Gmail AI does something cool, a new free model from Google, and are IDEs obsolete?
Plus, how to save gas money, giant eggs found under volcanoes, a new Darwin Award candidate, and what your poop schedule says about you.
I’m David Gewirtz. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. It’s been an exciting week. Let’s dive in.
Advanced Geekery is published weekly on Substack and LinkedIn. Same content. Choose your favorite delivery method. Back Issues.
My articles
Here’s a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET.
I built two apps with just my voice and a mouse - are IDEs already obsolete? With one hand holding my dog and no keyboard, I advanced two serious development projects using AI prompting, proving that the traditional coding setup may no longer be required.
I used Gmail’s AI tool to do hours of work in 10 minutes - with 3 prompts: I just had a ‘living in the future’ moment with Gmail, of all things. Here’s what happened.
Google’s Gemma 4 model goes fully open-source and unlocks powerful local AI - even on phones: Now open-source under Apache 2.0, Gemma 4 brings offline, multimodal AI to servers, phones, and Raspberry Pi - giving developers total local control over edge and on-premises deployments.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
This video shows future Darwin Award winners in hang gliders, being towed by drones. Thanks to my Internet Press Guild buddy Phil Shapiro for sharing this.
YouTuber Tom Buck shows how he uses a magic arm and a super clamp to mount his talking head camera setup. Simple and elegant.
In this short video, some guy shows how to fix wooden joists damaged by a plumber. This kind of splice patch can work for a lot of homeowner fixes, so it’s worth knowing how to do.
Interesting reads
And now, some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth checking out.
Scientists have found giant eggs nearly 20 inches long about two miles below an active volcano. They belong to a winged fish known as the Pacific white skate. And yes, people eat them. Apparently, Pacific white skate tastes a bit like lobster.
Your poop schedule says a lot about your overall health, according to this article. Personally, I think it’s a load of crap.
Want to save bucks on rising gas prices? ZDNET’s Lance Whitney has five apps that can save you real cash.
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!