TL;DR: Stop fearing your PDFs! Easily edit, convert, annotate, and master your PDFs with this license to PDF Agile Premium for Windows and Mac for just $39.99 (Reg. $119). We've all been there: staring down the barrel of a PDF, needing to do more with it than our OS allows. — Rea … | Continue reading
FreeInk is an open-source ecosystem for e-ink readers, aiming to replace locked-down software and walled gardens with a stack that includes everything from firmware to fonts and free file formats. There's even reference hardware and a manifesto. From the rendering engine to the … | Continue reading
The Castle Map is an interactive atlas of the world's greatest strongholds, featuring (at press time) 1,706 castles, 543 fortresses, 760 palaces and 682 ruins. They are further filterable by "fame ranking," with 100 in the top category, and by their date of construction (going ba … | Continue reading
The World Wide Web address turns 41 this year. DNS.pizza has analyzed 85,879 domains with verified registration dates and ranked the oldest active domains. The DNS "opened for business in 1985," the site notes: nordu.net, a Nordic research network, was created on January 1, and … | Continue reading
Before becoming a 1980s TV-dinner hall of famer, Salisbury steak was a 19th-century health fad. Dr. James Salisbury looked at chopped beef and somehow saw medicine; America looked at it and covered it in gravy. Dr. Salisbury wanted to start a high-beef-scraps diet, and apparently … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Microsoft Office 2024 Professional Plus for Windows is $54.99 (reg. $249.99) with Excel, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Access, and OneNote for one Windows 10 or 11 PC. Somewhere between the ninth app login and the fourth "manage subscription" page, normal software started to … | Continue reading
The latest addition to LEGO's Ideas is a gorgeous dose of nostalgia. The upcoming X-Files set was introduced by none other than Gillian Anderson herself. When a mysterious black box arrives at her door, she dons her gloves and investigates. "This is where it gets implausible," An … | Continue reading
The Orange Menace puked out a Truth Social post that started whinging over how Iran's "Arrogance" and the Reflecting Pool are his "TOP Concerns," then somehow swerved into an ad for a Fasset/Tether gold-backed Visa card already issued to "Myself and My Family." — Read the rest T … | Continue reading
Honest Trailers tackles Backrooms, the horror franchise where the monster is fear, the maze is infinite, and the production designer apparently died in a 1990s office park. The genius of Backrooms is that it understands the creepiest places in America are not haunted houses or ev … | Continue reading
Asked why Democrats dumped Graham Platner after a sexual-assault allegation while Republicans keep Max Miller and Cory Mills in the conference despite domestic-violence allegations, "MAGA" Mike Johnson's offered the kind of moral clarity you get from a used car salesman: "The key … | Continue reading
Light, maker of the stripped-down Light Phones (previously recommended), today announced the Light Flip, a clamshell model that swaps e-ink for matte OLED and gets a hinge, a keypad and (drum roll!) a camera. As much as I loved my Light Phone II, the slow and frustrating e-ink sc … | Continue reading
The lightsaber that Mark Hamill held and lost, along with the hand holding it, to the central reactor shaft of Bespin's Cloud City in "The Empire Strikes Back," which canonically was preserved in a cloning tank by Emperor Palpatine, or whatever, sold for $3.75m at Heritage Auctio … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Learn to speak one (or more!) new languages confidently and naturally with a one-year subscription to Rosetta Stone Sapphire for $127.20, a 20% savings on the $159 regular price. Learning a new language has a ton of benefits: It challenges the mind, open up new career oppo … | Continue reading
From the South Korean side of the DMZ you can look through binoculars at a tidy North Korean town — bright blue roofs, multicolored walls, a childcare center, schools, a hospital. Kijŏng-dong is a stage set. The buildings are concrete shells with no glass in the windows, and some … | Continue reading
Fear of the number 13 has a proper name — triskaidekaphobia — and it's baked into the buildings around you. In 2002, an Otis Elevator executive estimated that among buildings with 13 or more floors and Otis elevators, 85% had no floor labeled the 13th. — Read the rest The post W … | Continue reading
