Traveling with dogs is easy; cats not so much. Here's everything we've learned about traveling with cats in a travel trailer or RV.

The post How We Travel with a Cat in Our Tiny 17′ Casita Travel Trailer appeared first on Vagabondish.

Iif you're a new owner or just bought your first travel trailer, these are the must-have travel trailer accessories that may not have occurred to you.

The post Travel Trailer Accessories You Absolutely Need (Read This BEFORE Your First Trip) appeared first on Vagabondish.

Like almost any question about AI, “How does AI impact software architecture?” has two sides to it: how AI changes the practice of software architecture and how AI changes the things we architect. These questions are coupled; one can’t really be discussed without the other. But to jump to the conclusion, we can say that […]

July was a big month for model releases: There are new large models from Mistral and Meta, smaller multilingual models from Mistral and DeepL, another Mistral model that specializes in code generation, and a small version of GPT-4o. The security world saw another software supply chain disaster when CrowdStrike released a bad software update that […]

Platform engineering is the latest buzzword in IT operations. And like all other buzzwords, it’s in danger of becoming meaningless—in danger of meaning whatever some company with a “platform engineering” product wants to sell. We’ve seen that happen to too many useful concepts: Edge computing meant everything from caches at a cloud provider’s data center […]

This month, we’ll give AI a rest. Alex Russell has finished an excellent series of posts titled “Reckoning.” It’s a must-read for web developers. If you want to understand why our networks and laptops are much faster than they were 15 or 20 years ago, but the web is slower, it comes down to one […]

A recent article in Computerworld argued that the output from generative AI systems, like GPT and Gemini, isn’t as good as it used to be. It isn’t the first time I’ve heard this complaint, though I don’t know how widely held that opinion is. But I wonder: Is it correct? And if so, why? I […]

The model release train continues, with Mistral’s multimodal Pixtral 12B, OpenAI’s o1 models, and Roblox’s model for building 3D scenes. We also have another important AI-enabled programming tool: Cursor is an alternative to GitHub Copilot that’s getting rave reviews. Security will never cease to be a problem, but this month seems particularly problematic. The Mirai […]

In August 2024, we asked our customers to tell us about security: their role in security, their certifications, their concerns, and what their companies are doing to address those concerns. We had 1,322 complete responses, of which 419 (32%—roughly one-third) are members of a security team. 903 respondents aren’t on a security team, although 19% […]

Back in August, I cavalierly said that AI couldn’t design a car if it hadn’t seen one first, and I alluded to Henry Ford’s apocryphal statement “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” I’m not backing down on any of that, but the history of technology is always […]

I’m worried about AI. I’m not worried about it taking my job. I believe AI is a genuine productivity tool. By which I mean it can make developers produce more. The question is whether those developers are producing something good or not. The difference between an experienced developer and a junior is that an experienced […]

Modern organizations regard data as a strategic asset that drives efficiency, enhances decision making, and creates new value for customers. Across the organization—product management, marketing, operations, finance, and more—teams are overflowing with ideas on how data can elevate the business. To bring these ideas to life, companies are eagerly hiring data scientists for their technical […]

October had many language model releases. The mid-size models, and even the small models, are catching up to frontier models like GPT-4.5o in performance. But the release that blew us all away wasn’t a language model: It was Claude’s computer use API. Computer use allows you to teach Claude how to use a computer: how […]

Jon Stewart tears apart the denials and false claims Trump supporters make about their terrible candidate and wonders how anyone can remain undecided.

At the top of this piece by Stewart sits the strange claim MAGAs keep making that Vice President Harris isn't clear about her plans. — Read the rest

The post Jon Stewart on the bewildering denial in remaining an undecided voter appeared first on Boing Boing.

Adjudicated rapist and convicted felon Donald Trump chose to politicize the Federal response to Hurricane Helene, demonstrating little concern about the actual devastation.

