Geekly Update - 14 July 2021

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Scientists at US San Diego have created a gadget that uses human sweat to generate electricity. The device looks like a band-aid and harvests sweat from your fingertip to generate a few milliwatts of power. That’s enough to power a wristwatch, but nowhere near enough for a smartphone. The article notes that fingertips each have over a thousand sweat glands, and can produce up 1,000 times more sweat than most other body parts. I think I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t end well.

ZDNet says the advanced security features of Windows 11 are already in Windows 10. You can enable them if you are running the Windows 10 20H2 release (October 2020 Update) and beef up your protection from sophisticated malware and other threats.

This just in from the "Nigerian Scammer in the Slammer" department: Akhabue Ehis Onoimoimilin, a Nigerian national also known as Texas resident David Harrison, has been jailed for his role in a multi-million dollar email scam operation. The 29-year-old “Mr. Harrison” was sentenced to 87 months in prison for romance and business scams dating back to 2015. He’s also ordered to pay back over $865,000 in restitution.

So your not-very-old PC won’t pass the Windows 11 compatibility test? You might be able to bypass those requirements and install Windows 11 on almost any PC, according to this article. Be warned though… you’ll have to mess with a few registry keys, and potentially knock the moon out of orbit.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk warns drivers to "please be paranoid" even when using the latest version of Tesla's Full Self-Driving Mode. One tester of the FSD Beta 9 release uploaded videos of the software in action, which clearly show that you still need to keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel. Maybe call it Jim Morrison Mode for now.

Apple’s weather app will never say it’s 69 degrees, even when it is. Speculation (and smirking) abounds.

Do you get scam calls from phone numbers that look similar to your own? Verizon’s new Neighborhood Filter, a feature of the Call Filter app, will help you weed out calls from numbers that have the Caller-ID “spoofed” to show similar area codes and exchange prefixes.

Do you want to build a website, but lack the technical skills? That’s no longer a problem, thanks to the current crop of free point-and-click website builders. Check out this list of some of the best 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' website editing tools that can help you create a personal blog, set up shop online, or publish that novel.

Consumer Reports wants to know how much you pay for Internet service. The Broadband Together initiative asks people to share their monthly internet bills so CR can advocate for better and cheaper internet service.

AT&T will let “unlimited” data plan customers pay more to actually get unlimited data. The company has three different "unlimited" plans, each with limits on mobile data. But if you want to "stay in the fast lane" (no reduced speeds when you hit a certain data cap) you’ll have to upgrade to most expensive of those unlimited plans.

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