TL;DR: Get lifetime access to ChatPlayground AI's Unlimited Plan for $59.97 through Aug. 25 (reg. $619).

One AI answer can be useful. Several AI answers sitting side by side are much better at revealing which robot understood the assignment—and which one wandered into the woods. — Read the rest

The post Let ChatGPT, Gemini & more fight for your approval—ChatPlayground is just $60 for lifetime access appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Headway Premium turns bestselling books into 15-minute summaries and costs just $49.97 (reg. $299.95) for lifetime access.

Your unread book pile means well, but it's starting to feel less like an enjoyable hobby and more like a judgmental stack. Headway Premium makes those big ideas easier to reach by condensing bestselling fiction and nonfiction into summaries you can read or hear in roughly 15 minutes. — Read the rest

The post A one-time $49.97 gives you 2,000+ bestselling book summaries for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Update to Microsoft Windows 11 Pro for just $10.49 (Reg. $199) — that's over $190 in savings for a limited time only, with code SAVE30.

Is it time to upgrade to a newer version of Windows? Whether your computer was running outdated office apps or you're looking for new capabilities, you can't go wrong with a switch to Microsoft Windows 11 Pro. — Read the rest

The post Update to Windows 11 Pro for less than $11 with this limited deal appeared first on Boing Boing.

Seafoam green has always been one of my favorite colors. One of the reasons is that it has a mid-20th-century feel to it (at least for me), an era I associate with good industrial design.

Recently, designer Beth Mathews visited the Manhattan Project site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. — Read the rest

The post Why seafoam green was used in control rooms appeared first on Boing Boing.

Many people willed their remains to Harvard Medical School on the understanding they would be used in research and education. But the school's morgue manager sold these body parts on the black market, was caught, and now Harvard has agreed to pay $53m to settle class action lawsuits filed by 47 grieving families. — Read the rest

The post Harvard Medical School to pay $53m after donated body parts sold on black market appeared first on Boing Boing.

A scramble is a type of corner pedestrian crossing where vehicles from all directions stop while pedestrians cross freely from one street to the other, often crossing diagonally. The most famous one is the Shibuya Scramble in Tokyo. Up to 3,000 people walk across it when traffic stops every two minutes. — Read the rest

The post This Tokyo intersection lets up to 3,000 pedestrians cross at once, and you can watch it live on YouTube appeared first on Boing Boing.

I'm fascinated by the range of human reactions to the increasing use of AI, especially when it comes to writing. A lot of people have made up their minds about it: It's garbage. It's evil. It's evil garbage. It's going to usher in a post-scarcity world and eliminate poverty. — Read the rest

The post Does AI-assisted writing count as cheating? This essay says the question is backward appeared first on Boing Boing.

Oswaldo Pirela, the San Diego Padres' (Major League Baseball) minor-league catching coordinator, was arrested at an El Paso, Texas airport as he prepared to return to his home in Peoria, Arizona, where he lives with his wife and two children, aged 9 and 4. — Read the rest

The post Padres catching coordinator arrested at airport, held by ICE appeared first on Boing Boing.

Game studio Embark has teamed up with Subway to promote its extraction shooter ARC Raiders. Purchasing a meal will earn players a code for a new skin, complete with a removable (unbranded) Subway sandwich, or possibly a wrap, tethered to the front and curiously categorized as "tech." — Read the rest

The post ARC Raiders' first promotional tie-in is with… Subway appeared first on Boing Boing.

Bizarre or misshapen typefaces designed to confuse or stymie AI (previously and previously at Boing Boing) regularly go viral. But they're works of art making a point rather than something to actually use in production.

"Anti-AI fonts are useless and harmful," writes Andrew Yaros, not least because they are inaccessible. — Read the rest

The post Anti-AI fonts considered harmful appeared first on Boing Boing.

Looking for slack from voters pissed off about grocery prices, the Orange Menace is taking another swing at lowering prices. This time by "flooding the market with government-subsidized, below-market beef."

For a guy who loves capitalism and decries everyone he doesn't like as a crazy socialist, Diaper Don sure likes socializing stuff. — Read the rest

The post Big Beef has big beef with Big Fraud's cut-rate meat appeared first on Boing Boing.

Grandpa Pudding Brains invited a 10-year-old Nathaniel Rai and the lifeguard who saved him to the White House. He then told Nathaniel he would not have saved him, "probably."

The look on the kid's face says it all. It also lets the screaming millions who voted for Trump know he is the kinda guy who wouldn't save a drowning kid, even if he was the lifeguard on duty. — Read the rest

The post Trump meets boy rescued from drowning, tells him he probably wouldn't have helped appeared first on Boing Boing.

HTML Can Do That is a pleasantly minimal website by Chris Burnell, explaining some of the interesting tricks you can do without javascript or even styles. Did you know you can do popover modals now just with markup? Isn't that wonderful. — Read the rest

The post The latest HTML trickery for web designers appeared first on Boing Boing.

The pomato is a plant that grows cherry tomatoes on its vine and potatoes in the soil. Tomatoes and potatoes both belong to the genus Solanum, so you can graft them together. You can make one by cutting the stem of each plant, strapping the two together, and waiting for the cuts to heal.  — Read the rest

The post A single plant can grow tomatoes on top and potatoes below appeared first on Boing Boing.

This past week, Lord Vader took time out of his busy schedule to drop by a city council meeting in San Diego, California to say how much his Master is enjoying Flock. According to Vader, it's proven great for following children to playgrounds and stalking his ex-girlfriend. — Read the rest

The post Emperor Palpatine loves Flock appeared first on Boing Boing.

