Geekly Update - 26 September 2018

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

There are 106 two-letter words playable in Scrabble, the newest being "ew." If that news gives you a frowny, then you will not be allowed to twerk on the bizjet I bought with bitcoin. You'll do a facepalm when your bestie plays any of the 300 new words added to the Merriam-Webster Scrabble dictionary.

Carlos Zetina met a girl in a bar named Nicole, but when he tried to call her the next day, the number didn't work. Zetina then emailed all 247 Nicoles in the University of Calgary student directory, trying to find her. This resulted in the creation of a Facebook group, "Nicole From Last Night," and a subsequent meet-up event attended by 40 Nicoles. Zetina and Nicole eventually reconnected.

Linux mastermind Linus Torvalds has apologized for his long-running, infamous abuse of fellow developers and is taking time off from the Linux project to "get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately." I'll wager his wife had something to do with his time-out.

Gordon McComb, father of hobby robotics, has died at 61. Let's hope his passing had nothing to do with a violation of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

For about $500 you can genetically engineer your very own mutant frogs.

Should copyright cops be automated? Musician James Rhodes had to fight a long, unnecessary battle with Sony Music over a video of himself playing Bach on a piano. The video proved it was his creation. The Bach score is 268 years old and in the public domain. Yet Sony’s bots insisted that 47 seconds of Rhodes’ creation violated a Sony copyright.

A study shows that Facebook’s efforts to rid itself of fake news actually are working.

Electronics ecommerce giant Newegg let 12 lines of Javascript malware steal credit card data for over a month.

Facebook is trying and failing to refute and minimize ProPublica’s evidence that Facebook allows job advertisers to show jobs only to men.

The right to repair things you own has taken a severe hit as the California Farm Bureau inexplicably gave away its members’ rights to John Deere.

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