on sale for $159 with code LEARN via StackSocial (MSRP $299).

When you lowkey have a bathroom emergency while traveling, which language-learning app do you think will have your back? — Read the rest

The post StackSocial has an exclusive Babbel deal for people who collect languages appeared first on Boing Boing.

A tangle of bones and nightmare creatures entangled atop an SUV has locals contemplating the acceptable limits of Halloween decor in Casper, Wyoming. Described as a "Skeleton Sex Orgy," the scene was photographed above by Mary Goff, who made the image available to media. — Read the rest

The post Skeleton Sex Orgy "divides" residents of Casper, Wyoming appeared first on Boing Boing.

It's one thing to harass children and chase them down the street. But to live in the sewer? Baltimore County still has problems, reports CBS News, including the sewer-dwelling gentleman who emerges to terrorize local youngsters.

After hearing similar complaints from her children at least four times, Wiggins decided to investigate.

— Read the rest

The post Sewer-dwelling man harassing local children, says Baltimore mom appeared first on Boing Boing.

Food delivery app Just Eat admitted using AI to generate fake product images after some of the more spectacular examples went viral, including garlic bread in the shape of a plane and "bacon and egg soda bread" presented as a drink with a fried egg in it. — Read the rest

The post Just Eat slop: food delivery service apologizes for bizarre AI-generated menu appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Visual Studio Professional 2026 is on sale for just $29.97 (reg. $499.99) and includes cross-platform development tools, intelligent code completion, and GitHub Copilot integration.

AI can write code now, which is great until you have to figure out whether that code actually does what it's supposed to. — Read the rest

The post AI can write code, but this $30 developer tool helps you figure out if it works appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Today is the last day to get AdGuard DNS Personal for 5 years for $22.97 (MSRP $719.64).

Your internet connection has a guest list problem. Ads, trackers, and suspicious domains keep showing up uninvited. Today is the last day to get a 5-year AdGuard DNS Personal subscription for just $22.97 (MSRP $719.64) and set some boundaries. — Read the rest

The post Stop letting trackers get comfy — 5 years of AdGuard DNS protection is just $23 through today appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get a grade-A refurbished HP EliteBook 830 G8 with an Intel Core i7 and 32GB of RAM for $429.99 (reg. $1,499.99).

Cheap laptops usually skimp on memory, and 8GB of RAM slows down fast once you have a video call, a spreadsheet, and a few dozen browser tabs open at the same time. — Read the rest

The post A business-class HP EliteBook with 32GB of RAM is $430 refurbished appeared first on Boing Boing.

Toys R Us is back, at least in the sense of private equity rediscovering the skin of something it gutted long ago and deciding to wear it again. But this isn't the first time that the famous toy shop was haunted. — Read the rest

The post The haunted Toys R Us is now an unhaunted REI appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Hive AI is a workspace that combines documents, whiteboards, and databases with AI assistance, and a lifetime subscription is $79 (MSRP $619).

Productivity apps tend to pick one lane. A notes app is great for writing but terrible for visual brainstorming, and a whiteboard tool falls apart the second you need a structured document. — Read the rest

The post Your notes, your whiteboard, and your to-do list walk into one app appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Learn prompting, agentic coding, and app automation in Claude with the Claude AI Professional E-Degree, now $19.99 (reg. $159).

Asking an AI chatbot one question at a time works fine, but it leaves coding agents, app integrations, and automation unused. — Read the rest

The post Teach yourself to make Claude do the boring stuff for $20 appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Youbooks uses ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama to draft nonfiction books up to 300,000 words, and it's $49 (reg. $540).

Plenty of experts have a nonfiction book's worth of knowledge and no free time to write it. Youbooks is an AI book generator that turns your idea, notes, and research into a full manuscript, and a lifetime subscription is on sale for $49 (reg. — Read the rest

The post Youbooks turns your notes and podcast transcripts into a nonfiction book for $49 appeared first on Boing Boing.

When I was in Japan earlier this month, we visited the village of Kurokawa Onsen, which has over 25 Japanese hot-spring bathhouses you can walk to. It was an incredible experience.

You can read all about the spas at Kurokawa Onsen with a Google search, so I will instead tell you about the fantastic cat I met in the village. — Read the rest

The post Kurokawa Onsen has 25 hot springs, but I'd go back just for this cat appeared first on Boing Boing.

Local Wikipedia shows you Wikipedia articles about things that are a half-hour or less walk from the address you enter in the search field. 

