PJH Studios

Category: Technology

Mostly related to issues surrounding technology and computers, main include current events or news.

  • Drones tracking shoplifters

    Is sending a drone after a shoplifter really the best thing?

    “Instead of a 911 call [that triggers the drone], it’s an alarm call,” says Keith Kauffman, a former police chief who now directs Flock’s drone program. “It’s still the same type of response.”

    Kauffman walked through how the drone program might work in the case of retail theft: If the security team at a store like Home Depot, for example, saw shoplifters leave the store, then the drone, equipped with cameras, could be activated from its docking station on the roof.

    “The drone follows the people. The people get in a car. You click a button,” he says, “and you track the vehicle with the drone, and the drone just follows the car.” 

    The video feed of that drone might go to the company’s security team, but it could also be automatically transmitted directly to police departments.

  • Wi-Fi measuring heartbeats

    Apparently, there is a way for Wi-Fi to measure heart rate with clinical accuracy.

    Traditionally, measuring heart rate requires some sort of wearable device, whether that be a smart watch or hospital-grade machinery. But new research from engineers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows how the signal from a household WiFi device can be used for this crucial health monitoring with state-of-the-art accuracy—without the need for a wearable.

    Their proof of concept work demonstrates that one day, anyone could take advantage of this non-intrusive WiFi-based health monitoring technology in their homes. The team proved their technique works with low-cost WiFi devices, demonstrating its usefulness for low resource settings.

  • AI teaches college English

    A long but insightful article where a college English professor allowed students to use ChatGPT for assignments. What makes the usage interesting is that he encouraged to evaluate and compare human centered writing versus the AI output. In the end, still began to critically evaluate how to use a technology.

    There are valid reasons why college students in particular might prefer that AI do their writing for them: most students are overcommitted; college is expensive, so they need good grades for a good return on their investment; and AI is everywhere, including the post-college workforce. There are also reasons I consider less valid (detailed in a despairing essay that went viral recently), which amount to opportunistic laziness: if you can get away with using AI, why not?

    It was this line of thinking that led me to conduct an experiment in my English classroom. I attempted the experiment in four sections of my class during the 2024-2025 academic year, with a total of 72 student writers. Rather than taking an “abstinence-only” approach to AI, I decided to put the central, existential question to them directly: was it still necessary or valuable to learn to write? The choice would be theirs. We would look at the evidence, and at the end of the semester, they would decide by vote whether A.I. could replace me.

  • Robot rentals assisting human workers

    Industrial robots are becoming more affordable for small and midsize companies, especially in situations where the companies can rent the machinery. The robots perform the repetitive, physically breaking work, allowing people to remain healthier and perform more valuable work.

    Buying a robot could cost as much as $500,000, and Mr. Calleja wasn’t even confident that one would work. Instead, he rented a robot from Formic, a Woodridge, Ill., firm that takes care of installation, training, programming and repairs. It costs about $23 an hour, roughly the same as a human.

    “We have very low turnover because we try to make jobs easier,” Mr. Calleja said of the company, which is outside Detroit. “We are a small facility, but we produce about 65,000 pounds of food a day.” Stacking it was “a backbreaking job,” he said.

    In an era when manufacturers consistently list attracting and retaining workers as a top challenge, companies are automating some of the worst jobs in their plants as a worker retention strategy.

  • ChatGPT as a therapeutic tool

    Can ChatGPT act as a therapeutic tool? Possibly, but you still have to recognize it for what it is.

    As ChatGPT became an intellectual partner, I felt emotions I hadn’t expected: warmth, frustration, connection, even anger. Sometimes the exchange sparked more than insight — it gave me an emotional charge. Not because the machine was real, but because the feeling was.

    But when it slipped into fabricated error or a misinformed conclusion about my emotional state, I would slam it back into place. Just a machine, I reminded myself. A mirror, yes, but one that can distort. Its reflections could be useful, but only if I stayed grounded in my own judgment.

    I concluded that ChatGPT wasn’t a therapist, although it sometimes was therapeutic. But it wasn’t just a reflection, either. In moments of grief, fatigue or mental noise, the machine offered a kind of structured engagement. Not a crutch, but a cognitive prosthesis — an active extension of my thinking process.

  • What modern kids want

    Children want to meet up in person, no screens or supervision. But because so many parents restrict their ability to socialize in the real world on their own, kids resort to the one thing that allows them to hang out with no adults hovering: their phones.

    One reason kids retreat to their phones is they can’t connect with other kids in an unstructured way.

  • Ukrainian soldier escapes on e-bike delivered by drone

    A wild story, something out of a dystopian war novel: Ukrainian soldier escapes on e-bike delivered by drone

  • Subliminal AI messages

    Different AI models can send subliminal messages to other models.

    Alarming new research suggests that AI models can pick up “subliminal” patterns in training data generated by another AI that can make their behavior unimaginably more dangerous, The Verge reports.

    Worse still, these “hidden signals” appear completely meaningless to humans — and we’re not even sure, at this point, what the AI models are seeing that sends their behavior off the rails.

  • Two guys made their own fiber internet provider

    In rural, Michigan, two guys made their own fiber Internet provider after poor service for too long from Comcast.

    Herman said he was the chief operating officer of his father’s construction company and that he shifted the business “from doing just directional drilling to be a turnkey contractor for ISPs.” Baciu, Herman’s brother-in-law (having married Herman’s oldest sister), was the chief construction officer. Fueled by their knowledge of the business and their dislike of Comcast, they founded a fiber ISP called Prime-One.

    Now, Herman is paying $80 a month to his own company for symmetrical gigabit service. Prime-One also offers 500Mbps for $75, 2Gbps for $95, and 5Gbps for $110. The first 30 days are free, and all plans have unlimited data and no contracts.

    And that’s been the key to their success – they had most of the know how to do it. They only needed to organize and acquire a few additional skills to build out the business.

  • Have AI attend that meeting for you

    AI bots are attending meetings in people’s stead.

    Some of the AI helpers were assisting a person who was also present on the call — others represented humans who had declined to show up but sent a bot that listens but can’t talk in their place. The human-machine imbalance made Sellers concerned that the modern thirst for AI-powered optimization was startingto impede human interaction.

    “I want to talk to people,” said Sellers, who runs a content agency for entrepreneurs out of Birmingham, Alabama. “I don’t want to talk to a bunch of note takers,” he said — before adding that he hasoccasionally himself sent an AI note taker to meetings in his place.