2026-03-10 21:36:38
“A group of runners starts jogging around a circular track, with each runner maintaining a unique, constant pace. Will every runner end up ‘lonely,’ or relatively far from everyone else, at least once, no matter their speeds?”
2026-03-10 20:29:42
Jay Graber is stepping down as CEO of Bluesky to “transition to a new role as Bluesky’s Chief Innovation Officer”. And they’re looking for a new permanent CEO.
2026-03-10 03:01:12
“What if we taught students to use AI critically, rather than insisting they ignore it or assume they’re using it to cheat?” asks college freshman Maximilian Milovidov. “Students will reach for these tools, whether universities ban them or not.”
2026-03-10 01:58:41
New web game that takes 2 min to play (and perhaps a lifetime to master?): Outsmart. “Five rounds, first to 3 wins. In each round, the higher bet wins. You have 100 total points, so bet wisely. Can you outsmart the machine?”
2026-03-10 01:00:00
The Library of Congress recently discovered a copy of a “long-lost” film made in ~1897 by George Méliès called Gugusse and the Automaton (Gugusse et l’Automate), which “had not been seen by anyone in likely more than a century” and “was the first appearance on film of what might be called a robot”. It’s also one of the first science fiction films ever made.
You can watch a digitized copy of the whole film here (it’s only 45 seconds long):
And here’s the story of how the film was discovered.
Equally delighted was Bill McFarland, the donor who had driven the box of films from his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, to have the cache evaluated.
His great-grandfather, William Delisle Frisbee, had been a potato farmer and schoolteacher in western Pennsylvania by day, but by night he was a traveling showman. He drove his horse and buggy from town to town to dazzle the locals with a projector and some of the world’s first moving pictures.
He set up shop in a local schoolroom, church, lodge or civic auditorium and showed magic lantern slides and short films with music from a newfangled phonograph. It was shocking.
“They must have been thrilled,” McFarland said. “They must have been out of their minds to see this motion picture and to hear the Edison phonograph.”
Tags: George Méliès · Gugusse and the Automaton · movies · robots · video
2026-03-09 23:54:23
GPS jamming and spoofing is becoming commonplace in war. “Ships in the region’s waters found their navigation systems had gone haywire, erroneously indicating that the vessels were at airports, a nuclear power plant and on Iranian land.”