Reading this story made me so damn tired: as part of their effort to replace human employees with delivery robots, DoorDash has come up with a cunning plan: they're gonna use the human employees they want to replace to load delivery robots

Some workers in areas where DoorDash is using its Dot delivery robot are receiving offers through the DoorDash app to load them up.

— Read the rest

The post DoorDash sprints towards replacing its drivers with robots appeared first on Boing Boing.

A whole lotta Canadians love them some Wab Kinew. The current premier of Manitoba (think Minnesota but a whole lot more hockey), Kinew wore a lot of hats before wading into politics: journalist, author and musician. In every one of those roles, his skill with words, calm, friendly demeanor and intelligence made him shine. — Read the rest

The post Manitoba's premier: booze returns when the Epstein files do appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Take your AI knowledge from basic understanding to exam-ready with The Ultimate AI Learning Bundle: ChatGPT, AI Agents & Microsoft AI Certification for just $24.99 (reg. $145).

The Ultimate AI Learning Bundle: ChatGPT, AI Agents & Microsoft AI Certification is a three-in-one beginner-friendly bundle that will not only help you build ChatGPT fluency but also provide you with agent-building skills and preparation for a Microsoft-backed certification, all in a single $24.99 (reg. — Read the rest

The post Master ChatGPT and AI Agents with this $25 Certification Prep Bundle appeared first on Boing Boing.

Yet another untouched Roman wreck has been discovered off the coast of someplace in the Mediterranean.

This time, off the coast of Sicily. Naturally, Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli declared the sunken boat "one of the most significant underwater archaeological discoveries of recent years." — Read the rest

The post Man, those Romans sure lost a lot of cargo boats appeared first on Boing Boing.

I'm not fond of bricking my hardware. But I'm very fond of Valve's SteamOS. If you haven't had the opportunity to mess with a Steam Deck or Steam Machine, SteamOS is a deliciously easy-to-use, low-maintenance Linux distribution tuned to work on their hardware with next-to-no maintenance. — Read the rest

The post SteamOS is coming to more computers appeared first on Boing Boing.

The upcoming hour-long film on Disney+, "Disney Worldbuilders," focuses on how the cinematic visions of seven filmmakers have been realized as physical, immersive areas of Disney theme parks.

The film has more than its share of Disney and former CEO Bob Iger corporate P.R., — Read the rest

The post How Disney builds immersive theme park worlds from their movies appeared first on Boing Boing.

Researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon ran a test to measure how often chatbots flatter users. In a paper on social sycophancy in AI advice, they ran OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, DeepSeek, Qwen, and Mistral through thousands of personal dilemmas. — Read the rest

The post AI told Reddit's biggest jerks they did nothing wrong 51% of the time appeared first on Boing Boing.

Getting sick in Antarctica is no fun. Getting sick in Antarctica in the middle of winter is another problem.

On July 31, an Australian crew flew a cold-weather-configured Airbus A319 Long Range from Hobart to McMurdo Station, answering an urgent call to evacuate a seriously ill American. — Read the rest

The post Australian crew pulls off extraordinary Antarctic medical evacuation appeared first on Boing Boing.

Katsushi Murakami designed the Voltron robots, most of the robots in Power Rangers, and many of the Go-Bots. Matt Alt, the author of Pure Invention, reported Murakami's death in a farewell to the designer on his newsletter on August 10, 2026. — Read the rest

The post The designer of Voltron and the Power Rangers robots has died appeared first on Boing Boing.

On May 14, 1945, doctors at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco injected Albert Stevens, an Ohio-born house painter, with plutonium without telling him. Stevens had checked in with what doctors diagnosed as terminal stomach cancer. Manhattan Project researchers wanted to know how plutonium moved through the bodies of the workers who handled it, and they selected him as patient CAL-1. — Read the rest

The post The government secretly injected a house painter with plutonium appeared first on Boing Boing.

