Gmail giveth and taketh away, Claude Tag, and another preview of my app
Plus, a screw counting machine, Windows 10 isn't dead yet, OpenAI gives a plant brains, and astronaut out-of-body experiences.
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 latest preview video
If you’ve been following my ZDNET articles, you know I’ve been working on a filament management tool called My Filament Stash. Here’s another sneak peek feature that will be in the upcoming release of the product. It’s being built for the Apple ecosystem and will run on iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Mac.
My articles
Here’s a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET.
I let Gemini Flows organize my Gmail, and it effectively filtered my inbox (with one sneaky catch): Gmail’s genius Gemini Flows feature fixes filters - but there’s a monthly limit that you should know about.
Anthropic rolls out Claude Tag, your new agentic AI coworker in Slack: Claude Tag could turn your Slack channels into shared spaces where an agentic coworker reads the room, joins threads, remembers context, and moves team tasks forward. Is your workplace ready?
Project of the week
I’ve been using the Anycubic Kobra X for a while now, and I’m pretty happy with it. But it’s time to do a major color print to see how well big projects work on the little machine. As it turns out, I hadn’t yet made an R2D2. This print aims to rectify that situation. Stay tuned. I’ll show it off with supports removed once it finishes its more than 72-hour print process.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
The OpenAI folks managed to connect a plant to an Arduino and a bunch of sensors, hooked it up to GPT, and let it talk. Let us know in the comments below if this is the first step for a flora-flavored Skynet.
Zion Brock (the guy who designed that cool 3D printed radio from a few issues back) takes a look at Bambu’s new PURE filament, which is supposed to be food safe. Spoiler: it kinda (kinda) is.
Dude winds and cooks raw filament to make springy springs.
Gadget of the week
We’re so screwed! What? You all know I have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old. This device is a screw counting machine. Sam at Samcraft spotlighted it in a recent video and I had to share it. This is a tool you might use in manufacturing (Sam does), to create little packages of screws to accompany products. I don’t need one, but I love the idea.
Note: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases (but not this week).
Interesting reads
And now, some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth checking out.
Weird story about how astronauts have an out-of-body sensation when they return to Earth.
Why Doc Brown’s DeLorean had to hit exactly 88 MPH to time travel.
ZDNET’s Ed Bott reports that Windows 10 users just got another (very unexpected) year of support.
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!