Responsible leaders who care about the people they govern do not leap into every photo opportunity they can find. — Read the rest

The post Trump lies, sows division, and wastes recovery resources as Americans suffer appeared first on Boing Boing.

I recently attended a weekend-long birthday getaway for an old college friend, and as soon as I arrived, he pulled out a box and said, "You have to play this game."

And he was right.

Hitster describes itself as a Music Party Board Game, and that's accurate. — Read the rest

The post Do you like party games and music history? Try HITSTER appeared first on Boing Boing.

Pesto is a baby king penguin at the SeaLife Melbourne Aquarium. At nine months old, he is the biggest penguin the aquarium has ever seen. Weighing almost fifty pounds, Pesto weighs as much as both of his parents combined and is the biggest penguin at the aquarium. — Read the rest

The post Pesto the penguin is an adorable chonker appeared first on Boing Boing.

There are laptops sold with NVidia's high-end 4090 graphics chip, but it's a power-constrained mobile version appropriate for portable machines. A Chinese-language blogger modded themselves a beast of a machine with a full desktop-class 4090 card. This thing weighs 15 pounds and its battery life is a Borgesian map of nothing (one must plug it in). — Read the rest

The post "Laptop" with full 4090 GPU weighs 15 pounds appeared first on Boing Boing.

Earlier this year on April Fools' Day, the Empire State Building announced that they would be opening at a Rainforest Café on the iconic building's 86^th floor observatory. If you got your hopes up just to find out it was all an April Fools' joke, rejoice, because now the joke is about to become reality. — Read the rest

The post Rainforest Café fans: don't miss this Empire State Building pop-up appeared first on Boing Boing.

While on a walk, a woman saw a tuxedo cat in a window and greeted it with a wave. But she never imagined the cat would return the greeting, lifting its paw to say "hey."

"How many aura points did I gain when I waved to a cat and it waved back," says the caption of her TikTok video, accompanied by footage of the surreal exchange. — Read the rest

The post Woah! Woman waves at a stranger's cat — and much to her surprise, it waves back (video) appeared first on Boing Boing.

It's been just over a year since director Macon Blair premiered his new reboot of The Toxic Avenger at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. The new film stars Peter Dinklage as the eponymous hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength, along with Elijah Wood, Kevin Bacon, and more—but has unfortunately struggled to find support for a wider distribution, according to The Hollywood Reporter. — Read the rest

The post The new TOXIC AVENGER comic book is great appeared first on Boing Boing.

Update: Surveillance footage of the shooting shown in court

Letcher County Sheriff Shawn "Mickey" Stines shot dead District Judge Kevin Mullins in his chambers, was charged with first-degree murder, and has pleaded not guilty. It soon became apparent that Stines had no intention of resigning, despite the inconvenience of his incarceration, leaving authorities to deal with the long and difficult process of removing him from office. — Read the rest

The post Kentucky Sheriff who killed judge plans to retire; footage of shooting shown in court appeared first on Boing Boing.

With NASA's sights on moon bases, the question becomes how do you build shelters for tomorrow's lunar inhabitants? Carting up large amounts of raw materials from Earth is prohibitively expensive. And the only resources on the surface are regolith—lunar dust—and water. — Read the rest

The post NASA plans to grow mushroom houses on the moon appeared first on Boing Boing.

An underwater rover deployed by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre captured remarkable footage 3,300-meters down at the bottom of the Tonga Trench. It shows a rarely-seen bigfin squid (Magnapinna) "taking a walk" on its 13-foot tentacles. Watch below.

There have only been around 20 documented sightings of this beautifully bizarre creature in two decades. — Read the rest

The post Deep sea video of weird sea creature walking around on its 13-foot "legs" appeared first on Boing Boing.

Time's arrow may not be as unidirectional as we were led to believe. According to Scientific American, a group of quantum physical researchers at the University of Toronto had observed evidence of what they're calling "negative time"—specifically, of photons exiting a material before they ever entered it, to begin with. — Read the rest

The post Physicists find evidence of "negative time" in photons appeared first on Boing Boing.

