Glenn Fleishman writes in the Economist about how Curiosity sends messages home from Mars: "NASA'S Curiosity has the fastest modem on Mars. Since its only competition is an oldish bit of kit aboard Opportunity, one of two rovers dispatched in 2003, that is not saying much, at least in terms of what internet users on Earth have learned to expect. Curiosity's ability to capture images and other data easily outstrips its capacity to beam it all back home. Nonetheless, it delivers vastly more information from the red planet than any previous mission did."
Sending messages from Mars: Interplanetary broadband
The math-solving horse who fooled scientists still haunts AI research
In early 1900s Germany, a math teacher named Wilhelm von Osten toured the country with Clever Hans, a horse who could apparently add, subtract, multiply, divide, tell time, and answer questions… READ THE REST
The stubborn old belief that certain weather precedes earthquakes
The idea that a particular kind of weather — hot, still, and heavy — arrives just before an earthquake is old and stubborn. One geologist has called earthquake weather one of the… READ THE REST
A chemist invented a fake Frenchman to justify capital L for liters
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… READ THE REST
Spend $70 and get $150 worth of data with this lifetime eSIM that helps you dodge roaming charges
Disclosure: Boing Boing earns a commission on purchases made through links in this post. TL;DR: Have more money to spend on fun during your next vacation thanks to this aloSIM Traveler's… READ THE REST
Microsoft Office Pro 2021 is down to $29.97, plus free training
Disclosure: Boing Boing earns a commission on purchases made through links in this post. TL;DR: Pay once for Microsoft Office Pro 2021 and get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, and more —… READ THE REST
Make ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools work better for you with this $30 prompt tool
Disclosure: Boing Boing earns a commission on purchases made through links in this post. TL;DR: Go from idea to an optimized prompt in seconds with this lifetime subscription to Prompting Systems,… READ THE REST
