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OpenAI Usage Plummets in the Summer, When Students Aren't Cheating on Homework

For years, teachers have been bashing their heads against the wall as students outsource their homework to large language model (LLM) chatbots like ChatGPT. The time-honored tradition of parenting-by-screen — grossly exacerbated by the rise of LLM chatbots — is now coming to a head with what many have called a "crisis in student literacy," as reading ability among children in the US hits all-time lows. The issue isn't just affecting K-12 either; university professors have reported a similar dro

Which colors are primary?

Artists traditionally refer to red, yellow, and blue as primary colors. These three colors were once believed to be the essential set for mixing a broad palette in painting. Following this line of thinking, violet, green and orange become secondary colors because they’re mixed from the primaries. However, for more than a century, both scientific understanding and practical experience has shown that cyan, magenta, and yellow are more efficient for subtractive mixing with pigments, producing clea

The current state of LLM-driven development

I spent the past ~4 weeks trying out all the new and fancy AI tools for software development. Let’s get a few things out of the way: Learning how to use LLMs in a coding workflow is trivial. There is no learning curve. You can safely ignore them if they don’t fit your workflows at the moment. LLMs won’t magically make you deliver production-ready code If you can’t read the code and spot issues, they’re hard to use past the PoC stage They have terrible code organization skills, making them los

Hoto Snapbloq Tools Review: Attractive Power Tools

Tools often have a utilitarian design. Their purpose is to get stuff done, so their shape is exclusively focused on getting stuff done. This is where the Hoto SnapBloq toolkit is unique: These tools emphasize style and design to prove that functionality doesn’t need to have a rugged, utilitarian, and (typically) unappealing style. Hoto’s SnapBloq line is a set of three small power tools meant for tinkerers and hobbyists. The full set consists of a screwdriver, a rotary tool, and a drill, along

Is This Seat Taken? makes seating fussy people fun

Creating seating arrangements can be pretty stressful; the empath part of me strives to find the perfect seat for every person even if it’s a nearly impossible task. If it’s for a big, meaningful event, I get even more anxious. When you find the right place for everyone, though, it’s even more satisfying than a great jigsaw puzzle. Chasing that feeling is what Is This Seat Taken? is all about — and it does so in a low-stakes and relaxing way. In Is This Seat Taken?, your goal is to place people

Topics: ll make place seat taken

macOS Tahoe 26 beta brings over a dozen new aerial screen savers to your Mac

With macOS Tahoe, Apple will be adding a bunch of new screen saver options, which you can also set as wallpapers. There are a couple new variants of the previously introduced Tahoe screen saver in beta 5, as well as around a dozen other options introduced in a previous beta that flew under the radar. As a Mac user, I’ve always really enjoyed all of the real world wallpapers built into macOS. It was a bit disappointing when macOS Monterey and Ventura didn’t include real world wallpapers to repre

Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

A Nova Scotia man is the proud owner of a 1985 Toyota Tercel. Despite being 40 years old, the car is in mint condition. But there is one thing wrong with it: the odometer doesn't go up high enough. The CBC's Frances Willick explains. If you were to spot Andy Campbell's ride on the road, you might not think too much about it. Maybe you'd think it's a bit dated — a throwback to an earlier time when cassette tapes were all the rage and backup cameras were just a glimmer in a car designer's eye.

Long-term exposure to outdoor air pollution linked to increased risk of dementia

Dementias such as Alzheimer's disease are estimated to affect more than 57.4 million people worldwide, a number that is expected to almost triple to 152.8 million cases by 2050. The impacts on the individuals, families and caregivers and society at large are immense. While there are some indications that the prevalence of dementia is decreasing in Europe and North America, suggesting that it may be possible to reduce the risk of the disease at a population level, elsewhere the picture is less p

TTRPG Comic ‘Die’ Returns for Another Session

In 2018, comic book writer Kieron Gillen and artist and Stephanie Hans teamed on Image’s horror/fantasy comic Die. Part Jumanji, part Dungeons & Dragons, the comic wrapped in 2021, while its RPG companion became a compelling play in its own right. After reuniting for on We Called Them Giants, the pair are going back to Die with a sequel and a new set of rules for its real-world game. Set a year after the original story, Die: Loaded sees the surviving party members back on Earth and trying to li

I tried Lenovo's new rollable ThinkBook and can't go back to regular-sized screens

ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable ZDNET's key takeaways The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 is available now, starting at $3,300. The 120Hz, OLED, portrait-style 16.7-inch display delivers an expansive workspace, supported by a haptic touchpad. It has limited I/O, has some visible creasing on the rollable display, and has a sky-high price. View now at Lenovo Lenovo unveiled its "rollable" laptop at CES two years ago as a wild proof of concept that turned heads, but left consumers skeptical. Well, the compan

Representing Python notebooks as dataflow graphs

This blog is adapted from our talk at PyCon 2025. marimo is free and open source, available on GitHub. For a free online experience with link sharing, try molab. marimo is a new kind of open-source Python notebook. While traditional notebooks are just REPLs, marimo notebooks are Python programs represented as dataflow graphs. This intermediate representation lets marimo blend the best parts of interactive computing with the reproducibility and reusability of Python software: every marimo notebo

Engineer restores pay phones for free public use

An engineer restores pay phones for free public use toggle caption Patrick Schlott Patrick Schlott often finds himself in a cellular dead zone during his drive to work. "You go down the road, you turn the corner and you're behind a mountain and you'll lose cell coverage pretty fast," he says. The 31-year-old electrical engineer says poor reception is a common frustration for residents of Vermont's Orange County. To address this issue, he's providing his community with a new way to stay conne

James Lovell, the steady astronaut who brought Apollo 13 home safely, has died

James Lovell, a member of humanity's first trip to the moon and commander of NASA's ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, has died at the age of 97. Lovell's death on Thursday was announced by the space agency. "NASA sends its condolences to the family of Capt. Jim Lovell, whose life and work inspired millions of people across the decades," said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy in a statement on Friday. "Jim's character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the moon and turned a potential t

Hubble Captures Glorious New Image of That Mysterious Object Cruising Into Our Solar System

As the mysterious interstellar object known as 3I/ATLAS plummets through our Solar System, NASA's good old Hubble Space Telescope has captured the best look yet at the interstellar visitor. On July 21, the interstellar interloper passed close enough to Earth — and to Hubble, which orbits us at about 320 miles above the planet — that the veteran space telescope was able to capture a surprisingly detailed image of it, NASA explains in a statement about the image. In the space agency's incredible

Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 commander, has died

Portrait of NASA astronaut Jim Lovell Credit: NASA The following is a statement from acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy on the passing of famed Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell. He passed away Aug. 7, in Lake Forest, Illinois. He was 97 years old. “NASA sends its condolences to the family of Capt. Jim Lovell, whose life and work inspired millions of people across the decades. Jim’s character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from

Get Ready to See Six Planets Line Up in the Upcoming Planet Parade

Fresh off the excitement of the Perseids meteor shower is a chance to see six planets lined up in the sky at once. These events, colloquially known as planet parades, only occur about once or twice a year, with the most recent one in February showing off all seven planets in our solar system at once. The next one will feature six of our closest celestial neighbors, and the event starts on Aug. 20. The six planets sharing the sky will be Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus. Mars

Topics: aug ll planets sky venus

Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell has passed away

Portrait of NASA astronaut Jim Lovell Credit: NASA The following is a statement from acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy on the passing of famed Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell. He passed away Aug. 7, in Lake Forest, Illinois. He was 97 years old. “NASA sends its condolences to the family of Capt. Jim Lovell, whose life and work inspired millions of people across the decades. Jim’s character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from

New Gel Could Heal Stubborn Diabetic Wounds in Under 2 Weeks

For people with diabetes, high blood sugar can damage blood vessels and nerves, leading to chronic wounds that stay open for months. But a new gel-based treatment could massively speed up the healing process for people with diabetes, allowing wounds to close in just days, according to a new study. The new treatment targets thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1), a protein that inhibits the growth of new blood vessels, a crucial step in the healing process. Targeting this protein increased new blood vessel fo

You Don't Need iOS 26 to Get This Dreamy Wallpaper on Your iPhone Now

Apple's upcoming iOS 26 will introduce a wallpaper design this fall with spatial features that seem to move in accordance with your iPhone and developers and beta testers can access that wallpaper now. But you don't need to be running the iOS 26 beta to get Apple's latest wallpaper on your iPhone -- however, you'll miss out on spatial features if you're not running iOS 26. The latest wallpaper is called Here's to the Dreamers and was made to celebrate creators from Southeast Asia. "Let every gl

The winners and losers in tech's AI-powered ad race

In this article META GOOGL RDDT SNAP PINS Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT watch now Artificial intelligence has been a shot in the arm for digital advertising. Meta and Alphabet both reported sales and earnings that beat Wall Street's expectations, but the strength in digital ad spend was notable. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the earnings call that AI helped imbue "greater efficiency and gains across our ad system," thus contributing to the 22% year-over-year increa

