Ain’t ‘Murica already great enough? ChatGPT certainly thinks so. I asked it to give me Alt-Text for the image above and got back this. The image depicts a touching urban winter scene: A person is sitting on the ground, backed by a wrought iron fence with ornate details, surrounded by…

For hearing aids and even AirPods Pro — My wife has had some really bad experiences with hearing aids. We tried three different brands; they all hurt her ears and would fall out too easily. She tried to put up with it, tried different-sized ear tips, but nothing solved her problems and eventually she gave up. The expensive…

Some of us learned a little math in school — Medium introduced their optional price tier yesterday. I signed up immediately, as did many of the people I read regularly. Why? I WANT to pay the people I read — maybe like you — — more money. I want more people to come here to write; I want the people…

Nobody wants these photos — I have a large number of old family photos, some going back to the beginning days of photography. I scanned all of them, added what history I could, and then made an album shared with all of my family and every cousin I could find. I offered the originals to…

Though I’d rather work with Siri — I’ve been using ChatGPT to write Alt-text for some of the photos I use here. I was a bit amused by what it came up with for the photo above. A cheerful elderly man stands in a home interior, adorned in a classic entertainer’s outfit. He sports a black pork…

I sure hope they do it right for our future sake — Is Apple peering into nanotube battery tech? So said some recent reports. This could be quite exciting, as some of what I’ve read implies that CNT (Carbon Nanotube) batteries could have five times the storage capacity of current lithium-ion technology. Of course, “could have” is always a tricky little bit…

Morgan Stanley says Edge AI is Apple’s Golden Ticket — AI is hot, hot, hot. Hotter than a pepper sprout, as Johnny Cash once sang. Even I, a notorious cheapskate who can squeeze a penny so tight that Lincoln winces in pain, pay ChatGPT their $20 monthly extortion fee. If you don’t know about AI’s temperature rise already, you aren’t…

What costs as much as an iPhone but didn’t need to? — Oh, my. Two former Apple employees raised almost a quarter of a billion greenbacks to start Humane and build a quasi-smart-phone that you wear on your lapel. It costs a hundred dollars less than a brand new iPhone 15 and does a whole lot less. But Sam Altman of ChatGPT…

But my wife heard it too — Apple makes some nice speakers they call HomePods. Translation for the Apple haters: Apple makes some crappy, unbelievably over-priced speakers that sheeple like me buy. I have a wall switch that controls our Apple TV, the TV itself, and two HomePod Mini’s. I forgot that the switch was off yesterday…

Learn our secret plan so you can too! — It’s been nineteen years since our younger daughter laid out the outline for holiday shopping that we have used ever since. Her genius, inherited from her loving parents, has allowed all of us to complete our shopping long before most of the frazzled masses have even begun. The details can…

Credit Karma is a flat no — The email came this morning: Mint, the frustrating Intuit financial software I have used for too many years, will be shelved as of January. Intuit expects users to migrate to another crappy product of theirs called Credit Karma, which is in no way a replacement for Mint. …

Looky what I did — This will be a very short post because this picture tells a thousand words. Ever since Standby was added to IOS, I have wanted to be able to use it without having to plug a charger into the wall. Duh! I have a small stack of Mophie charger bricks like…

Maybe you are doing better than you think? — Are you making as much money here as you should here at Medium? What might you expect to make? I do not know. I’m going to share what I earn here. I know talking about money is a taboo for many, but it’s not for me. Most of the people…

This might work for a short time — Have you noticed grocery prices going up? I’d bet you have. Many things contribute: inflation, bad weather, transportation costs, labor costs, and more. I doubt anything will change; I’d expect prices to keep rising. One thing I do already is try to shop around for the best prices. That isn’t…

Oooh, shiny new locks! — I saw that Amazon now supports Passkeys. You might have read just enough about that to think it is wonderful and that you should rush to secure your account. Sure, do that. But your account will be just as vulnerable to hackers as it always been. I explained all this…

Hold on, let me ask my calendar — This silly little thing is my most used IOS Shortcut. It’s about as simple as it can get, yet it is extremely helpful. All it does is find upcoming Calendar Entries. When I run it. it prints out something like this on my screen.

Making their and your life easier — My wife is not severely disabled, but she does need help from me, so I have found several hacks that help both of us. The first one is visible in the main photo above. It’s a little white motion sensor that I can easily program to alert me to motion…