Geekly Update - 08 November 2017

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

The new $1,000+ iPhone X has glass on front and back, the latter to enable wireless charging. Replacing both glass faces could cost a whopping $829 if the phone’s 1-year warranty has expired. So how easy is it to break the glass? Too easy, in Cnet’s drop test.

Google CEO Sunder Pichai dropped everything to address the most serious issue of our time: whether a cheeseburger’s cheese belongs under or over the burger patty.

Here is why you’re wrong to think that Facebook and Google are listening to your conversations in order to smack you with ads about everything you mention.

Google is rolling out a YouTube TV app that will work with Roku, xBox, and even Apple TV, among many more streaming platforms. With an app, YouTube TV live streaming has been available only on Chromecast-equipped TVs, Apple Airplay, a mobile device, tablet, or computer. Which seems sufficient, but apparently not to Google.

"We're super flexible!" Best Buy briefly tried selling an unactivated version of Apple’s iPhone X for $100 more than the already eyewatering list price of $1000, swearing that consumers’ told Best Buy they wanted the flexibility of that “choice.” After much pushback, Best Buy has matched Apple’s prices to avoid “confusing” customers.

Reminder: do not share photos of your airline boarding passes on social media. Here’s how easily such a photo can lead to identity theft and allow a hacker to alter or cancel your itinerary.

FedEx and UPS are starting to worry about Amazon’s next ambitious target: the logistics and shipping industry. Last-mile deliveries - to the point of opening customers’ home doors and placing packages securely inside where they can’t be stolen - and ever more convenient fulfillment services for third-party sellers are already appearing in the U.S.

Hackatoos? Australia’s billion-dollar National Broadband Network is being hacked daily at multiple points; not by humans, but by cockatoos who have developed a fondness for sharpening their beaks on power and fiber optic cables. Repairs are costing tens of thousands per day.

A perennial patent troll has been smacked down for the last time by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. First, the EFF used crowdsourcing to amass overwhelming evidence that Personal Audio LLC was invalid due to the existence of “prior art;” that is, the patent didn’t describe anything new. Now, Personal Audio has lost its bid to keep an appeal of that ruling alive.

Wedding Cancelled Due to Insufficient Dowry: The potential merger of T-mobile and Sprint has been called off by both companies. The apparently amicable joint announcement suggests they want to keep the possibility of a merger open until Sprint cuts its debt and operating losses.

A homemade commercial for a used 1996 Honda Accord involves drones, a winding California coast road, a lovely young woman, and a cat. The eBay listing in which it appears now has a high bid of $3,300. Bidding ends on November 13th.

If you have been on the fence about getting a free copy of Windows 10 using the “assistive technology” ploy, make up your mind before December 31, 2017. That’s when Microsoft will close this loophole.

A U. S. District Court has issued preliminary injunction against the Canadian Supreme Court’s ruling that seeks to compel Google to suppress certain search results globally, not just in Canada. Judge Edward Davila said in his opinion that the Canadian ruling "undermines the policy goals of Section 230 [of the US Communications Decency Act] and threatens free speech on the global internet.” This turf war is not over, it’s just starting in earnest.

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