Most attempts to hide a drone tinker with how it looks — camouflage, transparent shells, light-bending optics. Northwestern University engineers went the other way and changed how your eyes see it. Their prototype, the "Phantom Twist," spins up to 25 times a second, too fast for … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Get Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows for $27.97 instead of $219.99. The one-time purchase includes eight familiar productivity apps for one PC, with no recurring subscription fee. The deal ends July 26 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Subscriptions have quietly colonized ev … | Continue reading
China's humanoid robots continue to improve their kung fu and have expanded into MMA cage fighting. The Ultimate Robot Knock-out Legend tournament is a showcase for EngineAI's humanoid robot, the T800. The model is seemingly unironically named after the Terminator model with the … | Continue reading
Everyone in Seattle and beyond is obsessed with a raccoon with a spinal condition. Kiana Hall recorded a video of a ball-shaped creature with long legs, resembling a cryptid or alien, sprinting away from her as she asks, "What am I looking at???" — Read the rest The post Jimoth … | Continue reading
Riot Fest has packed its lineup for 2026, with the Pixies, the Sex Pistols (sans Johnny Rotten), Patti Smith, and… William Shatner? The 95-year-old actor/space tourist/horse semen owner/singer and his heavy metal band the *uckers — the asterisk appears to actually be part of the … | Continue reading
For the past decade and a half, one question has been at the forefront of gamers' minds: what the absolute hell is Bethesda Game Studios up to? Although no AAA dev cycle could ever reasonably be accused of being snappy, Bethesda's apparent inability or unwillingness to do anythin … | Continue reading
I'm blown away by eleven-year-old Samuel Henderson, who has an amazing ability to mimic birds. Sam lives in Oklahoma, where he's become a bit of a local celebrity. He's also begun sharing his incredible talent on his social media, where his mom describes him as "bird caller extra … | Continue reading
Tesla is finally selling a bicycle, something the company's fans have apparently been speculating about excitedly for years. This bike, however, is not an e-bike and is not for adults. It's a toddler balance bike. The $225 "Balance Bike for Kids" has a silver and black design, co … | Continue reading
In May 1974, locked inside California's Vacaville Prison, Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson put together a manuscript they called The Periodic Table of Energy — a system of correspondences among the periodic table of elements, Leary's "neurogenetic theory of evolution," the T … | Continue reading
"Surveillance Monitor" gets a new meaning. LG's screens have apparently entered their "consent is someone else's problem" phase: some monitors can trigger silent Windows software installs, while some LG TV terms reportedly tell you to warn guests they may be recorded by AI voice … | Continue reading
The internet is the world's most efficient copy machine, and everything it touches — music, movies, books, code — slides toward a price of zero. In an essay called "Better Than Free", Kevin Kelly argues that isn't a death sentence for creators. — Read the rest The post Eight thi … | Continue reading
Trump Border "Czar" Tom Homan's message is clear: when masked men come for you, surrender first and ask questions after they bash your head into the pavement. Make the violence more convenient for the government, or suffer the consequences? This Republican talking point is prett … | Continue reading
Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer facing rape and sex-trafficking charges in multiple countries, was arrested in Miami this weekend, putting another accused sex offender from Trumpworld's orbit back in the legal spotlight. Reuters reported that the Tates returned to Florida … | Continue reading
California already had feral pigs. Then a Monterey County landowner added Russian wild boars for sport hunting, and nature responded with a century-long "absolutely not." Like many problems in California, a rich man decided he wanted to do something and to hell with the public go … | Continue reading
Spain won the World Cup, but Grandpa Pudding Brains saw a gold trophy, cameras, and a stage, so naturally he seemed to assume the ceremony had taken a wrong turn away from him. Reuters reports that Trump and Infantino were booed as they entered the field for the trophy ceremony. … | Continue reading
Trump's FDA appears to have shat the bed on the cyclospora outbreak: a major lettuce recall disrupted the food chain, the outbreak kept spreading, and now the agency says its positive product test was wrong. On July 19, FDA said its lab experts re-reviewed a Taylor Farms de Mexic … | Continue reading
It seems the "Avengers: Doomsday" trailer is here, giving away all the goodies. Disney needs money, so they've packed this with as many people as they could, including the characters they killed off. Shockingly, they aren't CGI'ing in people who actually passed away. — Read the r … | Continue reading
