Idle Stories

How a Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Beat the Texas Lottery 113
'Fish Doorbell' Enters Fifth Year with Millions of Fans 12
Professor Ends Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest After 43 Years 14
The 'Super Bowl for Nerds': Scenes from the Microsoft Excel World Championship 28
AI Boom Gives Rise To 'GPU-as-a-Service' 35
Enron has Been Resurrected in What Appears to Be an Elaborate Joke 47
SilverStone's Retro Beige PC Case Turns April Fools' Joke into Actual Product 33
The Tech Secrets Behind Disneyland's 'Enchanted Tiki Room' 76
America's Vice President Gets Stuck Behind a Stalled Driverless Robotaxi 162
How a Group of Teenagers Pranked 'One Million Checkboxes' 20
Internet Archive Streams Re-Discovered 1980s Radio Show About Early Computers 15
Weed Out ChatGPT-Written Job Applications By Hiding a Prompt Just For AI 62
'Are You Serious?' Hawaii Island Mayor in Disbelief after Third Vehicle Drives Straight Into Harbor 116
Remembering Bob Newhart, Legendary Comedian - and Commodore PET Owner 24
Photographer Sets World Record for Fastest Drone Flight at 298 MPH 33
AI-Powered 'HorseGPT' Fails to Predict This Year's Kentucky Derby Winner 40
Airline Ticketing System Keeps Mistaking a 101-Year-Old Woman for a 1-Year-Old 121
73-Year-Old Clifford Stoll Is Now Selling Klein Bottles 47
One of Disneyland's Longest-Running Attractions is Ditching Fossil Fuels 99
13-Year-Old Wins Science Fair with 'Death Ray' Experiment. Sort of... 83
Disneyland's New 'Pixar Place' Hotel is Like Visiting the Studio 18
God Told Him to Launch a Crypto Venture, Said Pastor. Now He's Accused of Pocketing $1.2M 120
Disney Demos 'HoloTile Floor' with Possible Applications in Shared Virtual Reality 16
Is the Internet About to Get Weird Again? 83
Animatronic Robots Make Their Last Stand at Atari Founder's 'Chuck E. Cheese' 28
1993's 'Second Reality' Demo Recreated for the Apple II 34
When Matthew Perry Met Windows 95 60
Cleanup Begins at Burning Man Site: a Few Abandoned Cars, Plus a Burned-Out RV 42
Cheese-Makers Track Their Parmesans By Embedding Edible, Blockchain-Enabled Microchips 187
Some People Are Having Sex in San Francisco's Robotaxis 56
Bill Gates Launches New Podcast, Tells Seth Rogen About Smoking Pot 35
Hundreds of Drones Crash Into River During Display 86
In Hawaii, GPS Keeps Sending Drivers Into the Ocean 173
How the NFL Scheduled 272 Football Games Using 4,000 Virtual AWS Servers 34
What Happens When AI Tries to Generate a Pizza Commercial? 61
Racehorse Owned by 391 Users of a Sports-Investment App Wins Kentucky Derby 17
Could We Build a Dyson Sphere Around the Sun Using Jupiter for Raw Materials? 102
The People Turning Time Into a Currency 86
Ben & Jerry's Cofounder Launches Nonprofit Cannabis Line 93
An Enormous Animatronic Dragon Caught on Fire at Disneyland 47
AI-Generated Viral Videos are Already Here 23
Planned NFT-Based Private Club in San Francisco Stalled by Uncompleted Permitting Steps 39
Teenage Pranks at Japan's Restaurants Lead to AI-Powered Sushi Monitors, Arrests 69
Why Are We Still Observing Daylight Saving Time? 242
AI's Latest Problem? Screwing Up Orders at McDonalds 108
A 'Cruelty-Free' Circus Replaced Animals with Holograms 51
10,000 Dogs are Registered for Workplace Visits at Amazon 64
'Dinosaur Comics' Celebrates 20th Anniversary with T-Rex Finally Stomping Past Sixth Panel 24
Internet Archive Celebrates 1927 Works' Arrival in Public Domain with Short Film Contest 10
