Geekly Update - 18 April 2018

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

“Your kid is not weak-willed because he can’t get off his phone,” 29 year-old Ramsay Brown says. “Your kid’s brain is being engineered to get him to stay on his phone.” The neuroscientist and his pals are trying to stop that with their company called Boundless Mind.

If you always thought video games were addicting, here's proof you were right. A man from Georgia bought a bunch of 1980s-era Nintendo games at a flea market, and later discovered that the game cartridges were filled with narcotics.

A Planet Fitness exercise emporium was evacuated after a patron seeking an open WiFi network stumbled upon a wireless router named “remote detonator.” Don’t do that, it isn’t funny these days.

Russian hackers are hijacking large numbers of routers owned by government and utility entities, according to a technical alert jointly issued by the US Department of Homeland Security and FBI and the UK's National Cyber Security Center. The hacks enable Russians to steal users’ password and sensitive correspondence, paving the way for widespread disruption of electricity, gas, water, and other essentials.

This just in from the Electric Personality Department: A nine-year-old boy from Kerala, India is able light up an LED bulb just by touching it. His body is apparently acting as an electrical conductor due to high salt content in his sweat.

That Spring Creators Update to Windows 10 isn’t happening in April, just as it didn’t happen in March as originally planned and coded into its unbranded designation, Build 1803 (March, 2018). Windows Insider guinea pigs reported a Blue Screen of Death problem that delayed release of Build 1803 on Patch Tuesday. Bets on May are being taken now.

Whatever happened to the “One Laptop Per Child” movement of Internet pioneer Nicholas Negroponte? Well, it’s complicated...

Over 450,000 Indians have proposed marriage to Google Assistant, the AI driven speakerphone thingie. In 2016, Amazon’s Alexa had a quarter-million proposals of marriage. "Alexa, how big is your dowry?"

Can you help the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) identify these orphaned relics found in its vast archives? I’d swear item 0304 is a left-handed frammistat.

Chinese officials are using free WiFi and facial recognition tech to cut down on toilet paper thefts and bathroom stays of more than 10 minutes. The USA should catch up in 10-20 years.

European Parliament: “What if we give smart robots legal personhood? We did it for corporations and that worked out just fine, didn’t it?”

The sole champion of Net Neutrality remaining on the Federal Communications Commission, Ms. Mignon Clyburn, has resigned.

The privacy policies of Yahoo and AOL are finally unified by their parent company, Oath, itself a subsidiary of Verizon. As soon as I mentioned “Verizon” you snorted, “What privacy,” didn’t you?

Your thoughts on these topics are welcome. Post your comment or question below...