[This is very, very bad.] I have often been amused at FedEx texts about deliveries, because the company will frequently flip-flop as to whether a package is coming early or late, sometimes changing their mind within minutes. The texts Troy Hunt got were much, much worse.Link: htt … | Continue reading
[I have to admit, this would work on me too.] When Tom McKay left Gizmodo in 2022, he apparently did not leave the company’s Slack group chat. Slack includes a robot user named “Slackbot”, which can assist with various things. McKay used a Cyrillic “о” to disguise himself as Sla … | Continue reading
[Minutia in every sense of the word] Today in incredibly arcane minutia: Are the Chicago Cubs finally ditching the tiny registered trademark symbol on their home jersey patch? While reading about the apparently terrible new uniforms MLB is planning to use for the 2024 season, I s … | Continue reading
[Apparently, it IS the size of your supercollider, not just how you use it.] Not content with a 17 mile tunnel to use in smashing particles together, the folks at CERN are now planning one over 50 miles in length. [T]he proposed supercollider will be three times the size of the L … | Continue reading
[A novel new form of renewable energy] Even when it’s cloudy, the tides continue rolling. Tidal kites are a potential way to harness that energy. Despite the fact that the moon’s volume is apparently shrinking, its density isn’t changing. That means the tides will keep right on … | Continue reading
[Target Circle is still not a registered trademark.] Earlier this year, I once again received a birthday present from everyone’s favorite Minneapolis-based retail chain, Target. Just as in 2022 and 2023, those nice Minnesotans emailed me the thoughtful gift of a 5% discount on a … | Continue reading
[That’s a lot of miles.] Speaking of lonely things in space, Voyager 1 is the most distant object humanity has ever sent out into space. It’s proved to be useful decades beyond its original mission, but now, it may finally be dying.Link: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/huma … | Continue reading
[At least in Canada.] When an Air Canada chatbot provided bad information to a customer, the airline attempted denying responsibility, as well blaming the customer for failing to do further research. These arguments did not fly. Air Canada, for its part, argued that it could not … | Continue reading
[He made it back.] Way back in 1984, astronaut Bruce McCandless performed the first untethered spacewalk in history. Here’s a picture from that mission: NASA featured the image on the fortieth anniversary last week. I find it amazing and horrifying.Link: https://www.nasa.gov/ima … | Continue reading
[Tomatoes are also known as “love apples”. Happy Valentine’s Day!] After decades of work, scientists have created a distinctly purple tomato: That’s weird as hell, but I’d try ’em.Link: https://www.wbur.org/npr/1228868005/purple-tomato-gmo-gardeners | Continue reading
[This is much sadder news for the marathon world.] Yesterday’s post was about the triumph of the human spirit. Sadly, sometimes, that spirit is snuffed out too soon. Such is the case with men’s marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum, who died this past weekend in a car crash. … | Continue reading
[One must imagine Neistat happy.] Casey Neistat tried to reach his impossible dream for 17 years. Try, fail. Try, fail. Try, fail. Give up? Oh, FUCK that. I’ve watched this video multiple times since it was posted, and it’s well worth your time. Simply tremendous.Link: https://w … | Continue reading
[I’m sorry, I don’t have room for this on my list of concerns.] It’s not enough that we need to worry about climate change making the Earth inhospitable to human life. Apparently, now, scientists are starting to worry about the moon shrinking. The moon’s shrinking has been measur … | Continue reading
[They’ve already occurred, they just haven’t been properly labeled.] Hurricanes are classified via the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, which organizes based on wind speed. A category 1 storm has maximum sustained wind speeds of 74 to 95 miles per hour, a category 2 storm hit … | Continue reading
[All burritos, all the time] Recently, I received an odd email: I came across your website and just wanted to say how much I love the pictures of your burritos. My name is Ara and I work at Wishpond, a lead generation company that specializes in helping fast food restaurant chai … | Continue reading
[You must be a fake, or you wouldn’t have come here.] Purportedly, a firm in Hong Kong recently fell victim to a massive fraud, losing more than 25 million US dollars. How did it happen? The elaborate scam saw the worker duped into attending a video call with what he thought were … | Continue reading
