On Computers

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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Protesters have been raging about giant data centers guzzling power, water and land. But here’s an environmentally-friendly solution: standalone apps that don’t connect to the internet. When you use free apps like Atomic Chat, Google’s AI Edge Gallery, LLM Studio, or Ollama, you sever your cord to the cloud. Unlike ChatGPT and other AI bots, these apps don’t require a web window. They allow you to download their brains to work offline. In short, by using these apps, you won’t cause electricity demand to shoot up the way it would with cloud-based AI bots. When you type a prompt into ChatGPT, Gemini and other standard AI services, your request travels to massive server farms that consume staggering amounts of electricity […]

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Filed under: AI, free stuff, phones, security | Comments Off on AVOIDING BIG DATA CENTERS

“What women’s club role should I choose?” I wondered. To help me answer this, I enlisted the help of an artificially-intelligent board of directors. The result was stunning. In our fascinating back-and-forth discussion, a consensus emerged. The same technique could be used to get advice for starting a new business, raising a child or moving to Timbuktu. PC World offers the exact steps. Here they are. First, go to your favorite AI website or your favorite AI app, whether it’s ChatGPT or something else. (I prefer Claude AI over ChatGPT, though both are great.) Second, type in a question. Third, add the following statement, including everything that’s shown below between the quote marks. “I want you to act as my […]

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Filed under: AI, health, science, security, trends | Comments Off on GETTING ADVICE FROM AN AI TEAM

There are now artificially intelligent reviewers inside the Amazon phone app that can chat with you about Amazon products. They’re folksy and fun. To test it, I tapped the app on my phone, then looked up the Ninja Kitchen System, a blender and food processor in one. After I tapped “Hear the Highlights,” my AI hostess introduced herself, then introduced Sofia, an AI culinary expert. While they were talking, I tapped the raise-your-hand icon to ask a question. “Are the reviews good?” I asked and up popped a “you’re next” sign. “Joy’s asking about the reviews,” the hostess replied. “Do customers actually like this thing?” The culinary expert said that 83 percent of Amazon buyers thought that the Ninja was […]

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Filed under: AI, Amazon, browsers, Internuts, photos, photoshop, security, video, virus | Comments Off on TALKING AMAZON APP

Big data centers use a huge amount of electricity. But that’s changing. Someday soon, we won’t have to pay higher electricity prices because AI is hogging our power. AI’s new Large Language Models are saving energy, because processing happens locally on our devices rather than via power-hungry remote servers. For example, PrismML, founded by Caltech scientists, shrinks AI. Instead of giant data centers, their AI models can work on devices as small as the iPhone 17. What’s more, they take up only 1.5 gigabytes and can be downloaded for free at PrismML.com. But PrismML’s “Bonsai” is not for casual users. It’s for tech enthusiasts who want to tinker with their own private AI, as well as developers, researchers and hardware […]

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Filed under: AI, health, how-to, Internuts, robots, security, social networks, Sports | Comments Off on FROM BIG AI TO INVISIBLE AI

When I went on a 2025 Princess cruise to Alaska, I got spotty connectivity on my Android phone, compared to what my iPhone-owning friends experienced. I ended up paying $100 just to send email for a day or two. But at least I was able to make phone calls throughout the voyage.  It was whole ’nother ball game for my friend Tammy when she took an MSC cruise to the Caribbean in March of 2026. The ship offered an internet package for $35 a day that didn’t cover calls. “Too pricey,” she decided. More typically, Carnival cruises charge $23.80 a day if you buy it before the cruise, and $28 to $35 if you wait. So if I ever go […]

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Filed under: AI, apps, Internuts, security, spyware, wearables | Comments Off on AT SEA WITH THE INTERNET

“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

Using a radio device, a car thief can unlock your fancy sports car and drive away. Even from 16 to 66 feet away, your key fob’s signal can be intercepted and cloned. The same goes for your low-priced vehicle. “So why don’t key fobs come with an off button?” an engineer asked me. I told him it’s because car manufacturers worry that if you forget you disabled the system, you might think your battery is dead. Then you might lose a business deal and sue. But some models do have a way to turn off “Passive Key Entry.” Others offer a fob that goes to sleep when it’s not in motion. In either case, disabling the PKE or using a […]

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Filed under: AI, keyboards, security | Comments Off on A FOIL TO FOB THIEVES

I love “The Ultimate ChatGPT Prompt Book” by Igor Pogany. It’s both fun and serious. The author has lived in six countries, speaks three languages natively, has 30 million views on YouTube and over 400,000 followers.  The Ultimate ChatGPT Prompt Book offers 750 examples of questions or commands you can use at ChatGPT.com, all of which have been tested by experts, from practical to funny. I found myself tweaking every single one, just as it encourages you to do. In the “Excuses” category, for example, I typed: “Write something funny and short with an absurdly implausible reason for not going for a walk with someone you find boring.” It came back with: “I’d love to walk, but I accidentally agreed […]

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Filed under: AI, books, gadgets, security, troubleshooting, wearables | Comments Off on THE ULTIMATE CHATGPT BOOK