Last Viewed Technology Blogs (217)

Spot is a robotic dog by Boston Dynamics and via their choreographer software they can get spot to dance.

Sounds like The Don's gearing up to campaign in the '22 Mid-Terms ... And '24??

This is worse than a disease... People are spending more on appliances than the kitchen that goes around them.
$10,000 for a refrigerator?
It can Wi-Fi to your phone, so if you want one with a camera to see what's inside without having to open the door... they cost that and more!

Appliances are now linked to the internet so you can access your appliances anywhere.

Washers and dryers also fall into the remote control category. You are alerted by the app on your phone when the dry cycle is done, no need to run downstairs to the laundry room to check.

One drawback: they can be hacked in the same way people are hacking doorbell camera systems.

Smart appliances... maybe not smart enough?

I'm thinking about a phone upgrade this year and the model I want is around $1,000. Scary thought to pay so much for a phone, but there's an interface that connects it to a monitor, mouse and keyboard creating a desktop environment. That way, you don't have to squint and pinch.
That model is also available in a 5G version for $300 more.
If I go for the 5G model, It will probably be the single most expensive device I own, exceeding the GPS drone I purchased a few years ago.

I'm not a power user and don't spend time streaming videos on my phone so the idea of 5G isn't a requirement.

To 5G or not to 5G... that is the question.

If I could have some CS wishes, my list wouldn't be too long. Well, maybe it would. The first request would be to be able to view profiles without them knowing and not giving up the ability of knowing who view me. Kinda like having your cake and eating it too. Going stealth has it's drawbacks. Unfortunately as simple of a request could have everyone using it and soon no one would 'see' any profiles here.

Another request would be to log on and appear offline. All the hits I get are within the first 20 minutes of being online as members float to the top of the list of who's online by the order of when they log on.

Allow foreign (Asian) languages so we read what they say in their language when they don't know English.
Chinese, Japanese, Thai, also Russian.

I inherited the family photo albums and scrapbooks. My brother does the genealogy and sometimes asks for scans of old photos. With the camera my parents owned, all the photos were square so it didn't matter which way the camera was held. Later on, they purchased a different camera that shot rectangular photos and it came with a neck strap and a top viewfinder so all the photos ended up in the portrait mode. Tall shots and not wide ones.
Fast forward two generations and wide screen TV's are the norm. Landscape. Cellphone videos shoot wide screen but people normally hold them vertically. If you've seen videos posted to social media, the majority are in portrait mode.

TV news stories often add some enlarged blurred images in the background of the original video filling the empty space on the sides.

Depending on the subject, I rotate my phone to landscape mode so all the image comes through a normal TV (or computer monitor) and you don't have to twist your head to see the video.

America made a poor attempt to convert to metric in the 1970's and with the exception of tools and some engineered products, we switched back to the imperial system learned from England.
Last time I checked, America, Liberia and Myanmar were the only countries still measuring by feet and weighing by pounds. Thanks England for abandoning us!
It's time to set the record books straight.

Let's start with the 1967 song 98.6 by Keith.

From now it's "Hey 37C, it's good to have you back again... Oh hey 37C, her lovin' is the medicine that saved me..."

But the word is finally in, at the "too much money and time on hands" Consumers' Delectronics "group f-ck convention" in LV Nevada. Thank the Goddess, we now have an AI frying pan.That's right peebles. It not only listens and speaks to us, but can guide our culinary skills based on what it hears about the recipe. Forget those earlier front door items that can smell us coming, and critically warm up the musical door knobs, or even the indispensable opera singing his and hers AI plastic back scratchers. No, my vapid CS consumers, this here is the real McCoy in human "must have" survival items. "Tell me, Jimbo, here are the ingredients for roasted garden earth worms---Your thoughts?" Who can really ever exist without these marvels of technology? At the Vierk Institute, the (only 1%) of sucker cash soaked TD-HD Syndrome patients who don't improve, get one of these pans to take home to the little family. And a firm handshake from the Vierk himself. Don't let the door hit on the way out, Friends. Such a deal.

Rights activists, journalists and lawyers around the world have been targeted with phone malware sold to authoritarian governments by an Israeli surveillance firm, media reports say.

They are on a list of some 50,000 phone numbers of people believed to be of interest to clients of the company, NSO Group, leaked to major news outlets.

It was not clear where the list came from - or how many phones had actually been hacked.

NSO denies any wrongdoing.

It says the software is intended for use against criminals and terrorists and is made available only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies from countries with good human rights records.

It said the original investigation which led to the reports, by Paris-based NGO Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International, was "full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories".

But it added that it would "continue to investigate all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action".

The allegations about use of the software, known as Pegasus, were carried on Sunday by the Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde and 14 other media organizations around the world.

Pegasus infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones and cameras.

What do we know about the people targeted?
Media outlets working on the investigation said they had identified more than 1,000 people spanning over 50 countries whose numbers were on the list.

They include politicians and heads of state, business executives, activists, and several Arab royal family members. More than 180 journalists were also found to be on the list, from organizations including CNN, the New York Times and Al Jazeera.

Many of the numbers were clustered in 10 countries: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the reports.

When contacted by the outlets involved in the investigation, spokespeople for these countries either denied that Pegasus was used or denied that they had abused their powers of surveillance.

It was not clear how many of the devices on the list had actually been targeted, but forensic analysis of 37 of the phones showed there had been "attempted and successful" hacks, the Washington Post reported.

This included people close to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018 and his body dismembered.

The investigation found that spyware was installed on his fiancée's phone days after his murder, and that his wife's phone was targeted with spyware between September 2017 and April 2018.


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