Every tool has two ends: the business end that does the work, and the end that meets your hand. Manufacturers obsess over the first and skimp on the second, which leaves anyone with a weak grip or sore joints to fix it themselves. — Read the rest The post Four cheap ways to fatt … | Continue reading
In December 1958, a Soviet expedition reached Antarctica's Pole of Inaccessibility, the point on the continent farthest from any coastline: 1,400 kilometers inland and 3,700 meters up in the coldest region on Earth. The year-round average temperature there is minus 58 degrees cen … | Continue reading
Sergio Furnari, a Sicilian-born New York sculptor, plans to unveil a life-size Charlie Kirk statue in Times Square on the first anniversary of Kirk's assassination. But the announcement drew thousands of hostile comments to his Instagram account, reports Rhea Nayyar at Hyperaller … | Continue reading
Florence Foster Jenkins (1868 – 1944) has been called the worst opera singer who ever lived, and she filled Carnegie Hall anyway. A wealthy New York socialite, she sang coloratura arias wildly beyond her range — consistently flat, mangling the rhythm, her accompanist scrambling t … | Continue reading
Indiana's State Personnel Department booted a burger truck from the Statehouse Market over its slogan, "you'll love our meat in your mouth," but a First Amendment scholar suspects the state may have bitten off more than it can chew. Here's Jack Forrest, reporting for the Indiana … | Continue reading
Minutes before she was to be killed at a slaughterhouse in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, a three-year-old, 1,600-pound heifer named Emily cleared the five-foot gate and ran. She stayed loose for 40 days through record snowfall in the winter of 1995, foraging in backyards and, at time … | Continue reading
In October 2000, a stunning discovery hit the antiquities market in Pakistan: a mummy in a gilded coffin, wearing a golden crown, with a cuneiform inscription identifying her as Rhodugune, a daughter of the Persian king Xerxes. Experts dated the Persian Princess to around 600 BC, … | Continue reading
Mexico's Ministry of Health has issued a travel advisory for citizens heading to the United States, where foodborne parasites have infected more than 1,600 people. The advisory was published by the National Committee for Epidemiological Surveillance, known as CONAVE. Newsweek was … | Continue reading
Most people remember Pinocchio as a story about lying: tell a fib, your nose grows. But the late tech writer Om Malik argued in an essay that reading "misses almost everything." Carlo Collodi's original 1881 serial, before Disney sanded it down, is a bleak portrait of a society w … | Continue reading
For most of human evolution, the air held about 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide. It has now surpassed 420 and is climbing by more than 2 ppm per year. A new open-access study in Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health argues that shift may already be showing up in our blood. — R … | Continue reading
TL;DR: Snag a lifetime family license to VideoProc Converter AI for Windows for only $29.97 (MSRP $119.90) through tonight at midnight. It happens to the best of us — you capture something incredible on video, only to watch it back and realize your hands were shaky. — Read the re … | Continue reading
Most invented languages try to say everything. Toki Pona tries to say just enough — with about 120 words and 14 sounds. The Canadian translator Sonja Lang built it in 2001, while she was struggling with depression, as a way to simplify her own thoughts. — Read the rest The post … | Continue reading
In the 19th century, people living near the Barisal region of Bangladesh kept hearing what sounded like distant cannon fire booming out of a clear sky. The Barisal guns became one of the best-known examples of a "skyquake," a sudden loud sound with no corresponding earthquake act … | Continue reading
On December 5, 1945, five Navy torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale on a routine navigation exercise and never came back — the disappearance that launched the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. Partway through, the flight leader, Lt. Charles Taylor, radioed that both his co … | Continue reading
Most UFO theories reach for outer space. The cryptoterrestrial hypothesis reaches down instead: it proposes that flying saucers come not from distant planets but from an advanced, hidden civilization that has been living on Earth all along — under the oceans, inside mountains, or … | Continue reading
On the morning of July 17, a redditor who normally pays Amazon Web Services about five cents a month opened their inbox to a wall of billing alerts and a running tab of $2.5 billion. Their whole setup was a single S3 storage bucket, untouched since 2023 and not even public. — Rea … | Continue reading