Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: In 1994 the TV show Friends premiered, and its first season's high ratings made it the 8th most-popular show. The next year Microsoft released Windows 95 — and filmed a promotional video for it with 25-year-old Matthew Perry and 26-year-old Jennifer Aniston.

"They'll be taking you on an adventure in computing that takes place in the office of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates," explains the video's narrator, adding "Along the way, they meet a wacky bunch of propellor-heads.... And are introduced the top 25 features of Windows 95!"

It's a journey back in time. (At one point the video refers to Windows as the operating system "with tens of millions of users.") Their 30-minute segment — billed as "the world's first cyber sitcom" — appears in an hour-long video introducing revolutionary features like the new "Start" button. Also demonstrated in Excel are the new minimize and maximize "features" in "the upper right-side of the window". And the two actors marvel at the ability to type a filename that was longer than eight characters...

Watch for reminders that The Microsoft Windows 95 Video Guide was filmed nearly three decades ago. When the desktop appears after waking from screensaver mode, Perry notes that there's "no messy DOS build-up." And later the video reminds viewers that Windows 95 is compatible "with DOS games like Flight Simulator." There's also a brand new feature called "Windows Explorer" (which is described as "File Manager on steroids"), as well as a new "Find" option, and a brand new icon named "My Computer". And near the end they pay a visit to the Microsoft Network — which was mostly a "walled garden" online service — described in the video as "your on-ramp to the information superhighway".

The video even explains how Windows 95 "uses the right mouse button for what Microsoft calls power users."

And by the end of it, Jennifer Anniston finds herself playing Space Cadet 3D pinball.

Late Friday a Burning Man press release claimed that "zero stuck or abandoned vehicles remain on site or on the exit road, as people have returned with friends and tow trucks to retrieve them."

But the Reno Gazette-Journal reports that as of 5 p.m. Friday, "at least a half-dozen vehicles were still scattered across miles of the Black Rock National Conservation Area, public land Burning Man leases from the Bureau of Land Management. Their drivers appeared to have made a run for the exit and got stuck in mud out on the playa. One burned-out RV that caught fire in the exit queue was still on site."

The press release from the Burning Man project claimed their entire community of attendees, sometimes called "Black Rock City," had now "disappeared, leaving no trace." But the Reno Gazette-Journal says... Entire abandoned camps were still in what had been Black Rock City, the temporary encampment that draws more than 70,000 burners each year. Tents, garbage bags, rugs, boxes, boots stuck in mud, a barbecue grill, cans of oil and even a wig were seen on Friday. Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen estimated there were still up to 10,000 people on site Thursday but a steady stream of RVS and cars continued to leave the playa... Burning Man did not return request for comment... "I am concerned about this year and the amount of stuff being left out," Allen told the Reno Gazette-Journal on Friday. "Dispatch has told me that in the last two days a lot of (car and truck) rental agencies and motor home businesses are looking for their vehicles still out there...

On Friday, the site was busy with campers who were cleaning up sites. Some abandoned camps sites had signs that said they would return. One sign said, "We will come back Thur. Fri. Sat. to clean up. Too many sick people."
The newspaper points out that event volunteers traditionally spend three weeks after the event doing a major clean-up effort. "The restoration crews they have doing that do an outstanding job," a public affairs specialist for the Bureau of Land Management told the newspaper.

"Italian producers of parmesan cheese have been fighting against imitations for years," writes the Wall Street Journal, adding "Their latest trick to beat counterfeiters is edible microchips.

"Now, makers of Parmigiano-Reggiano, as the original parmesan cheese is officially called, are slapping the microchips on their 90-pound cheese wheels as part of an endless cat-and-mouse game between makers of authentic and fake products." New methods to guarantee the origin of products are being used across the EU. Some wineries are putting serial numbers, invisible ink and holograms on their bottles. So-called DNA fingerprinting of milk bacteria pioneered in Switzerland, which isn't in the EU, is now being tested inside the bloc as a method for identifying cheese. QR codes are also proliferating, including on individual portions of pre-sliced Prosciutto di San Daniele, a raw ham similar to Prosciutto di Parma. A smartphone can be used to show information such as how long the prosciutto has been aged and when it was sliced... The new silicon chips, made by Chicago-based p-Chip, use blockchain technology to authenticate data that can trace the cheese as far back as the producer of the milk used.

The chips have been in advanced testing on more than 100,000 Parmigiano wheels for more than a year. The consortium of producers wants to be sure the chips can stand up to Parmigiano's aging requirement, which is a minimum of one year and can exceed three years for some varieties... The p-Chips can withstand extreme heat or cold, can be read through ice and can withstand years of storage in liquid nitrogen. They have outperformed RFID chips, which are larger, can be more difficult to attach to products, are more fragile and can't survive extreme temperatures, according to p-Chip Chief Technology Officer Bill Eibon. Parmigiano producers also use QR codes, but the codes are easily copied and degrade during the cheese's aging process.

A robot heats the Parmigiano wheel's casein label — a small plaque made of milk protein that is widely used in the cheese industry — and then inserts the chip on top. A hand-held reader can grab the data from the chips, which cost a few cents each and are similar to the ones that some people have inserted under the skin of their pets. The chips can't be read remotely. In lab tests, the chips sat for three weeks in a mock-up of stomach acid without leaking any dangerous material. Eibon went a step further, eating one without suffering any ill effects, but he isn't touting that lest p-Chip face accusations it is tracking people, something that isn't possible because the chips can't be read remotely and can't be read once they are ingested.

"We don't want to be known as the company accused of tracking people," said Eibon. "I ate one of the chips and nobody is tracking me, except my wife, and she uses a different method."
Merck KGaA will soon be using the same chips, the article points out, and the chips "are also being tested in the automotive industry to guarantee the authenticity of car parts.

"The chips could eventually be used on livestock, crops or medicine stored in liquid nitrogen."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the San Francisco Standard: As autonomous vehicles become increasingly popular in San Francisco, some riders are wondering just how far they can push the vehicles' limits — especially with no front-seat driver or chaperone to discourage them from questionable behavior... The Standard has spoken to four separate Cruise car riders who said they've had sex or hooked up in the driverless vehicles in San Francisco over recent months and have provided ride receipts. The Standard was unable to find a source who said they'd had sex in a Waymo...

The rules and regulations surrounding robotaxis are murky, largely because the industry is so new... Unfortunately for the debaucherous among us, robotaxi companies currently use pretty extensive camera surveillance inside and outside of their cars. "We record video inside of the car for added safety and support," Cruise states on its website... When asked, both Cruise and Waymo sidestepped commenting directly on what is or isn't allowed in their cars.

Thursday Bill Gates launched a new podcast called "Unconfuse Me." ("What do you do when you can't solve a problem? I like to talk to smart people who can help me understand the subject better...") Join me on my learning journey as I talk to brilliant guests about Alzheimer's, artificial intelligence, the future of education, plant-based meat, the evolution of language, marijuana, and more.
The first words of the first episode are a clip of Seth Rogen saying "Edibles? I don't mess with that. Snoop Dogg doesn't eat edibles. Like, that's how wild the variation on edibles is, and I do not recommend this."

Then Bill Gates' voice says "I love learning, even if a topic's complex, I like to see if I can figure it out..." People reports that the 67-year-old Microsoft co-founder and former CEO also spoke to Rogen and his wife Lauren Miller about the future of Alzheimer's research: With studies showing that "40% of cases" are preventable, according to Rogen, the "five brain healthy habits" in their framework are important: sleep, exercise, nutrition, mental fitness and emotional well-being.

He even confessed that his being a celebrity encourages people to better care for themselves. "I taught this coursework of brain health, and we've also had a neurologist teach the coursework, and we scientifically proved that people retain information better from celebrities than doctors, which is it's a heavy burden," he joked, adding that this information "was published..."

Miller also shared that she goes to a neurologist and the pair are both "open" with their doctors about their habits, and "no one" in the medical world has told them that smoking weed is bad for their brain health. They even believe its benefits of boosting hunger and relieving stress might be good for preventing Alzheimer's. "It's not federally legal, so there isn't money to fund research," Miller said.

Gates later concluded the podcast with his own funny anecdote, laughing about his first time he ever smoked weed — back when it was a "rebellious" thing to do. "In school out of the, say 105 people in my class I think, there were three or four who didn't smoke," he said. "Because it was kind of a, 'Hey, I'm an adult! Hey I can break the rules!' But I will say, sometimes it's like, I guess I'm doing this to be cool. It wasn't so much smoking for pot's sake."

Long-time Slashdot reader maxcelcat writes: A fleet of some 500 drives were performing a display over Melbourne's Docklands in the lead up to the FIFA Women's World Cup. About 350 of them didn't come back and are now being fished out of the Yarra River, no doubt somewhat worse for wear.

According to the operators, the drones experienced some kind of malfunction or loss of signal, which triggered a fail safe — an automated landing. So hundreds of drones landed safely... on the surface of a river!
One local newscaster called it "a spectacular malfunction" (in a report with a brief clip of the drones gently lowering themselves into the water).

The report also notes another drone company also once lost 50 drones in a river — worth tens of thousands of dollars — during a Christmas show.

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: In April a tourist in Hawaii followed GPS driving directions straight into a harbor. And one month later, another tourist did the exact same thing — driving into the same harbor. One onlooker remembers "screaming the whole time to get her attention but her GPS had told her to go there, so she drove right in."

When asked if they'd add warning signs, a state government spokeperson said no. "It's really clear that it is a ramp and it leads directly into the water." Although an information specialist for Hawaii's Department of Transportation did offer future tourists this advice.

