Author: Geek Planet

The Monolith: A refresherEarlier in the production of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the idea of putting a screen on the Monolith was floated and quickly rejected. In the book 2001: A Space Odyssey which was written alongside the film, the ape-men are literally possessed by the Monolith and compelled to perform various tasks. But director Kubrick chose to keep things subtle and open-ended instead. This was a good choice because to do otherwise would’ve required additional exposition. So, why the Monolith? It’s hard to know what to make of the explanation that the book offers. To me,…

Google’s gearing up to launch another Pixel, and this time, it’s the A-series that’s up next. Usually, the company drops an A-series handset in March, but multiple sources claim that the Pixel 10a could arrive a month earlier, in February 2026. Renowned tipster Roland Quandt (via a post on BlueSky) suggests that the Pixel 10a could hit shelves by the middle of February 2026. It’s worth emphasizing here that the retail availability of smartphones usually follows an announcement early on. Hence, Google could announce the next A-series handset in early February, and it might be available to purchase in the…

Dr. Bill Dembski recently wrote an article encouraging the use of chatbots like ChatGPT to improve educational outcomes, republished here at GeekPlanet News in three parts. I’ve been graciously invited to respond. I will also reply in three parts. This post is the first. First, I recognize that Dr. Dembski is one of few who would be carved in a Mt. Rushmore of the ID movement. I am a super-fan of him and his work, and love how he has invested his brilliant giftedness into carefully teaching the world how the design inference works. As a long-time fan and supporter…

Ahead of the CES 2026, the South Korean tech giant Samsung has released what it claims is the “industry’s first 6K glasses-free 3D monitor.” The 32-inch monitor features an IPS panel, supports a peak refresh rate of 165Hz, and has HDMI 2.1 and DP 2.1 ports, but its main highlight is glasses-free 3D rendering. Unlike traditional 3D displays that require bulky eyewear (and a fair bit of patience), Samsung’s 6K 3D Odyssey G9 (G90XH) uses an advanced lenticular lens system paired with eye-tracking cameras to determine the direction of your gaze and adjust the perspective for each eye, creating the…

Are you sharp enough to code for a top software company? Our Monday puzzles are based on the types of questions they are known to ask, hence the name of the series. Some of these questions include topics like “relativity.” It’s not math, exactly, but you need to be able to figure out relationships. Because last week’s Micro Softy was also about figuring out relationships, we will depart from our usual practice by presenting its solution before we ask this week’s question: Solution to Micro Softy 57: My Mother’s Mother-in-law     My father is Ben. Ben’s mother is mymother’s mother-in-law.…

Trust remains the fault line running through Amazon’s ad ambitions.It has been there from the start. Marketers learned early that partnering with Amazon meant buying media from a company that not only set the marketplace’s rules but also stocked the shelves and sold competing products. The tradeoff was efficiency. The tension never disappeared.  In fact, it has intensified as Amazon pushes its ad business beyond its own walls and deeper into the broader web. The pitch is performance at scale. The concern is whether those ad dollars are being steered to the best outcomes or toward the parts of the…

It’s been about four months since the iPhone 17 launched, and rumors about the iPhone 18 series have already started to pour in. The most recent one comes from the Chinese tipster Digital Chat Station (via Weibo), shedding some light on the display specifications for the entire lineup. Starting with the baseline iPhone 18, it could feature the same 6.27-inch (marketed as 6.3-inch) 120Hz OLED screen as the iPhone 17, with ProMotion and the Dynamic Island. The iPhone Air 2, which has returned to the rumor mill after being cancelled, will also retain the 6.55-inch 120Hz OLED screen we’ve seen…

OpenAI launched ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, and its seemingly magical conversational powers fueled the Silicon Valley narrative that scaling up large language models (LLMs) would soon achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI)—the ability to do any intellectual task as well as humans. ChatGPT is still benefiting from its first-mover advantage, with a current 61.3% market share, compared to 14.1% for Microsoft’s Copilot and 13.4% for Google’s Gemini. However, OpenAI has the daunting problem that, unlike Microsoft and Google, it has no other substantial sources of revenue. To survive, it needs to generate profits from ChatGPT. Unwarranted optimism It hasn’t and…

A new study shows that AI data centers are sucking up unbelievable stores of water, perhaps even more than the global water bottle industry. In addition, the study estimates that these centers pollute the environment more than the city of New York does in a single year. Justine Calma writes in The Verge, Image Credit: Gorodenkoff – Adobe Stock AI created as much carbon pollution this year as New York City and guzzled up as much H20 as people consume globally in water bottles, according to new estimates. The study paints what’s likely a pretty conservative picture of AI’s environmental…

The eulogies for WPP keep getting drafted, yet the holding company refuses to play along. That’s the subtext running through a wave of conspicuously aligned LinkedIn posts in recent weeks, each one offering a reminder that the onetime market leader is still very much in the game.“There’s been a lot of negativity around WPP,” wrote one WPP Media director. “But as the dust starts to settle, we are seeing wins happen more and more.” “All the negativity around WPP Media is incessant,” posted an exec at WPP Media’s Choreograph unit, a day later. “There is a lot of noise right…