Kindle jailbreakers have another way into Amazon's famously locked-down e-reader. Véra, released August 10 by developers Ava and sparklerfish, uses the Kindle's own web browser and a pair of specially prepared books to get supported devices running outside code. The KindleModding project says exact model and firmware compatibility matters, and directs users through its jailbreak wizard rather than claiming every current Kindle will work. — Read the rest

The post Kindle jailbreakers have a new way in with Véra appeared first on Boing Boing.

Paleontology already gives us giant carnivorous lizards, five-eyed sea creatures, and enough weird fossils to make science fiction seem boring. So, obviously, fringe paleontology has to start off the rails and then dive deep.

This entertaining first installment of a fringe paleontology iceberg descends into the theories, hoaxes, and pseudoscience that revolve around the study of prehistoric life. — Read the rest

The post Fringe paleontology gets weird fast appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Learn a new language on your own terms with this lifetime subscription to the Promova Premium Plan for just $79.99 (reg. $299.99).

If you're looking to learn a new language, you don't need to spend a fortune on specialist lessons or keep up with rigid schedules, thanks to Promova's Premium Plan lifetime subscription. — Read the rest

The post Learn up to 12 languages without the hassle and self-doubt for just $80 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Anyone going to court in England and Wales will be obliged to turn in smart glasses and pick them up when they leave. The ban targets devices such as Meta's and clarifies that existing restrictions on recording devices apply to attire: "There are clear restrictions on taking images or videos within courts and tribunals which is why the use of Meta glasses is prohibited," a spokesperson told The Guardian. — Read the rest

The post English courts ban Meta glasses and other spywear appeared first on Boing Boing.

A French manuscript from about 1485 shows a woman spinning wool in her doorway while her child plays beside her. The doorway is the mouth of a giant snail shell. She lives there.
Robert Testard painted it for Charles d'Angoulême, a count in southwestern France, as one of 56 miniatures in Les secretz de l'histoire naturelle.  — Read the rest

The post In this 1485 manuscript, people live inside giant snail shells appeared first on Boing Boing.

Charles le Brun (1619–90) drew a set of human heads that match the heads of animals: an ox, a fox, an eagle, a raven, a parrot, and a pig. Louis XIV put him in charge of the decoration of Versailles in 1669, and the palace pictures needed crowds of figures a viewer could tell apart at a glance. — Read the rest

The post A Versailles painter drew people with the faces of animals appeared first on Boing Boing.

F. D. C. Willard was a Siamese cat named Chester, who lived from 1968 to 1982. In 1975, his owner, the physicist Jack H. Hetherington of Michigan State University, wrote a paper on low-temperature physics and used the word "we" throughout, according to Wikipedia. — Read the rest

The post A Siamese cat co-authored a physics paper in 1975 appeared first on Boing Boing.

The next step for AI is spatial intelligence, says Kevin Kelly. Today's models learned from text,  but fail when engineers put them in a robot body because they have no sense of gravity, distance, or three-dimensional space. 

"The primary bottleneck restraining the arrival of this world model is the lack of sufficient quantity of quality data," Kelly says. — Read the rest

The post Why AI companies may sell robots and smart glasses below cost appeared first on Boing Boing.

Undertale, an indie RPG released in 2015 after a successful Kickstarter campaign by developer Toby Fox, has become nothing short of a pop culture icon. Since its release, critics and audiences fell in love with its memorable characters, humor, illustrator Temmie Chang's art style, bullet-hell-meets-RPG gameplay, storytelling, and of course, the soundtrack. — Read the rest

The post Fans are cramming Undertale into EarthBound's Super Nintendo engine appeared first on Boing Boing.

Mario Kart 8 asks you to pick a driver, a kart body, tires, and a glider, and each category has dozens of options with their own speed, acceleration, handling, and weight. Antoine Mayerowitz's interactive guide to the Pareto frontier sorts the resulting thousands of builds with a method an economist developed over a century ago. — Read the rest

The post The best Mario Kart build is an economics problem from 1900 appeared first on Boing Boing.

