Geekly Update - 18 March 2015

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

“Spyware Barbie” may become the informal name for “Hello Barbie,” the Internet-connected version of the iconic doll that Mattel is developing with U. S. startup ToyTalk. Everything a child says to Barbie will be transmitted to Mattel/ToyTalk, analyzed, and fed back to the doll for “personalized” responses.

For April Fool’s Day – or just the fun of it - give the geek in your life a copy of Windows 93, a whimsical faux operating system developed by French hackers. Internet Explorer becomes “Cat Explorer,” and you can watch “Star Wars” in animated ASCII text art.

False Positive… Panda Antivirus got an automatic update that caused it to label some of its own components as malware. A corrective update was hurriedly pushed out but many users and system administrators reported widespread chaos, including computers that would not restart.

Aibo, the robot dog introduced by Sony in 1998, is going extinct. Discontinued in 2006, replacement parts for aging Aibos are hard to find. Heartbroken Japanese owners are holding funerals for their mechanical pets.

Pancakebot will let you print flapjacks in any shape your computer can trace. Its $50,000 Kickstarter goal was nearly tripled in the first two days of its month-long campaign.

"I'd like to call my lawyers, all 146 of them!" A man caught attempting to smuggle iPhones into China from Hong Kong had 146 of the devices strapped to his legs and torso. According to authorities, it's the fourth time he's been caught.

"Recalculating..." According to the computers at Social Security, there over 6 million living people in the USA who have reached the age of 112. The problem? There are only 42 people that old in the entire world.

The bad news is that the CIA has been trying to hack the iPhone’s encryption for over ten years. The good news is they haven’t succeeded in all that time. Maybe.

More than 40% of U. S. homes have one or more subscriptions to streaming video services such as Netflix, Hulu Plus or Amazon Prime Video, according to the latest Nielsen survey, up from 36% a year ago. Viewing time per day is 48 minutes higher than non-streaming homes, and over an hour of that is spent watching time-shifted (recorded earlier) video.

Apple lost $2 million per hour in sales when a network misconfiguration took its App Store and iTunes offline for about eight hours on March 10. In other news, Apple is poised to be the first company to reach a $1 trillion valuation.

Facebook must face a class-action lawsuit filed by parents of children who made purchases using debit/credit cards without parental permission, A U. S. district court judge ruled.

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