ROBOT TO THE RESCUE

It breaks my heart to hear about lonely seniors. Perhaps a robot would help. The “ElliQ” is smaller than a desk lamp but inspires great testimonials. Some say it’s better than a dog. “She keeps me on my toes,” said one 69-year-old man. “It’s like I’m living with somebody.” Besides playing music and showing you photos on its companion tablet, it records your health vitals and remembers how you felt yesterday before asking you how you feel today. In an emergency, it will call your closest contact. One senior said that the ElliQ got her to exercise and feel appreciated. Others said they started laughing more, because the robot is funny. It engages you in trivia games, displays inspirational quotes […]

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SMART WATCHES TACKLE PHONE ADDICTION

My sister says her co-workers spend their whole lunch hour scrolling on their phones. Kids also do that from what I’ve heard. A smart watch could be the answer. A Lyft driver told me he bought T-Mobile’s SyncUp Kids Watch for his 10-year-old daughter on their $10-a-month plan so she won’t become a tech zombie. She can call, text and play a few games, but is not on social media. Plus, he gets real-time location tracking and text alerts if she ventures beyond his limits. The watch costs $174, but is free for those who sign up for the service. It comes in pink or blue or you can add your own watchband. But that’s just one of many smart […]

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PLAGIARISM BY CHATBOTS

Artificially-intelligent bots are plagiarizing known authors. It happened to author Jane Friedman, who reports on the publishing industry. A copycat version of her work was reviewed on Goodreads. Friedman told ZDnet that an author she found on Twitter.com has been plagiarized by AI bots 29 times. It could be a growing problem. Suppose, for example, that you insert the text of a published novel into a site like ChatGPT, and ask for it to be rewritten in the bot’s own words. Next you run the result through an AI content detector. If it scores 100 percent, it’s 100 percent fakey-sounding. So you tweak it a bit before uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing. I decided to test this idea myself. I […]

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A NEW AI

I just pasted 63,226 words into a search bar and got a great summary in a flash. In 14 sentences, Claude AI listed all the major events and themes of a book I edited called “A Woman from Iran.” “This is a revolution!” the author said. “A book that took me so long to write can be summarized in less than one minute by AI.” I agree. Claude AI is amazing. ChatGPT 3 can only understand 3000 words at once, and ChatGPT 4 can only understand 25,000, but the latest version of Claude can understand 70,000. To use it, go to the website Claude.ai and type or paste anything you want into the search box, then ask for a summary, […]

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TALKING TO THE BARD

A thousand experts have warned about artificial intelligence, but I’m having too much fun to stop. Using Google Bard, I typed: “I have five days in London. What should I see?” The first day of the Bard’s itinerary included a hop-on, hop-off bus tour, a visit to the Tower of London and a boat ride on the river Thames. It was almost as good as travel expert Rick Steves, without the detail. I also asked the Bard to write a program, in the programming language Pascal, to figure out the day of the week for any date going back thousands of years or into the future. The code arrived in seconds. By the way, Christopher Columbus set sail on a […]

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SWIMMING TO THE BEAT

The first time I tried the OpenSwim headset from Shokz, I found myself wanting to swim longer and faster. It literally brought music to my ears. But I had a heck of a time getting it adjusted properly. First I jumped in the pool, then tried to stuff my ponytail and headset under my cap. It makes a kind of ring around the back of your head, using bone conduction technology to bring the sound to you.  But I kept adjusting not just the fit, but the volume. It seems louder underwater, though it had to compete with my splashes. The second time I tried the OpenSwim, I thought “phooey.” I just couldn’t get it adjusted right. Of course, it’s […]

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FAKE TEXTS LURK INSIDE REAL ONES

Scammers are now adding hoaxes to legitimate text messages. It’s getting easier to be fooled. Recently, a friend of mine got a legitimate text about her furniture delivery. It asked her to choose a date. When none of the dates worked for her, she wrote down the number listed in the text, to get more options. What made it suspicious? She couldn’t just tap it to initiate a call like you normally can on a cell phone. And the guy who answered said: “How old are you?” When she said “70,” he said, “You sound so young, like you’re 30.” Then he added: “I’ll need your credit card number.” “Why should I give you that?” she asked, before hanging up. […]

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CHEAP TONER RUINS LASER PRINTER

My nine year-old Okidata color laser printer spews pale pink ink all over my documents and makes a black streak on the side of every page. Should I dump it or have it fixed? The Okidata tech support guy said the drum is busted, done in by the cheap toner I bought. I’d been buying knockoff toner from Amazon ever since I discovered that a full set of certified Okidata cartridges costs over $400. But those cartridges can print 6,500 pages in magazine quality, perfect for my greeting cards. The cheap toners don’t last and have lousy color, in my experience. In December, for example, I spent $55 on a set from “EasyPrint.” Six months later, one of the four […]

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GETTING A LYFT

The Lyft app often gets my pickup point wrong. Sometimes, I have to walk to a popular restaurant in order to be found. I had an awful time at the airport recently. When I put in the name, O’Hare International, the app should have prompted me to choose a specific pickup zone. It didn’t do that, so I typed in O’Hare’s address. What a mistake. The driver never came near to where I was standing. In the cold frosty air, I twiddled my frozen thumbs. I texted him repeatedly to say I was in “Green Zone D.” I also left a voicemail. When he called me back, I shouted “Green Zone D” over and over. The connection was faulty but […]

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MASSAGE GUN GETS A THUMBS UP

I asked a friend who has arthritis in his hands and feet to test a cordless massage gun. He gave it a pleasantly-massaged thumbs-up. A good massage increases circulation, decreases pain and removes stiffness. My friend reported back: “The Merach Pocket Nano Massage Gun is better than my Wahl Heat Therapy Therapeutic Massager, with one caveat. The hard plastic tips work well enough on muscles and fleshy parts, but pose a problem for bony parts. For instance, I usually run my massager over the tops of my hands. With this, I can only comfortably do my palms.” But it turned out that massaging the palms worked its magic all the way through to the bony parts as well. It also […]

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