The tales of New York City's rats are legendary. NY Rats are big and smart, and they have lots of babies. The city has a rat czar and recently held a rat summit to discuss the issue. Mayor Eric Adams was undoubtedly happy to talk about the rat problem rather than his own issues. — Read the rest

The post New York feeding rats tasty birth control appeared first on Boing Boing.

Neuroscientists have confirmed what every stoner already knows: music sounds better when you're high on weed. In a paper titled "Exploring the interaction between cannabis, hearing, and music," researchers from Toronto Metropolitan University reported results from a study in which participants "reported significantly greater hearing sensitivity and levels of state absorption while high compared to sober." — Read the rest

The post Music really does sound better when you're high, scientists report appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: If you still don't have a mouse for your WFH setup, get this ergonomic Logitech MX mouse for $89.99 (reg. $99)!

You know what part of you body seriously takes a beating after a long day or week of work? No, it's not your neck—though you need a more supportive office chair. — Read the rest

The post Your hand is cramping up! Use this ergonomic mouse instead appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Minnessota maker named Caleb Olson built the Poopcopter, an autonomous drone that seeks out dog-doo and retrieves it for disposal.

He describes it as the "world's first aerial bound self-guided dog poop removal system." See it in action below.

"The Poopcopter is capable of scanning areas defined by a user, your backyard for example, and as it scans it's performing real-time computer vision using the camera which is inside the drone," Olson says. — Read the rest

The post The Poopcopter is a DIY autonomous drone that finds and collects dog-doo appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Take 75% off this podcast player and discovery app with code TAKE10 at checkout.

We're not gonna lie: This app is so good it should come with a warning label. It's got everything a podcast junkie like yourself could ever want: millions of shows, easy discovery of new episodes, offline listening…But be warned, you'll only want more once you get a taste. — Read the rest

The post This app is your podcast dealer…don't get addicted appeared first on Boing Boing.

I recently switched over to using a vinegar-based spray cleaner (just vinegar, water, and rubbing alcohol), to clean my kitchen. It works wonderfully for me, and I love that by using it I'm saving money and reducing my exposure to harsh chemicals. — Read the rest

The post The science of vinegar: what happens to bacteria under a microscope appeared first on Boing Boing.

Preikestolen, Pulpit Rock, is one of Norway's most famous natural landmarks. It's located in Rogaland county, near the town of Forsand. It overlooks the stunning Lysefjorden, a narrow fjord surrounded by steep cliffs.

In this video of the 604m Rock, both the stunning beauty and dizzying height of the rock are shown. — Read the rest

The post The stunning view from Preikestolen, 604m over Norway's Lysefjorden appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Boring Day's DIY head speaker is a one-of-a-kind speaker straight out of the uncanny valley. It's fantastic. 

The speaker is built inside of a plastic mannequin head, with exposed wires that look like the mannequin's hairdo. The sound comes out of the mannequins eye holes which look like bug eyes.To — Read the rest

The post Bluetooth speaker inside a mannequin head appeared first on Boing Boing.

Surveillance footage of Sheriff Shawn "Mickey" Stines shooting and killing District Judge Kevin Mullins in his own chambers was played in a Kentucky court yesterday, shocking onlookers. Judge Rupert Wilhoit found probable cause to refer Stines' first-degree murder charge to a grand jury. — Read the rest

The post Surveillance footage of Kentucky Sheriff killing judge shown in court appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Verge's roundup of smart rings seems representative of a general consensus: Oura is just ahead of the game when it comes to these inconspicious gadgets. The competition is either too rough in one repect or another, be it software, syncing or the basic credibility of measurements, and the best is a model from Samsung that requires other Samsung stuff to work right. — Read the rest

The post Oura the best smart ring, say testers appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nintendo is cracking down on emulators of its hardware and media depicting their use. First Yuzu was taken down with a lawsuit, and now departs Ryujinx, a similar project that had sought to avoid the legal landmines Yuzu stepped on. — Read the rest

The post Another emulation project disappears amid Nintendo crackdown appeared first on Boing Boing.