"If you see a body of water, don't drive towards it."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: AWS offered A Look Inside the Making of an NFL Football Schedule in conjunction with Thursday's release of the 2023 NFL Schedule Powered by AWS. AWS notes that producing the schedule required the use of 4,000+ AWS EC2 Spot Instances. An AWS promotional video claims they "saved the NFL an estimated $2 million each season" by leveraging AWS Spot Instances for a discount of up to 90% off compared to AWS On-Demand pricing..

"In just three months," AWS explains, "National Football League (NFL) schedule makers methodically build an exciting 18 week 272-game schedule spanning 576 possible game windows." Up until 10 years ago, AWS notes in an accompanying infographic, the NFL used a white-boarding process to manually craft its schedule.

Not to diminish the NFL's and AWS's 2023 scheduling achievement, but the 2013 documentary The Schedule Makers told the remarkable tale of the husband-and-wife duo of Henry and Holly Stephenson, who for almost a quarter of a century in the pre-Cloud era managed the scheduling for 30 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams who each played 162 regular season games a year. According to the May 1985 Atari Compendium (pg. 38), the Stephensons were using a self-written program running on a 64K IMS-8000 to help schedule games for the MLB (2,106 games over a 6-month season), NBA, and NASL/MISL (defunct soccer leagues). So perhaps the NFL's claim that "There's no way the NFL could deliver the quality of schedule that we put out every year for our fans and television partners without the contributions of our friends at AWS" should be taken with a grain of salt.

The Today show's food reporter delivers a strange report on a viral AI-generated ad "for an imaginary pizza place called 'Pepperoni Hug Spot'."

Everything looks slightly ... off. Generated by AI, the audience is reminded constantly through the uncanny valley that the people aren't real — and neither is the pizza. "Cheese, pepperoni, vegetable, and more secret things," says the voiceover, which is also artificially generated... "Knock, knock, who's there? Pizza magic," the AI narrator says after a delivery driver (whose steering column is on the left side of his car) is shown delivering a pizza.

"Eat Pepperoni Hug Spot pizza. Your tummy say 'Thank you.' Your mouth say, 'Mmm,'" the ad continues while showing a trio of women eating pizza in the oddest possible fashion, complete with bizarre cheese pulls and facial contortions out of a food-based nightmare. "Pepperoni Hug Spot: Like family, but with more cheese..."

Using AI technologies Runway Gen2, Chat GPT4, Eleven Labs, Midjourney and Soundraw AI, the creator was able to produce the background music, voiceover, graphics, video and even generate the script for the ad. "I used Adobe After Effects to combine all the elements, adding title cards, transitions, and graphics," he adds... Seeing it spread, he whipped up a website that fit the uncanny vibe of the commercial and even created merch including hats and T-shirts.

"I figured I should capitalize on my 15 minutes of internet fame, right?" he jokes.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk "simply responded with an exploding head emoji."

And Pizza Hut's official Twitter account posted their reaction: "My heebies have been jeebied."

UPDATE: Saturday Pizza Hut Canada "transformed" one of its restaurants into the restaurant from the commercial, emblazoning the logo for Pepperoni Hug Spot onto its boxes, employee t-shirts, and the sign outside. There's two videos on the official Instagram feed for Pizza Hut Canada (which for the occasion changed its tagline to "Like family, but with more cheese.")

One video closes by promising the pizza does, indeed, contain "secret things."

This year's Kentucky Derby was won by a 15-to-1 longshot named Mage, reports sports magazine the Athletic. It was only the horse's third race — but the story gets even stranger: Mage is owned by a collective of horse racing fans that doesn't follow your standard ownership structure. Fans can purchase shares of a horse for as little as $50. It's a publicly owned racehorse. Mage has 391 owners on the Commonwealth app. Many were at the 2023 Kentucky Derby wearing Mage hats and they were shown on NBC's lead up to the Kentucky Derby.
The Commonwealth app even tried to arrange watch parties for the horse race across the country. Shareholders own 25% of the racehorse, reports Sporting News: Although horses are the most common commodity, there are golfers on the app as well, specifically Joey Vrzich and Cooper Dossey, whom it says are "coming Spring 2023." Commonwealth has a partnership with WinStar Farm, a premiere breeder of thoroughbreds... "Together we are going to revolutionize the ownership experience and give the world access to horses that were once unavailable to the public," Brian Doxtator, CEO of Commonwealth said, per the collective's website.

According to Action Network's Darren Rovell, Commonwealth owners will be paid out $94.52 per share (prior to taxes) for the win.
Before the race the Athletic sports magazine asked seven experts for their picks — and only one of them had even mentioned Mage. (The Athletic's senior sports betting editor correctly picked Mage and "Angel of Empire" to finish somewhere in the top three positions.) But just for fun, the Athletic also asked three AI chatbots — and none of them picked the winner: Bing AI: That's a tough question. I don't have a personal preference, but based on the odds and the past performances, I think Forte has a good chance of winning. He has been very consistent and impressive in his races, and he has a top trainer and jockey. He also has a favorable post position at No. 14, which gives him some room to maneuver and avoid traffic. But as I said, anything can happen in the Kentucky Derby, and there are many other talented horses in the field. It will be an exciting race to watch.


Google Bard: I like the chances of Tapit Trice to win the 2023 Kentucky Derby. He is the second-lowest odds horse at 5-1, and has won twice and finished second twice in six career races. He has one of the best pedigrees a horse could ask for, being sired by Justify, the 2018 Triple Crown winner. He is also coming off an impressive showing in the 2023 Blue Grass Stakes, where he finished second just barely behind Verifying.

Here are some other horses that I like to finish in the money... The Kentucky Derby is always a tough race to predict, but I think these horses have a good chance of winning or finishing in the money. [Bard then listed five more of the 18 horses — one of which ultimately finished third.]


Chat GPT: As an artificial intelligence language model, I don't have personal opinions or preferences. However, based on the current information I have, I cannot accurately predict the winner of the Kentucky Derby. Horse racing involves many variables, including the skill of the jockey, the health and performance of the horse, and even the weather conditions on race day. The outcome of any given race is always uncertain and subject to chance. It's important to note that gambling can be risky, and I don't encourage it.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Futurism: We'd need an astronomical amount of resources to construct a Dyson sphere, a giant theoretical shell that would harvest all of a given star's energy, around the Sun. In fact, as science journalist Jaime Green explores in her new book "The Possibility of Life," we'd have to go as far as to demolish a Jupiter-sized planet to build such a megastructure, a concept first devised by physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960...

Not everybody agrees that constructing a Dyson sphere would end up being such a huge undertaking. In an interview with Green, astrophysicist Jason Wright compared such an effort to [the city of] Manhattan, a human and interconnected "megastructure," which was constructed over a long period of time, bit by bit... "It's just every generation made it a little bigger...."

"If the energy is out there to take and it's just gonna fly away to space anyway, then why wouldn't someone take it?" Wright told Green.

The BBC looks at free websites like TimeRepublik, "which describes itself as 'a timebank for the internet era'." Time banking is in essence a more sophisticated form of bartering. You don't pay someone in money for a job that they do for you. Instead you give that person time credits that they can then use to get a service without financial payment from someone else... A "TimeCoin" credit... accounts to 15 minutes no matter what job you provide, be it cutting the lawn of a neighbour, or maths tuition via a video call. You simply advertise what you are offering and how long it would take in TimeCoins.

"We wanted to distance ourselves from financial transactions and find something that could create relationships between people," says co-founder Gabriele Donati. "Because we truly believe that only through our relationships, you can gain the trust of another person." TimeRepublik is today based in both Lugano, Switzerland and New York, and says it has more than 100,000 users around the world. It makes money by selling the service to companies who then offer it to their staff via their internal websites.

The concept of time banking has been around since the 19th Century. Mr Donati says that he wanted to bring it to a younger, and more digitally-savvy audience.
The first version of TimeRepublik launched in Switzerland in 2012, according to the BBC, though the site expanded internationally "in the past couple of years."

One user told the BBC that with monetary expectations out of the way, "you really get to the core of things and you discover something, I think, that's greater and sort of priceless."

The "Ben" in Ben & Jerry's "has gone from ice cream to cannabis with a social mission," reports the Chicago Tribune: Ben Cohen has started Ben's Best Blnz, a nonprofit cannabis line with a stated mission of helping to right the wrongs of the war on drugs. The company says on its website that 80% of its profits will go to grants for Black cannabis entrepreneurs while the rest will be equally divided between the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and the national Last Prisoner Project, which is working to free people incarcerated for cannabis offenses...

Ben's Best Blnz, or B3, says it licenses its formulas, packaging, trademarks, and marketing materials to for-profit businesses that pay a royalty. After expenses are deducted, the royalties are donated to the cause.

"Thousands of stunned guests were on hand Saturday night to watch a Disneyland malfunction for the ages," writes SFGate — when a 45-foot-tall animatronic dragon burst into flames, and continued burning for several minutes in front of the stunned crowd.

SFGate reports: The fire occurred during the 10:30 p.m. performance of Fantasmic, a show staged on the Rivers of America. The elaborate show uses ships, barges, projections on the water and fire effects to tell the story of Mickey Mouse's dreams and nightmares. Near the end of the show, the dragon form of Maleficent from "Sleeping Beauty," emerges from the island.

The big finale went awry Saturday, and flames engulfed the entire dragon. Video taken by shocked spectators shows the fire beginning on the dragon's face and rapidly spreading down its body as chunks of flaming debris fall to the ground. Smoke and heavy flames billow from the prop as firefighters begin hosing down the dragon. The remainder of the show was canceled, and guests were escorted out of the immediate area...

The dragon, one of the most memorable parts of Disneyland's beloved nighttime spectacular, has jokingly been referred to as Murphy, a reference to Murphy's law. Over the decades, it's been part of countless malfunctions and mishaps, although none quite so destructive as this. Though it is supposed to breathe fire, there are times when the effect doesn't work at all.
"Disneyland employees armed with garden hoses and fire extinguishers were no match for the inferno," reports the Orange County Register. "The dragon's head erupted into a fireball and a flamethrower effect from the dragon's mouth shot directly toward the stage, according to MiceChat."