What Happens When an AI Generates Designs for PC Cases? 94
From Halo to the Simpsons, Would Fictional Mad Scientists Pass Ethical Review? 46
93-Year-Old Retired Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Marries His 'Longtime Love' 52
Company Claims Its Push Buttons for Dogs Trains Them to 'Talk' 55
Customers React to McDonalds' Almost Fully-Automated Restaurant 221
Over 50 Programmers Generate 50,000-Word Novels For 9th Annual 'Nanogenmo' Event 12
Why the Internet Invented a Fake Martin Scorsese Film Called 'Goncharov' 34
Douglas Adams was Right. Science Journal Proves 42 Is the Address of the Universe 98
Can Talking to Strangers Make Us Smarter? 72
How 'Homestar Runner' Re-Emerged After the End of Flash 28
Elon Musk's Newest Venture: Selling a $100 Perfume 140
Disney World Plans a Tron-Themed Rollercoaster: 'Lightcycle Run' 31
San Francisco Transit Center Criticized over Restaurant's Plans for Expensive NFT-Based Private Club 166
A Robot Quarterback Could Be the Future of Football Practice 25
Cellphone at Third Base: Baseball Player Mistakenly Runs the Bases with His iPhone 38
'I Landed a (Model) Rocket Like SpaceX. It Took 7 Years' 33
Should Baseball Teams Use Technology to Stop Sign-Stealing? 85
Over Half a Century, Bill Gates Has Been Playing Pickleball 43
CERN Is Totally Not Opening a Portal To Hell 214
$TWINKcoin: Hostess Releases a New Crypto-themed Twinkie 63
British Army's Twitter and YouTube Accounts Compromised to Promote Crypto Scams 16
Why MapQuest, Jeeves, and Other 'Internet Zombies' are Still Around 49
Crop Circles - and Why People Believed in Them 83
'Doom' Game Ported To Run As a Coreboot BIOS Payload 17
Star Trek Wines: the Next Generation. Ars Technica Taste-Tests Klingon Blood Wine 20
NFT Conference Founder Predicts 97% of Current Projects Will Lose Value Through 2024 60
Sid & Marty Krofft to Release NFTs Starting with 'Land of the Lost' 58
Twitter Turns Its Privacy Policy Into a Videogame about a Dog 22
70-Year-Old Cyberpunk: 'This Interview Is a Mistake' 37
50 Years Later: a Rebirth for Polaroid's 'Instant Cameras'? 46
Two Skydiving Pilots Try to Change Planes in Mid-Air 102
The Exotic Legend of the Dark Knight Alien Satellite Meets Mundane Reality 41
How Do You Like Ubuntu's New Logo? 132
Largest Plane Ever Built May Have Been Destroyed, Ukraine Foreign Minister Says 152
Gawker Argues Because of the Internet, 'We Are All Cranks Now' 76
OpenAI Cofounder Mocked for Tweeting That Neural Networks Might Be Slightly Conscious 175
Are TED Talks Just Propaganda For the Technocracy? 151
Florida is So Cold Iguanas are Falling Out of Trees 110
New NFT Series Announced - By Cheech and Chong 60
'Worst of CES' Awards Announced by Right-to-Repair/Privacy Advocates 66
X-ray Analysis Confirms Forged Date On Lincoln Pardon of Civil War Soldier 46
'When a Newspaper Publishes an Unsolvable Puzzle' 23
World's Oldest Person Dies at Age 124 58
'Spider-Man: No Way Home' Trailer Remade With Footage From the 1990's Cartoon 30
Will Self-Driving Cars Be Able to Handle... Bears? 88
Bitcoin White Paper's 13th Anniversary Celebrated with Decentralized Pizza (and Gilbert Gottfried) 72
A Cryptocurrency-Trading Hamster Beats Warren Buffett's Performance - and the S&P 500 85
YouTube Blocks 31st Ig Nobel Awards Ceremony, Citing Copyright on a Recording from 1914 130
The 'Dead Internet' Theory Posits Forums are Now Almost Entirely Overrun By AI 147
Disney's Newest Animatronic Robots Get a 'Level of Intelligence' to Make Their Own Decisions 49
