The free Yuka app uncovers the dangerous ingredients lurking in foods and cosmetics. I wish it said “yuck” every time it gave a bad rating.

Thanks to Yuka, I decided not to buy Mission’s “Carb Balance Whole Wheat Tortillas” ever again. Yuka gave it a dreadful score, with all the reasons outlined. It also suggested healthy alternatives, but best of all, it saves your searches and the ratings, with photos of the scanned products and their alternatives, along with other great info.

To start, download and install the free app from the app store, then open it and tap its scan icon. Then scan a barcode. That’s how I found out that Olay’s “Complete Daily Moisturizer,” with sunscreen, which I’ve been using for years, gets a zero out of 100 thanks to risky chemicals galore. But the safe kind of sunscreen, with only zinc oxide and titanium oxide, turns your face white.

OK, that’s great, but what about the cons? Just because Yuka gives something a fantastic rating doesn’t mean it’s up to your standards. For example, it said that Trader Joe’s vegetable samosas are “excellent,” thanks to low sodium, low fat, low calories, no sugar, good veggies and no additives. But the samosas’ primary ingredient is white potatoes. I can think of dozens of foods more nutritious than that, especially green veggies. I use samosas as a party food.

Slow Mac

My friend’s newish Mac got so slow, it felt like it came from the 1990s, not 2022.

I suggested downloading Ccleaner from Ccleaner.com. The free app got rid of over three gigabytes worth of junk, and sped up her Mac immediately. She was ecstatic. I also told her she should turn off her computer at night. That will help too.

Stompers

A guy who designs characters for Looney Tunes came up with “Stompers,” a free app for keeping track of your daily steps on an iPhone. It lets you stomp or thwack your friends in a Looney-Tunes way as you aim to walk further than they did.

Glue on Your Pizza

Google’s “AI Overviews” recently suggested using glue to make cheese stick to a pizza. But fortunately, Google figured out how to eliminate such nonsense replies. In case you haven’t seen them yet, these summaries appear above the usual links in the Chrome web browser when you do a Google search.

A nonsense question can send Google AI down the rabbit hole into more nonsense. Garbage in, garbage out. But the mighty search engine is now aware of the bait. Skipping the summaries, it will limit itself to links if you try to trick it.

Generating Sound Effects

Do you need sound effects in your video, podcast or other project? You got it. Just type in some text and the Eleven Labs AI engine will generate that sound. The magic happens at elevenlabs.io/app/sound-effects.

Following a demo at The Verge, I asked for the sound of a train, an epic female choir, some  spaceship engine noise, a few galloping horses and a needle skipping over a vinyl record. Those all worked great. So did simple sounds like “rooster” or “typewriter.” But asking it for “professional whistling to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner” was a disaster. Hey, whaddya want in an app that gives you 450 free sound effects? For $5 a month, you can clone your voice, get access to their dubbing studio, and obtain a license for commercial use.

Upgrading Your Phone

“I’m thinking of getting a later, faster iPhone,” a reader wrote, “but I want to keep my cost down as I am a cheapskate. Thoughts?”

I suggested the iPhone SE, Apple’s $429 budget model. Everyone I know who has one is happy with it. But the reader doesn’t want a phone that’s smaller than his current iPhone 8 Plus. So I suggested Swappa.com, which sells lightly-used phones in great condition.

Often, the only reason someone parts with a perfectly good phone is that they’re anxious to get the latest model. This means bargains for you. For example, on Swappa, the iPhone 13 Pro starts at $416 for the unlocked version, a lot less than the $599 that Apple charges for a new one. It has a powerful processor, a fantastic display, two 12 megapixel cameras and great battery life. It will continue getting updates until 2029. Search on “Amazon Renewed” to explore similar deals.

Driverless Ambulances

A reader suggested that driverless ambulances might be a great solution to the shortage of regular ambulances. But scientists are already on the case.

Caltech’s Autonomous and Robotics Control Lab is working on Vertical Takeoff and Landing ambulances offering door-to-door, unhindered, frictionless flying without pilots. Search on “Caltech driverless ambulances” to see pictures.

Volkswagen showed off a driverless ambulance at the ITS World Congress in 2021. Its seats point backward toward medical equipment. They say it will be in operation by 2025.

Many people freak out at the idea of a driverless ambulance, despite statistics showing that human error is largely to blame in most autonomous vehicle accidents. According to research from Florida Institute of Technology and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University involving over a thousand people, about half of adults have reservations– even if they’d get two paramedics instead of one. That’s why driverless ambulances may start out as medical taxis for low risk patients.

Filed under: apps, games, podcasts, robots, troubleshooting, video