I entered Golden, Colorado, where I lived in my early years, and read an article about the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, which "contains over 800 quilts dating back to the 19th century."  — Read the rest

The post Local Wikipedia shows you articles about everything within a half-hour walk appeared first on Boing Boing.

People hoping to see mummies at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, were instead treated to a small sign that said, "We have removed human remains from this display as a mark of respect."

The museum had removed the remains of an ancient Egyptian priest, a mummified hand, a mummified head and a mummified foot. — Read the rest

The post Glasgow museum pulls its mummies, citing lack of consent from the dead appeared first on Boing Boing.

I promise I would never take time out of my day to write about something as mundane as a football team changing its logo unless it was whipping up a frenzy. Most NFL logos feature cool animals in profile, but the Falcons have taken theirs a step further. — Read the rest

The post The Bird Reich: The new Atlanta Falcons logo is uncomfortably familiar appeared first on Boing Boing.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted Dwight Eisenhower's 30-inch globe—a priceless World War II artifact—moved into his office. The recolation was botched, reports the Washingon Post, which received photos of the now-ruined antique. Hegseth's aides dropped it after deciding to do it themselves after they "eschewed the services of specialist movers."

— Read the rest

The post Priceless Eisenhower globe broken after Hegseth orders it moved to his office appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: With VoiceType, you can speak 9 times faster than you type. Get a lifetime subscription for $24.99 (MSRP $154).

When efficiency is the goal, you want to speed up the most laborious part of AI prompting: typing. With VoiceType AI, you can dictate your words to the AI-powered software with 99.75% accuracy. — Read the rest

The post Don't let typing slow down your AI prompting — switch to voice dictation for $25 for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

So. BioWare, the legendary RPG studio that created the Mass Effect series, was shut down just yesterday, taking with it an in-development Mass Effect 5. In my coverage of the initial event, I lamented that we'd never see the project again thanks to its unceremonious death. — Read the rest

The post Mass Effect 5 trailer leaks the day after studio closes appeared first on Boing Boing.

Greetings, all. I'll be your psychopomp this evening, the keeper of the crypt, the mistress of the dank, the lightning rod of this sterling dungeon, if you will. I ask you now to picture something horrid, something ghastly, but all too real…

Imagine: sometime in the future, October in the city of New Orleans. — Read the rest

The post New Orleans artistic haunted house heralds horrors of the Deep South appeared first on Boing Boing.

When I was in Japan earlier this month, one of my travel companions introduced me to the wonderful world of Umaibo, a puffed corn snack that you can buy in all convenience stores throughout Japan.

I wasn't expecting them to be so much fun to eat, but after trying one, I could not resist having at least one or two every day on the trip. — Read the rest

The post I couldn't stop eating these 16-yen corn puff sticks in Japan appeared first on Boing Boing.

The most famous person who hid in an attic in the Netherlands from the Nazis during World War II is Anne Frank, whose diary became a posthumous literary sensation.

But there was another Jewish author, also hiding in a Netherlands attic, who also found a way to create literary art while in concealment. — Read the rest

The post The Underwater Cabaret, a magazine made by a poet hiding from Nazis appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Uncensored Library is what you might call gamizdat: forbidden literature hidden inside a game. A Minecraft server (or downloadable map) housing a massive and beautifully-designed neoclassical library, it's packed with books, essays and other writings banned in authoritarian regimes. — Read the rest

The post Uncensored Library hides forbidden literature inside Minecraft appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 with faster solution loads and full Visual Studio 2022 compatibility for a one-time $29.97 (reg. $499.99).

Microsoft's professional developer tools usually come with a recurring subscription, and the charges continue for as long as you keep writing code. — Read the rest

The post Visual Studio Professional 2026 drops to $30 and opens your 2022 projects as is appeared first on Boing Boing.

Playdate (previously) is a delightful handheld console with a 1-bit display (for an original Mac-like aesthetic) and a peculiar hand-crank control in addition to the regular controls. Unlike other game machines, it comes with "seasons" of curated games, encouraging people to share their experiences, and season three is upon us. — Read the rest

The post Playdate Season 3 launches with an adorable frogs and abominable dungeons appeared first on Boing Boing.

London's Victorian Era Exhibition in 1897 featured a wide variety of modern innovations, the weirdest of which was a lamppost that doubled as a vending machine, dispensing coffee, cocoa, milk, tea, and a concoction called "fluid beef." Called the Pluto Lamp, this monstrous hybrid was installed throughout London. — Read the rest

The post In 1897, London had lampposts that sold coffee, tea, and "fluid beef" appeared first on Boing Boing.