Geekly Update - 18 May 2016

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Incandescent light bulbs are poised for a comeback as MIT scientists have created bulbs that use 3 times less electricity than LEDs and radiate light virtually indistinguishable from sunlight.

"Talk to the hand…" Because the hand is talking to you, of course. Two University of Washington students have created a pair of gloves that translate American Sign Language gestures into audible speech.

“Chipped” credit and debit cards are supposed to reduce fraud, but paradoxically their rollout is prompting an increase in card fraud, as bad guys rush to reap the $14 billion annual fraud crop before chipped cards are widely implemented.

Yahoo isn't just losing money; apparently they're giving it away, too. Yahoo bought a mystery company about one year ago. Nobody knows its name, where it is, or what it does. All we know is that its $23 million price included $22 million worth of “goodwill,” which Yahoo is now writing off as a loss.

Another Kickstarter fraud: the Peachy 3-D Printer raised over CAD$600,000 in 2013. Now Ryan Grayston, co-founder of the company, says his partner embezzled more than half of the funds raised and built himself a house. I hope at least he built the house with a Peachy Printer.

Yahoo Mail is so insecure that it’s been blocked on Capitol Hill following a cyberattack that affected Congress. As part of closing the barn door after the horse escapes, the Congressional IT department has banned use of Yahoo Mail by members of Congress and their staffs.

A 10 year-old Finnish boy is $10,000 richer after discovering a bug in Instagram that would have let him delete every comment on the social network. Facebook paid the reward to Jani even though one is supposed to be at least 13 before creating an Instagram account.

Robotic cockroaches have learned to cooperate in accomplishing complex tasks. Humanity is officially doomed now..

Netflix has updated its iOS and Android apps to permit HD video streaming on mobile accounts that have high or unlimited data allowances. The service had previously limited all viewers to 600 Kbps and 360p resolution.

Tiny screens and digital buttons are the bane of smartwatches. Carnegie-Mellon researchers have solved that problem by turning the user's skin into a touch-control keyboard.

This infographic summarizes “everything” that happens on the Internet every 60 seconds. For example, 150 million emails are sent per minute; by comparison, the USPS processes just 350,000 pieces of snailmail per minute.

Playing a mobile game app could help scientists spot warning signs of dementia, or cause it.

You always wanted to program a quantum computer, right? IBM has made one available online for anyone who wants to try their hand at quantum programming.

Explore the deepest and least-known parts of the Marianas Trench with NOAA’s webcams attached to the Okeanos Explorer submersible research vessel, whose expedition began April 20, 2016. New videos will be posted often until July 10.

The 100 remaining McLaren F1 sportscars, valued at $10 million each, are supported by a diagnostic system that runs under MS-DOS on a 1990s-era Compaq laptop.

Neural networks are recreating Star Wars clips in the Expressionism art style, and it gets pretty weird.

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