Technology Blogs (216)

For the benefit of those who don't know, Photoshop is a brand name for one of the first digital editing software suites. It incorporates dozens of filtering controls that people use to create artistic effects and alter or retouch existing photos.
Famous models, movie stars, singers use Photoshop to enhance their appearance, remove wrinkles, turn mediocre photos into masterpieces.

Fans who 'know their stars' are quick to complain when a perfect photo comes online to someone who is less than perfect. Kim Kardashian is a good example of a Photoshop queen who

Today, I was searching images and came across 26 year old Canadian YouTube star Jen Brett who was the subject of Photoshopped photos. This case it's the OPPOSITE.

Someone Photoshopped her 'chunky-butt' and reduced the size, digitally smoothed with the appearance of zero cellulite.



Shadows were reduced and proportions changed to give her a thinner body.

Part of the complaint was, the guy who did the photo retouch told Jen she should cut off the extra weight!


Story link:

I have an old laptop that only gets used when I'm outside, usually on a jobsite and I need to review drawings that I don't have printed copies of. The battery would only work for a short time, so I replaced it. The hard drive was slow so a friend suggested I upgrade to an SSD (solid state drive) that works faster with less power drain.
Good idea. I bought the drive, 500 gigabyte. The problem is the drive on the laptop is 1 terabyte. While I'm only using a small part of the capacity, the conversion software won't compress what I have to the smaller drive. No problem. I bought a 1 terabyte SSD but I haven't gotten back to the project. It's in the box on my desk collecting dust and the laptop is somewhere in the living room, also collecting dust.

I have a computer simulator for learning to fly model aircraft. It does airplanes, drones and helicopters. I used it religiously and the cord at the top of the controller wore out. It doesn't work reliably. No problem said I, as the plan was to cut a few inches of the worn wire off the cord and reconnect it.
There is a coil (interference filter) where it exits the controller that I snipped off. One problem is 6 wires come from the USB side and 5 wires come from the inside of the controller. Something gets changed in the coil. It took a few days of searching for my test meter. I gave up and bought a new meter. It's been a few months and the opened controller is on the shelf.

While looking for something else, I found the test meter that I couldn't find earlier. So now I have 2 meters and the project isn't finished.

I bought a new controller but it doesn't work with the older software, so I had to buy the newest version simulator and I'm undecided if I will go back complete the project.



The thought now is to pay my friend who suggested I do the SSD upgrade. His business is technical electronic repair. Changing the drive and repairing the controller is something he could easily do.



Projects I don't complete.


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An American firm (Biofire) has developed a programmable 9mm double stack pistol that can only be fired by the specific person authorized to use it. It uses fingerprint reading and other technology so only the user the gun is programed for can turn the gun on. It will remain on and active as long as it is in that person's hand, but turn off and become inert as soon as the hand leaves it. Orders are being taken now but first deliveries will occur in early 2024. The advantage is a homeowner or other authorized user no longer has to keep the gun under lock and key as it will not work for unauthorized persons. This makes it child safe while also preventing someone who overpowers an authorized user from shooting them with their own gun (something that sadly happens now and then). Many crimes are committed with stolen guns. Stealing this kind will not help a criminal if he is not the authorized user. If you are the owner, it works for you. If you are not, it won't. More information below.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – AI has the potential to both benefit and harm the U.S. in unknown and unimagined ways but Congress has hardly any experts on the rapidly developing technology, lawmakers told Fox News.

"AI is going to help us in many ways. It can also kill us," Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat said. "As a recovering computer science major, my understanding of AI on a scale of one to 10 is about a five. There's a lot I don't know."

Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis said: "We've got a long way to go before we have any sense of its true capabilities and understanding what people like Elon Musk see as its capabilities going forward. I put my knowledge on a scale of one to 10 at about a 1.5."

Musk and more than 1,000 others called for an immediate pause on "giant AI experiments" last month, warning the rapidly developing sector may pose security threats. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman disagreed, saying pausing development is not an optimal way to address the issue.

AI "has the potential of civilizational destruction," Musk told Fox News' Tucker Carlson this week. He said if the industry is left unregulated, the consequences could be dangerous.

"I don't think Congress is prepared intellectually and resource-wise" to regulate AI, Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat, told Fox News. "There's no doubt that AI is going to be highly consequential."

"I don't want to say the Congress knows nothing," Takano continued. "Staff has been going to briefings on AI."

Read more:

As followup to my 'Watch' this blog, about the number of people wearing watches that connect to their cellphones, I decided to buy a low-end 'fitness' watch just to check it's operation. I'm highly skeptical these devices could be accurate, at least in the ones that are inexpensive, but I'm giving it a try.

First step with any of these watches is charge the device. That gives you time to read the instructions and download the app that connects it to your smartphone. Allow time to be familiar with the settings for both the phone and watch. It defaults to metric, so I changed things to Imperial, including Fahrenheit for temperature. Only my doctors record my weight in kilos.

Since I wear no jewelry and haven't for years, I found it annoying to have this fitness watch attached to my wrist. It's already hitting the countertop, edge of doorways and anything I come in close proximity to. I expect lots of scratches on the bezel within the first week. That makes me wonder about all the people wearing diamond studded watches the size of a Frisbee!
That would equate to the women wearing 'inch-long' fake eyelashes. If you do it long enough, it becomes part of you. Kinda like Paul Stanley (KISS guitarist) wearing six-inch high platform shoes on stage must have required weeks of practice elsewhere.

