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Early in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987), the player walks into a house in the town of Ruto, where a bearded man in a purple tunic announces: "I am Error." For decades, gamers filed it alongside "All your base are belong to us" as botched translation. - Read the rest The post "I am Error" was never a mistranslation - it was a programmer's joke appeared first on Boing Boing.

In early 1900s Germany, a math teacher named Wilhelm von Osten toured the country withClever Hans, a horse who could apparently add, subtract, multiply, divide, tell time, and answer questions like "If the eighth day of the month comes on a Tuesday, what is the date of the following Friday?" - Read the rest The post The math-solving horse who fooled scientists still haunts AI research appeared first on Boing Boing.

Look closely at a lot of 15th- and 16th-century European portraits and you'll find a housefly sitting on the frame, the sitter's sleeve, or a page of an open book - painted so precisely it looks like a real insect that landed on the picture. - Read the rest The post Renaissance painters kept adding a realistic fly to their portraits appeared first on Boing Boing.

John I of France, called the Posthumous, was born on November 15, 1316, and died on November 19, 1316. He's the youngest person ever to be king of France, the only one to be king from birth, and the only one to hold the title for his entire life. - Read the rest The post France once had a king who reigned for four days - his entire life appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Pay once forMicrosoft Office Pro 2021and get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, and more - plus a free 25-hour Microsoft training bundle - for $29.97.Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook - most of us use at least one of them every week. - Read the rest The post Microsoft Office Pro 2021 is down to $29.97, plus free training appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Go from idea to an optimized prompt in seconds with thislifetime subscription to Prompting Systems, now for only $29.99 (MSRP $360).AI is only as helpful as the prompt you give it. If you could use some help making this powerful technology work for you, it's time to check outPrompting Systems. - Read the rest The post Make ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools work better for you with this $30 prompt tool appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1971 two Northrop-trained engineers in Van Nuys set out to build a flying car called the AVE Mizar, and the design was about as literal as it sounds: they bolted the back half of a Cessna Skymaster - wings, twin tail booms, and a propeller - onto a Ford Pinto. - Read the rest The post The time two guys bolted a Ford Pinto to a Cessna and called it a flying car appeared first on Boing Boing.

The idea that a particular kind of weather - hot, still, and heavy - arrives just before an earthquake is old and stubborn. One geologist has calledearthquake weatherone of the most common pseudoscientific ways people try to predict quakes. - Read the rest The post The stubborn old belief that certain weather precedes earthquakes appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Give your PC a major productivity boost with thisMicrosoft 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.

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 Rodriguez, 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.

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.

TL;DR: Tackle PDFs with ease forever with anIndyPDF 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 Emile 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.

Every so often someone proposes to abolish time zones entirely and put the whole planet on a single clock. It would be the same time everywhere at once: when it reads 08:00 in London, it reads 08:00 in New York and Beijing too - even though New York's sky would look the way it usually does at 3 a.m., - Read the rest The post What if the whole planet ran on a single clock? 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 withPromova's lifetime subscriptionfor $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'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.

TL;DR:Headwayis a mobile app that condenses fiction and non-fiction books into quick summaries, and it's only $70 for life.There just isn't enough time in the day to sit down for hours at a time and read a book, only to find out you didn't even get anything out of it. - Read the rest The post A popular platform is making it easier to read in your spare time, and it's only $70 for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

Long before Edison, a working light source turned up by accident. In 1675, the French astronomer Jean Picard noticed that the mercury in his barometer glowed as he carried it across a dark room. The faint light, later called "barometric light," drew the interest of some of the era's biggest scientific names before the trick faded into obscurity. - Read the rest The post The glowing light bulb discovered by accident in 1675 appeared first on Boing Boing.

When you open a credit card, you probably expect your home address expecting it to stay with your bank. According to 404 Media, it doesn't - the address travels through a chain of data brokers and ends up with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which can search it without a warrant. - Read the rest The post Open a credit card, and ICE learns where you live appeared first on Boing Boing.

