AI and cybersecurity, how I broke Gemini, GPT-5.4 vs humans
Plus, massive underground mystery tunnels, dancing robots, robots for octogenarians, my favorite sticky clay, and MacBook Air vs Neo
I’m David Gewirtz. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. It’s been an exciting week. Let’s dive in.
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My articles
Here’s a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET.
I used Nano Banana 2 to make perfect sketchnotes: 5 lessons learned (and how I broke Gemini): The results were fascinating, impressive, and sometimes surprisingly bad. Here are five tips that can help you get better results faster.
OpenAI’s new GPT-5.4 clobbers humans on pro-level work in tests - by 83%: GPT-5.4 is also more reliable, producing 18% fewer errors and 33% fewer false claims than GPT-5.2, according to OpenAI.
ZDNET Special Feature: Cybersecurity in the New AI Era
ZDNET is running a powerful Special Feature, Cybersecurity in the New AI Era. As part of that collaborative project, I wrote these in-depth analysis pieces:
Why enterprise AI agents could become the ultimate insider threat: Generative AI is moving from chatbot to autonomous actor. When agents can launch other agents, spend money, and modify systems, the line between productivity tool and insider threat disappears.
Why encrypted backups may fail in an AI-driven ransomware era: Think your encrypted backups are safe? AI-driven ransomware now infiltrates networks, corrupts recovery points, and silently targets backup systems before you ever realize your data protection strategy has failed.
Project of the week
Last week, I showed you how I cleaned up my workbenches. That gave me room to be able to film the unboxing and setup of this newly-released Anycubic Kobra X (the white machine in the middle).
This is a color-switching printer, but there’s no special separate filament holding box (like the one you can see above the Anycubic Kobra 3 on the right). Instead, the entire color-switching apparatus is built into the print head. It’s an interesting approach, even if there’s a wild mess of feed tubes exploding from the top of the machine.
Stay tuned. I’m currently editing the setup video, which I expect to be able to show you next week. Then, coming up after I put the machine through its paces, will be the usual testing and review.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
Deep dive on how undersea cables are used to link the Internet and AI processing across the world.
With the second season of Fallout now streaming all episodes, Todd Howard of Bethesda shares the company’s strategy. This video isn’t on YouTube, but it’s still very interesting if you’re into game and media business strategy.
Boston Dynamics robots dance to Queen on the America’s Got Talent TV show. Yes, it’s incredibly entertaining until these things come for you in the middle of the night.
Product of the week
I don’t think I shared my Blu Tack obsession with you before. This is a sticky clay-like substance that serves as both an adhesive and a modeling compound. I use it to prop up or secure objects I’m photographing, although I’ve also used it to hold awkward electronic connections when I’m soldering them in.
Note: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Interesting reads
And now, some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth checking out.
Great phrase in this NY Times story: “Some of the first people living alongside artificially intelligent robots are octogenarians who came into a world without color television.”
Scientists discover massive underground mystery tunnels in South America.
ZDNET’s Lance Whitney compares the MacBook Air with the new MacBook Neo. Which one are you going to get?
Send in your projects
I’d like to regularly spotlight a reader project or two here. Your project doesn’t have to be a big Kickstarter launch. If you’ve built something cool, it has some pretty pictures, and you’re proud of it, I might be able to share it here.
If you have a photogenic reader project, send an email to me at david@zatz.com with the subject “READER PROJECT,” a few pictures, and a short one-paragraph description. If you have a social media link or a link to the project, include that, too.
Both my EPs are now streaming
Available on all your favorite streaming services.
More clicky
I’ve got a lot happening all over the web. Here are links to my various stuff:
House of the Head: home for my published music
ZATZ Labs: where I host my published software projects
Feel free to dig around, visit, and say hey!
Leave some comments
Substack supports comments, so feel free to leave some. I promise to read them. Just, please, let’s keep our personal politics out of any discussion.
That should do it for this week. This newsletter is really starting to pick up subscribers. Please help it out by sharing links on all your socials.
Have a great week!