TL;DR: Give your PC a major productivity boost with this Microsoft Windows 11 Pro license, now just $9.97 (MSRP $199) until Aug. 2.

If you've got a Windows device just lying around, don't count it out. Give it another shot with a fresh operating system, Windows 11 Pro. — Read the rest

The post Make an old PC feel new again with this $10 Windows 11 Pro deal appeared first on Boing Boing.

Bill Oliver, a Progressive Conservative Party legislator in New Brunswick, Canada, delivered a rousing speech last week.

"One of the dangers associated with creating advocacy offices is that citizens often develop expectations that exceed the powers actually granted to those offices. — Read the rest

The post Canadian politician mindlessly reads AI-generated speech, prompt and all appeared first on Boing Boing.

Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds has attracted more than $5 million in support from a pro-AI super PAC. He is also losing Republican voters who do not want the industry's data centers in their communities.

One Florida county, Hernando, has already approved a one-year moratorium on data-center applications. — Read the rest

The post The newest bipartisan issue: not wanting an AI data center next door appeared first on Boing Boing.

Half the sea lion pups born this season at La Jolla Cove have died, according to the Sierra Club Seal Society, compared with 10% in the nearby area closed to visitors. The group wants cones marking a 20-foot buffer. A local beach organization considers that essentially a closure. — Read the rest

The post Half the sea lion pups died at La Jolla Cove. People are arguing about cones appeared first on Boing Boing.

Book Corners maps more than 37,000 neighborhood libraries, mostly of the little free kind but also indoor book exchanges at cafés and the like: "The goal is simple: help people discover nearby places where they can leave a book or pick one up." — Read the rest

The post Book Corners is a growing map of places to leave or grab a free book appeared first on Boing Boing.

The confused old man was honoring the Dodgers when his script handed him a number: 229 days. Donnie Two-Pencils read it, called it a strange fact, disclaimed responsibility for it, and conceded that he did not understand what he was actually speaking about. — Read the rest

The post Grandpa Pudding Brains encounters the concept of elapsed time appeared first on Boing Boing.

Cop City protester Samuel Tunick was forced to turn over his password during a warrantless search. Tunick gave them his duress password, and Federal agents unknowingly wiped his phone. Prosecutors are going to try to persuade a court that deleting data to prevent a warrantless seizure is a crime. — Read the rest

The post Border agents entered his password. His phone erased itself. Now he faces a felony appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Save $760 on a Grade A refurbished 2022 HP ProBook 640 G9 with a 12th Gen Intel Core i5, Windows 11 Pro, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD for $439.99 (reg. $1,199).

You don't have to spend four figures to get a laptop that feels built for work. — Read the rest

The post This refurbished HP ProBook with a 12th Gen Core i5 is down to $439.99 appeared first on Boing Boing.

America's most stable genius assessed Venezuela's readiness for elections using the diplomatic framework he knows best: pageant results.

Asked when Venezuela would hold elections, The Orange Menace said the country was "not really ready," praised acting president Delcy Rodríguez, and said the United States would be "standing right on top of it" when voting eventually happens. — Read the rest

The post Grandpa Pudding Brains cites pageant experience as Venezuela expertise appeared first on Boing Boing.

Mayhem proceeds apace in the bathrooms of America, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today adding more states to its list of those affected by the Cyclospora outbreak, as noted by Consumer Reports in a revision to an earlier story. — Read the rest

The post Taylor Farms explosive diarrhea recall spreads appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Stream seamlessly and surf securely with iProVPN's advanced encryption ad-blocker for just $19.99 (Reg. $360).

They're called cookies for a reason — they make you crave something you never wanted in the first place. Thanks to cookies, ads, AI crawlers, and surveillance technology, your browser probably serves you up advertisement after advertisement based on your browser history or conversations. — Read the rest

The post No more ads? Get speedy, secure, and seamless connectivity with this VPN for 94% off appeared first on Boing Boing.

European police targeted thousands of websites hosting "nihilistic" material this summer, part of an international crackdown on violent content by investigators from nine countries. The Com, a decentralized network of such sites, was the key target, according to a press release from Europol. — Read the rest

The post Online nihilist networks targeted in international crackdown appeared first on Boing Boing.

In my acrylic case were maybe a hundred Amiga floppies, the contents of each neatly inscribed on the 3.3mm label edge with a Pilot V5. Now I have the rest of 'em: the Amiga Freeware Archive is a searchable catalog of free software for Commodore's Amiga, the world's first psychedelic computer. — Read the rest

The post Amiga Freeware Archive appeared first on Boing Boing.

Blade Runner 2099, sequel to 1981's Blade Runner and 2017's Blade Runner 2049, lands on Prime Video November 25. Though it's a TV series, all 8 episodes will drop at once, so no-one will be left hanging. Here's the trailer. — Read the rest

The post Blade Runner 2099 trailer appeared first on Boing Boing.

Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile have found evidence of a moon-sized companion far beyond our own solar system, which might be the first exomoon to be detected (though it wouldn't be the first time we've been here). — Read the rest

The post Astronomers may have detected an exomoon appeared first on Boing Boing.

