Geekly Update - 14 Feb 2018

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Equifax released an app that enables you to lock and unlock access to your credit file with ease, from your phone. Except it doesn’t work, and there are important differences between “lock” and “freeze,” which the app does not help to explain.

“I can’t imagine how they released this,” says Sandy Munro, CEO of a company that tears down cars to see how well they’re made. Speaking of a brand-new Tesla Model 3, he added, “These are flaws we would see on a Kia in the 90s.”

In memoriam: John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet activist, Grateful Dead songwriter, and much more. (October 3, 1947 – February 7, 2018)

A Nest, Inc., smart camera captured a dog starting a house fire while stealing a pancake. Don't worry, your dog wants steak.

Chinese police are being equipped with sunglasses that can recognize faces within one-tenth of a second. After being deployed at a rail station for 5 days, it detected 7 fugitives.

MultiMate, WordStar, dBASE II, Donkey Kong, Castle Wolfstein, and more gone-but-not-forgotten software classics can be run again on The Computer Museum’s “Historical Software” page. Many other nostalgic, interactive exhibits are there, too.

Turns out it is possible to die of a broken heart (“stress cardiomyopathy”). It mostly affects 60-70 year-old women “who have had some sort of emotional or physical stress, loss of a loved one, (or) hardship economically."

“Is social media causing childhood depression?” is a rare case in which the answer to a headline’s question is “yes.”

If you think the eyes of a praying mantis are awesome, wait until you see them covered by 3D glasses!

NASA’s “On This Day In Space” site presents daily videos, each less than a minute, that will inspire and awe astronomy geeks.

A reporter turned her apartment into a “smart everything” home. “Our bed?” asked her husband, aghast. “What can it tell us?” The answer, along with details on how all your connected gadgets may be spying on you, will creep you out.

Ever wonder what the Millennium Falcon looked like before Han Solo started modifying it?

Google will mark sites “Not Secure” if they do not make HTTPS connections to browsers, starting July 2, 2018. Why do we have to wait so long?

Global warming may be countered with help from the Sun. Scientists are predicting an unusually long “cold spell” on the Sun’s surface, which means less heat will reach us and another ice age may ensure. Yes, the same scientists who predict global warming. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” as Ralph W. Emerson wrote in “Self-Reliance.” (1841)

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