Nerd News Tracker

The news from Apple is that earnings will be down due to Covid-19. Nvidia also reported similar problems. Much of the industry relies upon China in so many ways, and we're likely to see odd ripple effects unless something changes quickly. In what may be an ongoing...

In just a few months, SpaceX will launch the first manned spaceflight from USA since July 8, 2011 (STS-135). The battle between Boeing and SpaceX has been running for a while, but a few months from now, the journey to space for Elon Musk's project will achieve the new...

We don't think about it, but that rented car could leave us stranded if it can't call home. How often do we have problems with cell service? Or a problem that is solved by moving just ten feet over? Should we move the car just ten feet over? What an amazing...

Apple will have to pay California employees many hours of pay, retroactively, for the intrusive searches of bags and personal devices. This may have other ripple effects on Apple, as others are emboldened to sue the behemoth for other wrongs.Apple will have to pay its...

Samsungs new phone has arrived and a number of near improvements place it in competition with the iPhone. If you're ready for 5G, however, note that you're not likely to get it for a long time, so don't buy based on the additional speed. More RAM, more storage, more...

Just shy of two weeks before the huge annual smartphone convention, this large convention has decided to cancel this years event due to the Covid19 virus, aka the novel coronavirus. This is going to have major impacts on tech that comes from... oh yeah, China. Marty...

Internet crime complaints at the FBI are rising each year. In other news, ice is cold, and water is wet. It's no secret that online crime is climbing. The FBI getting an average of 1300 complaints daily, is another story. Be aware and stay safe, so you don't have to...

The battle over your biometrics is starting. Clearview AI was scanning pictures everywhere and identifying us. Following that, lawyers are climbing out of the woodwork to stop this invasion of privacy on our publicly available pictures. I applaud the efforts, but I...

AVOID SCAMS... This latest one looks very real, all the way through, but it's another way to get your credentials and mess with your life. Don't trust any text message, email, or whatever, especially with the links. Just follow your normal operations for accessing...

Everyone want's to intrude on our web experience. They want to give you notifications, pop-ups, and basically shove their information in your face. It's annoying, and obtrusive, and finally, the browsers are moving towards dialing back the obnoxious websites....

I hadn't considered it until reading. We don't look at our photos later. This approach forces people to look at memories from days ago. Perhaps by looking back at those moments, we will remember them better. Some say novelty, but I'm thinking of embracing it....

This article has objectionable language, but an interesting point. Why are we stuck with boring laptops when our smartphones come in multiple colors? Why are we stuck with utilitarian, when we could have excitement? Why can't we get great design in a laptop? There's...

Ancestry.com appears to be joining the customer side in the battle over your DNA. This refusal to comply with a search warrant is commendable, but their competitors haven't been so good. FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch have been complying with law enforcement, and that's a...

The Internet Of Hackable Things is moving slowly towards that hack side. Philips Hue Smart Bulbs have a security flaw that might only be annoying now, but it's an example that your smart home may be vulnerable.The internet of things industry remains a security...

Apple just brought forth something neat after Keith recorded this week... that fits into both of his show specialties... your iPhone or Apple Watch can unlock and start your car. The only downside is that your car has to have an NFC reader, and most don't have those...

$162 million in taxes on over $13 billion in profits. The stockholders must be really pleased. Part of it is an accounting trick of deferred taxes, but part is also the reality of big business. They claim they paid billions in taxes, but some of that is what they must...

Iowa's experience this week is a clear sign why our drive to push electronic voting is a massive mistake. Technical errors, security problems, lack of training, coding issues, and these have all happened. We haven't even discussed the idea of hackers (state or...

Licensing news websites is a scary concept. A member of Trudeau's team (the leader of Canada) is on board with this. Scarier still is deciding who is a news site, and who is not? Is just placing up links a news site? Drudge Report does that. Reporting on the news? TMZ...

On this weeks broadcast, I will apologize for ever recommending Avast Antivirus. This link provides some of the sordid details of how a company that was supposed to protect your data, abused your trust, and sold your data (supposedly "de-identified") to many major...

A robot solution is proposed to put an animal out of work? This is really shameful and shocking, that anyone would suggest this kind of thing. It's a strange history and custom, but not one that I would suggest abandoning to the robot workers. PETA suggested that the...