Okay, I've had the watch on for 12 hours and it's reporting to my phone some statistics. Blood pressure at it's highest 127/64 and 81 beats per minute, currently 53bpm. Temperature 98.0 F, blood oxygen at 98% and I burned 11 calories.


I'm most curious about the sleep status. The first night shows 3 hours and 50 minutes with 1 hour and 30 minutes being in deep sleep.

Although the device is water resistant enough for swimming, I'll remove it for my morning shower.

Later today, I'll compare the blood pressure and beats with my stand-alone blood pressure monitor.

I estimate the percentage of iPhone users versus 'the other phone' users to be as high as 70/30 and many most of them have an apple watch to go along with their setup. The phone rings and they look at their wrist. Most of the time, you don't hear their phone, but you see them looking as text messages or Twitter feeds scroll across the screen.



Digital or simulated analog watch face, some try to emulate what is on the main screen to their iPhone.

One guy in the design department wears Apple earbuds and talks through the Wi-Fi connection in his watch while his iPhone sits in a charging cradle.

So the idea of carrying around a phone that does everything hasn't replaced a wristwatch, as I found if it's not an Apple watch, it's the 'old standard' watch.



However, if you've got money... nothing says it more than a diamond watch.



In summary: It would appear having a cellphone doesn't eliminate the need or desire for a wristwatch, probably because watches are often worn as jewellery that happens to tell time.

Apple watches are on sale this weekend!

I bought a refurbished Samsung phone last year to replace one that was around 5 years old. The old phone had a worn battery that needed to be charged a few times a day if I used the GPS and made a few hours of calls. There is a factory authorized service center not far from me, that could order a battery, but they needed the phone 2 days to do the work. I'm not okay with that so the total change was less restrictive.
Cloning one phone to the other was easy and It took a while to get to get all the apps set up the way I'm accustomed. One new preinstalled app was Samsung DeX. Normally when I connect the phone to the computer it's to upload photos or do a backup with Samsung Smart Switch.
This morning, when I connected the phone to the computer, DeX automatically came up. Okay... What's this? It's a projected version of my cellphone. I can drag and drop photos easily now. Lots of new stuff to explore... I just need to copy a few photos to my desktop today.

Thanks Samsung... I think I'll be using DeX often now!

Modern life would be very difficult without the use of batteries. Over the years battery technology had changed greatly with more power and less weight. Consider how hearing aid technology fueled smaller devices, iPhone ear buds go for hours on a single charge.
Probably the least improvement is the automotive standard 'wet-cell' car battery. Heavy, but supplied lots of high current.
Lithium-Ion and lithium-polymer batteries appear to be everywhere powering all types of electronic devices... especially cellphones.
The problem is they are volatile if mishandled. Overcharging a Lithium battery can cause an explosion with the battery emitting toxic fumes. A while back I read a story about a girl who shipped her phone between the mattress and pillow. This insulated the heat dissipation while charging. She was lucky it only smoked the phone and pillow. Other devices actually explode.
I order lots of batteries and the packages have warning labels on the box.
Airlines have restrictions for traveling with batteries. New generation cellphones are sealed, so you cannot tamper with the battery, but proper charging care is essential.

For years, I've been reading about Amazon making deliveries by drone. For the record, it's not perfected yet. Good idea or not, something on a large scale must get the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which is the same government agency that hasn't allowed flying cars. Remember those?
I'm reading some drone companies have plane-like aircraft that drop their cargo from 10 to 12 feet and not land to release the package. Tell that to your Rolex vendor.

People who make flying cars often depict someone stuck in traffic and like a transformer, opening wings and taking to the sky. Read my lips: It ain't happening.
Airplanes (real or converted cars) have to get approval from a flight tower and have a prescribed flight plan... with the exception of a crop duster in Kansas, they all have to be 'on the radar' and takeoff and land from a runway. That includes manned drones.

While Amazon drones have great merit, you cannot fill the sky with drones dropping $200 Yeazy sneakers across town. What are they good for? In my opinion, special emergency authorization like a 20 minute direct flight transporting a heart (on ice) to a hospital 50 miles away where an ambulance transport could be more than one hour getting through one busy city to another busy city. Just like an ambulance helicopter transport, a designated heli-pad is where the package would be received. Logically, there would need to be a fast charge station for the return flight.

Drone on...

I don't play or copy CD's DVD's or Blueray discs and have avoided programs that allow you to save those forms of media to another system. I saw one available for free today on give away of the day dot com.
One of my clients is in the business of total home automation where lights, appliances, window shades can be controlled via an iPhone. That includes TV's and sound system throughout the house. He has software that allows him to copy any DVD, including protected ones and migrate those movies to a huge hard drive so the clients total library is accessible and they don't have to flip DVD's to watch movies.

Since I'm avoiding Geekdom, much of that process uses ISO files. A quick read says it's a compressed single file of the contents of data or possibly an operating system. So copying an entire DVD to one ISO file so it can be played directly from the system without having to play the DVD.

Most of the people I know who are deeply into streaming, have Netflix or some other service so they pull whatever video they want via internet to see from a huge library. Unless they have a big collection of movies, they probably bypassed the ISO phase.

I'll probably read a little more for the knowledge as I'm told you can copy an entire Windows operating system to ISO for future retrieval.