RAF pilots flying over the Middle East in the 1920s kept seeing huge shapes laid out on the ground: two long stone walls converging into an enclosure, with a tail. The shapes weren't noticable from the ground. One pilot said they looked like toy kites, and the name stuck. - Read the rest The post RAF pilots spotted 6,000 stone traps invisible from the ground appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Darvaza gas crater in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert - 60 to 70 meters across, 30 meters deep, and burning since 1971 - earned the nickname "Door to Hell" thanks to its hundreds of natural gas fires covering its floor and rim, visible for miles across the desert night. - Read the rest The post Turkmenistan's "Gates of Hell" crater is finally going out after 54 years appeared first on Boing Boing.

Michael Ham, retired in British Columbia, listed his walking poles in the Cool Tools newsletter What's in my NOW? and he wants you to know they are nothing like trekking poles. You hold a trekking pole out in front with a bent arm, and they mostly help you keep your balance on a steep climb. - Read the rest The post Why walking poles held behind you burn 20% more calories appeared first on Boing Boing.

Some people would happily wreck your $1,000 suit to mop up a spill, because the small amount of utility it beats the hurt it causes you. Writing on the blog Atoms vs Bits, Uri uses that as the bottom of a scale - how much weight a person gives your wellbeing next to their own. - Read the rest The post The person who'd use your $1,000 suit as a floor rag appeared first on Boing Boing.

Neal Stephenson writes his novels the way people did in 1850. The science-fiction author of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and the thousand-page Baroque Cycle has composed nearly every book since about 2001 with a fountain pen on paper. On his Substack, Graphomane, he says the handwritten manuscript for The Baroque Cycle stood 42 inches high and was displayed at the Science Fiction museum in Seattle. - Read the rest The post Neal Stephenson's guide to writing books with a fountain pen appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Uncle Sam's Army handed millions of employees "unlimited" AI tokens, urged them to use more, and was shocked when they did.Reportedly, the Big Green Machine bought an annual package containing 100 million tokens and encouraged workers to "lean into" generative AI, even sending out reminders to use the service. - Read the rest The post U.S. Army finds out unlimited isn't appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Orange Menace offered a fallen service member's grieving family a ride on his special Air Force One, and proudly reported their response: "They said wow." What Trump remembers about a family in mourning is that they like his plane.There is no human tragedy so large that Trump cannot crawl inside it and find a flattering anecdote about himself. - Read the rest The post Grandpa Pudding Brains tells grieving parents they can ride on his cool plane appeared first on Boing Boing.

Elon Musk, whose promises traditionally arrive years late or not at all, says Grok Imagine will make a full-length, "historically accurate" adaptation of The Odyssey before Christmas 2026. At last, a meticulously researched Scylla and Charybdis.Musk announced the project after complaining that Nolan had "desecrated Homer" with his casting choices. - Read the rest The post Elon Musk promises you a historically accurate Cyclops appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:For $59.99 (reg. $250),Pok Pokgives your family lifetime access to an award-winning educational app designed to make screen time calmer, more creative, and a lot less chaotic.Parents spend a surprising amount of time trying to answer one question:Am I failing at this screen time thing? - Read the rest The post This is the $60 Montessori-inspired kids' app that won't leave you feeling guilty afterward appeared first on Boing Boing.

Measles is having its best year in America since 1991, which is excellent news for measles and a little embarrassing for everyone else.Most of the cases are among unvaccinated people, and health officials continue to warn the surge could cost the United States its measles-elimination status. - Read the rest The post The anti-vax movement keeps setting records nobody wanted appeared first on Boing Boing.

On his way to receive four fallen service members at Dover, the President of the United States claimed the dead had strongly endorsed the Iran policy that sent them there.Nothing is as ghoulish as Grandpa Pudding Brains using dead US service people as props in his illegal war. - Read the rest The post Trump makes the dead endorse his war appeared first on Boing Boing.