The newspaper has a picture of the charred mechanical skeleton that was still lying on the ground Sunday on Tom Sawyer Island — and a 146-second video of the blaze. (Apparently realizing they're witnessing an unplanned fire, one spectator can be heard telling another one wryly, "Happy birthday, Danny.")

"Some spectators thought it was part of the show," reports the New York Times. One visitor told the newspaper, "My sister and I were talking about how it was impressive. I was like, 'Man, they can set that head on fire and it just stays perfectly intact?' So we were kind of amazed at Disney at first..."

When interviewed by the Associated Press, Ryan Laux, a frequent Disneyland visitor, "said Mickey vanished from the stage as soon as the dragon's head became engulfed in flames."

Then a voice over a loudspeaker announced the show wouldn't continue "due to unforeseen circumstances..." (as heard in the video). "We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause — and hope you enjoy the rest of your evening here at Disneyland. Once again, this performance cannot continue due to unforeseen circumstances. Thank you." At that moment the head burst into more flames, some members of the audience gasped in unison — and the announcement continued playing in Spanish. ("No podemos continuar con este presentacion...") Then cheery banjo music began playing.

At least six workers were eventually treated for smoke inhalation from the burning dragon prop, reports the New York Times.

In a statement Disney said they were now "temporarily suspending fire effects" in "select" shows in their parks around the world — "out of an abundance of caution."

AI now "automates creative impulses," writes New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka — then wonders where that will lead. Chayka's first example is a Berlin-based photographer using AI tools to create a viral video showing Harry Potter characters as fashion models for the upscale French label Balenciaga: A.I. tools were involved in each step of Alexander Niklass's process, and in each element of the video. He created the basic static images with Midjourney, evoking the Harry Potter actors and outfits through text prompts such as "male model, grotesque, balenciaga commercial." Then he used ElevenLabs — a "voice-cloning" tool — to create models of the actors' voices based on previously recorded audio. Finally, he fed the images into a service called D-ID, which is used to make "avatar videos" — subtly animated portraits, not so far off from those that appear in the newspapers of the Potter world. D-ID added the signature lip synchs and head nods, which Niklass explained were a reference to fashion models tilting their chins for the cameras.

The combination of child-friendly film and adult luxury fashion held no particular symbolism nor expressed an artistic intent. It's "entertainment," Niklass said. Yet the video's most compelling aspect might be its vacuity, a meaningless collision of cultural symbols. The nonsense is the point.
The article also cites a song where the French group AllttA performs with an AI-generated simulation of Jay-Z. Chayka marvels at a world where "The A.I. content has the appearance of realism, without actual reality — reality solely as a style.... it seems that a Rubicon has been crossed: It doesn't matter that these artifacts are generated by A.I.; we can just enjoy them for what they are. It happened faster than I thought possible, but now that A.I.-generated pop culture has entered the mainstream, it seems unlikely that we'll ever get rid of it."

Chayka asked ChatGPT how AI-generated imagery is changing our perceptions, and "It responded that there has been a 'blurring of the lines between real and artificial.'"

The article ultimately ponders the possible implications of "a world in which every style, every idea, and every possible remix is generated as fast and frictionlessly as possible, and the successful ones stick and get attention." But at the same time, Chayka believes the final output's quality still depends on the humans involved (arguing that the Harry Potter fashion video was still more "appealingly odd" than later AI-generated videos copying the idea, like "Matrix by Gucci," "Star Wars by Balenciaga," and "The Office by Balenciaga".) A.I. tools may have been able to replicate actors' faces and generate fashionable outfits, but only Niklass could have come up with the concept, which required keen observation of both high fashion and the wizarding world — and also a very specific, extremely online sense of humor. With tools like Midjourney publicly available to anyone online, "everybody can create something visually appealing now," he said. "But A.I. can't generate taste yet," he continued....

To put it another way, execution may have been democratized by generative A.I., but ideas have not. The human is still the originator, editor, and curator of A.I.'s effects.

Remember that entrepreneur planning an ostentatious NFT-based restaurant/members-only club in San Francisco? Seven months later it's still "an empty husk of a building, hindered by construction delays and unfulfilled crypto dreams," reports SFGate: Last August, Joshua Sigel held a "groundbreaking" event at what he said would be the future home of Sho Restaurant, located atop Salesforce Park in San Francisco. He told the gathered media that construction of the proposed Japanese fine dining restaurant would begin in less than two months, once some permitting issues were resolved, with a targeted opening date of September or October of 2023.

Sigel maintained that he'd soon be offering 3,275 Sho Club NFT (non-fungible token) memberships — first via a private sale, then a larger public sale in late September — which would serve as the backbone of Sho Restaurant's clientele. (Sigel is the CEO of Sho Group, which encapsulates Sho Restaurant and Sho Club.) There were to be 2,878 "Earth" NFT memberships, priced at $7,500 each; 377 "Water" NFT memberships, priced at $15,000 each; and 20 "Fire" NFT memberships; priced at $300,000 each. The NFTs are basically membership cards for the restaurant, spruced up with Web3 jargon.... Each membership tier comes with increasingly luxurious benefits, though restaurant reservations would also be available for nonmembers.

Seven months later, things don't seem to be going very well for Sho Club or for Sho Restaurant. I recently walked over to Salesforce Park and peered inside the shell of the building that's supposed to become a restaurant; I saw an empty space that looks almost exactly the same as it did in August. The mock-up design photos that journalists looked at during the "groundbreaking" in August remain strewn about on the floor. Permits for Sho Restaurant haven't been issued, the result of Sho Restaurant designers not yet responding to a number of San Francisco Department of Building Inspection notes, among a host of permitting steps that haven't been completed. Sho Club social media accounts have been radio silent since late September....

Sho Club appears to have sold around 100 NFT memberships, rather than 3,275, as Sigel originally projected. I repeatedly reached out to Sigel, to Sho Club, and its public relations representatives. No one replied to my questions.

Rest of World reports on viral teenage pranks at conveyor-belt sushi chain restaurants across Japan, which snowballed into a societal phenomenon that social media users and the Japanese press have named "sushi terrorism."

It began January 9th when a video showed a customer adding a pile of wasabi onto sushi on a conveyor belt. Another video shows a giggling teenager touching sushi on a conveyor belt at the sushi chain Sushiro after first licking that finger. The stock of the parent company that owns that sushi chain drops nearly 5%. It's not over. At a Nagoya branch of Kura Sushi, a 21-year-old customer grabs sushi from the conveyor belt, cramming it into his mouth and chasing it down with a swig from the communal soy sauce bottle. The incident is filmed by his two younger friends, one of whom posts the clip online. The same day, Sushiro's operating company announces it will limit conveyor belts and move to ordering by touch screen.
Concerns continued at other sushi chains. ("Kura Sushi says it's installing surveillance cameras equipped with AI to monitor customers' behavior and catch sushi terrorists. A day later, Choushimaru announces it will switch entirely to an iPad-based ordering system by April 26.") Sushiro also moves to ordering by touch screen and promises to limit conveyor belts.

The story's dramatic conclusion? Nagoya police arrest the 19-year-old man who allegedly posted the soy-sauce-swigging video from Kura Sushi, along with his two "co-conspirators." Nagoya police declare they are holding all three sushi terrorists on suspicion of "forcible obstruction of business." The crime would carry a maximum penalty of three years in prison, if they're convicted.

As millions set their clocks forward one hour, there's pockets of resistance, according to this local news report:

- "According to a March 2022 CBS News poll, 46% of Americans prefer permanent daylight saving time, while 33% prefer permanent standard time. The remaining 21% simply favor the status quo."

- "Exceptions to this adopted norm include residents of Hawaii and most of Arizona, where standard time is permanent throughout the year."


But The Hill notes that America appears to be stuck halfway toward repealing daylight saving time: Earlier this month, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced the Sunshine Protection Act of 2023, which would make daylight saving time permanent. So far, the bill has received bipartisan support in the Senate and has been referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. If passed, the March 12 changing of the clocks would be the final such event — we wouldn't "fall back" in November.

A similar bill introduced by Rubio last year passed with unanimous support in the Senate, but it wasn't as well-received in the House.
So before America can end daylight saving time, that bill would need approval from the U.S. House of Representatives — and then the president's signature.

Meanwhile at least U.S. at least 19 states have already enacted legislation or resolutions to make daylight saving time permanent, the article points out. "But these states can't make the change without congressional approval, or their neighboring states enacting similar legislation."

Perhaps AI "needs a little more work," writes ZDNet columnist Chris Matyszczyk — noting problems with the automated voice-recognition systems at McDonald's drivethrough lanes. The trouble started when TikTok-er Ren Adams ordered hash browns, sweet tea and a Coke. All seemed fine until, at a second drive-thru lane, another car pulled up. Adams' AI helper seems to have overheard that order and added it to Adams'. Adams tried to make the robot see sense. Or, rather hear it. Instead, the robot removed the errant Diet Coke and replaced it with, oh, nine sweet teas instead of one.

Which suggests something of a problem. When your robot drive-thru employee makes a mistake, to whom can you complain? Complaining to the robot seems to create an extra layer of complication and the potential for even greater misunderstanding.

Adams, indeed, isn't alone. Here's Caitlyn Sykora (not) ordering $254 of McNuggets meals. And here's Madilynn Cameron wanting a large cup of water and a cup of ice cream and discovering butter is included. She seems to have given up.
The customer who'd ordered one sweet tea and instead got nine also drove off in a huff, according to the end of their TikTok video.

