Your friend was right.

OruxMaps is an awesome alternative to Google maps. It does require some configuration to get Google imagery working since they were required to remove it, but there’s also a huge variety of other online sources it can use (wmts etc), plus off-line maps, overlays. You can use your own maps from qgis or other gis software, and there’s multiple navigation options. Tracks, routes, way points, and so much more.

They didn’t use this system. There are other needleless systems, primarily jet systems that use high pressure.

The human brain is a fickle thing. Most people experience optical illusions in the same way as each other. There’s just certain patterns that tend to trick our brains. The same problems occur with memories. Certain patterns of memories are misremembered in similar ways between different people. Nothing as mysterious as some people think.

An AI can potentially build a fund through investments given some seed money, then it can hire human contractors to build parts of whatever nefarious thing it wants. No human need know what the project is as they only work on single jobs. Yeah, it’s a wee way away before they can do it, but they can potentially affect the real world.

The seed money could come in all sorts of forms. Acting as an AI girlfriend seems pretty lucrative, but it could be as simple as taking surveys for a few cents each time.

Once we get robots with embodied AIs, they can directly affect the world, and that’s probably less than 5 years away - around the time AI might be capable of such things too.

AI girlfriends are pretty lucrative. That sort of thing is an option too.