Wear OS users are spotting a new kind of Google Wallet pass (Update: More confirmation)

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority TL;DR Some Wear OS watches are starting to show Google Wallet photo passes with patterns like QR codes or barcodes. Standard photo-only passes still don’t appear, based on our testing. This may be an early test of limited support for scannable custom passes on smartwatches. Update: August 8, 2025 (2:15 PM ET): More confirmation of this change is coming in from the Android Authority team. Rita El Khoury shared the photos of a custom photo pass on her Pixel W

FTC: older adults lost record $700 million to scammers in 2024

Americans aged 60 and older lost a staggering $700 million to online scams in 2024, marking a sharp rise in fraud targeting seniors, according to the Federal Trade Commission. This figure, presented in the agency's latest Consumer Protection Data Spotlight, represents an increase over all three categories of loss compared to previous years. Most notably, the amount of losses for those who lost over $100k recorded an eightfold jump compared to 2020. Below is an analysis of the amounts: Losses

Programming with AI: You're Probably Doing It Wrong

Programming with AI: You're Probably Doing It Wrong 2025 is the year of Artificial Intelligence. With GPT-5 just released, many developers will re-evaluate their use of large language models for assisting in their daily work. I’m here to tell you: you’re probably doing it wrong. And you’re missing out on the real power that AI assisted development can give you. What “doing it wrong” looks like Let’s kick off with a (non-exhaustive) list of symptoms you’re using your AI coding assistant wrong

Topics: agent ai code context llm

I clustered four Framework Mainboards to test LLMs

Framework casually mentioned they were testing a mini-rack AI cluster in their Framework Desktop presentation back in March. Imagine my surprise when Nirav Patel, Framework's founder and CEO, was at Open Sauce a couple weeks ago, and wanted to talk! He said they had seen my Project Mini Rack posts earlier this year and thought it was the perfect application to try out their new AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395-powered Mainboard, as it's mini ITX dimensions fit inside a 10" rack. Framework sent over four

Tech is getting a boost from AI ad tools. Some companies are being left behind

In this article META GOOGL RDDT SNAP PINS Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., arrives for the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Artificial intelligence has been a shot in the arm for digital advertising. Meta and Alphabet both reported sales and earnings that beat Wall Street's expectations, but the strength in digital ad spend was notable. Meta CEO Mark Zuck

Overengineering my homelab so I don't pay cloud providers

After years of self-hosting on a VPS in a datacenter, I’ve decided to move my services at home. But instead of just porting services, I’m using this as an opportunity to migrate to a more flexible and robust set up. I will deploy services on a single mini pc. Since I need to be able to experiment and learn without disrupting my services, I will need to be able to spin up Virtual Machines (VMs). Let’s explore how I deployed Proxmox Virtual Environment on a safe host for my specific needs as a ho

China Opens ‘Robot Mall,’ Its First Mall for Robots

China opened its first full-scale shopping center dedicated entirely to robots on Friday, as part of a broader push to bring robotics from research labs into people’s homes. The four-story Robot Mall, located in Beijing’s high-tech E-Town district, showcases more than 100 robots from over 40 brands, including Chinese companies like Ubtech Robotics and Unitree Robotics. The store operates like a car dealership, but for robots. It follows the “4S” model common in China, offering sales, service, s

Flipper Zero dark web firmware bypasses rolling code security

Over on YouTube Talking Sasquach has recently tested custom firmware for the Flipper Zero that can entirely break the rolling code security system used on most modern vehicles. Rolling code security works by using a synchronized algorithm between a transmitter and receiver to generate a new, unique code for each transmission, preventing replay attacks and unauthorized access. In the past we've discussed an attack against rolling code security systems called RollJam, which works by jamming the o

The 8BitDo Pro 3 Is So Dang Customizable, You’ll Never Need Another Controller

2025 Of all the lower-cost, pick-up-and-play controllers I tested for the Nintendo Switch 2, 8BitDo’s $60 Ultimate 2 easily felt the best in hand. At a steep discount from Nintendo’s now-$90 Switch 2 Pro Controller, it’s an easy recommendation. What else do you need? When we take a step up and look at the $70 Pro 3 wireless controller, we should consider just what we gain and what we’re still missing. No, unfortunately you can’t wake the Switch 2 from sleep with the Pro 3. What you get instead