Nerd News Tracker

This article paints Google as giving up on individual tracking, as they abandon cookies. Cookies for tracking users, however, is no longer needed. They have the power to track you, pitch to you, and it's all done through the information your browser provides freely....

It's a sign of the end... but to some it means good news, and others, the apocalypse. I think it's a good sign that Apple is moving forward, as it shows that Apple is trusting the path forward. The in-person shopping experience is key for certain items, especially the...

Perseverance landed off by about 15 feet. It's just downright disappointing that it travelled 293 million miles to ultimately miss it's target. OH, WHO AM I KIDDING!!! That rocks, NASA! At least it didn't have problems like SpaceX has had with their more recent...

We think of some cybercrime as being small time crooks, leveraging a few dollars here and there, but the world is evolving. Depending on the target, some networks are being broken into, just for access that can be resold. Access to your company network could be sold...

Elon Musk, who recently had Tesla buy a big chunk of that change we call Bitcoin, also said about a week ago, that he thought Bitcoin and Ethereum were a bit high priced. The price of bitcoin crossed a major milestone Friday after the market value reached more than $1...

Square is a company that started by enabling the little folk like us to accept credit cards. A small little reader, and then they moved into virtual cash registers on smartphones and tablets. You've probably used one at a restaurant while not knowing it. They have...

Prodigy Education, a math game company, has apparently pulled one of the tricks from the gaming world... where they offer a free-to-play version through schools, and then market a $60 premium membership to the kids who are using it. Worse yet, it's that same mechanism...

Numbers on Starlink are coming out, and it's an interesting read thus far. I've had a couple of people advise that they are looking at it, including a couple of nearby friends. It seems that even people in bigger cities are excited for this, as it frees one from the...

A week ago, Facebook was resisting efforts to pay for news in Australia. This week, we found out the cost to Facebook... $1 Billion over 3 years. This was to keep high-quality journalism rolling in the land of thunder, but I can't help but wonder exactly how large...

In the world's most expensive game of Tag, Jeff Bezos is once again the world's richest man, and Elon Musk is in second place. Bezos announcing a smaller role with Amazon, and the new leader taking his place helped, and COVID has boosted Amazon's sales greatly. Musk...

Perseverance made it successfully to Mars. This is a new effort to look for life, not in the form of little green men, but algae and other simple organisms. It's also planned to gather fascinating rocks and other soil samples to hopefully be returned to Earth for more...

Parler has been brought back to life, but still has a long way to go after Google, Apple, and Amazon beat them senseless, and left them for dead. If it were real people, and it happened in a dark alley in a major city, there would have been charges for attempted...

Australia is proposing laws to make social media giants pay for journalism... for news content, even if it's just a link or a post. Facebook has decided to turn off all news content in Australia, and that will reduce education, discussion, and even understanding of...

How tech companies will control "harmful content and behavior online" is being decided right now with Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and a few more. The new rules will guide on adopting rules for conduct and content, enforcement, and complaints. The problem I...

In the latest creepy cyberattack, an employee at a water facility noted that someone was moving his mouse. Then that mouse moved to increase the chemical sodium hydroxide (we know it as lye) to deadly levels. Fortunately, he was on top of it, and fixed the problem,...

A much better ad actually provided a contest to be on the first "all civilian" spaceflight. Backed with a rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", this commercial resulted in launching dreams of millions of people across the country, more exciting than having a...

For 4 years, Congress couldn't be bothered with Section 230. It's a short set of words that protects internet companies from liability for user-posted content. A certain person in DC railed against Section 230 many times, and half of congress called him evil and vile....

This article gets into the nitty gritty of where GameStop's shares may go. All I'm noting is that as I type this on Thursday, it had already fallen to about $50 a share from the $400 high. With GME and AMC down over two-thirds from their highs, should investors hold...

It's probably little surprise that Parler's CEO, John Matze, is no longer with the company. Can we call it a company if it's no longer viable? Can they even field a person who can bring the social media site back online? The controversies will probably stick with John...

Stepping into Bezos shoes is this guy, who built AWS into an amazing service provider. If you are any size company looking for cloud servers, storage space, or other computing needs on the Internet, AWS is a good first look. People who like Amazon's entire range will...

The 2nd richest (money) man in the world is stepping down from his role at Amazon. Jeff Bezos started with a few books, in a garage, and look at what he made from that. OK, maybe a little poetic license there. Moving to the executive chair at the board in the 3rd...

Gamestop, a company that should have died with the advent of internet delivery of software, is a controversial topic in the past few months. Who would have thought that the stock would drive from the ashes? I'll spend a full segment commenting on this on this weeks...