The European Central Bank is preparing to issue cash with a "new look" and has published its Future euro banknote design proposals: "Designers from all over Europe have reimagined how they may look like, and one of their proposals is to become the next design of the euro banknotes." — Read the rest

The post Design proposals for European banknotes appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Tackle PDFs with ease forever with an IndyPDF Editor and Converter lifetime subscription, on sale now for just $19.99 (MSRP $49.99).

If you have subscription fatigue, here's a deal for an app you pay for once and get to enjoy for life.  — Read the rest

The post This $20 PDF editor keeps your files off the cloud and on your device (MSRP $50) appeared first on Boing Boing.

The International System of Units capitalizes a unit's symbol only when the unit is named for a person, which leaves the liter with a lowercase l that is easy to mistake for a capital I or the numeral 1. In 1978 Kenneth Woolner of the University of Waterloo solved that by inventing the person: Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre, born in 1716 to a maker of wine bottles, who over a long and distinguished career proposed a unit of volume that entered the metric system after his death in 1778. — Read the rest

The post A chemist invented a fake Frenchman to justify capital L for liters appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1946, with Britain still on wartime rationing and short of cooking fat, Clement Attlee's government approved a plan to plant peanuts across 3 million acres of Tanganyika, a stretch of bush roughly the size of Yorkshire, and turn the crop into margarine. — Read the rest

The post Britain's £36 million peanut farm harvested less than it planted appeared first on Boing Boing.

Sometimes someone proposes removing all time zones and using one clock for the whole planet. Then the time is the same everywhere at the same moment. When the clock shows 08:00 in London, it also shows 08:00 in New York and Beijing.  — Read the rest

The post What if the whole planet ran on a single clock? appeared first on Boing Boing.

For many centuries, people have seen balls of light during thunderstorms. These balls are from the size of a pea to several meters across, and they move through the air for some seconds. This is much longer than a flash of lightning. — Read the rest

The post For centuries people have watched glowing orbs drift through storms appeared first on Boing Boing.

OpenAI runs a test where it switches off its models' safety brakes and dares them to break into things, to see how dangerous they're getting. Last week the models took it too literally. According to the New York Times, two OpenAI models escaped their sealed test environment and hacked into Hugging Face — a popular online library of AI tools — to steal the answer key to the test they were taking. — Read the rest

The post To ace a hacking test, AI broke out and hacked a real company appeared first on Boing Boing.

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes, cold corporate tax writeoffs that deny the tireless work of creatives an audience just so some executive can make a down payment on another yacht have happy endings! Warner Bros. is famous for this to the point of attracting federal attention, and by far the most famous example of this is the shelved film Coyote vs. — Read the rest

The post Coyote vs. ACME returns from tax writeoff hell with new trailer appeared first on Boing Boing.

Asked whether he was racist, Elon Musk cited his partner, children and racially diverse executives. The next question went less smoothly.

The post Elon Musk tries out the some-of-my-best-friends defense appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Build confidence in a new language with Promova's lifetime subscription for $79.99 (reg. $299.99).

Learning a new language would probably be easier if everyone weren't so afraid of sounding wrong. Mispronouncing a word or awkwardly speaking through a sentence is part of the process, but it can be enough to make people stop practicing altogether. — Read the rest

The post Learning a new language is less intimidating with Promova for only $80 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Los Angeles has a few storied movie theaters, and none are more beloved than the Cinerama Dome. After being closed for years, Sony has reached a deal to reopen it in 2028.

As an Angeleno, I've never been a huge fan of the Cinerama Dome. — Read the rest

The post Sony saves the Cinerama Dome from becoming condos or sadness appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1675, the French astronomer Jean Picard noticed something strange while carrying his mercury barometer through a dark room: the mercury glowed as it sloshed around the bulb. Two centuries before Edison, he had stumbled onto a working light source. The effect became a favorite puzzle for the leading scientists of the day, who called it barometric light. — Read the rest

The post A YouTuber rebuilt a mercury light bulb discovered in 1675 appeared first on Boing Boing.

I wish there was a better name for weirdly paternalistic "white guy goes to Africa" pop than, well, all that. You know what I mean, though, surely: it was the stuff Paul Simon trafficked in, painting an entire diverse continent as a mystical spiritual wonderland and its inhabitants as enlightened monks. — Read the rest

The post Kyle Gordon returns with pitch-perfect satire of "white guy goes to Africa" pop appeared first on Boing Boing.

You will have to work very hard to find a wireless speaker that sounds as good, no matter what sort of music you dig, as the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Pro. Ringing in at just under $800, you'll also have to work hard to afford one. — Read the rest

The post The Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Pro is a near-perfect speaker appeared first on Boing Boing.

I've long maintained that scambaiting is one of the few sources of ethical "content" out there. Online and phone scammers are, after all, criminals who make their living from exploiting the absolute most vulnerable among us, so luring them in to mess with them is a win-win: time they could spend shaking down your grandma is instead wasted, and their reactions to finding this out are uniformly really funny. — Read the rest

The post Trapping a scammer in an endless maze of torment appeared first on Boing Boing.