Angry Windows Pioneer Blogs 'Screw You, Microsoft Edge' 241
Baseball's Newest Anti-Cheating Technology: Encrypted Transmitters for Catchers' Signals 75
Peter Thiel Helps Fund an App That Tells You What to Do 152
Zero Day Found for Universal Turing Machine (CVE-2021-32471) 46
Elon Musk Teased on Twitter with Ideas for SNL Comedy Sketches 65
'Burning Man' Festival Cancelled Again, Goes Virtual For a Second Year 61
Edward Snowden's NFT Self-Portrait Sells for $5.4 Million in Charity Auction 28
iCloud Allegedly Locked Out User Whose Last Name is a Boolean Value 208
The First AI-written Play Isn't Shakespeare - but It Has Its Moments 56
Twitch Censors Live Metallica Performance with Dorkiest Music Imaginable 43
How the NSA-led US Cyber Command Wishes You a Happy Valentine's Day 88
Can Artificial Intelligence Restore 85-Year-Old Popeye Cartoons? 61
Can You Tell a Programming Language Inventor From a Serial Killer? 61
Google Employees Try Baking Recipes Created by AI 27
Can Chatbots Simulate Conversations with Dead People? 68
How The Band Phish Played Chess Against Its Fans on New Year's Eve 14
The Further Adventures of that Monolith Stolen in Utah 57
Elon Musk Tweeted About a Bitcoin Rival. It Soared 20% 43
Winner Announced In the World's First 'Quantum Chess' Tournament 25
A Stranger Crowdsourced $1,700 For a Mistreated Fast-Food Worker 50
Nathan Myhrvold's Dazzling High-Resolution Photographs of Snowflakes 58
Third Monolith Reappears, Fourth and Fifth Monoliths Discovered 103
The Best Way To Win a Horse Race? Mathematicians May Have the Answer 52
All Three Monoliths Gone -- Two Removed By Activist Vandals 119
That Mysterious Silver Monolith In the Utah Desert Has Disappeared 73
New Videogame Bug Turns Spider-Man Into a Trash Can 52
Kickstarter Mistakenly Emails Responses To Complaints From Seven Years Ago 8
UK Agency Demands Company Stop Using Name Which Includes an HTML Closing Tag 107
Tesla Tequila Sells Out Within Hours, Triggers Bidding Wars on eBay 72
Soccer Telecast Ruined When AI-Controlled Camera Mistakes Ref's Bald Head For Ball 59
A Few Trick-or-Treaters in Canada Receive a Surprising Treat: Bitcoin 37
Tesla Owner: I Butt-Dialed a $4,280 Autopilot Upgrade -- And They Haven't Refunded Me 104
Could Our Entire Reality Be Part of a Simulation Created by Some Other Beings? 203
13 Scientists Troll Scientific Journal With a Bogus Paper about Earth's Black Hole 65
Researcher Discusses Whether Time Travel Could Prevent a Pandemic 145
639-Year Organ Performance Changes Chords for the First Time in Seven Years 105
Major League Baseball Games are Experiencing 'Drone Delays' 31
Drone Drops Hundreds of Marijuana Bags On Tel Aviv 40
How Bill Gates Celebrated Warren Buffett's 90th Birthday 40
Remembering the Golden Age of Computer User Groups 55
A Covid-Friendly Wearable Shocks You With 450 Volts When You Touch Your Face 78
Steve Wozniak Turns His 70th Birthday Into a Charity Event 18
New Free Software Foundation Video Mocks Proprietary Remote-Learning Software 50
Tesla Engineer Reinvents Chocolate Chip for Maximum Taste and Melt 86
Vigilante Sabotages Malware Botnet By Replacing Payloads With Animated GIFs 16
John McAfee Loses Bet: Bitcoin Hasn't Hit $500K 49
Woman Who Harassed Starbucks Barista Now Wants Half the Money He Raised 229
Starbucks Worker Insisting Customers Wear Masks Rewarded With $70K On GoFundMe 331
Can Stadiums Replace Fans With Cardboard Cutouts and Avatars? 167
After 10 Years, Hidden $1M Treasure Chest Finally Found 78