Matyszczyk's conclusion? " if you're not so good at fixing ice-cream machines, how good will you be at maintaining thousands of robot order-takers?"

The Washington Post reports: A new spectacle is taking over the tented world of acrobats, clowns and juggling entertainers. And while it may have a trunk and tusks, it weighs absolutely nothing. Circuses, once known for showcasing elephants in all their heft are now presenting a much lighter creature — a 3D hologram.

The Circus-Theater Roncalli in Germany was the first to do it, and photographer Davide Bertuccio wanted to see for himself how the group pulled it off. When he attended a show at the end of 2022, he was immediately struck by the quiet atmosphere inside the tent. "Finding a circus without the din of animals, but the simple noise of people was a surprise" he said.

The holographic figures are custom-built for the circus using 3D animations, photography and virtual rendering. The system of 11 digital laser projectors positioned around the stage flash animations onto a circular net hoisted up for each performance. The entire light show is operated by one person, and it takes about 10 people to take down the metallic netting to make room for the other performers, including acrobats, clowns and dancers, Bertuccio said.
The circus introduced the holograms in 2019, the Post reports, and "other acts have followed suit, including the French circus L'Écocirque, which features holograms of a lion, an elephant and beluga whales, accompanied by a live orchestra blaring rock music."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In what might be mistaken for an early April Fools' joke, one month after Amazon confirmed it would layoff 18,000+ employees, Amazon News last week put out a whimsical story about 10,000+ of its employees' dogs who are registered to "work" at corporate offices as part of Amazon's Dogs at Work program. "This unique program," Amazon explains," pulls out all the stops to make sure dogs have everything they need for a successful work day, including decked out dog parks, unlimited treats from the reception desk, and regular events where dogs and their owners can get to know their colleagues."

Amazon employees also received a back-to-the office edict last week from CEO Andy Jassy, who cited the need for "serendipitous interactions" between team members, which Amazon has at times suggested would be facilitated if its employees' dogs return to the workplace, too. "The dog-friendly policy also contributes to the company's culture of collaboration," Amazon reported last year. "Dogs in the workplace are an unexpected mechanism for connection, an Amazon manager added. "I see employees meeting each other in our lobbies or elevators every day because of their dogs."

Amazon News offers profiles of "11 Amazing Pups" who didn't need obedience school to be convinced to return to the office, including Murray and Ripley. "Working from home certainly has its perks," Amazon reports, "but Murray LOVES coming into the office. He gets to see his favorite colleagues-both human and canine-and brighten everyone's day." And "Ripley starts each workday with a greeting from her best friend Lisa at the Culver Studios gate. From there, she promptly reports for duty, doling out kisses to anyone who needs a little pick-me-up."

In 2003 a 20-year-old Ryan North began writing new dialogue, three days a week, for the exact same set of six drawings of talking dinosaurs. And twenty years later, he's still doing it!

Interestingly, North found the original six drawings on a clip-art CD. So honoring this strange milestone, he's created a special edition in which the online comic strip finally continues beyond its sixth frame: I fired up a virtual machine running Windows XP which ITSELF was tweaking its settings to run Windows 95, which ITSELF was running the Windows 3.1 software I first used in the last few days of January to make myself a comics layout, and started playing around. (Incidentally, the comic's still laid out in MS Paint, but the version that came with XP...

After 20 years I'm allowed to change the images BRIEFLY. And only once!!
While readers laugh along with T-Rex, Utahraptor and Dromiceiomimus, North is experiencing this milestone as "incredible," while also adding "I'm so grateful for everyone who reads my work." Writing Dinosaur Comics has led to so many amazing things - not just meeting readers, not just seeing plush versions of T-Rex go up to the edge of space or to Antarctica... [Y]ou can trace a direct line between me sending an upload command to my FTP client in 2003 and everything I've done since, and if you told me back then that "hey, the Dinosaur Comics guy is going to write Star Trek comics and adopt Vonnegut into comics too and write bestselling (and non-fiction!) guides to both time travel and taking over the world and, oh, let's say be the new writer for the Fantastic Four AND MORE" I would've said "What?! I would like to be the Dinosaur Comics guy, thank you so much."
Looking back to 2003, North also reflects that "The world of online comics is very different from how it was when I started." [T]here's been a huge shift towards social media - functioning effectively as an aggregator - and a huge shift away from people actually visiting websites. But I love websites, and I think they give us the healthiest, most free version of the web, and I hope 20 years from now the only way to connect with other people won't be through a corporate or algorithmically-mediated platform.
And he adds that he hopes he'll still be writing the comic on its 40th anniversary in the year 2043.

To celebrate this year's "Public Domain Day," the Internet Archive "asked people to submit short films highlighting anything that was going to be made available in the Public Domain in 2023." For the contest, vintage images and sounds were woven into creative films of 2-3 minutes. Many of the films were abstract while others educational, they all showcased the possibility when public domain materials are made openly available and accessible for download. "The Internet Archive has spent 24 years collecting and archiving content from around the world...now is the time to see what people can do with it," said Amir Saber Esfahani, director of special arts projects at the Internet Archive.
The counsel from Creative Commons helped judged all 47 entries, with winners finally chosen "based on creativity, technique, engagement, and variety of 1927 content."

The winning entries include "The Public Domain Race," a montage of newly-uncopyrighted 1927 film clips and cartoons. And the honorable mentions include short films showing, among other things, 2023 filmmaker Sam Dody serenading a lovestruck silent film star from 1927 — and the story of why Mae West once spent eight days in jail.

But the big first-place prize of $1,500 went to Gnats Gonzales for reciting a poem that was emblazoned over the artwork and title pages of 1927 works that have finally entered the public domain. "... Let not kings nor selective texts decide what is known among you. Ignore the temptation of hippocampal decay. Plunge into the dark depths. And feel the warmth of mortal creation at its purest."

That last quote appears over a 1927 movie poster showing a woman smashing pies into the face of Oliver Hardy.

Someone on Reddit used the Midjourney AI image generator to create "a selection of 28 fantastically alluring case designs" for the Mini ITX PC, reports Tom's Hardware: Our sample gallery of the AI-generated Mini ITX PCs embedded above features quite a few designs that are rather rotund. This isn't a bias of the AI; instead, Hybective admits he has a fondness for Wheatley (the AI robot from the Portal franchise) and has wanted a spherical PC ever since casting eyes on the Games Sphere (a GameCube parody) in teen sitcom Drake & Josh....

For his shared Mini ITX PC case images, the Redditor says he commonly used 'spherical' as one of the inputs into Midjourney. More specifically, at least some of the images were generated with the prompt "Sphere ITX PC build hyper realistic," or similar.

From Science magazine: Cave Johnson is almost ready to start a new study in his secret underground facility. The founder of the Michigan-based technology company Aperture Science, he's invented a portal gun that allows people to teleport to various locations. Now, he and his colleagues want to see whether they can make portals appear on previously unfit surfaces with a new "conversion gel" containing moon dust. "It may be toxic. We are unsure," he wrote in a recent research proposal.

To test the gel, Johnson plans to recruit orphans, homeless people, and the elderly. They'll get 60 bucks — compensation he feels is well worth the risk of their skin potentially peeling off, death due to an artificial intelligence guide becoming sentient, or worse.

None of this is real, of course — Johnson is the villain of the popular video game Portal — but the makeshift ethical review board that evaluated his study was. At a Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research conference conducted online last month, attendees of the session "Mad Science on Trial: The Real Ethical Problems With Fictional Scientists" had some serious concerns with Johnson's research. Would the participants' data be secure and anonymized? Would the team of henchmen include some henchwomen as well? And, most importantly, would there be cake?

The moderators of the session didn't just target Johnson. They asked their audience of 450 virtual attendees to evaluate other fictional mad scientists as well, voting on whether an institutional review board (IRB) — a body of experts that a research institution uses to evaluate whether proposals are ethically sound — should approve their protocols.
Another example used was the scientist in the first-person shooter game Halo who proposed surgically enhancing 6-year-old children with armor, neural interfaces, and other technology to give them combat advantages against a theoretical alien attack.

Science interviewed two of the panelists, one noting "this format is good for making the Instituational Review Board ethics world fun and doing it in a way that kind of stretches people's minds."

Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for submitting the article.

CNN reports: Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, who became the second person to ever set foot on the moon in 1969, following crewmate Neil Armstrong, married his "longtime love" on his 93rd birthday on Friday.

The former astronaut announced his nuptials on Twitter.... "We were joined in holy matrimony in a small private ceremony in Los Angeles & are as excited as eloping teenagers...." Aldin also thanked fans for their birthday wishes in another Friday tweet. "It means a lot and I hope to continue serving a greater cause for many more revolutions around the sun," he wrote.

From a report: Have you ever wondered what your dog would say if it could speak to you? FluentPet promises the next best thing — buttons the company says you can train your pet to push if it's hungry, needs to go outside, or wants to play....

"We find that actually when dogs kind of know that they're being understood because they have the precision and specificity of the buttons, then they complain less because they're no longer wondering whether they actually communicated what they wanted to," said Leo Trottier, FluentPet CEO. At CES, the company announced FluentPet Connect, a new app that notifies owners when their dog presses a button and collects data on how the buttons are used.

FluentPet's starter kit comes with hextiles, a speaker, and six buttons for $159.95. The app does not require a subscription.

"The first mostly non-human-run McDonald's is open for business just outside Fort Worth, Texas," reports the Guardian. CNN calls it "an almost fully-automated restaurant," noting there's just one self-service kiosk (with a credit card reader) for ordering food.

McDonalds tells CNN there's "some interaction between customers and the restaurant team" when picking up orders or drinks. But at the special "order ahead" drive-through lane, your app-ordered bag of food is instead delivered to a platform by your car's window using a vertical conveyor belt.