[Hashtag #EmotionalWellBeing] Chinese New Year isn’t for another 8 days, but it seems that 2024 is the Year of the Elmo. On Monday, the furry red seal (?) posted a tweet asking how folks are doing: This was, perhaps, a mistake. The internet responded vociferously, and the answer … | Continue reading
[I don’t unicycle. That’s where I draw the line.] I use the roads around Boston just about every way imaginable. I walk, run, bike, ride a motorcycle, and drive a (fairly small) car. In recent years, I’ve been alarmed to notice the size of the average automobile growing larger an … | Continue reading
[I don’t quite understand the “fear” of this.] new Hampshire’s state motto is “Live Free or Die”, but this is apparently beyond the pale. Previously in endeavoring to let people enjoy things: Introducing QuadballLink: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/01/30/diaper-spa-r … | Continue reading
[Please tell me they didn’t use a pizza wheel.] I would love to know the exact steps that led to the creation of this sign: Was it an autocorrupt in a text message? Whatever the truth, the result is incredible.Link: https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2024/01/pizza-hut-ontario-vira … | Continue reading
[Hold on to your butts, people.] Apparently, Chipotle has a busy season: Burrito season, according to Chipotle, runs from March to May and is the busiest time of year for the fast-casual restaurant chain. The chain is looking to hire 19,000 new workers to cope with the spring rus … | Continue reading
[Also, no trampling on the flowers.] Remember “Uncle Chen”, the Chinese marathoner who ran a dishearteningly impressive time while chain-smoking cigarettes? Well, he was just disqualified from the Xiamen Marathon, because now there is a rule against that.Link: https://torontosun. … | Continue reading
[Thousands of companies is a lot of companies.] Modern ad tracking is really horrible. Consumer Reports looked at the state of things when it comes to Facebook, and determined that each user is monitored by thousands of companies. Gross. I use Facebook approximately never, but I … | Continue reading
[Is the plural “bigfoots” or “bigfeet”?] In a paper entitled “Bigfoot: If it’s there, could it be a bear?”, researcher Floe Foxon has found that as an increase in black bear population correlates to an increase in sightings of Bigfoot.Link: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01 … | Continue reading
[AI assistants are often bad, but this is something more. Or less.] When Ashley Beauchamp found himself stuck chatting with a useless AI assistant, he had some fun with it. 7-6-6? I particularly liked this caption from the BBC article: A haiku has 17 syllables divided between thr … | Continue reading
[Seriously, the term “Stanley Cup” is taken.] It’s been quite awhile since I last did a headline review, but recently I’ve seen quite a good collection. Let’s have a look, starting with Florida: These Florida monkeys could give you herpes. Here’s where they’ve been found This rea … | Continue reading
[This guy could’ve already made it to the NFL, played multiple years, and retired.] Years back, I joked about still having my eligibility to play college ball. Apparently, I underestimated greatly.Link: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/39337111/miami-te-cam-mccorm … | Continue reading
[“Welcome to the Jesus 5K!”] In a recent survey, I was asked about my preferred running surface: I was a bit surprised by one of the options provided: “Road”, “Trail”, and “Track” were standard enough answers, and while “Mountain” is not exactly a surface, I understood what it … | Continue reading
[Perhaps I should be a business efficiency consultant.] A few years back, I discovered miniature greeting cards. At just 3.25 inches small, their diminutive size tickles me. Just look at that: An adorable miniature greeting card I recently needed to convey some birthday well-wish … | Continue reading
[Stalking and harassment on behalf of your employer is a bad move.] Back in mid-2020, a rather horrifying terror campaign by executives at eBay became news here in Boston. Husband and wife David and Ina Steiner run a site called EcommerceBytes, and apparently, some folks at eBay … | Continue reading
[OpenAI sure is sorry it can’t assist.] Amazon is one of the world’s biggest marketplaces, and that makes it a target for scammers of all sorts. The latest nonsense is products named and described, indirectly, by AI. It appears that Amazon has now cleared up these products, so if … | Continue reading
[Stop and think about what the future may hold.] Out in the Arizona desert near Tucson, a fascinating camera will spend the next 1,000 years capturing a single image. Maybe, anyhow. Thought it seems unlikely that this camera will still be standing in 3024, the end result is reall … | Continue reading