For the past three years, a man known only has Lucky has been in the care of the Dutch government. When the police found his unconscious body on the streets of Amsterdam, he wasn't carrying a phone, passport or anything else that could be used to identify him. — Read the rest

The post Dutch police get lucky identifying mystery man appeared first on Boing Boing.

A video game developer, System 3 Software, is under fire from fans for using AI in its upcoming title, The James Pond Legacy. Typical comments include "AI singing, AI characters," and another that says, "Bro, this looks like a shitpost. — Read the rest

The post Fans smelled AI in James Pond Legacy's trailer. The studio says they're wrong. appeared first on Boing Boing.

A dark lord of the Sith spoke in favor of Flock cameras and wider public surveillance. Citing his Emperor's support, Darth Vader encouraged San Diego leadership to install more cameras.

If you needed any more convincing that Flock Cameras are the tool of the devil:

You might be surprised to hear that Darth Vader works better with George Lucas' terrible scriptwriting, but he does. — Read the rest

The post Darth Vader tells San Diego that the Emperor is a fan of Flock appeared first on Boing Boing.

Suffering unprecedented embarrassment on the international stage, morale issues are so deep that sailors are reputedly jumping overboard, but never fear: the United States Navy has a plan. Reportedly, they are considering renaming an aircraft carrier after Trump.

During President Donald Trump's first term, the Navy announced that the Ford-class carrier would be called the USS Doris Miller, recognizing an enlisted sailor who helped defend US forces from Japan's attack.

— Read the rest

The post Navy considers replacing a Black Pearl Harbor hero with a fat, fraudulent loser appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Save 42% on a subscription to PDF Expert Premium Plan for just $79.99 (Reg. $139.99).

There's nothing more frustrating than opening, closing, and reopening a PDF again and again, trying to make it do what you want. And don't get me started on the rigmarole of putting every PDF through Canva or converter apps just to make a single edit. — Read the rest

The post Decrease your cortisol by increasing your control of your PDFs appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Day of Silence is a sacred Balinese Hindu observance, and tourists are expected to honor it too. Luzian Andrin Zgraggen not only failed in this obligation, but insulted it, an infraction that now lands him in an Indonesian jail for a year. — Read the rest

The post Year in jail for tourist who wouldn't shut up on Bali's Day of Silence appeared first on Boing Boing.

Trumpian United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro has a very weird idea about "sabotage."

In a desperate attempt to keep her boss- not the Attorney General, but Donald Trump- happy, Pirro is somehow trying to keep open a door to subject former Olympian David Hearne to more legal abuse. — Read the rest

The post More reflecting pool nonsense appeared first on Boing Boing.

California's narrower guardrails on whatever exemption anti-vaxxers are currently using to reduce herd immunity work, while Florida's willingness to nod and wink at doubters has its MMR vaccination rate for youngsters falling like a rock.

Nationally, of course, we have RFK Jr telling people to take cod liver oil and squinting funny when people mention vaccines. — Read the rest

The post Vaccination rates show what leadership is for appeared first on Boing Boing.

In a first, Connecticut judge Walter Spader Jr. issued a decision [PDF] sanctioning a plaintiff for "use of prompt-injection" in their electronic filings. [via Ars Technica]

"The Court identified text that had been formatted to be invisible to a human reader while remaining fully legible to any software that reads the document's text," Spader wrote. — Read the rest

The post Plaintiff hid prompts in court filings, hoping AI was calling the shots appeared first on Boing Boing.

Mr. T's The Man with the Gold is one of my treasured books, so Netflix finally spending some Untold money on Laurence Tureaud feels like someone finally got something right over there.

In a time when Netflix is pissing money away on Melania and rehabilitating the DOA Raygun, it is a pleasant surprise to see Mr. — Read the rest

The post Mr. T's extraordinary life gets the Netflix Untold treatment appeared first on Boing Boing.

Remember that Chinese mushroom that can cause you to hallucinate tiny people? The best guess for this bizarre effect is that the mushrooms contain some kind of psychoactive substance unknown to science, rather than cultural conditioning, because the effect is limited to a single species of mushroom.  — Read the rest

The post An edible mushroom causes visions of tiny people. Nobody knows why appeared first on Boing Boing.

The IKEA Complexity Index ranks IKEA's product line by the number of steps required to assemble them.

At the top of the list is the PAX Corner wardrobe ($1,755), which requires 236 steps to build, contains 743 parts, and comes with a 248-page user manual spread across 16 PDFs. — Read the rest

The post Someone ranked every Ikea product by assembly complexity appeared first on Boing Boing.

There's a replica of Disney World's Magic Kingdom in a basement in O'Fallon, Illinois. But unless you are a Minifig, you can only view it from above.

Doug Schieppe started building it from Lego bricks six years ago during COVID, after his family trip to the full-size park had to be postponed. — Read the rest

The post An Illinois man built all six Magic Kingdom lands out of Lego in his basement appeared first on Boing Boing.

Four Renaissance paintings by Antonello da Messina, including three of five surviving panels of his San Gregorio Polyptych, were heisted from the Regional Interdisciplinary Museum of Messina in Sicily. The thieves came and went without triggering alarms, police say, and they don't know who is responsible. — Read the rest

The post Museum heist bags four Renaissance paintings, with two more dumped in the street appeared first on Boing Boing.

In a post earlier this week, I wrote about a 1958 James Bond comic strip in which the cartoonist drew the character like he was drawing Sean Connery. But Connery wouldn't be cast as Bond for the first movie until four years later. — Read the rest

The post Jimmy Bond: In the first filmed version of James Bond, he was American appeared first on Boing Boing.