Will The Pandemic Force Us to Learn How to Cook? 236
'Burning Man' Festival in Nevada Cancelled This Year, Will Move Online 45
What It's Like To Attend a Conference -- in Person -- in the Age of Covid-19? 35
Was Magellan's Voyage Riskier Than Sending Humans to Mars? 153
Ambitious Project Seeks to Re-Create Every Structure on Earth in Minecraft 60
Disneyland Is Closed. 31,000 Employees Given 18-Day Paid Vacation 122
MIT Celebrates 'Pi Day' With Star Wars-Themed Video 10
70% of Americans Hate Daylight Saving Time 231
Coffee Shop Refuses an Order Until the Customer Removes His AirPods 418
Nuclear Fallout Exposes Fake 'Antique' Whisky 76
Today is 02/02/2020 -- the First Global Palindrome Day in 909 Years 84
Waze Mistakenly Directed Hundreds of Drivers to a Remote Wildlife Preserve 80
Google/NASA/Maxar Images Reveal This Decade's Engineering Accomplishments As Seen From Space 18
Bill Gates Gives Reddit User An 81-Pound 'Secret Santa' Gift 42
Couple Reports 'Intruder' To 911. It Turns Out To Be Their Roomba Vacuum Cleaner 85
How Pranksters Tricked Twitter-Scraping Sites Into Copyright Infringement 63
Open-Source Security Nonprofit Tries Raising Money With 'Hacker-Themed' T-Shirts 11
Remembering The Home Computer Christmas Wars of 1983 165
Silicon Valley's Newest Health Fad: Dopamine Fasting 89
You Can Now Buy Pretend Food for Your $2,900 Sony Robot Dog 40
70% of Americans Dislike Daylight Saving Time 269
World Pinball-Playing Record Broken During Gamers' Livestreaming-for-Charity Event 31
Did a Poker Pro Use RFID Tags To Cheat? 158
US Military Apologizes For Joking about Bombing 'Millennials' Who Might Storm Area 51 95
Ask Slashdot: How Will 2019 Look To People 20 Years From Now? 338
Inspired By Harry Potter, 150 Colleges Now Have Quidditch Teams 91
The 'World's Safest' Bike Helmet Has A Built-in Airbag 148
2019's 'Ig Nobel' Prizes Honor Strange, Unusual, and Hilarious Research 17
Two Penetration Testers Arrested For Attempted Burglary 63
MIT's Epstein-Funded Media Lab Accused of Faking Hydroponic Plant Experiments 62
150 Microsoft Employees Release a New Music Video: 'Microsoft: The Musical' 53
Two College Students Nearly Grabbed Donald Trump's Tax Returns Online 247
Optimism Increases Lifespan By 11-15%, New Study Finds 76
Here's What Would Happen If You Tried to Storm Area 51 202
Some of the Best Video Game Streamers Are Senior Citizens 38
'The Joys of Being a Late Tech Adopter' 68
Three Smart Ovens Turned On Overnight, Then Preheated To 400 Degrees 182
XKCD Author Challenges Serena Williams To Attack A Drone 87
'I Want a Super-Smart Chair!' 155
Dreams of Offshore Servers Haunt The Ocean-Based Micronation of 'Sealand' 43
'Mining Bitcoin On a 1983 Apple II: a Highly Impractical Guide' 42
A Wearable Robotic Tail Could Improve Your Balance 69
Vintage 30-Year-Old Mac Resurrected As a Web Server 66
$7,000 Contest Seeks Better Stock Images For 'Cybersecurity' 82
Marty the Grocery Store Robot Called 'Ominous', 'Mostly Useless' 137
John McAfee Released From Jail in the Dominican Republic 117
It's So Hot in Nebraska, You Can Bake Biscuits in Your Car 189
Are Millennials Spending Too Much Money On Coffee? 532
Chess Grandmaster Caught Cheating in Tournament With Hidden Cellphone in Bathroom 97
Meet The Community That Always Seem To Win Online Sweepstakes 128
Can You Beat The World's Worst User Interface? 168
How The Advance Weather Forecast Got Good 80
Does Monopoly's Cash-Free AI Banker Teach the Wrong Lessons? 160
