New-Fangled News for Boomers, Gen X and Anyone Else Trying to Keep Up with Technology

Skelley’s Snippets ✂️

 🥽 Thinking about smart glasses? Now might be the perfect time because prices and designs have finally hit a sweet spot. Wired recently reviewed the top picks for work, gaming, or just enjoying a movie on a long flight without looking like you’re auditioning for a sci-fi film. Expect to pay around $500 for a solid pair.

👽 Dust off your childhood Sleestak nightmares and get ready to stream those upright bug-eyed chameleons on Netflix soon. The network just closed its deal with Legendary Television to remake Land of the Lost based on the 1974 show. Will Ferrell and Danny McBride starred in the movie version in 2009 which only managed a 26% RT rating.

🏎️ The new Corvette ZR1X packs 1,250 hybrid horsepower and goes from 0 to 60 in under two seconds, putting it in the same league as Ferrari and McLaren’s top hypercars. What sets it apart is the price, at about $175K, offering hypercar performance without the usual sky-high cost. It even comes with carbon-ceramic brakes—a feature usually reserved for European exotics.

😐 AI Isn’t Joking

With all the talk that AI bots are going to take everyone’s jobs in less than two years, it looks like comedians are going to get the last laugh.

It turns out that the large language models (LLMs) behind the most popular AI chatbots struggle with humor. I had this idea to ask a few of the top bots the same exact question to compare their responses and it occurred to me that it would be interesting to test their ability to create an original joke with the help of a straightforward prompt.

In an earlier attempt at this, I left it wide open as to what original joke they wanted to tell, and I found something very interesting. Some of the LLMs lied to me. They passed off jokes that have been around for decades as their own. Specifically the following one:

“There’s a band called 1023MB. They haven’t had any gigs yet.” (One gigabyte or one gig in computer storage is 1024 megabytes.)

I called the LLM out on its deception, and it replied with something like, “Now that you mention it, I didn’t create that joke.” It’s troubling that I had to point this mistake out to the bot before it would admit it. Sometimes the LLMs can give off this “people-pleaser” vibe that favors a kind of deception to respond with a complete answer when a better answer might just be, “I can’t do that.” or “I don’t know.”

It makes me wonder how else these bots could tweak their responses as more people rely on them for vetted details regarding health, finances or anything else where accuracy and truthfulness are at a premium.

Now back to the fun.

To get to the comparisons, I prompted each of the chatbots below with the following:

“Create an original joke of no more than 50 words with this starting premise - "Three AI chatbots walk into a bar..."

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I told you they were bad. Any random person off the street is way closer to Dave Chapelle or George Carlin than any chatbot currently out there.

There have been many articles written about AI’s struggle with humor. In particular, I found Greg Robison’s piece written for the F’inn Group to be extremely insightful. He touches on the element of creativity as fundamental to humor. He writes,

So yes, it’s true, AI bots can wipe the floor with human chess grandmasters these days. But when it comes to making you double over with laughter at your best friend’s latest wild story (which, let’s be honest, probably isn’t true anyway), the bots don’t stand a chance. -LC

🧬 The New Risk: DNA Data and Bankruptcy

The latest threat comes not from a breach, but from a company going bankrupt. The risk extends beyond sensitive account numbers to include human DNA. 23andMe, the well-known and apparently struggling business, recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March.

Following the bankruptcy filing, Anne Wojcicki, a co-founder, reportedly offered to buy the company outright through her non-profit, TTAM Research, for a little over $300 million. The company was once valued at $6 billion and had collected DNA samples from 15 million customers. Challenges at the company became widely known back in September 2024, when all eight independent directors resigned, citing concerns with how then-CEO Anne Wojcicki was running the corporation.

With the future of the company uncertain, many customers who entrusted their DNA samples to 23andMe are very concerned about how their personal health information might be used and are attempting to delete all of their data held by the company.

TechCrunch recently published an article with information on how to do just that. The author, Aisha Malik, explains how people who previously chose to have their saliva samples stored with 23andMe and consented to future research can reverse those decisions.

Protecting your personal data may seem like screaming into the void at this point, but taking whatever precautions you can still matters. Awareness is your best weapon to keep your and your family’s data as safe as possible. -CP

📱🧟 15 iPhones Later = New Zombie Movie

Danny Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle have long experimented with digital filmmaking, starting with the handheld digital camcorders of 28 Days Later and evolving through their collaborations.

For 28 Years Later, they took a radical leap by shooting much of the film on iPhone 15s mounted on custom 3D-printed rigs. One rig held 20 phones arranged in a curve, allowing for unique wide-screen shots in an extreme 2.76:1 aspect ratio reminiscent of Ben-Hur. (That chariot scene, wow!)

Laugh Lines 🤣

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DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice or any other kind of advice for that matter. This is strictly for entertainment and fodder for occasional thoughtful reflection. The owners of The Skelley may benefit financially when readers click on links in the publication.