Geekly Update - 15 Nov 2023 (Will AI haunt your dreams?)

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

It's no secret that social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are intentionally designed to be addictive. In a victory for families alleging harm was caused by these apps, a U.S. federal judge has given the green light to lawsuits alleging that the companies behind these platforms illegally enticed and addicted millions of children, resulting in physical, mental, and emotional harm, including anxiety, depression, and suicide. The litigation seeks damages and a halt to the alleged wrongful practices.

Return of the Glassholes? I wish it was just a movie. Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses are hoping to succeed where the Google Glass experiment failed. But one Wired reporter's experience with the camera-on-your-face spectacles didn't go so well. For some reason, people still don't like the notion that the person sitting across the table could be secretly snapping pics or recording video.

Talk to the hand... On a related note, Humane is testing a gadget called the AI Pin, a wearable smartphone without a screen. The AI Pin clips onto clothing and has a camera, microphone, and motion sensors that allow the user to interact with the device. It can respond to voice commands, identify objects, and project images onto your hand.

I always say there's a 50/50 chance that it will rain -- either it will or it won't. The TV weatherman doesn't seem to get it right most of the time, either. But a new AI meteorology model from Google DeepMind has the potential to make future weather forecasting far more accurate. GraphCast's 10-day weather predictions were more accurate than current models in 90 percent of 1,380 weather metrics, and used significantly less time and energy than the supercomputer-based models in use today.

This just in from the "You Kids Get Off My Lawn" Department: ArsTechnica quotes Kevin Beaumont, a security researcher who believes that "the cybersecurity reality we live in now is teenagers are running around in organized crime gangs with digital bazookas." Beaumont says most ransomware groups are run by teens who take advantage of the fact that large companies are slow to patch known software vulnerabilities.

If your Ford, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, or General Motors car has an "infotainment" feature that allows you to connect your smartphone, those car makers may be downloading your text messages and call logs without your knowledge. And a federal judge says that's just fine, no actual harm done.

But of course the automobile privacy problem is much worse than that. MalwareBytes reports that cars are "a privacy nightmare." The privacy and data collection policies of major auto makers allows them to collect age, gender, social security number, as well as information about your religion, marital status, disability status, immigration status, and race. Nissan and Kia take it further, claiming they can collect information about a consumer’s s*x life. Why would they want this information? To sell it data to marketers.

Samsung's foldable phones, the Galaxy Z and the Fold are cool but pricey, costing up to $1,800. The Motorola Razr foldable has an $800 price tag. But leaked info from Samsung indicates a $400 price point for an upcoming "mid-range" foldable phone. Yippee, another way to break your phone.

If a robot has a crush on you, that's not a good thing. A man in South Korea who was sent to a vegetable packing factory to inspect a "pick and place" robot was apparently mistaken for a box of bell peppers. The machine grabbed him and forced him onto a conveyor belt, crushing his face and chest, leading to his death.

It's the Hindenburg on steroids, only without all that highly flammable hydrogen. Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, is bankrolling the Pathfinder 1, a 410-foot helium-filled airship with the ability to carry tons of cargo over long distances. One potential use is to provide disaster relief where roads and airports are damaged.

Apparently it's not enough that technology occupies almost every waking moment of our lives. Halo is a wearable headband that developers hope will be able to induce "lucid dreams," the sensation of waking up inside your own dream. Using machine learning models, the device aims “to detect when dreamers are in REM to induce and stabilize lucid dreams” with transcranial focused ultrasound. Aside from benefits such as improving mood and creativity, lucid dreams may help to reduce PTSD-related nightmares.

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