ChatGPT flunks Martin Gardner’s old brainteasers.
If you’re a longtime Scientific American reader, or just a geek of a certain age, you’ll remember Martin Gardner’s “Mathematical Games” puzzle column. (It got […]
Month: May 2023
Science Art: Intercepting Well, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, by R.S. Bross, 1882.
This is an illustration of a public waterwork taken from the pages of A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, […]
Out of Africa, yes, but all over Africa and not all at once.
New York Times rewrites human prehistory with a genetic study that replaces the tree of life – a diagram of human origins with one trunk […]
SONG: In the Years Before A/C
SONG: “In the Years Before A/C”. ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: National Park Service, 1 May 2023, “National Park archeologists find remains of an underwater hospital and […]
No song today.
I have rough drafts of music tracks and written lyrics… but have not yet brought the two together. More soon, along with a penitential cover.
Science Art: Painted Bunting, by John James Audubon, 1841
These are painted buntings, “1.2.3. males in different states of plumage and 4. female” in the branches of a chickasaw wild plum, as displayed in […]
Sunken cemetery, hospital found off the Dry Tortugas.
They used to be above water, but the National Park Service reports that divers surveying a sunken island off Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas […]
U.S. Marshals use Twitter partner to scope out abortion-rights protestors.
The Intercept has found that Dataminr, an “official partner” of Twitter, has been collecting information on abortion protests for federal law enforcement by paying close […]
The internet isn’t all bots. It’s about *half* bots.
Security Magazine evaluates (using Imperva’s Bad Bot Report) just how much internet traffic comes from humans, and how much is automatically generated machines. The latest […]
Science Art: Causerie sur la Peche Fluviale en Chine, 1909.
Do two sampans make a catamaran? Looks like they did for this Chinese fisherman at the dawn of the last century, angling on the river […]
Big ol’ brontotheres.
Science News reports on new discoveries shedding light on how prehistoric mammals grew so dang big, evolutionarily, once the dinosaurs cleared out: Brontotheres were among […]
China makes first ChatGPT arrest – for manufacturing fake news.
Vice‘s Motherboard covers what is probably the first-ever AI-related arrest, by Chinese officials who accuse a man of using the software to mass-produce fake news: […]
Science Art: The Engineer’s Sketch-Book, 1508 & 1509.
Two machines, or parts of machines. These are a “Four-Plunger Valve” and “A starter valve” from The engineer’s sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appliances, contrivances […]
An octopus will say its name in stripes.
Ars Technica gets a first glimpse at the language of cephalopods, with the discovery that each octopus (which can change the pattern of its skin […]
Voyager 2 gets a slight reprieve – until 2026, at least.
NPR reports on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory finding a way to keep the plucky space probe going in the outer limits of the solar system […]