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LEGO Legend of Zelda Set Available for Pre-Order!
Watch this screaming, rainbow-clad musician demo Google’s AI DJ
Developer conferences aren’t exactly known for having an energetic, party-like atmosphere, but thankfully, that didn’t stop Google’s latest hype man. The company’s I/O event this year was kicked off by Marc Rebillet — an artist known in online spaces for pairing improvised electronic tracks with amusing (and typically loud) vocals. He also wears a lot of robes.
“If you have no idea who I am, I would expect that,” said Rebillet. He introduced himself as an improvisational musician who “makes stuff up.”
That made him a good fit to demo the DJ mode that Google recently added to its generative AI text-to-music tool, MusicFX. Back in February, Google DeepMind’s Adam Roberts described the feature as an “infinite AI jam that you control.”
R...
Calvin & Hobbes creator returns after 28 years with illustrated book ‘for adults’
Georgespoiler, it's just calvin peeing on things
“The Mysteries” is a “fable for grown-ups”
How do cryptozoologists feel about cryptocurrency?
Ever since the word “crypto” became shorthand for cryptocurrency, NFTs, and Web3 stuff sold in Super Bowl ads or discussed in dinner table conversations, it has overshadowed another community living outside of the blockchain world.
Cryptozoologists have been using the word “crypto” to talk about their field of expertise: legendary creatures like Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster, Mothman, Chupacabra, and others. Cryptozoology, the study of hidden or unknown animals, originated in the early 1960s by author Ivan T. Sanderson in his book Abominable Snowmen, Legend Come to Life.
Though other crypto-prefix fields of study like cryptography have also been around for decades, to some cryptozoologists, crypto is not only just disrupting the...
Truth Social is now available on the Google Play Store
Truth Social, the social media app created by former President Donald Trump, is now available for download on the Google Play Store (via CNBC). In August, Google banned the app over “insufficient” content moderation policies.
Truth Social, which offers a Twitter-like social experience, markets itself as a platform that “encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation.” It first launched on the Apple App Store in February before attempting to offer its app through the Google Play Store.
Google said in a statement that it permits apps on the Google Play Store as long as they “comply with our developer guidelines, including the requirement to effectively moderate user-generated content and remove objectionable posts such as those...
No cap, bussin, forreal, forreal: Sen. Mike Lee’s personal Twitter account is called ‘BasedMikeLee’
No cap, Sen. Mike Lee himself is tweeting from the @BasedMikeLee Twitter account.
The account cropped up seemingly out of nowhere towards the end of last month, posting news articles about the Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry; claiming that Lee is taller than his colleague Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); and shaming the tech companies he aims to regulate as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“The haters can’t handle this frickin’ smoke,” Lee said in a July 24th tweet on the account.
Quote-tweeting Turning Point USA contributor Benny Johnson that same day, Lee wrote, “This account is no cap — bussin, forreal forreal.”
The Salt Lake Tribune was the first to confirm that the account belonged to Lee on Tuesday. Lee Lonsberry, a Sen. Lee...
This PC orchestra, built from 512 floppy disk drives, is wondrous to hear and behold
When I was a kid growing up in rural Yorkshire, one of the regular attractions at local fairs was a huge steam-powered organ: a baroque monstrosity of pipes, horns, and whistles that would parp out classical tunes to the delight of onlookers. I don’t know if steam organs are still a thing, but if they’ve been retired then I have the perfect replacement: the Floppotron — a mammoth “PC hardware orchestra” that plays music using only electric motors.
Like a fairground organ, the Floppotron is unwieldy, massive, musically unsubtle, and a complete joy to behold. It’s the work of Polish engineer Paweł Zadrożniak, who’s been building various iterations of the instrument since 2011. The first Floppotron consisted of just a pair of floppy drives p...
Mars helicopter spots wreckage from Perseverance landing
GeorgeHumans can litter on all planets!
New pictures from the Ingenuity helicopter offer a fresh perspective of the wreckage left behind when the Perseverance rover landed on Mars last year, NASA said on Wednesday.
Launched in 2020, the Perseverance rover successfully landed on the Red Planet in 2021, with the mission of finding ancient signs of life on Mars. The rover carried the Ingenuity helicopter onboard — an experimental project that scientists on Earth hoped would be able to see sights that the rover couldn’t.
