Boing Boing Digest, April 28, 2026
Privacy bugs, a 50-year mystery, and Chonkers the sea lion
Happy Tuesday! Apple patched a bug that let the FBI extract deleted Signal messages from the iOS notification cache — and Tor Browser’s “New Identity” button turned out it wasn’t fully wiping your fingerprint either. A scientist at Texas A&M who spent 50 years studying the molecular motor bacteria use to swim finally has his answer. And Chonkers, a very large Steller’s sea lion, is hanging out at Pier 39 in San Francisco.
How to skip a year of work without anyone noticing
By Ellsworth Toohey / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Half an hour before her weekly check-in, Leyla Kazim would spend 15 minutes “knocking up a page of something,” fire off a couple of emails, and deliver her updates “in a convincing tone.” That was the entire work week. She’d been at the same London company for almost a decade, and for the last year of it, she did no real work at all.
Apple patches bug that exposed deleted Signal messages
By Ellsworth Toohey / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Signal’s disappearing messages weren’t fully disappearing. When a message arrived on your iPhone, iOS stored the notification content in an internal database — and that database held onto the text for up to a month after you deleted the message inside Signal. The FBI ran forensic tools on someone’s iPhone and extracted Signal message content that the app’s auto-delete timer had supposedly erased.
Tor Browser’s “New Identity” button didn’t actually reset your fingerprint
By Ellsworth Toohey / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Tor Browser has a “New Identity” button that’s supposed to give you a completely fresh start — like opening a brand-new browser with no memory of what you were doing before. But it turns out it didn’t fully do that.
Why America is deeply, uniformly unhappy
By Ellsworth Toohey / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
The happiness crash that started in 2020 didn’t spare any particular group. University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman analyzed self-reported happiness data and found the decline cut 10 to 15 percentage points across every demographic he examined — every age group, every income level, every ideology, every gender.
Scientists finally cracked how bacteria’s spinning motor actually works
By Ellsworth Toohey / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Mike Manson has spent 50 years at Texas A&M studying the bacterial flagellar motor — a molecular machine that spins hundreds of times per second, outpacing a race car’s spinning crankshaft, to drive bacteria through water. He finally understands it. “My lifelong quest is now fulfilled,” he told Quanta Magazine.
Sony’s table tennis robot beat a pro player she couldn’t read
By Ellsworth Toohey / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Mayuka Taira, a professional table tennis player, lost to a robot called Ace in December 2025 and described the experience: “it is very hard to predict, and it shows no emotion. Because you can’t read its reactions, it’s impossible to sense what kind of shots it dislikes or struggles with.” Table tennis at the competitive level relies heavily on reading your opponent — their body language, their hesitation, the micro-adjustments they make before a difficult return.
Take a break from your phone with a KitKat wrapper that is also a Faraday cage
By Gail Sherman / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Nestle wants people to take a break with a KitKat and put their phones away. And not just put them away, but keep them from connecting entirely. KitKat “Break Mode” looks like a giant KitKat wrapper, but is actually a Faraday cage. The specially designed wrapper blocks electromagnetic radiation, turning smartphones into bricks.
100-episode YouTube series demystifies the Asian grocery store
By Jennifer Sandlin / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
I have been trying to cook more lately, and a great resource I’ve found to help me level up my game is Sam Low’s series, “How to Shop at Your Local Asian Grocer.” I love Asian grocery stores and always find new ingredients to try out, but I don’t always know the best ways to use them. Sam Low has offered his guidance and expertise to help me incorporate new sauces, pastes, spices, vegetables, and more into my cooking.
Tom the Dancing Bug: Trump Reveals Plan to Turn All Schools into Ballrooms
By Ruben Bolling / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Tom the Dancing Bug: News of the Times – Trump Reveals New Plan to Turn All Schools into Ballrooms
Cartoonist Gemma Correll’s moving and funny book about her lifelong mental illness: Anxietyland
By Ruben Bolling / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Popular and hilarious web cartoonist and illustrator Gemma Correll has just released a new graphic novel about her lifetime struggle with anxiety and depression, which at times has been quite severe. Anxietyland is a heartbreaking and crushingly honest memoir, but also very funny and hopeful.
What happens when a deer smashes through a Funko Pop store?
By Popkin / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
A deer in Copperas Cove, Texas, recently made a bold retail decision: it entered a collectibles shop by going directly through the window. The surveillance video shows the animal popping in unannounced, scattering customers, and taking out about 45 Funko Pop figurines. The shop owner says the figures ranged in value from about $13 to $125 each, so the damage adds up fast.
This 1980 Czech animation is circles all the way down
By Popkin / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Do you ever feel like you’re spinning in circles trying to get ready in the morning? “Diskžokej” (”Disc Jockey”), directed by Jiří Barta, is a 1980 Czechoslovakian short that finds the circle in everything: plates, pancakes, cigarette butts, coffee cups, steering wheels, stairwells, records. The film never leaves the frame, and Barta films most of it directly from above.
A knitted human body comes to life in this animation
By Popkin / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
This wonderful animation by Candace Couse takes you on a strange trip through a knitted body. Every organ and body part is hand-knitted, yet they pulse and move like the real thing. The film feels cozy yet slightly unsettling in a visceral way, which is exactly what makes it so much fun to watch.
House of the Dragon is back to swords, screaming, and dragons
By Séamus Bellamy / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was a mirth-filled romp compared to most of what we’ve seen from the Game of Thrones universe on HBO. But with the trailer for the third season of House of the Dragon, it looks like we’re back to the backstabbing, relative-humping grimdark fantasy that so many folks know and love.
Get a university-level education on buried viking treasure for free
By Séamus Bellamy / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
If you’re an archaeology buff or get your ya-yas out by reading about ancient European history, you’ve likely heard of the Cuerdale Hoard. It’s a massive collection of over 8,000 silver coins, ingots, hacksilver, and other expensive bits and pieces, sealed in a lead box and buried in a riverbank in Lancashire, England, around the year 910.
Somehow, Eric Trump’s “money printing” bitcoin business left investors holding the bag
By Jason Weisberger / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Eric Trump sold his bitcoin company as a profit machine. But as the stock soared and then cratered, it was investors, not family insiders, who ended up stuck with the losses.
OpenAI reports “incredibly positive” vibe as shareholder value sinks
By Jason Weisberger / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
It becomes increasingly apparent that OpenAI is high on its own fumes. Celebrating “more compute” as something other than “a money incinerator” as its investors feel the pain.
Chonkers the Steller Sea Lion pays San Francisco a visit
By Jason Weisberger / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
Chonkers, a very large Steller’s Sea Lion, is visiting San Francisco’s Pier 39.
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Free Universal Construction Kit: 3D-printable adapters to connect Lego, Duplo, K’Nex, Stickle Bricks and other systems
By Rob Beschizza / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
The Free Universal Construction Kit is a 3D-printable set of adapters that allow you to connect 10 popular construction toy systems, including Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Gears! Gears!, K’Nex, Krinkles (AKA Bristle Blocks/Stickle Bricks), Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Zome, and Zoob.
Europe’s USB-C charger rules come into force
By Rob Beschizza / Tue, 28 Apr 2026
The European Union decided that all charging thingies must use USB-C, at least for smaller gadgets such as phones, tablets, cameras, headphones and low-power laptops that are sold there. By the end of 2024, most electronics were already compliant, but as of today, they, they must be compliant.