We are doing what we do best when something threatens the consumer supply chain: rushing to buy mountains of toilet paper. Experts say the dockworkers' strike won't result in shortages, but the panic-buying might so long as the panic-buying lasts.

"They cleaned out the toilet paper at my local Walmart in Virginia.

— Read the rest

The post Toilet paper buying panic recommences as dockworkers strike appeared first on Boing Boing.

Announcing the brand new Tom the Dancing Bug book: Volume 8 of The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug book program is "IT'S THE GREAT STORM, TOM THE DANCING BUG!" Now accepting orders right HERE! Get your personalized / signed / sketched / swagged copy today! — Read the rest

The post Tom the Dancing Bug: "Hey, Ladies! Trump will be your protector!" appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get 37% off this touchscreen infotainment system with CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility. 

Elon, who?? Okay, maybe Teslas have cool infotainment systems, but you don't have to pay crazy prices for an over-hyped screen—just grab one of these CarPlay displays for your old beater. — Read the rest

The post Teslas suck! What you really need is this whizz-bang CarPlay screen appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you have ever thought, "I wish I could play as an 8-bit version of Janet Weiss or Brad Majors," you are in luck. You can "Jump to the left and dodge to the right" in the upcoming video game adaptation of everyone's favorite midnight movie. — Read the rest

The post The Rocky Horror Picture Show is now a video game appeared first on Boing Boing.

Jason M. Allen's "Theatre D'Opera Spatial" won an art competition at the 2022 Colorado State Fair, but the work was subsequently denied copyright protection due to his use of AI software to generate it and his unwillingness to disclaim that contribution to the whole. — Read the rest

The post AI artist appeals denial of copyright protection appeared first on Boing Boing.

October 1 was officially "International Raccoon Appreciation Day," for those of you who love to love the adorable trash panda. Around here, honestly, every day is raccoon appreciation day, so it's an "International Day" I can genuinely get behind.

National Day Calendar explains the origins of the day:

In 2002, a young girl in California wanted to highlight the good points about the raccoon instead of the bad ones.

— Read the rest

The post Every day should be raccoon appreciation day appeared first on Boing Boing.

A North Texas man recently spent $4000 on a guitar he believed was signed by Taylor Swift at the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie, Texas, and then immediately destroyed it with a hammer. Sounds like the guitar was an imposter. — Read the rest

The post Texas man wastes $4k smashing a Taylor Swift "themed" guitar appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ryan Lawler notes in his Contentinople blog that CBS's high definition stream of the NCAA men's basketball tournament has been a great success.

CBS Sports reported that traffic to its NCAA March Madness on Demand site on the first day of the tourney increased 56 percent year-over-year, to 2.7 million unique users yesterday from 1.75 million uniques a year ago.

If there is a conclusion to be drawn, I do not think it is that internet video can or should compete with television. In this case, I believe the draw is a combination of the fact that watching television on Thursday afternoon is not an option for people with a day job, and that there are many games going on simultaneously and CBS television does not always cut to the game that the individual user wants to see.

I think the focus should be on the success of delivering a high quality video experience to a large audience, many of whom were at work. This is just another step in the direction of enterprise video becoming an essential element of the workplace experience.

Last week President Obama held a press conference and took questions from a virtual audience in a video webcast.

According to an article written by Chris Lefkow on Yahoo, 67,000 watched the webcast live. The White House website was open for questions for 36 hours before the press conference. 3,607,837 votes were cast for 104,129 submitted questions.

The President answered seven of those questions. One of them was about the legalization of marijuana. Some groups banded together and used the opportunity of this process to submit a high number of questions about that topic, and the despite the fact that vetters tried to avoid that issue, President Obama weighed in with a firm no.

