Geekly Update - 15 March 2017

Category: Tech-News

If your neighbor's drone lands in your yard, are you allowed to eat it? Can you buy a latte while wearing nothing but a pair of sunglasses? And is the altitude in the Mile High City actually making people taller? Get answers... in today's Geekly Update -- it's jam-packed with the latest tech news. This issue is guaranteed to make you 146% smarter -- you'll see why. Read, think, and, comment!

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Hungry? Have a drone. Windhorse Aerospace has devised an edible drone made of honeycomb, compressed vegetables, and salami. The Pouncer is intended to deliver food to areas where aid is needed.

A sofware error at the Denver Colorado DMV has made 12,000 drivers taller -- on paper at least. By failing to properly convert inches to feet, some drivers became tall enough to dominate in professional basketball. For example, drivers who were 71 inches tall (5 feet 11 inches) were shown as 7 feet, 1 inch on their licenses.

A spamming operation that spewed over a billion emails per day has been exposed by its own backup hiccup, which left the gang’s chat logs, software, and data exposed online.

Geekly Update 03-15-2017

Facebook's Town Hall feature can help you find and contact the local government officials who represent your district. Depending on what information the officials have made available, you can contact them by calling, emailing, or messaging on Facebook.

The BBC told Facebook about child p**n on the social network. Facebook reported the BBC to the police.

ISPs would be allowed to sell your browsing history without your permission under a bll introduced in the Senate.

A new guide to protecting sensitive data from intrusive searches when crossing U. S. borders is available from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Being 7 feet, 8 inches tall makes everything harder for 19 year-old Broc Brown. But when he needed size 28 sneakers, 3D printing technology came to his rescue.

IBM researchers have stored data on a single atom, a breakthrough for quantum computing research.

Facebook has struck an exclusive deal to broadcast Major League Soccer. But don’t call it a media company.

Visa wants to put your credit card in your sunglasses, because who ever lost sunglasses?

Lego tape allows you to turn any surface into a Lego-compatible playground.

Russian spies and hackers have been indicted in the 2014 hacking of 500 million Yahoo accounts.

 
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Most recent comments on "Geekly Update - 15 March 2017"

Posted by:

Tony Sheffield
15 Mar 2017

You scold your readers to use proper English in their comments, but that also applies to you.
IBM did not store data on an atom - it stored a single piece of information, not plural.
The correct word is "datum", not "data" - a somewhat significant difference.


Posted by:

David
15 Mar 2017

Ah, the Pink Panther theme: Datum, datum, datum-datum-datum, datum-datuuuuuuuum,da-da-da-da-tum

Or the short version: data


Posted by:

Fred Huddle
15 Mar 2017

Have you looked at Dash Cams? There are quite a few out there, but they describe themselves in incompatible terms, so difficult to compare them. Any that you think are "best buys?"


Posted by:

RichF
15 Mar 2017

I wonder what Zukerberg thinks about Facebook screwing around with the BBC.


Posted by:

Cynthia Garner
15 Mar 2017

Sen. Flake's bill will protect me from government over-regulation, yet will allow every bit of my browsing history be sold, unbeknownst to me. I would prefer a little privacy, please. I feel like I'm living on Animal Farm.


Posted by:

Cynthia
15 Mar 2017

The Grammar Nazis picking on Bob should realize that he requires commenters to follow the conventions of communications. "Data" is often the preferred term for general usage, while "datum" is used by those requiring scientific specificity. From Merriam-Webster:
"Data leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural.... The plural construction is more common in print, evidently because the house style of several publishers mandates it."


Posted by:

Ernest Dutra
15 Mar 2017

Cynthia, I thought the same thing, concerning your comment about "picking on Bob", when I read Tony's post. Though, I must state your explanation is much more in-depth than I ever would have responded or thought of. Kudos to you.

Ridiculous how all of us, at one time or another, feel a need to blow our own horn. It seldom has a positive effect. (Err, or is that affect?) :)


Posted by:

sky
15 Mar 2017

Tony, if I stuck a banana in your ear, would you proudly declare that sky showed you a new way to store a banana - or would you not think that "new way to store bananas" make more sense?You know - I stick a new banana (now bananas)in your ear as fast as you eat them (or is it "eat it"?) The moral is: leave petty criticisms out of here.... [and don't correct me - I DO spell my name all in lower case, even on civvy street]


Posted by:

ed fields
15 Mar 2017

Keep that security stuff comming, great stuff
ed


Posted by:

Jim Swan
16 Mar 2017

I think the edible drone is a fabulous idea.


Posted by:

Therrito
16 Mar 2017

Great article, Bob. :-) Thank you for keeping us well informed.

To all of the Grammar Nazis out there:
As long as we understand the message that Bob is trying to convey, so what if he makes a grammatical error? Who gives you the right to criticize him? You are not perfect either. Get over it and get over yourselves. Life is too short for petty things such as that.


Posted by:

Old Man
16 Mar 2017

The purpose of any language is to convey information or ideas. As long as it does that, proper grammar is an aid in doing it.

Too much emphasis on grammar ain't no good.


Posted by:

Old Man
16 Mar 2017

I can see the headlines already:
Man sues neighbor for eating his drone


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