Perseverance went through a grueling process known as the seven minutes of terror to descend onto the Martian surface. As it entered the atmosphere, a heat shield helped protect the rover from the blistering heat of reentry and slowed it down dramatically. After...
Patreon suspends NGO account collecting money for Ukrainian military
Patreon says it’s suspended the crowdfunding page for “Come Back Alive,” a Ukrainian NGO that was collecting money to support the the country’s military in response to Russian aggression. In a statement given to CNBC, the platform said it “does not allow any campaigns involved in violence or purchasing of military equipment, regardless of their cause.” Come Back Alive’s page said that funds would be used to train soldiers, as well as provide technical equipment, according to Patreon’s blog post.
Come Back Alive’s Patreon page dates back to at least May 2020, according to the Daily Dot, but as of January 26th this year it had a modest 936 patrons bringing in around $19,000 a month. That all changed this week after Russia invaded Ukraine,...
Satellite images show just how ridiculously high the Tonga volcanic plume rose
The volcanic eruption that rocked the Pacific island nation of Tonga in January was so powerful it blasted ash all the way up to the mesosphere, the third and coldest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Rising 58 kilometers (36 miles) above Earth, the volcanic plume was likely the tallest ever measured by satellite, according to NASA.
NASA was able to measure the plume because two weather satellites happened to be in the right place at the right time. Those satellites took still images and infrared observations that give a play-by-play of the eruption from above.
In just 30 minutes or so following the eruption, ash, steam, and gas from the underwater volcano rose from the surface of the ocean all the way up to the mesosphere. A second blast...
Little Caesars dared to make a Batman-shaped calzony
Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need
Wikitrivia is a web game that challenges your knowledge of historical dates
Georgegeoguessr but wikipedia
If you’re a history buff, or are looking for a new web game to play, Wikitrivia may be worth your time. The game’s creator, Tom Watson, describes it on his site as “Wikidata as a trivia card game,” and the tweet that brought it to our attention called it an “online clone of the card game Timeline.”
Playing it is simple: it gives you a card that represents something that has a date, which is pulled from Wikidata; some examples I saw asked me to pin down when the Bastille was built, when the Foo Fighters were formed, and when the October Revolution ended (unfortunately, it was looking for a year, not a month). You then have to put the card on the correct place in the timeline. You’re allowed three mistakes, which are represented by hearts,...
What is Wordle? A viral word game everyone’s playing
GeorgeWordle 196 6/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜🟩⬜🟨⬜
🟨🟩🟨⬜⬜
🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
GeoGuessr made figuring out where on Earth you are the hottest new esport
The years-old browser game became a competitive thrill this year
A piece of cloth to clean your Apple devices will cost you $19
If you were ever concerned about safely cleaning your Apple products, now you can use an official $19 piece of cloth made by Apple to do so. Apple released this polishing cloth after today’s event in addition to its new MacBook Pros, the M1 Pro and Max chips, and third-generation AirPods (via 9to5Mac).
The Apple-branded cloth, made of unspecified nonabrasive materials, will be available to purchase separately. Other than having an Apple logo stamped on it, it’s unclear how the cloth is any different from a typical microfiber cloth that you can get for a fraction of the price.
Apple recommends using “soft, lint-free cloth” and avoiding “abrasive cloths, towels, paper towels, or similar items” when...
Strong Bad ... thank you
The Flash icon endures as the internet rapidly changes
No, They Weren’t Dead the Whole Time
An oral history of Lost’s daring, divisive finale, our last truly communal broadcast TV experience.
Trump’s fight to overthrow election now falls to the guy who invented the CueCat
In a hopeless attempt to overthrow or cast suspicion on an American election, a ridiculous cast of characters has heeded outgoing President Donald Trump’s call to misadventure — including, now, the inventor of one of the worst gadgets of all time. His name is Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, and yesterday he gave a poor imitation of a TED talk before the Georgia state senate, claiming that he has the ability to prove whether ballots from the 2020 election were real or fake. He introduced himself to a subcommittee of state senators as an “inventor and pattern recognition expert,” just before implying that he’s a titan even bigger than Apple and Google combined. “I’m on approximately about 12 billion devices globally,” he said.
