North Korea's Red Star Linux OS ships with a modified Firefox called Naenara ("Our country") and lets users browse Kwangmyong, the country's isolated national intranet. It also comes with an office suite, media players, and video games. It sells for $15. — Read the rest

The post North Korea's operating system watermarks every file you touch appeared first on Boing Boing.

The British Transport Police announced it would start using facial recognition cameras in a London Underground station. The Victoria Underground station was the first to be equipped with cameras.

The cameras scan the faces of everyone who walks past them and compare each face to a watchlist of people the police or the courts want to find. — Read the rest

The post Police are now scanning faces at a London Underground station appeared first on Boing Boing.

Many restaurants in Japan put a small plastic device on tables. When you press it, a chime rings at the waitstaff station or in the kitchen, and a server comes to your table. 

Algis Tamosaitis writes the newsletter Japan or Die, and he explained the table call button for travelers. — Read the rest

The post In Japan, press the button on your table and a server appears appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: UPDF packs editing, OCR, conversion, forms, signatures, batch processing, and cloud syncing into one cross-platform PDF toolkit, now $69.99 for life.

PDFs are already stubborn enough without your editing software demanding a specific operating system. UPDF works across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android and packs editing, conversion, OCR, signing, and more into one lifetime subscription for $69.99 (reg. — Read the rest

The post This $70 PDF editor doesn't care which operating system you use appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1941 the National Park Service hired Ansel Adams to make a photo mural of the national parks for the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, DC. Adams took the pictures between 1941 and 1942, and then the project stopped. — Read the rest

The post Ansel Adams shot 226 park photos for a mural that never got made appeared first on Boing Boing.

How Buildings Learn is a six-part BBC television series from 1997 about what happens to a building after the builders leave. Stewart Brand wrote and presented it, and Brian Eno wrote the music.

Brand made the series from his illustrated book of the same name. — Read the rest

The post Stewart Brand put his 1997 BBC architecture series online for free appeared first on Boing Boing.

The world's southernmost ATM is at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, at 77°51′ south. It is the only cash machine on the continent.

Atlas Obscura says the machine works the same way as an ATM in the United States, and it gives out U.S. — Read the rest

The post The only ATM in Antarctica has a second ATM for spare parts appeared first on Boing Boing.

Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist in London who writes about heavy metal and about Jewish communities. His ninth book, The Beautiful Death of Ozzy Osbourne: How Metal Teaches Us To Live, came out in June 2026. He types on a Wobkey Rainy 75 mechanical keyboard, which he replaced the stock switches on with Gateron Oil Kings. — Read the rest

The post A mechanical keyboard, plain yoghurt, and a 7am start appeared first on Boing Boing.

Jonathan Weber has written a history of San Francisco's rise as a global technology capital and the crises that came with it. City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco opens in the early 1990s, when San Francisco had not recovered from the AIDS epidemic and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. — Read the rest

The post How San Francisco became a tech capital, then nearly lost itself appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: AskAnyModel is a new platform that gives you access to 50+ popular AI models, and it's only $39.99 for life.

Most of the good AI models cost about $20 per month. For one, that's not too bad, but no single model is good at everything. — Read the rest

The post Get 50+ AI models for life, including GPT, Claude, and Gemini, for just $40 appeared first on Boing Boing.

I thought Ghost of Tsushima was areally good game, what with all its razor-sharp samurai action and breathtaking Japanese vistas. I thought its sequel Ghost of Yōtei was pretty damn good too… weird as it was to see local comedian Erika Ishii, a person I have seen get their head shaved live on stage for a few measly improv comedy points, gruffly deliver stone-cold badass lines about revenge. — Read the rest

The post Slick samurai simulator Ghost of Yōtei finally getting some DLC appeared first on Boing Boing.