Urgent Kindle countdown, why AI is so hot, protect your digits when online shopping
Plus, I 3D printed a Dalek in four colors, pets are part of the family, purple Earth, goop of the week, and the history of shipping containers
I’m David Gewirtz. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. It’s been an exciting week. Let’s dive in.
My latest video
This week, I created an amazing full-color Dalek using the Kobra 3 printer. This is the first big color project I’ve done, and the results blew me away.
My articles
Here’s a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET.
10 key reasons AI went mainstream overnight - and what happens next: Not long ago, AI seemed like a futuristic idea. Now, it's in everything. What happened?
Download your Kindle books right now - Amazon is killing this option in a few days: The clock is ticking for Kindle users. After February 2025, a long-standing feature disappears. Will this change how you buy and store digital books? Read on to find out more.
Why I never use my personal credit card for free trials, and what I do instead: Say goodbye to surprise credit card charges with the ultimate online shopping hack.
Backup your Kindle files now: If you want to download Kindle files, you only have until Wednesday (February 26). Tomorrow (Monday Feb 24), I have another Kindle article coming that details a step-by-step hack for how to bulk download those files. Check back here to find it.
Goop of the week
In this week’s YouTube video, I showed how I used CA glue and activator to bond some of the Dalek parts together. I really like this Starbond Medium CA stuff, and the little squirt bottle of activator produces far less overspray than the big cans.
Note: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
By now, you know how fascinated I am by logistics and supply chain stories. YouTuber The History Guy makes a really interesting case why the standard shipping container might be the most consequential invention of the last hundred years.
Dude talks about the weird origins of a dozen idioms many of us use every day.
The Knight Rider theme, but done as a Spanish guitar ballad.
Interesting reads
And now, some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth reading.
The Atlantic has an article about why pets are part of the family. Well, duh.
Some scientists believe the Earth was once purple. Seriously. This is their job.
Microsoft says they made qubits work.
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!
Make sure you enabled the tamper monkey plug-in, make sure you pasted the script in, and that you turned on developer mode. Also, you need to be running a modern version of chrome.
I followed the instructions and was able to download one book but the Green Box never appeared. I can download them one at a time. what might I have done wrong