This is another in an irregular series of posts built on short but pithy comments about current (or maybe future) tech. Or whatever else comes to my mind. Sometimes, I'm easily amused.

These items have numbers because it's easier for me to keep track of them that way.

1. This is the dawning of the age of ... High Tech Walking Mushrooms! There's a saying the news that some stories are too good to check. Well, I think this one is too hilarious to check! But for what it's worth, the paper it's based on is real and actually says this stuff. What it is, is that some scientists put a mushroom inside a robot body. The robot has sensors that measure the electrical field around the mushroom (or something like that) and treat it as control signals. The mushroom reacts, the robot walks. The mushroom reacts to the walking motion, the thing keeps going and maybe even changes direction.

This is a simplified and probably not super-accurate description of what's happening. But it's not completely unreasonable. In essence, they gave the robot a mushroom for a brain. Before you start making jokes about your boss or your least favorite politician, think about how brilliant this is. A robot has to have something to control it. There have been great advances in all-hardware robots lately but there are still tremendous challenges in building in both responsiveness to the environment and autonomy. In other words, if you leave a robot on its own, will it do what needs to be done without getting into trouble?

A brain made from something living might, maybe, be able to learn faster and more flexibly than one of the more common non-living robots. In one experiment with the mushroom-brained robot, they shined an ultraviolet light on it. Mushrooms (or that particular species?) respond to UV and so did the robot. The nice thing about that is that they didn't have to buy a UV sensor and build a machine learning model to respond to it and then wire the whole thing up to the robot. The mushroom came with the response already built in.

You may be thinking that that's not a very useful capability. How often do you need a robot that moves because it detected UV light? But this is only the beginning. Today you have a mushroom that responds to UV light. Maybe tomorrow you have some kind of proximity sensor that translates it's signals into UV. Now the robot will be able to avoid obstacles. And then, maybe the next day you have a tree fungus that responds to humidity. Now you have something that avoids obstacles and can find water. See? Building blocks. Starting with mushrooms!

The possibilities are endless. The big question is, are these types of hybrid robots more likely or less likely than pure-artificial robots to stage a genocidal revolt against human rule? How far do you trust mushrooms?

2. Magnetic Meat Thawing. Not just any meat. There's new research into thawing super-frozen meat - specifically human organs - using magnetic nano-particles. The problem they're trying to solve is that organs meant to be transplanted into someone who needs them can spoil before the operation happens. People try hard not to let that happen. They refrigerate them. They transport them in specially designed coolers. But they have to be careful not to get them too cold or for too long or, when they thaw them out (Because who wants brand new heart that’s ice cold?) ice crystals might form and damage the organ. Because ice is hard, see?

This is the long-standing problem of suspended animation. If we could put people in suspended animation, we could (in theory) preserve them for a very long time. Long enough for a ship, traveling at less than the speed of light, to take them to another star. That might take tens of thousands of years. On a lesser time frame, if someone has an incurable illness (such as death), you might suspend them until medical science has learned to fix whatever the problem is. But so far, we can't suspend people and then thaw them out, safely.

Anyway, in this work, they're aiming lower. Rather than freeze the whole body, they just want to do a small piece of it. They used magnetic fields and ferrous nanoparticles (Teeny tiny iron filings) to generate heat. I guess the nanoparticles put the heat closer to the target, so they can warm up more quickly. Hopefully, quickly enough to keep ice particles from forming and endangering the tissue. This is promising work with a viable goal. You don’t see enough of that these days.

It's not ready to go into production. That’s tech-speak for, ‘do it for realsies.’ And when it is ready to go into production, it will be used for things like livers, kidneys, tongues ... no, probably not tongues. You could but as far as I know they never transplant those. Maybe it's a hygiene thing. Anyway, they won't be doing whole bodies. At least, not for a long time. But it will be a good thing when they can do hearts and stuff. Not tongues, though. Other stuff.

3. My laptop died. Last week. It was sitting next to me and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a decrease in brightness. I turned my head just in time to see the screen go slowly black. Haven't been able to get the machine to respond since. I think it's something in the power. So I did what any rational person who routinely uses the Internet for research and publishing would do. I ordered a new one. While I was waiting for it, I tried to do the things I had to do using my phone and my tablets. Yes, I have two tablets. Doesn't everyone? Someday maybe I'll be able to talk about what an incredible nuisance that was. But today, I want to talk about something entirely different but related.

As I told my wife, "I remember when setting up a new computer was FUN!" I always looked forward to it. But it's not so much fun anymore. It's not the computer itself. It's the security on all the services and applications. “You must log in to use this service.” Okay, log in. Do you have a license key? Yeah. It’s somewhere in the email I haven’t accessed from this computer yet. Hang on. Let me go find it.

Then "We don't recognize this device. You have to prove you're really you by copying the code in the email we just pretended to send into this box in the next 4.4 seconds. Or. Else. Your. Computer. Will. Explode!"

I made that last part up. But after the fifth or tenth or thirtieth time I went through it, I was ready to explode. Every single time seemed to be different, too. One sends a verification email. Another sends a text message. Yet another wants me to enter a code from an authenticator app. Another one wants me to answer my security questions. The number of variations on logging in is amazing! And exhausting.

This is the world of technology! It brings us incredible convenience, except when it causes incredible inconvenience.

Not long ago I coined a name for that. I called it technofriction. I'm not even saying it's not worth the benefit. It probably is. But don't blame me if my doctor's eyes pop right out of his head the next time he checks my blood pressure.

Well, the new computer is here and about 90% set up. Also, this post is long enough so I'll stop complaining. Until next time ...

Here's that prompt: "A chaotic and humorous surgical theater scene where small, sentient magnets are running around as if they were doctors performing surgery. These living magnets have no faces, just simple magnet shapes in different sizes, holding tiny surgical tools like scalpels and forceps. They move playfully across the operating table, pretending to perform surgery, while others are scattered around, causing a mess. In the background, there is a gallery of refrigerator repairmen and other blue-collar workers watching the scene through a window, smiling and enjoying the comedic action below."