[I think Carlin would have hated this. I know I despise it.] Apparently, there’s an AI-generated George Carlin, that has “dropped a comedy special”. I listened to a minute or so of it before I turned it off, and I can say that it’s in the vein of dropping the kids off at the pool … | Continue reading
[This argument must be swiftly rejected.] When Donald Trump was impeached for the second time, his lawyers argued that because he would soon no longer be president, the correct venue for trying him was in a criminal court. More recently, his defense team has cited the very same s … | Continue reading
[I’m sure this negotiator feels a sense of accomplishment.] The Los Angeles Dodgers are spending incredible sums of both current and future money in their pursuit of a World Series championship. You should check your mail, because it’s very possible they’ve signed you to a multi- … | Continue reading
[Cuong Tran, you should turn auto-lock back on.] By now you’ve likely heard about the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, which lost an emergency exit door panel shortly after takeoff. It quickly returned to the airport, and investigations are ongoing. Thankfully, no one was badly hurt … | Continue reading
[Whale-SETI doesn’t quite make sense as a name, unless they’re searching for space whales.] Scientists recently had something of a conversation with a humpback whale. Fascinating, though I was disappointed to learn that the whale did not actually offer that his name was Twain.Lin … | Continue reading
[That’s just a real bad look.] Last month, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that data from almost 7 million of its users had been stolen. Now, the company is trying to pin the blame on a small number of users whose accounts were compromised.Link: https://techcrunch.com/2 … | Continue reading
[Where in this case, a dragon is a water-spewing robot.] A dragon is a mythical flying beast with the ability to breathe flames. As such, it’s an odd inspiration for a firefighting robot, but here we are: The Dragon Firefighter’s firehose is propelled upward (flying at two meter … | Continue reading
[This is a delightful use of machine learning.] Using satellites to spying on beavers from space then training artificial intelligence to analyze the resulting imagery is an incredibly complicated way to deal with effects from climate change. It also just might work.Link: https:/ … | Continue reading
[It’s lasers all the way down.] When NASA needed to test a laser-based deep space transmission earlier this month, they had a little fun with the video. The contents of the video didn’t matter for the experiment, so the team decided to have a little fun, using a cat video featuri … | Continue reading
[Lighthouses from our heart space] Last month, I wrote about Sally Snowman, the last official lighthouse keeper in the US. On the eve of her retirement, she spoke with WBUR. That conversation included this amazing quote: I believe we are all beacons of light. We are all lighthous … | Continue reading
[This seems terribly foolish.] When I saw that former James Bond Pierce Brosnan had been accused of trespassing in Yellowstone National Park, I was intrigued. I wondered where he might have gone to get in such trouble. It turns out, he went off trail near Mammoth Hot Springs, whi … | Continue reading
[They’re picking up good vibrations.] Billions of dollars are donated each year trying to cure cancer, and competition for those funds is surely fierce. Having a technique that can reasonably be called a “molecular jackhammer” seems likely to be good for getting funding.Link: htt … | Continue reading
[Today in reasons to not take a cruise.] I live in Boston. I like it here. But if I went on a December cruise to the Caribbean, and I instead wound up in New England and Canada, I would not be happy. Nor would I, or anyone who didn’t get the heads-up, be properly packed.Link: htt … | Continue reading
[I’m curious why the child’s relevant adult didn’t get a gate pass and take them to the correct plane.] Did you know children as young as five can fly as unaccompanied minors on most airlines in America? Even if they don’t get misplaced by Spirit Airlines, that seems very young.L … | Continue reading
[“Plus, mice can be difficult to trick.”] You won’t be able to get your grubby little mitts on Apple’s Vision Pro until “early next year”, whenever that is. In a Northwestern University lab, however, mice are running on mini treadmills while wearing virtual reality goggles, all i … | Continue reading
[At least you made it, Ricardo.] A week ago today, a loose steer on the tracks disrupted train travel in New Jersey. The then-unnamed steer [Photo credit: NJ Transit] It was quite a sight to behold, and though trains were delayed, the internet was briefly in love with the escape … | Continue reading