Geekly Update - 05 November 2020

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Officials from the Washington State Department of Agriculture eradicated the first Asian giant "murder hornet" nest found in the U.S. this week. Eighty-five of the marauding hornets were killed in the raid. Two of the queens who evaded capture were found later, and taken for questioning.

NASA says their Juno Spacecraft spotted “sprites” or “elves” frolicking in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet. Someone tell J.R.R Tolkien, please.

Early adopters of the SpaceX Starlink satellite internet service say they are experiencing download speeds that put traditional satellite broadband to shame. The Starlink service, which employs almost 1000 satellites in orbit, costs $99/month and promises speeds in the range of 50 to 150 megabits per second.

Getting too many robocalls? A consumer credit expert is offering a kit that promises to help you turn them into cash with a little work. The $47 downloadable PDF has instructions for sending demand letters to robocallers that use automated dialing systems to place calls to mobile phones.

Scottish soccer team Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC is using an AI-controlled camera to track the action on the field. Software is trained to follow the ball and move the camera accordingly. But the system had trouble distinguishing between the ball and the shiny bald head of a linesman. Hilarity ensued.

The new $70 Raspberry Pi 400 is a PC in a keyboard, sporting 4GB of RAM memory, a faster Raspberry Pi 4 and a built-in heatsink to keep it cool. Just add monitor, mouse, and you’re good to go.

Security researcher Brian Krebs says two men have been charged with identity theft and conspiracy charges for a “SIM swapping” scheme, in which they tricked employees at wireless phone companies into providing access to customer account information. This allowed them to reassign a victim’s phone number to a SIM card in a mobile device they controlled, and use that to steal bitcoin and social media accounts.

Whatsapp, the popular messaging app, has a new “disappearing messages” feature that will automatically delete chats after 7 days.

Not to be outdone, Google is rolling out a new feature for the Messages app that will let you schedule text messages to be sent at a later time or date.

Researchers in South Korea have developed a fast charging system that can charge electric car batteries up to 90% capacity in just six minutes.

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