Facebook is driving a new message that political speech isn't important. Their thoughts are that it's too much trouble, but isn't freedom worth it? After all, our world has always communicated their feelings on divisive topics like politics and religion. Yet, Mark...

A couple weeks ago, I heard from someone who was unhappy that I was against Facebook censoring folks on the political right. This week, Britain's Socialist Workers Party was also squelched for a time. When Facebook determines what can and cannot be said, then everyone...

Ever had a hunch? Apparently Amazon's Alexa gets those now, and can start helping automate your smarthome a little more. It does have a little creep factor, as I've noted before, but I think we'll get over it just as we've gotten over it listening to everything we...

When someone says to update a security patch right away... and you hear things like Zero Day, or various announcements about urgency of updating... DO IT RIGHT AWAY! Apple's iOS 14.4 is the fix, and apparently there are folks leveraging this problem right now. The...

I like the dash button, but for the hackable nature of being able to use it to command things via IFTTT. The Dash Smart Shelf, however, does not do that... it locks you into reorders of items that are pricier than just going down to the store and buying yourself. Or...

It's not surprising that Microsoft poked fun at Apple this week. For a long time, they've been on the receiving end for most of the jabs, but this one rang true. They went for the majority of the market, noting the stylus, touch screen, and price... and poked fun at...

Years ago, there was UPN, the United Paramount Network. For the first time in decades, Paramount is the name of a TV service, but it's streaming. CBS All Access, suffering from a less than stellar reputation for not having enough content, is being renamed to...

No surprise that all kinds of screen time has gone up in the past year, nor changed since. I wish that we had some other options, but I think we've also overlooked that books are harder to come by in print, libraries aren't running, and more. Unfortunately,...

CES adapted. There were still announcements, and wonderment, and a number of different COVID related items as well. Still, just as some of my previous tech haunts have disappeared, I think we are seeing the last of the biggest annual trade expo in the country. How...

Are we surprised by another downsizing of a tech company with a ton of competitors? In all fairness, it's not a large amount, and it appears to be a minor correction to ensure longevity. Still, I feel for those who are having to move on. This will continue, and I'm...

Bitcoin went from $40k to $30k and back in a week. There are people ready to cash out some of it, and one is a programmer who has about $220 million (well, depending on what day) on a small hard drive which he forgot the password to. He's got two attempts to gain it...

There are a number of different social media platforms gaining attention, most due to censorship on other prevailing platforms. Telegram is one, over WhatsApp's changes in terms of service... gaining millions per day. Signal doesn't share their numbers, but Elon Musk...

Years ago, it was the amateurs who would hack their competitor businesses. This last week, Ticketmaster admitted to hacking their rival, Songkick, and has now agreed to pay a $10 million criminal fine, for what was apparently a sanctioned attack. Unfortunately, these...

The State of Washington is where a number of Boeing aircraft are assembled. It's so massive, that 2 weeks ago, Boeing was the largest employer in Washington. This week, however, as the airline industry is dialing back plane orders, and more... a company that has been...

A key court decision in regards to copyrights happened this week. Apple lost a claim against Corellium, who developed a way to build security software that found bugs in Apple's iOS code. Corellium sold their software to a limited number of customers, and vetted them...

Blind to the invasions of our personal lives, we have been using smart devices constantly. I'm just as bad at this, but I do care, and I make careful measures to control it. Do you? Or are you one of the 2 in 3 American's who now say they "don't care". I wonder if the...

This week created a lot of fireworks in the political world. I try to avoid divisive issues, and my first topic this week is regarding all of the social media craziness... without getting political. Social media platforms have all locked down the President's access to...

The most meteoric rise to the top of the rich in modern history is now Elon Musk. At a valuation of $185 Billion, he's showing no signs of stopping. The richest in the world, but a year ago, he was only able to brag about top 50. Tesla is the big driver for him, but...

Apple's reign in the US is getting stronger. 9 of the top ten most activated smartphones for Christmas... Apple. Now, part of that also comes from a smaller selection, and a highly fragmented Android market. The tenth, which happened to place tenth, a 2 year old LG...

The FAA has released the final words for drone usage, and it's a little easier than what was original proposed. They've smoothed out some items, so many of the desired items are objective approval, vs subjective, and you can do most things you could before, if you...

One of my acquaintances was talking just weeks ago about XRP, a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. He was hyped on it, but this week it was locked out of Coinbase, the largest trader in the United Staes. It's all due to an SEC investigation into how it's a security instead...

No surprise that Amazon has been doing well this year. The early numbers say 1.5 BILLION packages. Third-party sales up 50% year over year. Amazon ate $5 Billion in operational costs for sellers to build on their base. Q4 numbers are revenue around $115 Billion, so...

