Author: Geek Planet

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (CBS12) — Florida leaders announced on Tuesday Operation Senior Shield (OSS), a statewide initiative to combat scams and financial exploitation targeting older adults. The launch comes as law enforcement reports a troubling rise in sophisticated fraud schemes that have cost Florida seniors hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the news release.Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins and Florida Department of Elder Affairs Secretary Michelle Branham unveiled OSS, calling it a “mission to keep seniors safe” through real-time scam alerts, a statewide fraud strike team, and hands-on prevention tools.“Our seniors deserve protection from criminals who prey on them,” Collins said.…

I recently visited Discount Tires to have my tires rotated. They do it for free. Stepping into the garage, I noticed two mechanics looking under the hood of a Volkswagen. I recognized them from church, though their names escaped me. Courtesy ChatGPT. The older mechanic was tall, with long, unkempt hair, while the younger one was built like a squat fire hydrant with short hair. He had no physical resemblance to the older one. Even so, the squat young mechanic is the biological son of the older mechanic. And yet the older mechanic is not his biological father. Solution to…

Metaplanet added 4,279 bitcoin during the fourth quarter of this year, spending about $451 million and lifting its total holdings to 35,102 BTC, the company said Tuesday. The purchase reinforces the Tokyo-listed firm’s position as one of the largest corporate bitcoin holders in Asia and the fourth largest among publicly traded companies globally. The bitcoin was acquired at an average price of $105,412 per coin, according to the company. Metaplanet has now spent roughly $3.78 billion accumulating bitcoin at an average cost of about $107,600.  The firm has set an ambitious target of owning 210,000 BTC by the end of…

Five years ago, who would have thought that political scientist Charles Murray, famous for social analysis books like Coming Apart (2012), would write Taking Religion Seriously (2025)? He now examines traditional religious approaches to the meaning of life on the assumption that they might actually be correct. A far cry from the usual effort to explain them away or patronize those who accept them. For example, Murray writes about terminal lucidity — the sudden clarity that many people gain just before dying: In the only systematic study with a large sample, described in Alexander Batthyány’s Threshold, about 20 percent of…

Phishing attacks are an ever-present cyber threat for businesses of all sizes and industries. According to data cited by Small Business Trends, “1 in every 99 emails is a phishing attack. And this amounts to 4.8 emails per employee in a five-day work week. Considering close to a third or 30% [of] phishing emails make it past default security, the threat is very much present.” It only takes one careless click by an employee in your organization for a phishing email attack to work. Despite the risk, many organizations don’t have a plan for how to stop phishing attacks. This is where phishing…

SEATTLE — A cybersecurity attack against an emergency notification system compromised personal data across the country and is preventing alerts from being sent to the public.City officials in Sumner were one of the first local jurisdictions to alert people in the Puget Sound region about the breach of the CodeRED platform, which is administered by Crisis24.SEE ALSO | Emergency alert bill faces renewed scrutiny after deadly floods kill more than 100The ransomware attack has exposed user data and resulted in significant disruptions. One main concern is that people’s passwords were obtained by unauthorized individuals.KOMO News reached out to Crisis24 and…

This essay is republished from Science and Culture Today. This essay is adapted from the preface to a book I will be publishing later this year on the legacy of Jaime Escalante. The book is titled Defying Low Expectations: What Jaime Escalante Taught Us About Learning.  The story of Escalante’s success is widely remembered, at least in broad strokes: Escalante took a failing math program at East LA’s Garfield High, an inner city school whose students were poor and largely Hispanic, and transformed it into a math powerhouse that at its height in 1987 accounted for more than a quarter of…

Towards the end of 2025, rumors around an affordable MacBook had started surfacing. The idea was that this model would compete directly with Chromebooks and affordable Windows laptops, targeting students, professionals, and casual users who don’t want to spend $1,000 on an entry-level MacBook. Now, according to Taiwanese market research firm TrendForce, the long-rumored entry-to-mid-range MacBook is expected to launch in spring 2026, potentially giving budget-conscious buyers a new reason to consider macOS. This device, according to the analysts, would come with a 12.9-inch display, putting it a hair smaller than the current 13.6-inch MacBook Air but large enough for…

Discover effective strategies for managing cyber incidents and crafting an efficient incident response plan to safeguard your organization. Understanding Cyber Incidents and their Impact Cyber incidents refer to any unauthorized access, disruption, or misuse of computer systems, networks, or data. These incidents can have a significant impact on organizations, ranging from financial losses to reputational damage. Understanding the nature and impact of cyber incidents is crucial for developing effective incident response strategies. One important aspect of understanding cyber incidents is recognizing the different types of threats and attacks that can occur. This includes malware infections, phishing attempts, ransomware attacks, data…

At ScienceDaily, George Washington University reports, For nearly 300,000 years, early humans shaped stone tools with precision, even as they faced constant wildfires, severe droughts, and dramatic shifts in their environment. A new study published in Nature Communications reveals astonishing evidence of this long-lived technological tradition in Kenya’s Turkana Basin. “2.7-million-year-old tools reveal humanity’s first great innovation,” November 4, 2025 Stone tools, though these are not the ones made by the culture discussed. /AI, ScienceDaily.com The tools, which the researchers call “the first multi-purpose ‘Swiss Army knives’ made by hominins” date from about 2.75 through 2.44 million years ago (Pliocene).…