Geekly Update - 03 May 2018

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Wired Magazine reports on the rise of "brandfluencatars," or brand influence avatars. These realistic, computer-generated, AI-powered personalities on Instagram are hawking the wares of high-profile brands. Some, like Lil Miquela and Bermuda, even get into fights with each other.

We are very near the biological limits of the human species, say researchers at the Institute of Biomedical Research and Epidemiology of Sport in France. Without technological intervention, humans will not continue living longer, growing taller, leaping farther, etc. Bring on the cyborgs!

Mark Zuckerberg says it will take three years to “fix Facebook,” and by “fix” he means “hire, train, and deploy 30,000 censors plus an AI program that will decide whether you can say that.”

In case you think that your browser’s “incognito” or “private” mode protects you from being spied upon, this article explains the awkward truth.

This solar-powered machine sucks moisture from the air and purifies it, creating potable water seemingly out of nothing.

China’s Citizen Score system combines surveillance of your movements and actions with credit report, purchase history, and other data to determine how “trustworthy” you are. Those with low Citizen Scores are denied access to high-speed trains, private schools for their kids, and other amenities of society. Being friends with a low-score citizen drags your score down.

This just in from the Blinded by Greed department: A man who sold $20/month set-top boxes that provide 500 channels plus Netflix and Amazon TV is now in court. Jason La Bossiere is facing those two companies plus the six major movie studios on a copyright infringement lawsuit that even Ray Charles could have seen coming.

Costco’s pizza-making robot is mesmerizing. Just don’t think about what your grandkids’ are going to do for summer jobs.

France is being sued for seizing the domain name france.com from a man who has been using it for 24 years. Expatriate Jean-Noël Frydman filed suit in a U. S. federal court, noting that France explicitly acknowledged that it didn't own the right to the word "France.” Domain registrars Verisign and Web.com are also named in the suit.

Real people are willingly turning their Instagram accounts into nodes in a botnet. Fuelgram.com even charges verified Instagram users to be part of its web of fake “likes” and comments.

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