James Doohan played Scotty on Star Trek. He passed in 2005 at 85 years old, after serving in WWII and losing a finger after being shot six times at Juno Beach on D-Day. His ashes have made it into space in a number of ways. One that was revealed this week, was that of...

In a year where escapism has been the keyword, delivering subpar product was a bad idea. A long awaited game with many buyers was released just over a week ago, and the disaster is still unfolding. Cyberpunk 2077 makers are battling bugs, crashes, performance issues,...

Bitcoin hit amazing numbers on Wednesday, passing $20,000... and Thursday it came within spitting distance of $24,000 before falling a bit. Remember that this is a clear sign of instability and is something I would avoid. I liken it to gambling, but far faster. Note...

If you are concerned by the Google outage this week, then perhaps you buy into the idea that Google is a monopoly. You'd be there with 38 states and territories who have filed the 3rd antitrust lawsuit in 3 months. This is taking aim at attacking their ad division,...

A website outage for an hour, not all that bad. Google suffering a worldwide outage across most of their services, from Docs, to YouTube, Gmail, Assistant, and so much more, is a near disaster. That happened this past week, and while people could access the free...

One of the big names in the cybersecurity world has been breached. FireEye was hacked by what is believed to be Russian intelligence operatives. Several major US Government departments, Treasury, Homeland Security, State, NIH, and more, but also businesses have been...

In an effort to move ahead of the government, many gig companies in California have been scrambling to make good. The benefits and rates are filling in some ground, and may serve to keep the wheels moving. Lyft and Uber are adding new things like a minimum earning,...

While our resident fanboy supports Apple offering their latest phone without a charger, Brazil sides with me. They have stated that Apple did not demonstrate any "environmental benefits", and that the charger is essential for the use of the mobile device. To everyone,...

I find it strange that it is only after the election, and years of censoring various voices, that Congress is looking to remove Section 230. The list of requirements to be protected by Section 230 is lengthy, and would require many social media platforms to rethink...

In case you were unaware, Netflix's series "The Crown" is not a documentary, but a dramatization. Oh wait... you probably were aware of that. It's outstanding writing, and approach to the history of the longest living monarch is great, but now some in the royal family...

We've had the makers of the YouVersion Bible series of sites and apps on this show, many years ago. I'm happy to say they are doing well, especially as they announce amazing new numbers. Searches are up over 80%, reading is up, devotional plans, and more. The most...

Facebook has run afoul of the H1B Visa program, by failing to properly advertise positions in the United States, or even consider US born workers. Now, when you can't find talent, using the program is good. But if you aren't bothering to try, then it's clear abuse of...

Now, before you get excited, the idea of breaking up Facebook has been floated for a while. The problem is that it will take years to happen. The AT&T breakup in 1984 was 2 years after they made an agreement, which was after 8 years of battle in the courts....

It's interesting how exploring if something is true or false used to be allowed. We were encouraged to be free thinkers (not the atheist term, but just a general description). YouTube's banning of content exposing "election fraud or errors" follows many other...

To quote Star Trek, "It's dead Jim." Adobe Flash has been lingering on the deathbad for far longer than it should have. It was not allowed in the iPhone or iPad, removed from FireFox and Chrome in 2016, and abandoned by most developers years ago. It was a target for...

I'm not surprised that the movie industry has to adapt. In 2020, we've realized that entertainment at $30-40 a pop is just not workable. The theaters are going to suffer for it, and Warner Bros and HBO are going to lead the charge. I'm looking forward to some of the...

International Travel may soon be covered with additional requirements for vaccination and testing, proved by tech. The idea of attaching a "digital passport" to our smartphones seems like an invite for another disaster for travelers. I support reasonable actions, but...

Wondering what the numbers for laptop and PC sales are for 2020? With the increased demand, year over year growth of 26% has left retail shelves bare, and even the ugliest tech is getting attention. Tablets? Up 10% year over year. 2021 numbers will be lower, but still...

In a despicable move by hackers, virus attacks are up sharply on companies looking to make, ship, and deliver vaccines for COVID. No matter where you sit on the effectivity, the choice to receive a shot, or various conspiracy driven theories, this is just downright...

Want to contribute to Google's mapping of the world through Street View? It has long required a special camera, but now Google Maps will now allow you to use your smartphone to do exactly that. I like this idea, as we seek to expand our view of different locations in...

I remember working for a retail toy store during the Cabbage Patch Kids years. The electronics industry has driven much of the supply-demand tricks over the years, by underdelivering stock, and hyping up to build demand. Scalpers have come along each time, seeing...

Spin doctors are noting that the social media giant was changed to show "authoritative" news in your feed, instead of "misinformation". Sounds very much like the Ministry of Truth is calling the shots. This "nicer news feed", censoring of opinions, adding warning...