Worse on Purpose is a website about the decline in product quality and the forces driving it, ranging from mundane cost-cutting to enshittification. Private equity is a regular theme, but… Read the rest of the article: Products are getting worse on purpose
At 5:10 p.m. on Saturday 26 November 1977, viewers in parts of southern England watching an ITN news summary heard the audio mutate into a deep buzz. A distorted voice… Read the rest of the article: In 1977, a voice claiming to be an alien took over British TV for four minutes
In 2014, a talking doll named My Friend Cayla was voted Innovative Toy of the Year. Three years later the German government was telling parents to destroy it. Cayla listened… Read the rest of the article: Germany told parents to destroy this talking doll
AI companies are facing a data problem of their own making: the open web is clogged with AI-generated text, and training new models on that sludge invites "model collapse," where… Read the rest of the article: AI companies are buying up old books to escape their own AI slop
Designer and writer Matt Webb has a bone to pick with the movie ratings board. Ferris Bueller's Day Off carries a PG-13 for cursing and kissing, but Frozen 2 —… Read the rest of the article: Frozen 2 should be rated R, a writer argues with data
On the evening of October 15, 1991, the University of Utah's Fly's Eye detector at Dugway Proving Ground recorded a single subatomic particle arriving from space with an energy of… Read the rest of the article: A single atomic nucleus hit Utah with the force of a pitched baseball
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:… Read the rest of the article: PDFs fill you with dread? Save yourself the stress with a PDF reader
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.… Read the rest of the article: Open-source firmware and software for e-readers
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… Read the rest of the article: Interactive map of the world's castles, fortresses, palaces and ruins
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,"… Read the rest of the article: A tour of the oldest domains still on the internet
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… Read the rest of the article: Salisbury steak was health food before it became cafeteria nostalgia
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… Read the rest of the article: Microsoft Office 2024 puts the old reliables back on your PC
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… Read the rest of the article: Gillian Anderson reveals X-Files LEGO set
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… Read the rest of the article: Grandpa Pudding Brains turns foreign policy into a crypto gold-card ad
Honest Trailers tackles Backrooms, the horror franchise where the monster is fear and the production designer apparently died in a 1990s office park. The creepiest place in America is not… Read the rest of the article: Honest Trailers gets lost in the beige hell of Backrooms
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… Read the rest of the article: Mike Johnson discovers the word "allegation" only applies to Republicans
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… Read the rest of the article: Light Flip is a minimalist phone without the dumb
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… Read the rest of the article: Luke Skywalker's severed hand and lightsaber prop sold for $3.75M
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… Read the rest of the article: Speak a new language confidently sooner than you dreamed with Rosetta Stone Sapphire for $127.20
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… Read the rest of the article: North Korea's fake village with painted-on windows