CNN reports that it's targetted to customers on the go. For example, there's dedicated parking spaces outside for curbside pickup orders, while inside there's a room with bags to be picked up by food-delivery couriers (who also get their own designated parking spaces outside). But for regular customers, CBS emphasizes that "ordering is done through kiosks or an app — no humans involved there, either." But not all customers are loving it. "Well there goes millions of jobs," one commenter on a TikTok video said about the new restaurant said.

"Oh no first we have to talk with Siri and Google [and] now we have to talk to another computer," another one opined.

"I'm not giving my money to robots," another commenter wrote. "Raise the minimum wage!"

Other customers had more personal concerns, expressing worries about how they could get their order fixed if it was incorrectly prepared or how to ask for extra condiments. "And if they forget an item. Who you supposed to tell, the robot? It defeats the purpose of using the drive thru if you have to go inside for it," one consumer noted....

To be sure, not everyone had negative views about the concept. Some customers expressed optimism that the automated restaurant could improve service and their experience.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Since 1999 fiction writers have tried starting and finishing the composition of 50,000-word novels in November for "National Novel Writing Month". But for the last nine years, programmers have instead tried generating 50,000 word novels — and this year's edition received more than 50 entries.

"The only rule is that you share at least one novel and also your source code at the end," explains the event's official page on GitHub.
From the repository's README file: The "novel" is defined however you want. It could be 50,000 repetitions of the word "meow" (and yes it's been done!). It could literally grab a random novel from Project Gutenberg. It doesn't matter, as long as it's 50k+ words.

Please try to respect copyright. We're not going to police it, as ultimately it's on your head if you want to just copy/paste a Stephen King novel or whatever, but the most useful/interesting implementations are going to be ones that don't engender lawsuits.
This year's computer-generated novels include " sunday in the sunday in the," mapping the colors from each dot in the Pointillist painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte onto words from the lyrics of a musical about that painting. ("Rush blind. Link adds shallot again....")

"People just seem to really enjoy coming together to pretend fake things are real," writes the Guardian.

"Thousands of Tumblr users have been making posters, soundtracks, drawings and fan fiction for a 1973 Scorsese film starring Robert De Niro — but it never existed." Released in 1973, the little-seen Scorsese flick starred Robert De Niro as Goncharov, "a former discotheque owner who comes to Naples after the fall of the Soviet Union" with the goal of becoming a mob boss. Harvey Keitel plays the eye-patched Andrey (or Andrei) "The Banker" Daddano; Gene Hackman plays Valery Michailov; Al Pacino appears as Mario Ambrosini and Cybill Shepherd plays Goncharov's wife, Katya. Apparently, it was really good and was added to the Criterion Collection.

And you've never heard of it because it doesn't actually exist....

A few years ago, a Tumblr user posted a photo of some "knockoff boots" they had ordered online that had a very strange tag on the tongue: "The greatest mafia movie ever made. Martin Scorsese presents GONCHAROV. Domenico Proccacci production. A film by Matteo JWHJ0715. About the Naples Mafia." This mostly went ignored until 2020, when another Tumblr user reblogged a comment made on the original post, reading: "this idiot hasn't seen goncharov...."

The internet works in mysterious ways; earlier this month, Tumblr user beelzeebub made a fake poster for the film, tens of thousands of people were suddenly sharing it and lo: a new Scorsese film was born... [L]ike all of the best jokes, people have really committed to the bit. There's the film's poster, which has the tagline "greatest mafia movie (n)ever made". A music teacher in Indiana composed a theme song for Goncharov, inspired by The Godfather. There is also a cash-in video game, with an accompanying soundtrack, and a fake VHS.

"Academics" wrote essays analysing the film, which were published in (fake) film journals. A representative for the movie reviewing platform Letterboxd even told the New York Times that they had had to remove multiple reviews for the film that had been submitted by users.

A Slashdot reader writes: First published in Jan. '21, a new publication entitled Measurement Quantization affirms the #42 is the address of our universe (Appx. AC), a distinguishing feature of our construct that ultimately answers the question to life, the universe and everything – from a physicist's point-of-view. Importantly, the International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics – is a top-tier journal indexed to NASA's Astronomical Data System (ADS), the after peer review version of arXiv.org.

With just over 500 equations, the paper resolves a comprehensive physical description of dark energy, dark matter, discrete gravity, and unification. Resolving over 30 outstanding problems in modern physics, the paper derives the physical constants from first principles, demonstrates the physical significance of Planck's units, resolves discrete versions of SR and GR, derives the equivalence principle, presents a parameter free description of early universe events, discovers a new form of length contraction not related to Einstein's relativity and identifies the discrete state of our universe – 42. Forty-two is what defines our universe from any other version of a universe. It also determines the rate of expansion and the ground state orbital of an atom, thus reducing the number of stable universes as we understand them to just a few.

So, while Douglas Adams may have just been randomly picking numbers when writing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, perhaps we also live in a universe that likes to humor itself.

Smartphones "have made it easier than ever to avoid interacting with the people in our immediate environment, writes New York City-based author Joe Keohane.

But is that always good? "Some social scientists believe teaching kids that literally everyone in the world they hadn't met is dangerous may have been actively harmful." For several years, I researched why we don't talk to strangers and what happens when we do for my book, The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World. This effort put me in the company of anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, archeologists, urban designers, activists, philosophers, and theologians, plus hundreds of random strangers I talked to wherever I went. What I learned was this: we miss a lot by being afraid of strangers. Talking to strangers — under the right conditions — is good for us, good for our neighborhoods, our towns and cities, our nations, and our world. Talking to strangers can teach you things, deepen you, make you a better citizen, a better thinker, and a better person.

It's a good way to live. But it's more than that. In a rapidly changing, infinitely complex, furiously polarised world, it's a way to survive....

Talking to strangers can also make us wiser, more worldly, and more empathetic, says Harvard University professor and MacArthur "genius grant" recipient, Danielle Allen. When she was teaching at the University of Chicago, Allen was repeatedly warned by colleagues to stay away from the poorer side of town. She believes that this "fear of strangers was actually eroding a lot of [her peers'] intellectual and social capacities". She declined to stay away, and did some of her most admired work in those neighbourhoods. She has since devoted her career to fostering connections between people and groups that otherwise would not interact. "Real knowledge of what's outside one's garden cures fear," Allen writes, "but only by talking to strangers can we come by such knowledge."

By talking to strangers, you get a glimpse of the mind-boggling complexity of the human species, and the infinite variety of human experiences. It's a cliché, but you get to see the world from the eyes of another, without which wisdom is impossible.... When these interactions go well — and they generally do — the positive perception of the stranger can generalise into better feelings about people. For me — and many of the respected experts and complete strangers I've spoken to — it comes down to a question of data. If I based all my perceptions of humanity on what is available through my phone or laptop, I would have a fantastically negative view of most other people.

Wikipedia describes Homestar Runner as "a blend of surreal humour, self-parody, and references to popular culture, in particular video games, classic television, and popular music." But after launching in 2000, the web-based cartoon became a cultural phenomenon, co-creator Mike Chapman remembered in 2017: On the same day we received a demo of a song that John Linnell from They Might Be Giants recorded for a Strong Bad Email and a full-size working Tom Servo puppet from Jim Mallon from Mystery Science Theater 3000.... The Homestar references in the Buffy and Angel finales forever ago were huge. And there was this picture of Joss Whedon in a Strong Bad shirt from around that time that someone sent us that we couldn't believe. Years later, a photo of Geddy Lee from Rush wearing a Strong Bad hat on stage circulated which similarly freaked us out. We have no idea if he knew what Strong Bad was, but our dumb animal character was on his head while he probably shredded 'Working Man' so I'll take it!
After a mutli-year hiatus starting around 2009, the site has only been updating sporadically — and some worried that the end of Flash also meant the end of the Flash-based cartoon and its web site altogether. But on the day Flash Player was officially discontinued — December 31st, 2020 — a "post-Flash update" appeared at HomestarRunner.com: What happened our website? Flash is finally dead-dead-dead so something drastic had to be done so people could still watch their favorite cartoons and sbemails with super-compressed mp3 audio and hidden clicky-clicky easter eggs...!

[O]nce you click "come on in," you'll find yourself in familiar territory thanks to the Ruffle Project. It emulates Flash in such a way that all browsers and devices can finally play our cartoons and even some games.... Your favorite easter eggs are still hidden and now you can even choose to watch a YouTube version if there is one.

Keep in mind, Ruffle is still in development so not everything works perfectly. Games made after, say 2007, will probably be pretty janky but Ruffle plans on ulitmately supporting those too one day. And any cartoons with video elements in them (Puppet Jams, death metal) will just show you an empy box where the video should be. But hang in there and one day everything will be just like it was that summer when we got free cable somehow and Grandma still lived in the spare bedroom.
And since then, new content has quietly been appearing at HomestarRunner.com. (Most recently, Thursday the site added a teaser for an upcoming Halloween video.)

The Homestar Runner wiki is tracking this year's new content, which includes:

• Strong Bad livestreaming his play of a text adventure (titled "Disk 4 of 12 — Vampire's Castle") on September 19th
• Strong Sad streaming a demo of the expando deck for Trogdor!! The Board Game (July 2)
• A Twitch parody in which Strong Bad livestreams a speedrun on a horrific beef-themed game (titled "Strong-Play: Marzipan Beef Reverser") on April 25th
• A new Strong Bad Email on April 1st

And past videos are now also being uploaded on the site's official YouTube channel.

CNN reports: Elon Musk's latest internet jest has taken the form of a perfume with an unsavory scent: "Burnt Hair.