We’ll definitely...
The making of the worst Christmas special of all time
Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa was supposed to start an animation revolution, but...
Cyberpunk 2077 characters can’t get their penises to stop poking through their pants
People are putting their routers in jail to protect themselves from harmless Wi-Fi
Please do not put your internet router in a Faraday cage. Please do not put your internet router in a Faraday cage.
If you’re reading this, as someone who uses the internet, this may seem obvious. A Faraday cage, after all, blocks electromagnetic radiation and signals from escaping. Putting one around your router would, by very similar physics, prevent those same radio waves that carry your internet from reaching your devices.
So apparently putting Faraday cages around routers has become a thing for the 5g conspiracy nuts and there are companies out there ready to cash in.
— Ansgar Odinson (@AnsgarTOdinson) December 2, 2020
My sides are in orbit. pic.twitter.com/mGcud5Kb70
And yet, an entire cottage industry of con artists looking...
The mysterious Utah monolith has disappeared
The Utah monolith has now disappeared almost as abruptly as it was discovered.
The Utah Bureau of Land Management released a statement that the “illegally installed structure” had been removed from its public lands by an unknown party, likely on November 27th, after receiving national and international attention.
“The BLM did not remove the structure which is considered private property,” according to the statement posted to the agency’s Facebook page. “We do not investigate crimes involving private property which are handled by the local sheriff’s office.”
The 10- to 12-foot steel object was first discovered by the Utah Department of Public Safety during a sheep-counting expedition in the Utah desert on November 18th. There was “no...
Even Utah’s mysterious monolith may be no match for Google Earth
Last week, a sheep-counting expedition found a mysterious monolith deep in the Utah desert, and they warned the world to stay away.
This is a great opening for a science fiction story, and also the actual events of late November 2020. As local news outlet KSL TV lays out, a Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter crew discovered a 10- to 12-foot steel object that they described as a “monolith.” The crew found the object installed in the canyon’s rock floor on November 18th, and they found “no obvious indication” of its source. On November 23rd, they posted photos of it to Instagram and the DPS site.
“There is a significant possibility they may become stranded.”
DPS has avoided saying exactly where the monolith is. “It is in a very...
The Complete Calvin & Hobbes is deeply discounted on Amazon
Grab the hardcover or softcover sets at 30-50% off
I Cannot Tell If Flat Earth Simulator Is Real Or A Prank
Flat Earth Simulator recently appeared on Steam with no fanfare at all. Costing $5, it’s a beautifully presented—if extremely slight—depiction of a proposed model for a flat Earth. There’s interactive recorded narration explaining the theory, which posits that our planet is a floating disc, surrounded by a wall of…
Bud Light made a video game console that also cools two beers
Image: Bud Light
Bud Light, the beer brand produced by Anheuser-Busch, has created a video game console. It’s called the BL6, and yes, it will keep two of your beers cold. It has 16 gigabytes of memory and six games, including Tekken 7 and Soulcalibur VI. It has a built-in Asus projector. It has the form factor of a six-pack of beer.
Look, I’m not going to lie to you: I’m not sure why this exists. I’m not mad at it, though.
I love drinking beer as much as the next person, and while I don’t usually consume Bud Light, I do have an appreciation for booze companies doing weird video game stunts. (My previous favorite entrant in this category: Miller Lite’s “Cantroller,” which was a can of beer you could game with.)
But the problem with these devices is...
Get the old Google icons back with this Chrome extension
Image: Claudio Postinghel
Life is in constant flux, but experiencing change during the extremely uncertain time we’re all going through is especially maddening. Luckily, you can still eke out some semblance of control in your web browser — this new Chrome extension created by designer Claudio Postinghel lets you replace Google’s newly redesigned but confusingly similar icons for the old ones (via Gizmodo).
When it was announced in early October, we described Google’s big rebrand of G Suite as a way to set up the search giant’s products to better compete with Microsoft Office. Yet the newly named Google Workspace brought a collection of redesigned, cohesive app icons that — in my opinion, and that of my coworkers — are very difficult to recognize from a distance.
...