My point has nothing to do with the politics of marijuana.

If I can be so bold as to be self-referential, my first post on this blog was to equate the power of webcasting technology to that of the printing press. The printing press broke the monopoly of a relative few (for example, monks) who had the ability to publish the written word and decide which books were worthy of reproduction and distribution (most often, the bible). The printing press made publishing accessible to the masses.

Regardless of one's politics regarding the issue, I think everyone would agree that those who favor legalizing marijuana are not in the "main stream" or among the more influential interest groups in this country. Yet the President of the United States specifically addressed their question.

The Washington DC press corps is not going to ask that question - rightly or wrongly. But the webcast by-passed the traditional media filter and brought the concerns of this group of people to the attention of our country's chief executive.

How does that translate to the corporate world? Well, what is the value of getting real feedback from the rank and file? What corporation would not benefit from taking their executives out of the bubble on the 40th floor and exposing them to the concerns of the people at the sharp end of the spear?

What is the value of a corporate culture? Most companies do a poor job of communicating and maintaining a corporate culture from the top down. But the best companies leverage webcasting to enable communications from the bottom up and include that feedback in the corporate culture.

There are perhaps a few hundred journalists with access to the President. These journalists are the only way 300,000,000 Americans can hold their leadership accountable between elections. That is, until last Thursday when webcasting allowed the people to submit questions to their President and their President decided to answer them.

President Obama's recent press conference on March 26 was available for online viewing.

According to an article written by Chris Lefkow on Yahoo, 67,000 watched the webcast live. Of course, millions if not tens of millions watched the press conference live on broadcast television so what is the big deal about another 60,000 or so watching on the web?

I wrote about the democratizing effect of using the internet to bypass the Washington press corps and taking questions from the people in my last post.

But there is at least one more point of interest. The Obama press conference exemplifies how video can be used to great effect in the enterprise.

The internet will never supplant television's ability to broadcast to tens of millions of people. Why pay for the bandwidth to replicate the scale and quality of a broadcast platform that already works very well?

But the internet does scale rather well to the needs of the enterprise: an audience of tens of thousands. And there are several "internet television" services that are emerging to deliver video across the corporate network to the employees.

But this begs the question: why should a corporation or organization invest in a network able to deliver video across its enterprise and then settle for pre-recorded video with no interactivity?

It was not the video feed that made the Obama press conference so noteworthy. It was the 104,129 questions that were submitted by the American people. Enterprise video is much more effective when it is combined with interactive rich media features like live questions and answers, live polling, surveys, testing and certification, synchronized PowerPoint, whiteboarding, registration and reporting, etc. Choosing to merely deliver the video - live or on-demand - is choosing to ignore the strengths of webcasting and get the least bang for your buck.

Why invest in servers and hubs and routers and content engines and then settle for a video platform that does not enable interactivity?

According to research done by Steve Vander Haar that he shared in a recent webcast, 68% of executives polled believe streaming video has measurable value only when it is combined with a registration system that enables reporting about who watched.

Registration and reporting adds accountability to internal communications and adds measurable results and lead generation to external communications. Internet television gives that capability away when it simply loops pre-recorded video in a window on one's website.

President Obama's press conference is a template for the effective use of internet video in the enterprise. Just as the televised Nixon vs. Kennedy debate serves as the defining example for understanding the difference between television and radio in politics, I believe this press conference will be regarded similarly for its effect on politics and on business communications.

There are plenty of corporations out there who are already doing a great job with rich media. Some of them are my clients. But the nature of corporate communications is that much of the content is for an internal audience, so there is not an obvious opportunity for organizations to learn from the successes of others. But the Obama press conference lays the formula bare for all to see.

On March 26, President Obama took questions in East Room of the White House, but there was a twist. The East Room is usually the scene of press conferences where the President submits to questioning from the White House press corps. But in this case, President Obama took questions directly from an internet audience as 67,000 viewers watched a live stream of the event.

