Geekly Update - 29 September 2021

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

If your phone rings and caller ID shows an 876 area code, it's almost certainly a scam. About 30,000 calls are made each day from this Jamaican area code into the United States. Victims are congratulated for winning the lottery, a Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes, or a new car. The scammers then ask for payment of several thousand dollars to process the winnings or pre-pay taxes. I get these calls nearly every day, and so far this year I've "won" over $15 million and quite a few Mercedes Benzes. It's fun to answer once in a while, to keep the scammers busy for a few minutes.

Ruh roh... here comes Astro. An Amazon exec says Astro is more than Alexa on wheels. The roving robot with computer vision and AI is named after the dog from the Jetsons, and can check on loved ones and pets. Naming this product Rasroh would have been so much cooler.

If you prefer a flying robot, check out the Always Home Cam from Ring, an Amazon drone that can fly around your house and record video. Are you terrified of the future yet?

Two men from Germany joked that a hamster could make smarter cryptocurrency trades than most humans. Meet Mr Goxx, the crypto-trading hamster beating human investors from the exercise wheel which serves as his office.

Mr. Goxx would be hard-pressed to continue his winning streak in China, though. Financial regulators in China have banned all crypto-currency transactions and crypto mining. The People's Bank of China says the move is "to safeguard people's properties and maintain economic, financial and social order." Some analysts believe the Chinese government sees cryptocurrencies as a threat to the digital-yuan, a government-backed digital currency. (And to iron-fisted totalitarian control.)

Many law enforcement organizations are putting facial recognition tools on the shelf, as they often have trouble correctly identifying humans. But the South Australian government thinks it might work well enough with koalas. A collaboration of government, university and charity groups will use drones and facial recognition technology to count and identify individual koalas.

Worth a look... weather radar captured an amazing image of the migration of Monarch butterflies, as they flew over Oklahoma City.

McGill University scientists have developed stronger and tougher glass, inspired by their study of mollusk shells. The material is three times stronger and five times more fracture resistant than regular glass. "Nature is a master of design." says Professor Allen Ehrlicher, "Studying the structure of biological materials and understanding how they work offers inspiration, and sometimes blueprints, for new materials."

The FCC is doling out $1.9 billion in grants to telecom carriers so they can rip out Chinese-made communications gear made by Huawei and ZTE. The FCC designated Huawei and ZTE as national security threats in July 2020.

Samsung and Harvard researchers are working on a way to reverse engineer the human brain, with goal of being able to ‘copy and paste’ the brain on to neuromorphic chips. Such a memory chip could approximate the computing abilities of the brain.

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