He’s raising funds for two UK charitable organizations
Inventing the future requires a future people want.
A YouTuber has been arrested. The CEO of Patreon refused to take down his videos. Lawsuits and restraining orders have been filed. All after a Lego reseller, Bricks & Minifigs, reportedly didn’t pay an 83-year-old man for the $100K-plus Lego collection he offered the store on consignment.
We’re watching this one with popcorn: 404 Media’s a good starting point. So is Techdirt.
This invention from Pablo Rochat made me cackle out loud. It’s a tripod deployed from his arms that reminds us of the chair pants from Jury Duty and the trouser bench from Community. Would anyone use this? Should anyone? You decide.
I wrote about that — and other Catholic concerns — at my friend Rusty’s newsletter while he took the day off.
[Today in Tabs]
Just press play. Trust me. Also see this! And maybe this. I would absolutely pay for tickets to watch this live.
You can do all kinds of fun, useful, and questionable things with a Flipper Zero, among other wireless mischief tools. Now, they can rewrite electronic price tags with TagTinker. Creators say it is for “educational research” and testing at a store is “strictly prohibited.” Maybe for my kid’s toy grocery store, though?
After a decade of weekly videos, Tom Scott largely disappeared from his hugely popular channel in 2024. Now he’s back! And apparently he has a whole series coming, in which he explores England.
To quote a commenter: the internet is healing.
In 2006, “The Best Damn Sports Show Period” got him to read some “Chuck Norris Facts” on air. His fav: “They wanted to put Chuck Norris’ face on Mount Rushmore, but the granite wasn’t hard enough for his beard.”
For his 86th and final birthday, he contributed a Chuck Norris Fact himself: “I don’t age. I level up,” he said.
The solution is using Bluesky, of course. Naturally, a user with a blue check next to their name told Grok to put a bikini on the butterfly and the AI did — which seems like an even stronger advertisement for Bluesky than the one Bluesky itself posted.
Look, I’m more of an Oxford English Dictionary girlie, but I respect the hustle from Merriam-Webster. I hope our terminally online dictionary raises a cool billion.
This is just a fun little series of Mastodon posts about a security breach at a “highly secure” data center... by a female mallard.
Look, this cover of “War Pigs” is amazing, and I’m not going to pretend I’m putting it here for any other reason. (Via Rafi Schwartz.) Check out Ukandanz’s Bandcamp for more.
That’s gotta be a bizarre thing to wake up to, but at least it didn’t block the Suez Canal?
The Microsoft Excel World Championship is a reminder that anything can be competitive (and fun) if you’re skilled enough. At the HyperX Esports Arena in Las Vegas last month, 12 finalists faced off by solving puzzles with spreadsheets in an effort to be named the world’s best spreadsheeter.
You can check out the highlights below.
An attempt to crush myself to death.
Today I learned that after Google stopped doing April Fools’ jokes in 2021 — a change we lauded — its Japan division started revealing zany keyboards on October 1st (because 10/1 = 101 keys) instead. Find the latest below; previous entries include the Gboard Teacup, Gboard Stick and Gboard Cap.
Someone go get David Hume — we’re trying to figure out what blue is. I scored 174, true neutral.
[ismy.blue]
The iconic desktop media player has enjoyed several revivals, but none as technically impressive as Rodrigo Méndez’s Linamp.
Powered by a Raspberry Pi 4B, the stereo’s touchscreen interface features Winamp’s recognizable UI, allowing music to be played from CDs, storage drives, and even Spotify. Most of the iconic Winamp features are there, including playlist editing, but those hypnotic visualizers are, unfortunately, MIA.
If last week’s big revamp and the launch of the Canva Enterprise package didn’t convince you, hang on one minute.
Perhaps the power of hip-hop dance and Hamilton-style rhymes can prove that Canva’s suite is soulless enough (or “safe and securrre” enough, if you prefer) to have a place in your corporation alongside Microsoft 365, Zoom, Google Workspace, and Slack.
We stan a relatable king. Who hasn’t had their whole day leveled by emails?
“Sunscreen, shades, ZZ Top’s Degüello album and beer is INCOMPATIBLE to emails! Natural adversaries!”
Despite being a .Swoosh-exclusive this BSOD-themed shoe doesn’t have any NFT links or crypto wallet requirements (although you will need to register an account by April 18th).
Nike’s web3 plans for .Swoosh seem mostly dead, with a January blog post saying digital gaming item tie-ins will skip the blockchain and instead just link to Nike accounts.
The 3D X-ray startup Lumafield did a CT scan of a Stanley Quencher water bottle to show you without destroying one (but if your viral insulated cup does happen to break, you should return it).
You can see where an airhole in the stainless steel outer layer is vacuum-sealed with a small lead pellet, which appears red in the image below. That way, it never comes in contact with your beverage in the inner flask or with you on the outside.
The Wall Street Journal, BBC, 9 News, and other outlets report that McDonald’s “technology outage” temporarily closed restaurants in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, and the UK. There’s no word on any impact in the US, where the McGriddles must flow.
Residents of Fukuyama City are looking for a cat that fell into a vat of toxic chemicals at a metal plating factory. After reviewing security footage, officials believe it fell in the tank containing hexavalent chromium on Sunday night, crawled out, and ran off.
Locals are keeping an eye out but are urged not to touch the potentially highly toxic cat. Personally, I’m rooting for the cat’s eventual rise as the greatest supervillain the world has ever seen.
If you have a deactivated library card for Worcester Public Library in Worcester, Massachusetts, you can get it reactivated by bringing in a photo of a cat. Or a drawing of a cat. Or “any ungovernable animal.”
[The New York Times]
These are just a few of the names that Google has bestowed upon its AI products in recent weeks.
Is it confusing for those of us on the outside to track all of these name changes? Yes. Yes, it is. And as Business Insider details in this fun story, even Google’s own employees are roasting the company by posting memes about it internally.
The next time you look at the screen on your phone or the RGB on your keyboard, thank Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of the blue LED, who made it all possible and should have received way more recognition for it. His breakthrough is still changing the world.