There are many interesting implications: the bypass of the media filter; the virtual town halll; the modern fireside chat; the 21st century version of participatory democracy.

But on a very basic level the event contains a significant lesson for corporate America.

An Associated Press article cited in the dailycamera blog quotes presidential spokesperson Robert Gibbs:

"It's not a whole lot different than were we in California doing the meeting," Gibbs said. "It's just we'll have people hooked up from a lot of different places all over the country, but he'll be able to do all that from the East Room."

"It's a way for the president to do what he enjoys doing out on the road, but saves on gas,"

IVT's client NEC, a leading provider of IT network integrated solutions, documented annual savings of $250,000 replacing road shows with webcasts.

How much can the White House save by using webcasting to bring the American people to the East Room of the White House rather than traveling around the country to take questions in local town halls?

Has any politcal town hall been held in a venue that could hold 67,000 people?

IVT released its latest upgrades to its MediaPlatform software.

Click to view the announcement.

Forbes.com published an article by Dan Woods where he describes a battle between the traditional enterprise software providers (Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle) and Saas providers like Salesforce.com and NetSuite.

According to Woods, SaaS applications are easier to use because they offer streamlined interfaces that are modeled after successful web consumer sites like Amazon.com, Yahoo!, eBay, Google, etc. These SaaS interfaces were designed to be easily configurable.

Traditional enterprise software is not as easy to use because user interfaces are often created before it is known exactly how the software would be used. Customization to the user interface is often done at installation by systems integrators who do not have any actual user behavior on which to base their customizations.

The Big Three are well aware of the usability gap between their products and SaaS software, but it is unclear how to solve the problem. Oracle emphasizes Fusion as an integration platform. SAP recently announced an experiment called Blue Ruby that is attempting to adapt Ruby on Rails as a user interface and programming technology for its applications. But is it possible to affordably automate a business starting with a configurable application platform that must be adapted to the specific user interfaces and business processes in a company? The SaaS model starts with a usable interface and a working automation of common processes, and then has the configuration proceed from there. The hosted nature of SaaS removes the deployment barriers.

IVT software is the only webcasting and digital asset management applications available both as a SaaS and as a behind-the-firewall installation. With webcasting software, the divide has included the question: should there be proprietary hardware or should the solution be software-only.

IVT falls on the software-only side, believing that "black box" proprietary hardware is not scalable and is prone to obsolescence.

IVT software on a SaaS basis works with the network infrastructure that already exists, which is one of the competitive advantages we take to the enterprise video battle.

Steve Vonder Haar recently released an outstanding research report about the online webcasting event services business.

He states that consumers of webcasting services have been motivated by two priorities: 1) the desire to keep costs low; and 2) the desire to keep involvement of their own IT departments to a minimum. For this reason, major webcasting event service providers, like ON24, have enjoyed their greatest success at the ends of the market spectrum: low cost self-provisioning services and high touch premium webcasting services.

The premium end of the market has been bolstered by the complexity of the client's needs, which has kept fees high and competition at bay. The low end of the market had become increasingly commoditized.

He concludes that service providers are going to have to push more to the middle of that spectrum and identify more companies that require well-produced webcasts for the market to continue growing.

He also mentions that the complexity of webcast events that has traditionally protected the major service providers is no longer a significant barrier to entry. Sophisticated webcasting software offered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis allows any number of production companies, agencies, and event companies to compete on an equal footing with the ON24s and the OnStreams.

According to Hoovers, the US marketing and services industry includes about 35,000 companies with combined annual revenue of about $80 billion. The industry is fragmented because the top 50 companies generate less than 40 percent of that revenue. In other words, there are a large number of potential buyers of enterprise webcasting software that want to compete for online event services business at a time when traditional advertising revenues are falling and internet advertising revenues are growing. Internet communications are definitely going to become a greater point of emphasis for these companies.

I am unable to attached the report, but you can request a copy at the Interactive Media Strategies website.