Samsung's bonkers badass history, giant 3D printer hack, Doctor Who parody, AI stories, and more
It's Advanced Geekery for the week ending September 22, 2023
Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. This is an exciting issue. Let’s dive in.
My articles
Let’s kick it off with a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET:
You know Apple's origin story but do you know Samsung's? It's almost too bonkers to believe: The official history of Samsung (as told by Samsung) begins in 1969. But there's a much more colorful and incredible pre-history of the company that began back in 1938. Here's that story.
AI is a lot like streaming. The add-ons add up fast: Hang on tight to your wallets, folks! The AI upsells are coming for your hard-earned cash.
My two favorite ChatGPT Plus plugins and the remarkable things I can do with them: For daily tasks, two plugins stand out, but there's a catch: they can't run simultaneously. So choose your tool with care.
Project of the week
I’m testing out the new Creality K1 Max 3D printer for an upcoming review. Here’s one project printed on it. So far, this is looking like quite a solid printer…and it’s fast.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
With David Tennant coming back to Doctor Who, these two women have produced a note-perfect mashup parody of the Tenth Doctor and Rocky Horror. These folks are incredibly talented. Neil Gaiman even shows up on perfect, but too long parody of Good Omens, also starring David Tennant.
What happens if you extend the aluminum extrusion bars on a bed-slinger 3D printer to the tune of ten feet? This engineer decided to give it a go. I think even she was surprised how well it turned out.
In a perfect example of someone with too much time on his hands, this delightfully geeky video is an exploration of the plastic model kits used in the production of the 1960s TV science fiction series The Thunderbirds. What’s your favorite Thunderbird? Mine is, hands down, Thunderbird 2. F-A-B.
Interesting reads
Here’s some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth reading.
Archeologists have found wooden structures half a million years old, showing humans’ use of tools going way back. But which humans?
How Lego changed its color selection over the decades.
Finally, this is just disturbing. Apparently, there’s a weird industry of folks who read obits into YouTube for some scammy cash.
Reader projects
I’d like to regularly spotlight a reader project or two 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.
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!