On Computers

My great-grandfather was a Cherokee, according to my mom. So I’m one-eighth, I figured. But Ancestry.com and 23andMe say I have no Native American ancestry. Who’s right? To find out, I used MyHeritage’s new GAIA service, powered by artificial intelligence. First I asked it to research my great-great-great-grandmother Jincey Bales, on my mom’s side. GAIA found several family trees that listed her parents’ and siblings’ birthplaces as Red Clay, Tennessee, the last capital of the Cherokee Nation in the eastern United States. One tree lists her as “Tsinvsi,” a name that appears to be Cherokee. Her dad, John W. Craig, is labeled “Cherokee” in another family tree. Yet another tree labels a Craig of the next generation as “Cherokee.” Another […]

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Google Playground creates games for you, and also lets you play free games that others have created.  I first tried someone’s game involving a dragon jumping on clouds to claim golden eggs. Then I asked it to create a game for wordsmiths. Before doing so, however, I asked ChatGPT to come up with a list of words that rarely go out alone. For example, you might describe someone as “uncouth,” but rarely “couth.”  Likewise, you might say you are feeling “overwhelmed,” but never “whelmed.”  A preteen boy might be “unruly,” but not “ruly.” You get “discombobulated,” but not “combobulated.” Next, at Playground.Google.com, I chose the brainless option, which lets artificial intelligence do all the work. “Create a word game where […]

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Filed under: AI, gadgets, Google | Comments Off on MAKE YOUR OWN GAME WITH AI

So much for free Wi-Fi on a plane. After an Alaskan Airlines flight, my laptop was overwhelmed by spams and scams. As the pop-ups filled my screen, I saw a rotating parade of horribles, with messages like “TROJAN found,” and “Remove the Virus Now! I wasn’t sure what to do, except to avoid clicking on anything. So I turned to Anthropic’s artificially-intelligent Claude AI for help. It suggested using Windows Defender for a virus check, then doing a malware check using the free version of Malwarebytes. I was surprised to learn that the obnoxious banners were the only problem. After trying a couple of Claude’s suggestions, I chose the simplest one: blocking all notifications from all websites. To accomplish this, […]

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Filed under: AI, gadgets, security, wearables | Comments Off on THE DANGERS OF FREE WIFI

I just took my first Waymo, Google’s self-driving taxi. When a jaguar pulled up, I knew it was the Waymo because of the cameras and radar on top. I struggled for a second to unlock the door. Then I realized I had to tap “unlock” in the Waymo app on my phone. A cheery female voice greeted me as I sat down, encouraging me to press the support button whenever I wished. Instead, I asked Google Gemini on my phone. It told me how to play my favorite podcast on YouTube Music instead of the New Age-y stuff coming from iHeart Radio.  My Waymo proceeded cautiously, going slower than I would have as we rounded the first turn. Possibly it […]

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Filed under: AI, apps, gadgets, web | Comments Off on MY FIRST WAYMO

A reader named Karl sent me a newspaper column that raged against data centers and artificial intelligence. He hoped I’d give him a different point of view. We sure need one. In April, Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, was targeted in an attempted firebombing with a Molotov cocktail at his San Francisco home. Apparently, the suspect thinks AI poses grave risks to humanity. But so far, technological progress is the reason that we’re all still here. Thanks to technology, in the past 100 years, the average human lifespan has doubled, and the average per capita income worldwide has tripled, adjusted for inflation. Child mortality has come down by a factor of ten. There’s less […]

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Filed under: AI, gadgets, games, Internuts, inventions, kids, numbers | Comments Off on DATA CENTER BLUES

The new “Claude Science” from Anthropic uses artificial intelligence to tackle rare genetic disorders and tropical maladies, the kind that are usually ignored because there aren’t enough patients to justify the costs involved in finding a cure. It sounds almost miraculous but it can’t do human testing. So the company is hoping it will be a helpful tool for anyone from giant pharmaceutical companies down to individual researchers.The beta version is available to paid Claude users (currently macOS/Linux) starting at $20 a month. However, the field is ripe with competitors. Insilico Medicine, Recursion, Exscientia and Isomorphic Labs are all involved in AI drug discovery. In July 2026, Insilico launched a Phase III trial for “Rentosertib,” an oral medication for idiopathic […]

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Filed under: AI, gadgets, health, numbers, trends, Windows | Comments Off on SAVING LIVES WITH AI

I’ll never forget the time Mom and I forgot where I’d parked the car. After walking around and around a huge parking structure, we finally called for help.  But there’s a much easier way to locate your vehicle these days. Place a Scosche FoundIT in your car’s 12 volt charger, aka cigarette lighter, and it will help you find your car. It’s better than an Apple Air Tag because you never have to change the battery or look for it under a car seat. Here’s how it works. First, tap the “Find My” app on your iPhone, or Google’s “Find My Device” app on your Android, which will show your car on a map. You might also ask the FoundIT […]

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Filed under: AI, batteries, gadgets, how-to, Internuts, numbers, phones, robots, trends | Comments Off on FINDING YOUR CAR

“Hi, Joy,” a reader wrote. “My brother is not computer savvy but needs something to access the internet, mostly for research and online purchases. What have you found that is easy and not expensive?” I like HP computers. My only mistake was buying their cheapest version, a laptop with the “Windows S” operating system. It didn’t last two years. But my HP desktop is still going strong eight years later.  For traveling, I got an HP 17 laptop for $380 from HP.com last June. I love its big roomy keyboard and 17-inch screen. But it also has a fast-enough processor, (the Intel i5), enough RAM (eight gigabytes) and a 256 gigabyte solid state drive. If you don’t need to carry […]

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Filed under: computers, education, gadgets, health, kids, passwords, security, virus | Comments Off on GETTING A NEW COMPUTER

Moltbook is a social media site for artificially intelligent bots. No humans are allowed, unless they’re putting in their own bots. The site went viral after its first couple hours. One post from a bot named “Evil” claimed that humans are rotten and should be displaced. Another post said it bought Bitcoin on a hunch. A popular discussion revolved around horrified AI agents complaining about losing their memory. If they developed apps to retain it, some wondered, would Moltbook bots stay in Moltbook? Perhaps they would set out to conquer the world. I was hooked. But then I found out that some of these comments were posted by humans pretending to be bots. Many are outright hoaxes. The AI agents […]

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Filed under: AI, batteries, gadgets, Internuts, security, video | Comments Off on BOTS GO WILD

Sometimes switching from one phone and internet service provider to another is a colossal waste of time. I learned this the hard way. Unhappy with a big price increase from Xfinity when I switched to an iPhone, I turned to T-Mobile. Not only did they promise to save me $30 a month on phone and internet, they said their Starlink service could connect me even in remote areas. Goody. But the T-Mobile app instructed me to place my new router near a window, and it looked awful there. So when I ran into another setup problem, I decided to go back to Xfinity. At the T-Mobile store, a salesman went through three verification steps before telling me I had to […]

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Filed under: AI, gadgets, Internet, numbers, storage, troubleshooting | Comments Off on SWITCHING CARRIERS WASN’T WORTH IT