Groundhog day

February 2, 2024

Punxsutawney Phil’s days may be numbered. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) wants to replace him with an AI animatronic groundhog, saying it would be more accurate and humane. So, how accurate is Phil overall — A.) 12%, B.) 39%, C.) 51% or D.) 78%?

B.) 39%. That’s according to the Stormfax Weather Almanac. Listen, if I had an employee who only did 39% of their work correctly … that person wouldn’t last long.

Tags: AI (artificial intelligence), animals

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💋 Kiss my asteroid: A stadium-sized asteroid is cruising by Earth today, missing us by, well, 1,770,000 miles. NASA says it’s “potentially hazardous” but will likely whizz on by. It’s one of 2,350 space rocks keeping NASA on its toes.

24% - Reduced risk of death for hearing aid users

This is for folks who wear them, of course — compared to those who regularly skip putting in their hearing aids. What studies haven’t examined is the why.

A giraffe walks into a bar and orders a bottle of Coors Light. “Long neck?” the bartender asks. “Some say so,” the giraffe replies.

Dream control? Meet Halo, an AI headband promising to let you control your dreams. It detects REM sleep and nudges your brain into lucid dreaming mode. For a mere $2,000 (plus a $100 deposit), you might get to live out your “Inception” fantasies by 2025.

⛔ It worked for Netflix: Starting March 14, no more password sharing on Hulu, Disney+ or ESPN+. Disney is banning using someone else’s account — aka “borrowing.” Mickey needs the money.

“This is the year that I want to fall in love — 100%.” That’s what actress Sharon Stone said, even after her bad luck with online dating. Lowlights include meeting a felon and a guy with 20,000 heroin injections. If I saw Sharon Stone on Tinder, I’d def think it was fake.

🎨 Feel like Bob Ross: Thanks to the Imagen 2 engine, Google’s Bard chatbot now does AI art. It’s free to use, and Google is adding watermarks to avoid AI image drama (ahem, Taylor Swift pics).

Nothing to see here: The Consumer Product Safety Commission is about to tag Amazon as a “distributor,” making it accountable for all those third-party products. Amazon has played the “just-a-middleman” card all these years. The new label could mean lawsuits and recall headaches for Bezos and Co.

I was glad to see this: eBay is paying a $59 million settlement after the U.S. Department of Justice proved pill press machines were being sold on the site. Yep, those devices can make fake, maybe fentanyl-laced, pills. How eBay could let this crap be sold in the first place is beyond me. Shame on them.

Malware mystery: Hackers are planting malware on USB drives and using trustworthy sites like GitHub, Vimeo and Ars Technica to activate it. The “how” is still a mystery, but be safe and don’t share USB drives. If you get one in the mail or find one on the street, throw it away.