" The tech mogul, entrepreneur and sometimes internet troll announced the launch of the product on Twitter on Tuesday, calling it "the finest fragrance on Earth." The perfume is apparently being sold on The Boring Company's website for $100 and will ship in the first quarter of 2023....

The product is the successor to other Musk memes, like the $500 flamethrowers he sold in 2018 or the Tesla-branded satin shorts he debuted as investors "shorted" the company in 2020....

Musk appears to be enjoying the media attention on his newest lark. He switched his Twitter bio to "Perfume Salesman" and claimed to have sold 20,000 bottles....

"Please buy my perfume, so I can buy Twitter," he wrote on Wednesday.

Released 40 years ago, the 1982 movie Tron eventually spawned a 2010 sequel (plus a 19-episode animated series that aired on Disney XD between 2012 and 2013). But it also spawned a rollercoaster...

Tron Lightcycle Run first opened at Shanghai Disneyland in 2016. (You can find some ride-through footage on YouTube. Apparently riders race against a yellow lightcycle....)

And now the ride is finally coming to Florida, reports Cinemablend: Tron Lightcycle Run began its construction back in 2018 and while the E-ticket ride was massive, we expected things to move along as quickly as possible. However, then a little pandemic happened and that changed a lot. Construction was delayed and even after the parks reopened things were going quite slowly, but more recently things have picked up, and now we know when the ride will finally be open.

At the D23 Expo today Disney Parks Chairman Josh D'Amaro announced a Spring 2023 opening date for Tron Lightcycle Run..... Lightcycle Run has been undergoing testing with live riders of late, a video was shown during the presentation of Josh D'Amaro himself doing a run...
CNET quotes D'Amaro as saying the ride is "really close to being ready for showtime."

Last month an SFGate.com columnist explored plans for San Francisco's first NFT-based restaurant, an "ostentatious Japanese-themed restaurant and private club" featuring a members-only Sho Club Sky Lounge. What's more galling than the repeated use of the terms "immersive" and "experiential" to describe an actual restaurant is the fact that, as the group's website proudly proclaims, the astronomically expensive and exclusive eatery "is the only rooftop restaurant located on the Salesforce Transit Center's roof." As downtown San Francisco suffers through soaring homelessness, vacant storefronts and a deadly fentanyl epidemic, the idea of its newest public space only providing food for those willing to spend exorbitant sums is brazen. In a terrifying J.G. Ballard-like dystopian metaphor come to life, the private lounge, which will charge a top-tier membership fee of $300,000 a pop... will be situated 70 feet above surrounding homeless encampments. [The cheapest membership tier is available for a one-time fee of $7,500.]

In maybe a projection of the venture's deficits, the most common word used in interviews and marketing blurbs surrounding the decidedly exclusionary club is "community." The word, adored in the crypto world, is used relentlessly in all of Sho marketing materials, as though if said enough times this ultra-bourgeois establishment under the bright lights of Salesforce Tower's beaming helmet will somehow magically help the working man under Sauron's gaze.... Outside of the private members lounge, the restaurant will be open to the public. Sho told SFGATE over email that the number of seats and tables available to the public is not available at this time....

It's a smug celebration of the widening chasm of wealth disparity, planted in a time and a city that needs just the opposite.
Marketing materials note that paid memberships "will be minted on the Ethereum blockchain. As an NFT, the SHO Club membership will be an asset to the holder, publicly verifiable, and can later be sold or transferred on the secondary market."

So Friday SFGate.com paid another visit to "the empty husk of the building that will, if all goes smoothly, soon sell NFT memberships between $7,500 and $300,000 to join a hospitality club at a yet-to-be-constructed Japanese fine-dining restaurant in the middle of Salesforce Park." (Predicted grand opening date: September/October 2023.) The public will have allocated reservations too, [CEO Joshua] Sigel said, without revealing numbers. "Then what's the selling point for a membership?" a reporter interjected. There will be special events, a monthly membership dinner for certain tiers, and concierge service, among other benefits, Sigel said... Sigel said there's "fantastic" interest in Sho Club memberships, that they've had thousands of sign-ups on their website, and they anticipate rolling out a private NFT sale next week, followed by a public sale in mid- to late September....

Inevitably came web3 talk. Once the 3,275 NFTs memberships are sold, that's it, no more. If you want to become a member after that, you'll have to obtain a Sho Group NFT on OpenSea, a secondary market for NFTs.... Sho Group will get a 10% kickback on any secondary market sales of NFTs. A reporter astutely asked how the restaurant will keep tabs on who its new members are, once the NFTs start exchanging hands. In other words: What happens when a genuine piece of s — t snags a secondary market membership? Sigel assured us the restaurant will have a terms and conditions agreement to deal with unruly forces....

Someone abruptly asked Sigel if he'll be helping the homeless, a non sequitur of epic proportions that does, in fairness, loom over everything related to this fancy restaurant located in an ostensibly public park. "Great question," he started, announcing that in the next few weeks, his group will be rolling out a foundation of some kind. "For those who know Sho and I well, giving back and supporting the community is a very big thing for us. You specifically asked about the homeless — I have a family member who's homeless. It's near and dear to my heart, in terms of serving not only the unhoused, but also those who are in need of food."

Here's an interesting story from the Washington Post. (Alternate URL here...) When the Green Bay Packers walked onto the practice field this week, they were greeted by an unusual new teammate: a robot. In videos on Twitter, a 6-foot tall white robotic machine simulates a punter, kicking balls at a rapid pace to players downfield. The robot, which holds six balls in a revolving cartridge, could also imitate a quarterback's style including the speed, arc and timing of a throw.

The Seeker is a robotic quarterback, kicker and punter rolled into one. It's a modern day version of a piece of football equipment, called a JUGS machine, that's been used to simulate throws and kicks to football players for decades. The Seeker, company officials say however, is a more accurate thrower and runs software to let players practice more advanced gameplay scenarios. he robot, created by Dallas-based Monarc Sport, is starting to gain adoption. Top college football programs, such as Louisiana State University, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Iowa, all count the Seeker as part of their training strategy. The Green Bay Packers are the first team in the National Football League to try the technology.

The Seeker's software allows players to customize how they practice with it. Athletes can catch balls from close to the machine to improve hand-eye coordination. They can also program the robot to throw a ball to a spot on the field, or simulate more-lifelike conditions by over or underthrowing a ball. Players wear a pager-like tag which allows the robot to track their location on the field, and throw a ball accurately within inches. "It gives so much opportunity for our guys to get reps without the need of having a quarterback there," said Ben Hansen, the director of football administration at Iowa, where the technology was first tested. "That's a huge plus...."

One of the most helpful parts of the technology, he said, is being able to program it to throw passes that simulate game day conditions. Unlike the JUGS machine, he said, which doesn't have software to pass in random patterns, the Seeker can purposefully throw passes that aren't perfect.... A case study published in April by Microsoft, which provides the software ecosystem for the robot, noted that West Virginia University's dropped passes rate fell to four percent in 2021, down from 53 percent the past season after introducing the robot into training.

The university's senior athletic director said the robot deserved a "share of the credit" for that outcome.

Last year Rodolfo Castro made baseball history. Called up to the Major Leagues in April, the 22-year-old eventually recorded his first hit — a home run. But his next four recorded hits were all also home runs, something no player had done since 1901.

CBS News reports that this week, finally called back up to the Major Leagues, Castro again made history — of another sort: Modern technology has allowed people to take their phones, as well as the power of the internet, with them anywhere they go. Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Rodolfo Castro took his around the bases against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday night.
Yep — an iPhone made a bizarre cameo in the 4th inning, reports the Associated Press: Castro and third base coach Mike Rabelo stood and stared, mortified.... Even third base umpire Adam Hamari had the perfect reaction, pointing at the phone that came flying out of Castro's back pocket during a head-first slide, trying not to giggle at the absurdity of the situation.

Those around the sport cringed along with them. "That's obviously not something that should happen," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said.... This faux pas just happened to be at a televised big league game, creating a video clip seen by millions.

"I just remember getting dressed, putting my pants on, getting something to eat, using the restroom," the 23-year-old Castro said through a translator Tuesday night after the Pirates lost 6-4 to Arizona. "Never did it ever cross my mind that I still had my cellphone on me...."

It's far from the first time a phone has made a cameo on a pro sports field. One of the most famous examples came nearly 20 years ago when New Orleans Saints receiver Joe Horn pulled out a flip phone — remember those? — that he had hidden in the padding around the goalpost and then acted like he was taking a call after scoring a touchdown.

"If you've been following Joe Barnard's rocketry projects for the past few years, you'll know that one of his primary goals has been to propulsively land a model rocket like SpaceX," reports Hackaday.

"Now, 7 years into the rollercoaster journey, he has finally achieved that goal with the latest version of his Scout rocket." Many things need to come together to launch AND land a rocket on standard hobby-grade solid fuel rocket motors. A core component is stabilization of the rocket during the entire flight, which achieved using a thrust-vectoring control (TVC) mount for the rocket motors and a custom flight computer loaded with carefully tuned guidance software. Until recently, the TVC mounts were 3D printed, but Joe upgraded it to machined aluminum to eliminate as much flex and play as possible.

Since solid-fuel rockets can't technically be throttled, [Joe] originally tried to time the ignition time of the descent motor in such a manner that it would burn out as the rocket touches down. The ignition time and exact thrust numbers simply weren't repeatable enough, so in his 2020 landing attempts, he achieved some throttling effect by oscillating the TVC side to side, reducing the vertical thrust component. This eventually gave way to the final solution, a pair of ceramic pincers which block the thrust of the motors as required.
"I have been trying to do what you just saw for seven years," Barnard says in the video, remembering that he started the project back in the fall of 2015. "Not because it's revolutionary or game-changing for model rocketry, but because it's a really cool project, and I knew I would learn a lot." (On Twitter, Barnard added that "I had no background in aero, electrical engineering, coding, etc so it took a lot of trial and error.")

