Geekly Update - 09 September 2020

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Due to the forced popularity of work-from-home and remote learning, many laptops are in short supply. But ASUS is one vendor that seems to be keeping up with demand. Here are some of the best models you can buy now, and get fast shipping. The ASUS Chromebook Flip with 14" Full HD Touchscreen ($598) is a best-seller on Amazon. If you can squeeze your work into an 11.6-inch screen the ASUS VivoBook L203MA laptop is only $275. And if you need a top of the line laptop NOW, the ASUS ZenBook 15 laptop is on sale for $1132 with free one-day shipping.

Facebook wants to grant you “perceptual superpowers,” by adding augmented reality audio features to their AR glasses. The idea is to figure out what you’re trying to hear, then amplify it and remove background noise. Could be useful when one is trying to hold a conversation in a crowded venue.

Auto-play videos can be annoying, harmful, and potentially bad for your relationship, if you’re scanning social media in bed. Here’s how to turn off those autoplay videos on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and desktop browsers.

Google announced an update to the Phone app that will help fight robocalls and spam calls. The Verified Calls feature promises to tell you what business is calling, and in some cases, why they're calling.

NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope is producing some produce some “cosmic delights” which include awesome images of galaxies, stars, nebulas and supernovas. These pics are definitely worth a look.

Astronomers in Australia scanned over 10 million stars, but they say they found no indication of any alien civilizations. Keep looking guys, there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, and about 10 billion other galaxies.

The Pangolin dress is Dutch "fashiontech" designer Anouk Wipprecht's latest creation – a dress that can read your mind, and change shape or color according to your brainwaves. Other than revealing your emotions, one possible downside is the requirement to shave your head and wear a “head-hugging brain computer interface.”

In the wake of reports that people in all 50 U.S. states have received unsolicited packages of mystery seeds postmarked from China, Amazon is banning the sale of foreign seeds to the US. Despite warning from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, people are reportedly planting (and some eating) them.

It’s no surprise that facial recognition tools trained on data sets of mostly white faces, often fail to accurately identify people of color. But a software engineer from Ghana has created a facial identification product that's specifically designed to identify African faces. 26-year-old Charlette N'Guessan won the 2020 Royal Academy of Engineering's Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation.

Can you trust reviews on Amazon's marketplace? I recently purchased an item on Amazon for $36, and a few days later a letter from that vendor arrived in the mail, promising me a $20 gift card in exchange for leaving a good review. The BBC says that some competitors are using one-star reviews to harm rivals, and other sellers are offering incentives for fake 5-star reviews.

Android 11 officially launched September 8th, after months of beta testing. The latest version of the mobile operating system is available now on Google Pixel devices, and also for phones from OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Oppo.

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