While messaging Android to Android or iPhone to iPhone is secure, messaging from one to the other is not.
Now even the FBI and CISA, the US cyber defense agency, are warning Americans to use responsibly encrypted messaging and phone calls where they can. The backdrop is the Chinese hacking of US networks that is reportedly “ongoing and likely larger in scale than previously understood.”
Fully encrypted comms is the best defense against this compromise, and Americans are being urged to use that wherever possible.
You can buy MS Office again! No subscription needed!
“Earlier this month, Microsoft finally released the latest version of Microsoft Office that isn’t tied to Microsoft 365, meaning you can now buy access to the latest versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with a one-time payment instead of shelling out cash on a subscription.”
“Is your boss texting you on the weekend? Work email pinging long after you’ve left for home?
“Australian employees can now ignore those and other intrusions into home life thanks to a new “right to disconnect” law designed to curb the creep of work emails and calls into personal lives.
“The new rule, which came into force on Monday, means employees, in most cases, cannot be punished for refusing to read or respond to contacts from their employers outside work hours.”
“India’s largest budget carrier, IndiGo, is the first airline to trial a feature that lets female passengers book seats next to other women to avoid sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a man in a move designed to make flying more comfortable for female passengers.”
“The airline’s booking process is fairly standard except for the seat map which highlights seats occupied by women with the color pink. This information is not visible to male passengers, according to the airline.”
“‘We have a significant share of female travelers. And, basically, technology is now enabling some things which were not able in the past … We brought it up as a test for female travelers to check in and see where they can sit next to another female traveler, and actually it has resounded very, very well of course with our customers, but also internationally,’ CEO Pieter Elbers said in an interview with CNBC.”
You probably know that ChatGPT isn’t just limited to typing and reading, but it also has a voice mode. It is conversational, where you can talk to it and it talks back to you (rather than putting text on a screen).
This video is, well, an interview with ChatGPT, and Alex O’Connor, the host of this YouTube channel, tries to get ChatGPT to admit that it is conscious, mostly based on the words that it uses.
“The African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, typically lives in the streams and ponds of sub-Saharan Africa, scavenging for food that it rips apart with its feet. In January, researchers at the University of Vermont and Tufts University published a report that gave the amphibian a different lot in life. They harvested its embryonic skin and heart cells and reassembled the living matter into robotic devices — transforming Xenopus into xenobot.
“Xenobots are the first robots made completely of living materials. They’re designed on a supercomputer running software that emulates natural selection: Algorithms determine possible effective tissue configurations for a xenobot to perform a specified task, such as moving through fluids or carrying a payload. The most promising designs are sculpted with tiny forceps and cauterizing irons, then set free in petri dishes, where the specks of amphibian flesh live for about a week before decomposing. There are no electronics involved. Behaviors are programmed entirely through the structural arrangement of the pulsating heart cells held in a matrix of rigid skin cells.
“Although xenobots can’t yet do much more than crawl or swim, the researchers see great potential for them to aid in fields like medicine and environmental remediation. In the future, xenobots could be engineered to deliver drugs through the human body or to gather up microplastics in oceans, politely biodegrading when the job is done.”
