Star Trek geek alert, Quest 3 in a car, and saving hours with AI help
Plus, Liam Neeson in a bunny costume, a cat in Top Gun, how to cut and paste using the Vision Pro, and more.
I’m David Gewirtz. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. It’s been an exciting week. 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.
Saving hours of work with AI: How ChatGPT became my virtual assistant for a data project: Ever wondered how to leverage AI for mundane tasks? I'll demonstrate how ChatGPT turned hours of grunt work into minutes, using a shopping challenge on Temu.
Amazon knows you don't have the AI skills for tomorrow, and has a plan to help: With AI literacy becoming as fundamental to future jobs as reading, Victor Reinoso - in an exclusive interview - details the many ways Amazon is working to bridge the education gap.
How to select, copy, and paste on the Apple Vision Pro with hand gestures: Want to use just your fingers and eyes with the virtual tools on Apple Vision Pro to copy and paste? This guide is for you.
Can you use your Meta Quest in a moving car? Maybe - what to know before you try: Here's why passengers using VR headsets in cars are finding it challenging, and how to (sort of) overcome those issues at your own risk.
Urgent geek alert!
The latest season of Star Trek Discovery begins streaming on Thursday! Be sure to tune to Paramount+ and catch the double episode.
Sadly, after Thursday’s double feature, there will be only eight more episodes (ever) of Discovery. Strange New Worlds Season 3 is slated for 2025. So unless the Section 31 movie, Lower Decks Season 5, and/or Prodigy Season 2 materialize in 2024, this is the last new Federation goodness we’re going to see until next year.
Ah well, any Trek is good Trek, right? Now, when are we gonna get new Stargate?
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
Ever wondered what Right-click→Refresh does in Windows? Apparently, this guy did and did a video. I won’t lie. I desperately need that feature for MacOS, even if it’s just as a fidget menu.
What could possibly make Top Gun: Maverick better? Top Gun: Maverick with a cat. Some video editor did a fairly masterful job of sticking a cat into promo scenes from the movie. Gotta love it.
I never really noticed it until I noticed it, but Liam Neeson has some Christopher Walken in his soul. Check out this bit where Liam Neeson auditions to play the Easter Bunny. Priceless.
Interesting reads
And now, some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth reading.
Big shoutout to my Internet Press Guild colleague Daniel Dern who turned me on to these two fascinating histories: the story of Smokey Bear and the ad campaign for Smokey Bear. And no, “the” is not part of Smokey’s name. Remember, only you can prevent wildfires.
Gizmodo ran a fascinating piece, entitled, “We Tested AI Censorship: Here’s What Chatbots Won’t Tell You”. It’s worth the read.
Continuing the topic of AI (bet that’s a surprise!), ZDNET’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has an informative take on What is an AI PC, and should you buy one?
Reader 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.
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!