Pal Mickey is a wireless-enabled familiar for visitors to Walt Disney World. Using location cues, Pal Mickey announces interesting factoids, upcoming shows, and nearby rides of interest. He's $8/day to rent, and about $50 to buy. This reminds me — not unpleasantly — of the "famulus" social-engineering familiars in Ian McDonald's brilliant novel Out on Blue Six. I wonder whether Pal Mickey communicates bidirectionallly or uploads its logs of owner-activity?
Pal Mickey: A location-aware wireless famulus for Walt Disney World
Americans now lose a quarter of a trillion dollars a year gambling
Americans will lose about $250 billion gambling this year, reports Joey Politano, a number that's up 60% in half a decade. And that doesn't include "prediction markets" and cryptocurrencies, both… READ THE REST
A million passports leaked online by marijuana club portal
An Irish software firm managing membership of cannabis social clubs left more than a million member records and roughly 985,000 identity-document photos sitting on a server that required no password,… READ THE REST
IP Crawl exposes that insecure web camera you never locked down
IP Crawl is a browseable library of camera systems exposed to the internet. Currently on the favorites list are a swimming pool in Austin, Texas, a boxing ring in New… READ THE REST
This $40 AI tool writes, formats, and covers your next ebook
Disclosure: Boing Boing earns a commission on purchases made through links in this post. TL;DR: EbookMagic uses AI to generate, format, and package ebooks with custom covers, Kindle-ready exports, commercial rights, and… READ THE REST
Copilot, BitLocker, and Hyper-V for under $10? Meet this Windows 11 Pro deal
Disclosure: Boing Boing earns a commission on purchases made through links in this post. TL;DR: Get a lifetime license to Microsoft Windows 11 Pro for $9.97 (reg. $199), no coupon code needed. A… READ THE REST
Skip the subscription with Microsoft Office 2019 for $20
Disclosure: Boing Boing earns a commission on purchases made through links in this post. TL;DR: Get a lifetime license to Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019 for Windows — including Word, Excel, PowerPoint,… READ THE REST