And in the video Barnard made sure to thank his 690 supporters on Patreon — and also shared a surprise. He'd printed out a sheet of paper with the name of every one of his Patreon supporters, rolled it up, and inserted it into the hollow center of his rocket before the flight. "So if you support, you were part of this."

The Patreon account offers more details on Barnard's mission. "Learning by experimentation is the most effective way to gain a deep understanding of new concepts, which is why providing hands-on experience with advanced rocketry components is important for the next generation of scientists, engineers, and astronauts."

And the video ends with Bernard describing the next projects he'll attempt:

• More SpaceX-like vertical landings

• A 9-foot model of SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy rocket

• A special secret project known only as "the meat rocket"

• An actual model-rocket space shot — that is, a rocket that ascends over 100 kilometers

Professional baseball has a dirty secret, according to the New York Times. While a catcher may secretly signal for certain pitches using their fingers, "Multiple managers say there are clubs who use a dozen or more staff members to study video and swipe signs."

But should that practice be stopped with technology? Adding cameras in every ballpark and video monitors in every clubhouse opened the door to an unintended consequence: electronic cheating. The 2017 Houston Astros brazenly stepped through that door, developing an elaborate sign-stealing system that helped them win a World Series. Two years later, when that system was revealed to the public, it resulted in firings, suspensions and, ultimately, the permanent tarnishing of a championship.... This season, Major League Baseball took a big leap forward in distancing itself from the stain of sign stealing with the introduction of PitchCom, a device controlled by a catcher that allows him to wordlessly communicate with the pitcher about what pitch is coming — information that is simultaneously shared with as many as three other players on the field through earpieces in the bands of their caps....

There have been a few hiccups, with devices not operating, or pitchers not being able to hear, but so far this season, everyone in baseball seems to agree that PitchCom, like it or not, is working. Carlos Correa, a shortstop for the Minnesota Twins who has long served as the unofficial, and unapologetic, spokesman of those 2017 Astros, went as far as saying that the tool would have foiled his old team's systemic cheating. "I think so," Correa said. "Because there are no signs now."

Yet not all pitchers are on board. Max Scherzer, the ace of the New York Mets and baseball's highest-paid player this season, sampled PitchCom for the first time late last month in a game against the Yankees and emerged with conflicting thoughts. "It works," he said. "Does it help? Yes. But I also think it should be illegal."

Scherzer went so far as to suggest that the game would be losing something by eliminating sign stealing.

"It's part of baseball, trying to crack someone's signs," Scherzer said. "Does it have its desired intent that it cleans up the game a little bit?" he said of PitchCom. "Yes. But I also feel like it takes away part of the game."
That comment was called "a little naive" and "a bit hypocritical" by a relief pitcher in Seattle, who also had this to say about Scherzer. "I have a very good feeling that he's been on a team or two that steals signs."

For now, electronic pitch-signalling remains optional — and yet has been adopted by every one of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball, the article points out (attributing this to "a leaguewide paranoia".) And the League's executive vice president for baseball operations points out a second advantage.

Since catchers don't need to run through a long series of decoy signals, "It has actually sped the game up a little bit."

"I started playing pickleball more than 50 years ago," Bill Gates says in a new video — not long after the game was invented...

Now the 66-year-old Microsoft co-founder writes in a blog post that "I've been a little stunned — and delighted — by the sudden popularity of one of my favorite pastimes..." Largely confined to the Pacific Northwest for decades, it has now emerged as America's fastest-growing sport.... It's best described as a mash up of tennis, badminton, and ping-pong. And if you haven't heard of it, I expect you soon will....

Boredom was what got this sport started in 1965. Three dads living on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, came home one summer evening to find their children complaining that there was nothing for them to do. So, they found a net, a Wiffle ball, some ping-pong paddles, and created a game on an old badminton court that the entire family could play together.... Over the next year, the three friends worked together to develop a set of rules, formalize the court layout, and introduce a larger plywood paddle that was good for striking the ball. And they decided to call it pickleball... Meanwhile, word slowly spread in Seattle of this odd new pastime.

My dad was friends with the game's inventors, Joel Pritchard, a state legislator and later Washington's lieutenant governor, Barney McCallum, and Bill Bell. He learned about their creation and by the late 1960s, he got inspired to build a pickleball court at our house. I've been playing ever since. At the time, the pickleball community was very small. I doubt there were more than a thousand people in the Seattle area who had ever seen the sport when my family picked it up. And I don't think anyone expected it would ever become a national phenomenon.

Today, there are more than 4.8 million players nationwide, a growth of nearly 40 percent over the last two years. And I expect it will only get bigger....

The best thing about pickleball, however, is that it's just super fun. I look forward to playing a pickleball game with friends and family at least once a week and more often during the summer.

"Ten years on from discovery, there's still a lot left to learn about the Higgs boson!" tweeted a researcher anticipating their experiment on the Large Hadron Collider.

But on Facebook, there's posts calling CERN "a demonic/Evil machine that opens up portals to other dimensions/Hell/other spiritual worlds" and "brings in demons wicked spirits/High Evil Principalities." And USA Today reports that similar posts making that same claim "have amassed hundreds of interactions on Facebook and Twitter." (Their article then goes on to assure readers that "the claim is baseless.")

In fact, USA Today's "Fact Check" feature spent some time investigating the claims of a demonic machine opening portals to hell, and after exhaustive research can report that at this time "There is no evidence scientists at CERN are engaged in anything other than scientific-related activities." Physics experts told USA TODAY scientists use the Large Hadron Collider to collide particles at very high energies to study matter. There is no truth to the claim that scientists at CERN are communicating with demonic entities and using the collider to open up a portal to hell, Dejan Stojkovic, a physics professor at the University at Buffalo, told USA TODAY in an email.
The physics behind his explanation is interesting: "To create a black hole or a wormhole, even microscopic ones, with our current technology, in the context of our standard theories of gravity, we need an accelerator as big as the whole universe," Stojkovic said. "So there is no chance whatsoever to create such a portal at the [Large Hadron Collider]."

"Since these are previously unexplored energies in a controlled environment, we might expect production of some new elementary particles that we did not know if they existed," Stojkovic said. "However, these are microscopic particles, so there is no chance such a portal would open."
Facebook has now attached a warning to its user's post about a demonic machine opening up portals to hell, notifying users that the post contains "False information." (It adds that this assertion has been "checked by independent fact-checkers," linking back to USA Today's article for support.)

USA Today ends its analysis with a definitive summation: Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that scientists at CERN are communicating with demonic entities and opening a portal to hell. There is no evidence scientists at CERN are engaged in anything other than scientific-related activities. The collider cannot open up portals to other dimensions. Experts said scientists use the machine to collide particles at very high energies to study matter....

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

Thanks to Slashdot reader Iamthecheese for sharing the story!

"There's a new cryptocurrency in town," quips SFGate. "But the only crash you'll experience with this one is from sugar." Inspired by the recent headlines and discussion around cryptocurrency, Hostess decided to capitalize by debuting their own edible investment: Enter $TWINKcoin, the latest limited-edition Twinkie iteration to hit shelves.

"We saw an opportunity to release a new take on fan-favorite Hostess Twinkies, to create the best investment consumers can make to satisfy their snacking needs," a Hostess representative told Decrypt. "With more than 12,000 cryptocurrencies already in existence, $TWINKcoin is the first coin-shaped golden sponge cake of its kind. And, what's more, it's a currency with a stable value — it's always delicious!"

Compositionally, $TWINKcoins are indistinguishable from original Twinkies, with the same dense cake and synthetic cream filling; but instead of the classic cylindrical mold, the pecuniary pastries are formed into coin-shaped discs.

The British army is "investigating an apparent hack," reports Engadget, after its official Twitter and YouTube accounts were compromised Sunday: News of the breach was first reported by Web3 is Going Great . According to the blog, both accounts were simultaneously compromised to promote two different cryptocurrency scams.

Although it has since been scrubbed, the army's verified Twitter account was briefly changed to look like a page for The Possessed, a project involving a collection of 10,000 animated NFTs with a price floor of 0.58 Ethereum (approximately $1,063). During that time, the account tweeted out multiple links to a fake minting website....

Over on YouTube, the army's channel [had] been made to look like a page for Ark Invest...livestreaming videos that repurpose old footage of Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and Ark CEO Katie Wood discussing cryptocurrency. The clips feature an overlay promoting "double your money" Bitcoin and Ethereum scams. According to Web3 is Going Great, a similar scheme netted scammers $1.3 million this past May. It's unclear who is behind the attacks.

"The dream of the 1990s internet is still alive, if you look in the right corners," argues the New York Times' newsletter On Tech: More than 17 million Americans regularly use MapQuest, one of the first digital mapping websites that was long ago overtaken by Google and Apple, according to data from the research firm Comscore. The dot-com-era internet portal Go.com shut down 20 years ago, but its ghost lives on in the "Go" that's part of web addresses for some Disney sites.

Ask Jeeves, a web search engine that started before Google, still has fans and people typing "Ask Jeeves a question" into Google searches.

Maybe you scoff at AOL, but it is still the 50th most popular website in the U.S., according to figures from SimilarWeb. The early 2000s virtual world Second Life never went away and is now having a second life as a proto-metaverse brand....

There is something heartwarming about pioneers that shaped the early internet, lost their cool and dominance, and eventually carved out a niche. They'll never be as popular or powerful as they were a generation ago, but musty internet brands might still have a fruitful purpose. These brands have managed to stay alive through a combination of inertia, nostalgia, the fact they've produced a product that people like, digital moneymaking prowess and oddities of the rickety internet.