About 9,000 people a year search Arizona's Superstition Mountains for the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine. Some have died in the search. The mine is named for Jacob Waltz, a German immigrant ("Dutchman" was the era's term for Germans) who supposedly found a rich gold vein and kept its location secret until 1891, when he confessed on his deathbed to a woman named Julia Thomas and gave her a crude map. — Read the rest

The post 9,000 people a year hunt a gold mine that geology says can't exist appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Pok Pok gives kids ages 2–8 an ad-free, low-stimulation space to explore, create, and learn—and lifetime family access is $59.99.

Most kids' apps seem designed by someone who asked, "How many flashing buttons can we fit on one screen before a parent throws the iPad into the sea?"  — Read the rest

The post Trade loud, addictive screen time for Montessori-inspired Pok Pok, just $59.99 for lifetime access appeared first on Boing Boing.

Cruelty is a growth industry, and the deportation business is booming.

Surprise! MAGA's favorite mass-deportation program has produced at least one conspicuous group of winners: the companies paid to lock people up.

America's two largest private-prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group, reported a combined $1.4 billion in revenue for the second quarter, as the number of people held in immigration detention approached 66,000. — Read the rest

The post Trump's mass deportation machine is a $1.4 billion private-prison bonanza appeared first on Boing Boing.

This video is the most pleasant thing I've seen in a couple of days. Perhaps I should give up on the mainstream news.

Puppies being cute is one thing, but puppies playing on ice? In little figure skater outfits? With SKATES? — Read the rest

The post Dogs on Ice are beyond adorable appeared first on Boing Boing.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate whose career has accumulated enough corruption allegations to require its own filing cabinet, has yet another interesting financial arrangement to explain.

The New York Times reports that Paxton co-founded a cell-tower company, Premier Vertical Properties, in 2005. — Read the rest

The post Texas' Ken Paxton somehow gets even sleazier appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander found strong "life affirmation" results in a Martian soil sample. Robert Jastrow, then director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said, "Short of seeing something wiggling on the end of a pin, the case for life on Mars is now as complete as the Viking experiments could make it." — Read the rest

The post Viking lander's 1976 Mars soil test may have found life after all appeared first on Boing Boing.

All the money in the world, and he still can't buy a beat. Elon Musk is dancing as if his firmware update just failed.

The Six Flags old man literally hands Elon his ass. Even Diaper Donald's double-fisted dance of glory (holes) is more cohesive. — Read the rest

The post Elon Musk has all the rhythm of an Austin Powers villain appeared first on Boing Boing.

Robert Jackson Bennett's The Tainted Cup delivers everything I want from a fantasy detective story. Wonderful characters, fantastic world-building, and a mystery worth solving.

Bennett tells the story from the point of view of Din Kol, an altered human whose misshapen talents left him useless to most regular sources of employment for altered humans in the Empire. — Read the rest

The post The Tainted Cup gets the fantasy detective novel exactly right appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: SwifDoo PDF Pro lets you edit, convert, translate, sign, and run OCR on PDFs without paying a recurring subscription. A lifetime Windows license is $29.97 with code SAVE5.

Adobe Acrobat isn't the only way to wrangle PDFs anymore. SwifDoo PDF Pro covers editing, conversion, OCR, and document signing for a one-time fee of $29.97 (reg. — Read the rest

The post SwifDoo PDF Pro handles your PDF headaches for $30 for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

Victoria Gordon, operator of a cleaning service, found a 35-year-old Mars Bar while plowing through a hoarder's house in Scunthorpe, England. Shocked by its enormity, she posed it with a contemporary bar and took a photo. The old bar, from 1991, was 62.5g, while a 2026 model is just 40g. — Read the rest

The post 1991 Mars Bar highlights shrinkflation and inflation alike appeared first on Boing Boing.