"April Fools' joke results in Japanese firm making a beige 80's throwback PC case."

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

 

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April Fools’ joke results in Japanese firm making a beige ’80s throwback PC case

SilverStone retro PC case launches 2025

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400+Ars Technica - All content / 10h

Putting out a joke product on April Fools' Day can sometimes be a clever way to quietly gauge the reaction to a wild idea without having to really commit to it. Nerdish purveyor ThinkGeek did this a few times with the 8-bit tie and the Tauntaun sleeping bag . Pokemon Go crystallized in some ways from a Google Maps joke . And just recently, PC case-maker SilverStone has decided that so many people

Trump’s FCC chair is Brendan Carr, who wants to regulate everyone except ISPs

Trump appoints Brendan Carr FCC Chairman

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75Ars Technica - All content / 8h

President-elect Donald Trump announced last night that he will make Brendan Carr the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Carr, who wrote a chapter about the FCC for the conservative Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, is a longtime opponent of net neutrality rules and other regulations imposed on Internet service providers. Although Carr wants to deregulate telecom companies that t

AI-generated shows could replace lost DVD revenue, Ben Affleck says

Ben Affleck discusses Skydance Paramount deal

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Ars Technica - All content / 3h

Last week, actor and director Ben Affleck shared his views on AI's role in filmmaking during the 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit, arguing that AI models will transform visual effects but won't replace creative filmmaking anytime soon. A video clip of Affleck's opinion began circulating widely on social media not long after. "Didn’t expect Ben Affleck to have the most articulate and rea

Today

The ISS has been leaking air for 5 years, and engineers still don’t know why

NASA Roscosmos ISS air leak disagreement

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Ars Technica - All content / 3h

Officials from NASA and Russia’s space agency don’t see eye to eye on the causes and risks of small but persistent air leaks on the International Space Station. That was the word from the new chair of NASA's International Space Station Advisory Committee last week. The air leaks are located in the transfer tunnel of the space station's Russian Zvezda service module, one of the oldest elements of

Trust in scientists hasn’t recovered from COVID. Some humility could help.

Scientists increase trust through humility

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Ars Technica - All content / 3h

Scientists could win back trust lost during the COVID-19 pandemic if they just showed a little intellectual humility, according to a study published Monday in Nature Human Behavior . It's no secret that scientists—and the science generally—took a hit during the health crisis. Public confidence in scientists fell from 87 percent in April 2000 to a low of 73 percent in October 2023, according to su

Valve developers discuss why Half Life 2: Episode 3 was abandoned

Valve reveals cancelled Half-Life 2 Episode 3

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Ars Technica - All content / 5h

After Ars spent Half-Life 2 's 20th anniversary week looking back at the game's history and impact , Valve marked the occasion with a meaty two-hour YouTube documentary featuring insider memories from the team behind the game itself. Near the end of that documentary, longtime Valve watchers also get a chance to see footage of the long-promised but never-delivered Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and hear m

To invent the wheel, did people first have to invent the spindle?

Ancient pebbles hint at wheel origins

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21Ars Technica - All content / 6h

Twelve-thousand years ago, people in a coastal village in the Levant used stone weights on their spindles to spin thread faster and more evenly—and, some archeologists are arguing, in the process they pioneered the basic mechanics that eventually made cart wheels possible. Archaeologists found hundreds of perforated, roundish, flattish pebbles in the 12,000-year-old village of Nahal Ein-Gev II, a

The amorous adventures of earwigs

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Few people are fond of earwigs, with their menacing abdominal pincers—whether they’re skittering across your floor, getting comfy in the folds of your camping tent, or minding their own business. Scientists, too, have given them short shrift compared with the seemingly endless attention they have lavished on social insects like ants and bees . Yet, there are a handful of exceptions. Some research

Apple’s headphone adapter for older iPhones sells out, possibly never to return

Apple discontinues Lightning headphone adapter

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Ars Technica - All content / 8h

When Apple infamously ditched the headphone jack with the launch of the iPhone 7, it at least provided customers with a Lightning-to-3.5 mm adapter either right in the box or as a $9 standalone purchase in its online store. Now it looks like that adapter is being retired. As MacRumors first noted, the adapter is showing as sold out in most regions, along with a few other Lightning accessories, li

Apple Intelligence notification summaries are honestly pretty bad

Ars Technica - All content / 8h

I have been using the Apple Intelligence notification summary feature for a few months now, since pretty early in Apple’s beta testing process for the iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 updates. If you don’t know what that is—and the vast majority of iPhones won’t get Apple Intelligence, which only works on the iPhone 16 series and iPhone 15 Pro—these notification summaries attempt to read a stack of missed

Explicit deepfake scandal shuts down Pennsylvania school

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An AI-generated nude photo scandal has shut down a Pennsylvania private school. On Monday, classes were canceled after parents forced leaders to either resign or face a lawsuit potentially seeking criminal penalties and accusing the school of skipping mandatory reporting of the harmful images. The outcry erupted after a single student created sexually explicit AI images of nearly 50 female classm

Racing turns its back on heavy, expensive hybrids for sustainable fuel

Ars Technica - All content / 10h

Over the past decade, spurred on by series like Formula 1 and the World Endurance Championship , the world of motorsport began to embrace hybrid powertrains. In addition to being a sport and entertainment, racing also serves as a testbed for new vehicle technologies , having pioneered innovations we now take for granted, like seat belts, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But that dalliance

SpaceX president predicts rapid increase in Starship launch rate

SpaceX predicts 400 Starship launches

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Ars Technica - All content / 11h

As SpaceX made its final preparations for the sixth launch of its Starship rocket, the company's chief operating officer and president spoke at a financial conference on Friday about various topics, including the future of the massive rocket and the Starlink satellite system. The Starship launch system is about to reach a tipping point, Gwynne Shotwell said, as it moves from an experimental rocke

Urban Arrow’s front-loader is a stylish, functional cargo/kid hauler

Ars Technica - All content / 11h

So far, all of the cargo bikes we've tested have been what are called "long tails," which means the frame is extended out past the seat, moving the rear wheel back and creating a space for cargo or extra passengers. Based on my experience, they're the most common form of cargo bike on US roads. But they're not the only game in town. Bakfiets, or front-loaders, extend the other end, moving the fro

Study confirms Egyptians likely used hallucinogens in rituals

Ancient Egyptians used hallucinogenic cocktails

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24Ars Technica - All content / 11h

Last year we reported on preliminary research suggesting that ancient Egyptians may have used hallucinogens in their religious rituals, based on the presence of a few key chemical signatures taken from a ceremonial mug. Now those researchers have extended their analysis and fully identified the chemical components of those samples, confirming those preliminary findings, according to a new paper p

Nov 16, 2024

Silo S2 expands its dystopian world

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The second season of Silo , Apple TV's dystopian sci-fi drama, is off to a powerful start with yesterday's premiere. Based on the trilogy by novelist Hugh Howey, Silo was one of the more refreshing surprises on streaming television in 2023: a twist-filled combination of political thriller and police procedural set in a post-apocalyptic world. It looks like S2 will be leaning more heavily into sci

These are the lasting things that Half-Life 2 gave us, besides headcrabs and crowbars

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It's Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2 —a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day up through the 16th, we'll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact. “Well, I just hate the idea that our games might waste people’s time. Why spend four

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