Remembering The Retiree Who Became America's Worst Counterfeiter 98
Star Trek Logo Spotted On Mars 46
How to Get XKCD Author Randall Munroe To Visit Your City 61
New Hampshire Unveils a Historical Highway Marker For The BASIC Programming Language 68
Caterpillar Takes Tiny 'Cat & Cloud' Coffee Shop To Court Over Trademark 140
Bizarre New Theories Emerge About Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto 133
The Lost History of Sodium Wiring 111
Bezos HQ2: Amazon CEO Pays $80 Million For Three NYC Apartments 59
YouTube Star Who Gave Man Toothpaste-Filled Oreos Sentenced To Prison 259
How a Professor Beat Roulette, Crediting a Non-Existent Supercomputer 156
Email Addresses and Passwords Leaked For 113,000 Users Of Account Hijacking Forum 36
When an AI Tries to Name Racehorses 42
The Incredibly Stupid Plot To Hijack a Domain By Breaking Into Its Owner's House With A Gun 294
More Than 23 Million People Use the Password '123456' 155
Flat Earther Now Wants to Launch His Homemade Rocket Into Space 151
New Apps Fight Robo-Calls By Pretending To Be Humans 77
14-Year-Old Earned $200,000 Playing Fortnite on YouTube 171
Elon Musk Continues To Amuse Himself On Twitter, Sharing Song, Duck Emoji 101
Devuan.org Now Points To 'Pwned' Page With Gopher URLs 119
Tinder Announces New 'Height Verification' Feature. But They May Be Lying 323
Continuing Progress On Babbage Analytical Engine 27
When Charles Babbage Played Chess With the Original Mechanical Turk 30
Major League Baseball Finally Begins Experimenting With Robot Umpires 51
Microsoft's Cloud Evangelist Adds 'Clippy' To Their Business Card 49
Eight People Suffer Burns After Attempting Viral 'Boiling Water Challenge' 151
'My Airbnb Guests Threw a New Year's Party For 300 People' 374
How One Merchandiser Lost $1M Trying to Monetize the 'Hamster Dance' Site 62
Study Reveals The Most Googled 'Should I' Questions In Each State 102
Developer Misinterprets Linux Code of Conduct, Suggests Replacing F-Word with 'Hug' 402
Principal Fired For Using School's Computer Room To Mine Cryptocurrency 54
World Chess Champion Faces American Challenger, Grueling First Game, and Woody Harrelson 62
California Company Markets A $2,400 2W Laser Bong That You Need to Wear Protective Glasses To Use 110
Why Someone Put a Giant, Inflatable Bitcoin Rat on Wall Street 39
Thieves Who Stole GPS Tracking Devices Were Caught Within Hours 95
Research Proving People Don't RTFM, Resent 'Over-Featured' Products, Wins Ig Nobel Prize 101
Cryptocurrency App Mocks Competitor For Getting Hacked. Gets Hacked 4 Days Later 30
Instead of Bobbleheads, Baseball Stadium Tries Handing Out Crypto Tokens 51
Theme Park Deploys Trained Crows To Collect Litter 181
Tesla's Limited-Edition Surfboards Now Selling For $6,450 119
'The Word Hack is Meaningless and Should Be Retired' 156
Flat Earther Fails To Launch His Homemade Rocket -- Yet Again 162
Elon Musk Sells $10 Million in Flamethrowers in Four Days 147
Investigators Crack DB Cooper Code, Identify Suspect With Possible CIA Connections 133
Flat Earther Plans New Rocket Launch, Predicts Super Bowl-Sized Ratings 219
The Linux Kernel Mailing List is Down 76
Fake 'Inbound Missile' Alert Sent To Every Cellphone in Hawaii 227
New Year's Resolutions For Linux Admins: Automate More, Learn New Languages 139
Stolen Car Recovered With 11,000 More Miles -- and Lyft Stickers 119

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Lisp Users: Due to the holiday next Monday, there will be no garbage collection.