Shopping between Black Friday and Cyber Monday brings you the best deals. But it’s also the best time for scammers. I once ordered pants that never showed up.

When shopping online, look for “https” in the address bar. If it doesn’t have the “s” for security, leave. Also watch out for deals that sound too good to be true. Avoid unknown retailers.

Two-factor authentication is also highly recommended. If the Hilary Clinton campaign had used it for its email accounts in 2016, for example, hackers couldn’t have gained access to the 50,000 sensitive emails belonging to her campaign chairman. Nor could the hackers have controlled the inboxes of her staffers, according to “Fancy Bear Goes Phishing,” by Scott Shapiro.

Finally, if your phone isn’t a Pixel, you probably don’t have a Virtual Private Network, or VPN. You probably need one if you’re doing online shopping over public Wi-Fi, instead of using data through your cellular connection. According to recent surveys, 58 percent of Americans pay for unlimited data, but a third feel that they over-pay.

A good choice for VPN service is the free “Proton,” recommended by The Verge and PC Magazine. The company was built by scientists who met at CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research. It’s the world’s biggest physics laboratory.

The Big “C”

Why is your computer’s hard drive called a “C” drive?  Before computers with hard drives, there were floppy disks. These were inserted in the “A” or “B” drive. Thus, the hard drives became “C” drives. Your CDs or DVDs went into the “D” drive. Though D drives began to be phased out in the late 2010s, they’re still available. For example, the HP 22-inch All-in-One Desktop PC, which just came out this year, has one. There are also portable CD/DVD drives, which plug into your computer, starting at $20.

How to Share Your Screen on Facetime

If you want to teach someone something on Facetime, just ask if you can control their screen. Here’s how.

First, tap the share button next to the red “x” end call button. Then tap “share my screen.” You’ll see a preview of the other person’s screen. Tap “Request Control.” For more info, see the Mashable article: “How to take control of someone else’s screen during a FaceTime.”

Controlling Alexa with Your Thoughts

Six Americans with Louis Gehrig’s disease, the paralyzing malady formally known as ALS, are now controlling their Alexa devices with thoughts alone. Amazingly, no brain surgery was required.

Unlike Elon Musk’s Neuralink, the new technology from Synchron is non-invasive. It goes into a patient’s jugular vein, then sits on a blood vessel on the brain and senses brain signals. If you search on “Synchron Brain Computer Interface,” you’ll come upon a video showing a patient responding to a text from his doctor by thinking about it. For example, while looking at a menu, he focuses on the phrase “Tuesday at 3 works for me.” When the doctor asks about his back pain, he focuses on the line: “It’s there, but manageable.” Later he lets the doctor know he received his prescription.

AI is not Human

Many people talk about AI like it’s human. But according to Professor Yann LeCun, the founding director of Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR), it isn’t even close.

AI is only good at predicting how words might follow one another, based on a huge database of examples. To get to human-level intelligence, LeCun says, you’d have to start with models that learn the way a baby does, by taking in visual information. Toward that end, Dr. LeCun feeds his AI system lots of video. But the makers of the Pokémon Go game may have a better idea. They’re harvesting data from millions of players to create an AI model that can navigate the physical world.

Humanized Robots

Until now, every robot I’ve seen looked metallic and machine-like. The new “Neo” from a company called 1x, is covered in clothing. It moves like a human and puts its arm around you for a selfie shot of the two of you, while waving to the camera. It’s powered by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. In the video, it helps around the house, cleaning up spills and making itself useful. See it in action in a CNET article titled “Humanoid Robots Head to Homes.”

Restaurant Robots

The phones of popular restaurants ring all day with people asking questions or making reservations. But if you’re calling a restaurant in Miami, San Francisco or Atlanta, you’re probably speaking to a robot. The robot will pass you to a human if your question is tricky, but that only happens 10 percent of the time.

AI Tackles Scientific Journals

If you’ve ever stumbled upon a scientific journal article that made your eyes glaze over, you might like Google’s new “Illuminate.” Illuminate is a free AI tool you can use to digest scientific articles and books, turning them into three-minute podcasts. It’s like Google’s NotebookLM but handles the kind of complicated stuff that would stump the Notebook.

To try it out, go to Illuminate.Google.com. The site offers a dozen examples to tap on, along with a link to the transcript and source material. In some cases, I didn’t think the podcast was any more helpful than the executive summary in a journal article. In others, it did seem to help.

Filed under: AI, computers, facebook, health, robots, shopping