We all know what it means to procrastinate, but what about actively spending time building a useless machine? You have undoubtedly seen the ornamental boxes with a tempting little toggle switch on the ...

What is it about useless machines that makes them so attractive to build? After all, they’re meant to be low-key enraging. At this point, the name of the game is more about giving that faceless enemy ...

In a world dominated by smarter and smarter gadgets, one of the dumbest machines on earth is making a quiet comeback. Invented in the 1950s by an artificial-intelligence expert, the device is known as ...

Get exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading. The world’s most useless machine, which is essentially a small electronic box that turns itself off whenever you try to turn it on, first made ...