Author: Geek Planet

I’m always surprised how many nerds play musical instruments. There’s a lot of math in music. The western scale is based on natural acoustic harmonics from the physics of vibrating strings and resonant acoustics from sound columns. The ratio of the frequency of two adjacent notes on the piano or guitar is the twelfth root of 2. The spacing of the bridge to adjacent frets on a guitar has the same ratio. Changing frequencies forms melodies. There’s also rhythm. I’ve heard it said that our fondness of rhythm comes from listening to Mommy’s beating heart as a baby. (I read…

The latest chatter around Samsung’s next flagship lineup has one standout detail for budget buyers. A new tip says Galaxy S26 45W charging is headed to the base model, a jump that would make quick top-ups noticeably easier. The same post, shared by leaker on X, also claims the Galaxy S26+ sticks with 45W, while the Galaxy S26 Ultra reaches 60W. It even points to a February 25 Unpacked date, which helps explain why spec talk is heating up now. Samsung hasn’t confirmed any of this. Key anchors are still missing, including battery size, how charging speed holds up over…

Disney kicked things off by announcing that Disney+ subscribers will soon be able to spin up their own content using its characters. A former video game studio head chimed in to note that younger audiences are already using this stuff. And TikTok added more fuel by confirming its testing controls that lets users adjust the amount of AI-generated material in their feeds — an update that landed alongside the revelation that more than 1.3 billion videos on the platform now carry an AI label.  All of it points to an entertainment pipeline being retooled in real time, where the separation…

Doug Smith has been a software developer for three decades. He writes extensively about the impact of technology on culture, especially within the Christian church. He is an anti-LLM absolutist, and from what I can tell also an anti-AI absolutist. Large language models, or LLMs, being a subset of artificial intelligence, or AI, it’s strictly speaking possible to be entirely against LLMs and still allow some positive room for AI. But in my reading of Smith’s work, I can discover nothing positive from him about either. Smith, whose website is thatdougsmith.com, has for some time now been calling attention to destructive…

Bowman vs. The Stargate This is the point where the movie went off the rails. I don’t necessarily mean this as a bad thing because I suspect that Kubrick is trying to thread a needle. He and Clarke seem to be at odds on a key point: the nature of the aliens. The entire stargate sequence is shrouded in an ominous and mysterious vibe, but the sequence ends with benevolent transcendence. At the same time, there is conquering imagery, but Bowman seems to be just along for the ride. Is he a victor for reaching the stargate or has he…

It’s been quite a year for humanoid robots, with all manner of increasingly advanced designs coming to our attention. The selections here focus more on physical movement than AI smarts, with the latter expected to come to the fore next year. H1 by Unitree So many humanoid robots still walk as if they’re desperately looking for a bathroom. But Unitree’s H1 robot not only walks like a human, it runs like one, too. The impressive contraption proved itself at the first-ever World Humanoid Robot Olympics in August, picking up four gold medals, three silver, and four bronze in various track…

Android 17 Quick Settings might finally get the kind of fix you feel every day. A new leak suggests Google is working on two changes meant to cut friction when you’re just trying to connect, adjust brightness, or toggle basics fast. Mystic Leaks, posting on Telegram, says Google has made progress cleaning up the dual shade Quick Settings layout, including fixes for visual weirdness and functional bugs. The same post claims there’s now an optional switch to separate Wi-Fi and mobile data controls again, after years of complaints about the combined approach. If this lands in public builds, it’s the…

Bernard “Bernie” Widrow, a Stanford electrical engineering professor and foundational figure in adaptive signal processing and neural networks, died on September 30, 2025, at age 95.  He did incredible things with neural networks in the mid-20th century. He was  more deserving of the Nobel Prize in pioneering artificial intelligence than either of the 2024 recipients.  Working with his first doctoral student, Marcian “Ted” Hoff, Widrow developed the Least Mean Squares (LMS) algorithm (the Widrow-Hoff algorithm) that allowed systems to adapt by correcting errors incrementally. This breakthrough became essential to high-speed communications, mobile phones, modems, and early internet technologies. His achievements earned…

Blended workforce models — combining independent contractors with full-time employees — have evolved from experimental tactics into business-critical strategies.According to a study from consultancies Lions & Tigers and Read the Room Advisors based on responses from more than 500 workforce decision-makers, 97% say losing access to blended teams would disrupt their ability to meet business goals, with 81% calling such disruption “very” or “extremely” severe. For company leaders navigating talent shortages and rapid organizational change, the findings signal a fundamental shift in how we think about workforce composition. What’s driving the trend? While cost efficiency remains a benefit, it’s no longer the…

I recently read an article (“Computers and the Nature of Man:  A Historian’s Perspective on Controversies about Artificial Intelligence”) by Judy Grabiner, a celebrated mathematician and historian of mathematics and I learned two things that I want to share.  The first concerns the Eliza effect, our inclination to attribute human-like intelligence and emotions to computers. In the 1960s, MIT computer science professor Joseph Weizenbaum created a chatbot he named ELIZA that conversed with users the way a psychotherapist might; for example, often repeating the user’s words and asking a followup question: “You were unhappy as a child? Tell me more…