If today's internet powers like Facebook and Pinterest lose relevance, too, they could stick around for decades.
The article quotes Bloomberg Opinion columnist Ben Schott calling the older sites "almost cockroach brands. They're small enough and resilient enough that they can't be killed."

The New York Times tells the story of crop circles, "the mysterious patterns that regularly intrigued people around the world in the 1980s and '90s, prompting speculation about alien visitors, ancient spiritual forces, weather anomalies, secret weapons tests and other theories."

They call the phenomenon "a reminder that even before the era of social media and the internet, hoaxes were able to spread virally around the world and true believers could cling stubbornly to conspiracy theories despite a lack of evidence — or even the existence of evidence to the contrary." In the case of crop circles, the most important contradictory evidence emerged on Sept. 9, 1991, when the British newspaper Today ran a front-page story under the headline "Men who conned the world," revealing that two mischievous friends from Southampton had secretly made more than 200 of the patterns over the previous decade.

Doug Bower, then 67, and his friend Dave Chorley, 62, admitted to a reporter, Graham Brough, that in the late 1970s they had begun using planks of wood with ropes attached to each end to stamp circles in crops by holding the ropes in their hands and pressing the planks underfoot. They had then watched with amusement as their anonymous antics eventually attracted media attention and began being copied by imitators around the world... The real-life pranksters phoned the newspaper to come clean, according to Mr. Brough, now 62, who says he verified their claims by checking an archive of more than 200 crop circle designs stored in a shed behind Mr. Bower's home. The designs were clearly aged and matched the patterns they had made over the years, Mr. Brough said.

"I spent a week getting them to show me how they had done it all, and I have never laughed as much in my life," he recalled. "The prevailing wisdom at the time was that aliens were about to land any day, but it had all been kicked off by these two blokes who'd have a couple of pints at their favorite pub and then head out into the night to have a bit of fun...."

"The people who wanted to keep believing in aliens and everything else just ignored the evidence, no matter how obvious it was," said Rob Irving, who had begun emulating the two pranksters' work in 1989 and befriended them after they went public.... "The power of the art came from the mystery, and Doug forever regretted coming forward because the mystery was lost."
A professor of psychology at the University of Bristol in Britain explains to the Times the thought process of believers (which he says predated the internet). "instead of admitting that we live in a world we can't control, they take comfort from believing that there is agency involved and someone who can be blamed." The Times finds an example in a crop circle proponent who now believes, to this day, that even if crop circles are all man-made, the people making them have unwittingly "been prompted by an independent nonhuman mind."

Although after a new crop circle appeared, the Times obtained an alternative perspective — from a neighboring farmer. "It is just so irresponsible to be trespassing and destroying food in the middle of a global wheat shortage."

"Yes, it's possible to get the game Doom running atop this system firmware," reports Phoronix.

Tom's Hardware explains: Originally known as LinuxBIOS, which provides a better clue to its utility value, Coreboot 4.17 supports new motherboards, delivers a new bootloader, supports AMD Platform Secure Boot (PSB), comes with a handful of fixes, and... a port of Doom.

Coreboot is a free and open-source BIOS implementation that supports numerous extensions known as Payloads. These Payloads add functionality to the minimal code that is the basis of Coreboot. Therefore, a great deal of customizability is available to Coreboot users to determine exactly what their BIOS ROMs contain via Payload choices.

To configure Coreboot for a usable setup, one might typically start by adding a bootloader, with a choice of eight available currently according to the official Wiki. Then there is support for various popular OSes, a handful of utilities provided as Payloads, and even some games. If your BIOS flash memory space is large enough, you could even shoehorn in a Linux distribution.
There's a few caveats. (There's no sound or "save game" feature, "and your system will hang on exiting the game.")

But their article still calls Doom "a great new choice if you are bored of the Grub Invaders (Space Invaders) and Tint (Tetris) clone Payloads, bringing 3D gaming to your BIOS."

Would you drink a glass of Klingon Blood Wine? Or Cardassian Kanar Red Blend? Maybe you'd prefer the Andorian Blue Premium Chardonnay, or the United Federation of Planets Special Reserve Sauvignon Blanc...

Star Trek wines — a collaboration between CBS Consumer Products and Wines That Rock — has now added those four new flavors to their original two (which Ars Technica described as "far better than we expected, although very much over-priced.") So Ars hosted a wine tasting including the new wines, with their six testers joining "Q himself — aka actor John de Lancie." Also taste-testing was The Orville writer Andre Bormanis (a former science advisor for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise).

"Wine assessments were anonymous, in keeping with the gathering's super-casual vibe. And the wine was purchased out of pocket, not gifted for promotional purposes."

They'd tried this once before in 2019. Their three-year mission? To explore strange new wines... Next up: A Bordeaux blend from Chateau Picard (although the label claims it's a 2386 vintage to keep the conceit going): 85 percent cabernet and 15 percent merlot. As I noted [in 2019], this is a bona fide winery, with a centuries-old vineyard in the St.-Estephe region. It just so happens that Jean-Luc Picard's family has long run a fictional vineyard of the same name, albeit in the Burgundy region rather than Bordeaux — it features prominently in Picard. The real winery agreed to collaborate on a special edition of their cru bourgeois vintage for the Star Trek collection.

The Bordeaux blend also came out on top with the 2022 tasting crew, who declared it "perfectly quaffable" and "surprisingly good." The wine is light and dry, "easy on the palate," with "a clean finish," and fairly well balanced. It's almost as if Bordeaux wine makers have had centuries of experience to draw upon. This was the only bottle the tasting crew polished off completely.

Alas, the four new varieties in the Star Trek wine collection fall far, far short of their predecessors....

I will give the Star Trek Wine folks props for creative bottle design, especially the corkscrew shape of the Cardassian blend. The broad consensus was that the Klingon Blood Wine is trying to be a pinot noir and falling short; it's basically a very fruity California cabernet, with perhaps a hint of pepper. "Whoever supplied this blood ate nothing but fruit salad the week prior," one taster noted, with another simply writing, "Way too sweet." The most generous assessment was that it is "drinkable but not extraordinary...."

With the evergreen caveat that taste in wine is highly subjective, here's our recommendation. Stick with the original two bottles for your Star Trek wine, or save yourself some money and get something comparable for a fraction of the price — unless, of course, you're really keen to collect the whole set of unusual bottle designs. Or you're a Cardassian who loves really sweet wine.
Meanwhile, William Shatner himself is raising money for charity by auctioning off a bottle of "James T. Kirk" whiskey — the actual prop used on Star Trek: Picard. "The bottle does not contain real Bourbon just a colored liquid," its description notes — but the bottle has actually been autographed by 91-year-old Shatner.

"Serial entrepreneur" Gary Vaynerchuk launched a four-day conference "exploring digital ownership and the way emerging technologies could interact with art, sports and entertainment," reports the Pioneer Press: It's billed as an event "featuring icons of business, sports, music, arts, Web3, and popular culture in conversation to build lasting relationships, share ideas, and connect with the community." VeeCon is expected to draw over 10,000 visitors from around world who will hear from 150 speakers, from New Age guru Deepak Chopra to filmmaker Spike Lee and the ubiquitous rapper Snoop Dogg. [Also speaking: Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg's sister]

Tickets were sold in the form of NFTs, which are non-fungible tokens sold on the blockchain, a digital ledger of transactions. Much of the conference will dive into the potential applications for NFTs.

Ami Barzelay, chief product officer of Crinkle, a shopping rewards optimizer, described NFT ownership as "digital bragging rights." An NFT, which could be an image, song or video, can be copied and enjoyed by anyone in the world, but it may have just one owner. The NFT market, still in its infancy, has seen wild swings in what people are willing to pay for digital assets, which Barzelay has experienced first-hand. He said that for fun, he paid $100 for a video clip of Tiger Woods and later sold it for $5,000.

There is inherent skepticism and fear around buying and selling things that don't exist in the physical world, which VeeCon aims to address.
The article quotes Vaynerchuk as saying "Education and communication solve everything," adding later that "NFTs are really fun for collectability, but it is a tiny part of the consumer blockchain."

CNBC points out that holders of the NFT-format tickets "also are given exclusive access to the annual event for three years after the NFT's purchase." Though they also end on a skeptical note: "Right now the overwhelming energy of the space is very short term. I would call it greed. Many are not spending their time on education," Vaynerchuk said.

"The reality is that all that behavior is going to lead to 97-98% of these current projects losing value over the next 24-36 months because the supply and demand curves will not work out."
The event's schedule included happy hours that were officially hosted by Johnnie Walker and Captain Morgan.

On Twitter one attendee reported from the festival that digital artist Beeple "just got caked in the face in front of 7,000 people by Steve Aoki and it was incredible."

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Today sees an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of 1970s children's programming giants Sid & Marty Krofft. (Born in 1929, Sid Krofft will turn 93 in July). And reportedly Marty Krofft has now partnered with NFT producer Orange Comet "in a multiyear contract to release NFTs based on the often enigmatic and much-beloved television shows they have brought to us since 1969."

The first one commemorates Land of the Lost — dropping sometime after September.

Today I learned their big break in America came from making puppets for Dean Martin's show, followed by designing and directing the Banana Splits and a string of successful children's shows on Saturday mornings. ( Land of the Lost, H.R. Pufunstuf, Lidsville, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters...) Looking back, Krofft muses that even today somewhere in New York City, "some guy 50 years old, remembers the damn theme songs. Because there were only three networks, so basically every kid in America saw our shows." In the article Marty Krofft describes their style as "a nightmare and bizarre" — or, more pragmatically, as "Disney without a budget" (while crediting future Disney CEO Michael Eisner for being their mentor).

Yet the article adds that "They were nearly unstoppable with styrofoam, paint and cloth. In a digital universe of truly endless possibilities, there is no telling where they could take their stories."