Liminal spaces are so hot right now, guys. I hope you're ready for the surge of movies about being trapped in weird, unexplainable places we're going to see in the next few years now that Backrooms is a proven money maker. - Read the rest The post It Ends is a horror movie about a road that ironically doesn't do that appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you've spent any time wandering the borderlands where technognosis, occulture, and the weirdosphere collide, you already know Erik Davis - a scholar of the weird who has spent decades mapping the multidimensional margins of human consciousness. In the latest installment of his always-inspiring Burning Shore newsletter, Erik shares some welcome news: the entire catalogue of his Expanding Mind podcast, after vanishing from the web without warning, is back and now safely enshrined on YouTube, ready to stream. - Read the rest The post A decade of cult podcast episodes vanished, then reappeared online appeared first on Boing Boing.

A program rumored to launch as soon as next week will allow customers to lease Apple hardware, but financing companies can lock down those devices for missed payments.The Apple Upgrade program will provide 12- to 36-month leases on iPhones, iPads, and iMacs, but may also mean giving up control of your device. - Read the rest The post Apple's upcoming leasing program may come with a big caveat appeared first on Boing Boing.

I just discovered, through Frank Santopadre's podcast Fun for All Ages, the radio and television universe of artist Rachel Lichtman's imagined 1960s/1970s town of Golden Sands.It's a surreal town stuck in a mid-century far out brown-and-orange aesthetic. Lichtman creates parody television commercials, and print and radio ads from the town of Golden Sands, as well as opening credit theme song videos from the town's television station, Programme 4. - Read the rest The post Enter Rachel Lichtman's groovy, shag-carpeted world of Golden Sands appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tom the Dancing Bug: Follow Little Donald Trump's Odyssey-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 INTHE INNERHIVE, 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: Follow Little Donald Trump's Odyssey appeared first on Boing Boing.

Budget carrier EasyJet sent a Liverpool-bound flight back to Tenerife after a fight broke out among the 186 passengers aboard on Tuesday evening. "About 10" people were reportedly involved in the brawl, half an hour after takeoff, leading the captain to turn flight EZY3352 around and request that police meet them after landing at Tenerife South airport. - Read the rest The post 10-person passenger brawl sends EasyJet flight back to airport appeared first on Boing Boing.

Worse on Purpose is a website about the decline in product quality and the forces driving it, ranging from mundane cost-cutting to enshittification. Private equity is a regular theme, but corporations of every kind are at it, and the site offers "autopsies" of notable offenders and categories. - Read the rest The post Products are getting worse on purpose appeared first on Boing Boing.

At 5:10 p.m. on Saturday 26 November 1977, viewers in parts of southern England watching an ITN news summary heard the audio mutate into a deep buzz. A distorted voice took over, introducing itself as Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, and telling humanity that it had a short time left to put down its weapons and learn to live in peace. - Read the rest The post In 1977, a voice claiming to be an alien took over British TV for four minutes appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 2014, a talking doll named My Friend Cayla was voted Innovative Toy of the Year. Three years later the German government was telling parents to destroy it. Cayla listened to a child through a hidden microphone, beamed the audio over Bluetooth to a phone app, searched the internet for an answer, and spoke back after about a one-second delay. - Read the rest The post Germany told parents to destroy this talking doll appeared first on Boing Boing.

AI companies are facing a data problem of their own making: the open web is clogged with AI-generated text, and training new models on that sludge invites "model collapse," where machines degrade by eating their own output. One company is filling the need for human-written content by buying old printed books in bulk. - Read the rest The post AI companies are buying up old books to escape their own AI slop appeared first on Boing Boing.

Designer and writer Matt Webb has a bone to pick with the movie ratings board. Ferris Bueller's Day Off carries a PG-13 for cursing and kissing, but Frozen 2 - where a tidal wave nearly levels an entire kingdom - sailed through with a PG. - Read the rest The post Frozen 2 should be rated R, a writer argues with data appeared first on Boing Boing.