Almost any modern web application or desktop application offers near the ability to switch between light and dark mode. In Common With applies this in a clever way when displaying a page of lamps.
Category: Technology
Mostly related to issues surrounding technology and computers, main include current events or news.
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The Oatmeal on AI art
The Oatmeal on AI art. Astute and poignant.
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AI for science research
Dr. Agarwal is among more than 20 researchers who have left their work at Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other big A.I. projects in recent weeks to join a new Silicon Valley start-up, Periodic Labs. Many of them have given up tens of millions of dollars — if not hundreds of millions — to make the move.
As the A.I. labs chase amorphous goals like superintelligence and a similar concept called artificial general intelligence, Periodic is focused on building A.I technology that can accelerate new scientific discoveries in areas like physics and chemistry.
“The main objective of A.I. is not to automate white-collar work,” said Liam Fedus, one of the start-up’s founders. “The main objective is to accelerate science.”
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A school in Kentucky banned phones. And the kids started talking to each other
A school in Kentucky banned phones. Unsurprisingly, they interacted more, and surprisingly, library circulation went up.
“There is definitely a different feeling,” Neuss said. “It’s hard to quantify something like that. But it’s noticeable when you talk with students, walk through the hallways and go into classes.”
What is easier to quantify is the immediate impact of the ban on students’ use of the school library. In the first month of school this year, students took out 67 percent more books than the same month last year, with 533 books checked out in August 2024 and 891 books checked out in August 2025. That’s for a student body of 2,189.
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Drones tracking shoplifters
Is sending a drone after a shoplifter really the best thing?
“Instead of a 911 call [that triggers the drone], it’s an alarm call,” says Keith Kauffman, a former police chief who now directs Flock’s drone program. “It’s still the same type of response.”
Kauffman walked through how the drone program might work in the case of retail theft: If the security team at a store like Home Depot, for example, saw shoplifters leave the store, then the drone, equipped with cameras, could be activated from its docking station on the roof.
“The drone follows the people. The people get in a car. You click a button,” he says, “and you track the vehicle with the drone, and the drone just follows the car.”
The video feed of that drone might go to the company’s security team, but it could also be automatically transmitted directly to police departments.
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Wi-Fi measuring heartbeats
Apparently, there is a way for Wi-Fi to measure heart rate with clinical accuracy.
Traditionally, measuring heart rate requires some sort of wearable device, whether that be a smart watch or hospital-grade machinery. But new research from engineers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows how the signal from a household WiFi device can be used for this crucial health monitoring with state-of-the-art accuracy—without the need for a wearable.
Their proof of concept work demonstrates that one day, anyone could take advantage of this non-intrusive WiFi-based health monitoring technology in their homes. The team proved their technique works with low-cost WiFi devices, demonstrating its usefulness for low resource settings.
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AI teaches college English
A long but insightful article where a college English professor allowed students to use ChatGPT for assignments. What makes the usage interesting is that he encouraged to evaluate and compare human centered writing versus the AI output. In the end, still began to critically evaluate how to use a technology.
There are valid reasons why college students in particular might prefer that AI do their writing for them: most students are overcommitted; college is expensive, so they need good grades for a good return on their investment; and AI is everywhere, including the post-college workforce. There are also reasons I consider less valid (detailed in a despairing essay that went viral recently), which amount to opportunistic laziness: if you can get away with using AI, why not?
It was this line of thinking that led me to conduct an experiment in my English classroom. I attempted the experiment in four sections of my class during the 2024-2025 academic year, with a total of 72 student writers. Rather than taking an “abstinence-only” approach to AI, I decided to put the central, existential question to them directly: was it still necessary or valuable to learn to write? The choice would be theirs. We would look at the evidence, and at the end of the semester, they would decide by vote whether A.I. could replace me.
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Robot rentals assisting human workers
Industrial robots are becoming more affordable for small and midsize companies, especially in situations where the companies can rent the machinery. The robots perform the repetitive, physically breaking work, allowing people to remain healthier and perform more valuable work.
Buying a robot could cost as much as $500,000, and Mr. Calleja wasn’t even confident that one would work. Instead, he rented a robot from Formic, a Woodridge, Ill., firm that takes care of installation, training, programming and repairs. It costs about $23 an hour, roughly the same as a human.
“We have very low turnover because we try to make jobs easier,” Mr. Calleja said of the company, which is outside Detroit. “We are a small facility, but we produce about 65,000 pounds of food a day.” Stacking it was “a backbreaking job,” he said.
In an era when manufacturers consistently list attracting and retaining workers as a top challenge, companies are automating some of the worst jobs in their plants as a worker retention strategy.
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ChatGPT as a therapeutic tool
Can ChatGPT act as a therapeutic tool? Possibly, but you still have to recognize it for what it is.
As ChatGPT became an intellectual partner, I felt emotions I hadn’t expected: warmth, frustration, connection, even anger. Sometimes the exchange sparked more than insight — it gave me an emotional charge. Not because the machine was real, but because the feeling was.
But when it slipped into fabricated error or a misinformed conclusion about my emotional state, I would slam it back into place. Just a machine, I reminded myself. A mirror, yes, but one that can distort. Its reflections could be useful, but only if I stayed grounded in my own judgment.
I concluded that ChatGPT wasn’t a therapist, although it sometimes was therapeutic. But it wasn’t just a reflection, either. In moments of grief, fatigue or mental noise, the machine offered a kind of structured engagement. Not a crutch, but a cognitive prosthesis — an active extension of my thinking process.
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What modern kids want
Children want to meet up in person, no screens or supervision. But because so many parents restrict their ability to socialize in the real world on their own, kids resort to the one thing that allows them to hang out with no adults hovering: their phones.
One reason kids retreat to their phones is they can’t connect with other kids in an unstructured way.