A friend said she often loses cell service when camping in Yosemite. Either she’s too far from a cell tower or the signal is blocked by hills, dense trees and stormy weather. So what happens if she’s stung by a bee? There’s no Google when the internet is down.

But there is artificial intelligence. A new iPhone app called “Survivalist.ai” can answer almost any question you throw at it, even offline, because it stores 1.8 gigabytes of info on your phone and was trained on 15 trillion tokens of public data. However, it can only provide event information up to March 2023. That’s because the system is based on many different language models, one of which, Llama 3.1, took 7.7 million hours of Graphics Processing Unit time to train. You can’t get up to date overnight, though most information is still relevant.

 The need for such an app appears to be great. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 65 percent of Americans sought safety info when disaster loomed. But Survivalist.ai doesn’t just answer safety questions. It answers any kind of query. For example, I saw great info on annuities, travel and other topics. Even when you’re stuck in a cave somewhere, you want to know how old Tom Hanks is.

Reader Conundrum 

Many readers said they couldn’t find the free version of Google Lens, which lets you get answers by pointing your phone at an object and asking a question aloud. They even doubted that Lens is really free. There are too many Lens-like links tempting you to tap on them.

To avoid that, go your favorite browser, whether that’s Google Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari or something else. Now search on “Google Lens” or go straight to the site Lens.Google. When you get there, click on “Go to Google Lens,” and click the icon for iPhone or Android. Like all other Google apps, it’s free, though not all Google apps are compatible with your phone.

Some queries work better than others. With obscure Chinese art, I didn’t get an answer to my question about it. To try it out yourself, launch the app, tap the camera button, tap the search button and tap the microphone to add to the search.

The Mighty Mini

If your laptop is just going to sit on your desk, consider the mini. It’s like a desktop, but is about the size of a thick book. Its advantages are many.

First, because it doesn’t come with a keyboard and monitor, it’s a lot cheaper, given that you already have those accessories. When last I checked, Best Buy was selling a Mac Mini for $499. Compare that with a Macbook Air for over a thousand. NewEgg sells a Windows mini for $170. 

Here are some other mini advantages: The mini manages heat better, which makes it last longer, since heat is the death of laptops. Also, it doesn’t use batteries, so you don’t have to worry about replacement costs. It’s also easier to upgrade than a laptop is, and has more ports. For example, the $170 Firebat S1 Mini PC, sold by NewEgg, has four USB-A ports on one side, two HDMI 2.0 ports, two Ethernet ports, and a headset jack. A mini also uses significantly less power, saving you on your electric bill, and is less prone to dust accumulation and insect intrusion. For more info, checkout the PC World article “5 Reasons Why You Should Get a Mini PC.”

The Best Android Phone

The release of the Google Pixel 9 phone was treated like a galactic event. One of its spectacular new features, called “Add Me,” lets you use AI to add yourself to a photo. It does this by stitching together a picture with you and a picture without you. But what if you don’t want to spend $799 or don’t care about AI? 

Until the Pixel 9 came out, Wirecutter.com, a major site for consumer product reviews, said that the best Android phone on the market was the Pixel 8, for $699. A similar choice is the Pixel 8a for $499. Both have seven years of security patches and updates, far above the norm. Both have great cameras. Both can juice up wirelessly with Qi devices such as the $30 Anker Wireless Charger.

After the Pixel 8, Wirecutter said the next greatest Android phone is the Samsung Galaxy S24. But I also like Moto G phones, which have a fantastic battery life and a budget price. I only switched to the Pixel 8 because it came with $25 a month cell and internet service from Xfinity. But I had to go to the Xfinity corporate store to prove it was a real deal.

Typing with Long Fingernails

Attention hand models. The $45 Tippy type silicon keyboard cover allows anyone with long fingernails to type normally. Unfortunately, it’s only compatible with five kinds of Macbooks as well as three laptops from Lenovo, HP and Dell. Check out the FAQs at tippytype.co.

Internut

Search on “Deep Live Cam Goes Viral,” and click on the Ars Technica link to see a guy morph into J.D. Vance, Hugh Grant, Mark Zuckerberg and George Clooney. The George Clooney impersonation is truly amazing. But the ears are the same on every person, and even with the George Clooney clone, there’s something a bit fake about it.

Filed under: AI, Android, apps, computers, Google, Internuts, keyboards