Category: Emerging Technology

  • PLEX Privacy Problem.

    At the begin­ning of Novem­ber 2023, PLEX enabled some new fea­tures that have turned out to be a bit of a PR and Pri­vacy nightmare. Basic­ally, they’ve star­ted email­ing all mem­bers of a PLEX serv­er with the recent view­ing habits of oth­er mem­bers of that serv­er. Even if the mem­bers don’t know each oth­er, PLEX…

  • I’m don’t have the knowledge, but ChatGPT does…

    I’m work­ing on a web­site, build­ing pages that have ran­dom pull-quotes on them. And I’m mak­ing mockup / place­hold­er pages. Many mockups. This gets old pretty quickly so I’m think­ing to myself, “Self? Let’s see if we can have some fun with these quotes”. But, rather than just do a search for quotes, I thought I’d…

  • Rogue One: A Masterpiece of Star Wars Storytelling

    Star Wars is a uni­verse of myths and legends, a place where the impossible becomes pos­sible, where dreams are made real, and where her­oes rise from humble begin­nings. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story con­tin­ues this tra­di­tion, weav­ing a new tale of hope, sac­ri­fice and cour­age into the fab­ric of the Star Wars universe. The…

  • Using ChatGPT to generate Dungeons & Dragons adventure scenarios: Abandoned mineshaft near Oakdale

    I was play­ing around with the Chat­G­PT arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence recently, and decided to prompt it to see how well it could cre­ate a Dun­geons & Dragons adventure. Sur­pris­ingly well, it turns out. I’m temp­ted to run this sometime… Abandoned mineshaft near Oakdale Prompt: Using the 5th edi­tion Dun­geons & Dragons rules, cre­ate a small dun­geon…

  • Found my boarding pass. Next stop, Mars.

  • Have your friends pay you back directly with PayPal.Me

    Do you lend friends money, and they nev­er have cash to pay you back? Well PayP­al has cre­ated a tool that will help your friend pay you back through PayP­al; it’s called PayPal.Me Basic­ally you get a cus­tom URL at PayP­al (Mine’s paypal.me/BradGrier if any­one feels like test­ing this) , that any­one with a PayP­al…

  • SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lands ‘nicely vertical’ within 10 meters of target … in the ocean

    And that’s how it’s done. SpaceX’s Fal­con 9 came back to Earth after a suc­cess­ful launch today, land­ing in the ocean with­in 10 meters of its actu­al tar­get. And though it didn’t make the plat­form as ori­gin­ally inten­ded, the com­pany thinks that absent rough weath­er, the rock­et have worked as planned. “Rock­et soft-landed in the ocean with­in…

  • Expected: Keurig’s attempt to ‘DRM’ its coffee cups totally backfired

    I’m amazed that someone thought that apply­ing DRM to a cof­fee machine was a good idea. Using single-use dis­pos­able cof­fee pods is not great for the envir­on­ment — we use a refil­lable pod, which would be locked out under the Keur­ig 2.0 system. Con­sumers hate DRM — in music, in movies, in any­thing — but…

  • Once $399 A Year, Google Earth Pro Is Now Free

    Inter­est­ing devel­op­ment. Very cool if you may be doing some­thing like Geocach­ing and need to dump all your cache loc­a­tions into GE. Worth check­ing out, for sure!

  • Testing Duet — an OS X display extender app for iPad

    You’ve prob­ably seen the online hype around Duet — an OS X dis­play extender app for iPad. Basic­ally it’s sup­posed to allow you to extend your cur­rent desktop screen to an iPad — just as if you had an extra mon­it­or. Oth­er apps already do this, but Duet’s claim to fame is it will extend…

  • Cool Thing: A browser based Theremin

    Well, it’s not really a Theremin but more of a sound toy. Yes, it’s a great dis­trac­tion and some­thing to piqué the curi­os­ity of your cube­mates. HTML5 based, it’s a very cool imple­ment­a­tion. The author states he’s work­ing on an update that will allow you to play along with your own music.. cool! Check it…

  • iOS 7 Launch — A busy day today

    iOS 7 will be released later today, and I’m look­ing for­ward to it! Update: But first, a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment. Don’t for­get to BACKUP YOUR DATA (thanks for the remind­er Ryan!) Here’s a great how-to from Apple’s sup­port site. From what I’ve seen, this update of the ven­er­able iOS oper­at­ing sys­tem will be the best yet, not…