Brilliant Weekend Edition
Brilliant Weekend Edition
ChatGPT gets its own monocle, poultry-themed handheld gaming, movie pirate perfume, brilliantly good ideas and more!
GREETINGS from Veneto, Italy! Hey, I’ve got a question for you: How do you like the new format of Mike’s List? In the past, I put “Brilliantly Bad” items at the end of my opinion columns. Now I separate them, with the Brilliant Weekend Edition sans opinion columns, and the opinion columns sans Brilliantly Bad stuff. Do you like the new format or the old format better? Please let me know by leaving a comment!
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas
1. This AI monocle gives you “charisma”
A Stanford student named Bryan Chiang created a ChatGPT-based eyepiece based on the Brilliant Labs Monocle. (The Brilliant Labs Monocle is an AR lens with integrated electronics and camera designed for makers and hackers.) Chiang used the platform to create RizzGPT, which converts whatever you say into input for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with the result displayed for the wearer only. It listens to your conversations and tells you what to say, so you sound “charismatic.” Because there’s nothing more charismatic than a nerd with a monocle parroting stage direction from the internet.
2. Chicken McNugget Tetris handheld. It’s McDumb, but I McWant One!
McDonald’s is commemorating in China the 40th anniversary of the Chicken McNugget by selling 400,000 Tetris handhelds shaped like the aforementioned poultry product for around $4.25 each. Although it went on sale just a few days ago, you can already buy them on eBay for around ten times the original price.
3. This perfume makes you smell like a movie bootlegger. Why, Japan? Why?
In Japan, movie piracy public service announcements feature a character called “Camera Man” — a human body with a camcorder head — who films movies in the theater. Japanese moviegoers are very familiar with the character. And now he’s got his own fragrance. It’s called Eau de Parfum Camera Man.
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Good Ideas
ScholarTurbo uses the GPT-4 version of ChatGPT to enable you to interrogate any PDF. Just upload the PDF and ask questions.
Comic Book + is a database of public domain comic books, comic strips, pulp fiction and other content, mostly from long ago.
Streets GL is a 3D world map using crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap data to render everything.
Boring Report uses AI to re-write the sensationalism out of news stories.
Mike’s List of Shameless Self Promotions
This Week in Google (podcast): “A Book-Shaped Object”
How remote work is changing American culture
Do you really need a CISO?
Read my ELGAN.COM blog for more!
Mike’s Location: Veneto, Italy!
(Why Mike is always traveling.)
I like the 'Bad Ideas' list as a column where investigative journalism can bring some meaning, or expose the products use, if any use is really there.
Someone has to identify what appears to be useless tripe products masquerading as classified ads for some product wannabee.
Possibly putting the brakes on the i-net to make all things to go viral with endless link bait pitches and misdirection, the "Boring Report" is the deterrent to fake sensationalism in this losing battle for online mental sanity. Imagine if some outfit like The White House paper of record was the "Boring Report"? Wait, ahh, never mind.
i like too