Nobody in the government should have the right to demand that I install a tracking app as a condition of anything short of parole or other criminal related items. These students can be tracked anywhere and for any reason, and without knowing how far that tracking...

In a day and age where EULAs are 60 pages long, it's no wonder that people aren't reading them. Nobody knows what's going on there, and they don't think that they will be precluded from suing for damages done to them. I understand if we're talking about minor...

Forget about your bank, or your credit card, the hackers now want your nestegg. This article covers the scary thought that your entire plans for retirement may be gone before you even get there. My best suggestion is to ensure that you get alerts immediately any time...

I don't want anyone to know my vote. It's not party line, not left or right, and sometimes eclectic. In a day and age where politics are a battleground, why would anyone want to take a selfie while voting? And yet, in Wisconsin, they are encouraging it with a new...

A scarier number has emerged on ransomware. 16 days to restore networks after being hit. When one considers that in the modern age, a week of downtime can threaten the entire company with 50% chance of failure within a year or two, it's chilling. Everyone should be...

I'm not sure that voting via your smartphone is a good idea. In a world of hackers, of high competition for each vote, of accusations of fraud, hanging chads, dead voters, and more, why are we making it easier to fake the vote. Decades ago it was simple and...

The top headline here, about how our online subscription TV is saturated is something we've talked about on the show before. I've already started to take stock and push back, even though I have budget, because I can't justify another $5 a month for one show that I may...

Seeing one of these robots in person makes you concerned about the jobs that may be going away. I know that others are created to make the machines. I know about efficiency and accuracy. It's all part of a sadder future. Take this as a goal, be better than an...

A few weeks back, an announcement about a new robot pizza making wonder, and now another set of robots are out of business. Other robots in the automated market are also having problems. If you're on the unemployment line, and you see one of these metal machines,...

The latest news is that the blue light from our devices may not disrupt sleep any more than any other light. It's something that may have been based upon the major amounts of blue light from our sun, instead of actual evidence. Mice tested had no problems, but there's...

Serious kudos and praise to Wolf, a year old intern at NASA, who discovered a planet. He studied some data pertaining to a binary star system and determined that additional information indicated something more than just two stars. After being double checked and more,...

Just as Windows 7 falls off the support list, Microsoft is moving away from Edge, the replacement for Internet Explorer, to a Chrome based operating system. This kind of merge is likely to further make a deep gouge in what's left of Microsoft's browser share. Amazing...

A different type of spam is coming to you soon. It'll look and sound like the real thing, but isn't. 1/5th of tweets in the 2016 election were bots. 1/3rd of Brexit tweets. And now, we are getting towards the 2020 elections, and the digital world is more complex. This...

I can do all of these things. But stats speak for themselves: Respondents as follows: 43% said they know how to unclog a drain. 25% know how to install a drywall anchor. 39% said they can stop a running toilet all by themselves. 38% can find a stud. 31% know how to...

Previously unofficial, the idea of limiting speech was sometimes even denied. Now encapsulated into Twitter's EULA, this practice can just continue along and Twitter can say "we do what we want". In some countries, press is run by the dictator, and opponents are...

Your information has been under attack for ages. Your phone, your address, SSN, and more. Now it's thought that hackers may someday target your DNA itself, specifically looking for certain known gene issues, and more. Sure, it'll take a smarter breed of hackers for...

In the latest twist on free speech and communication, Twitter is now preparing to offer control over who can reply to you. Now in some ways that's fine, but we can't have a discourse if we shut down all those who disagree with us. When we shut down and shut out all...

"How do you know a politician is lying? His lips are moving." - Facebook declining to fact-check political ads is actually a good move. Why? Because the bias involved with modern "fact-checking" is overwhelming. Targeting ads? Again, no problem, as that's already done...

For what it's worth, this is a common type of crime. Fake invoices have been used for years to bilk employers out of monies. The issue that makes this most amazing is that the criminal is an IT manager, who should have known that Microsoft Word stores information that...

Reminder, I call out the political left and right for censorship. In this case, Amazon is threatening left leaning environmentalists, with losing their jobs if they don't stop their outspoken ways. Now it's unclear if these people are speaking as individuals, or are...

Mars missions should not be a surprise to us. This rover being sent to Mars is a precursor to a human mission, and while we don't have timing yet, I'm quite sure that we'll see something soon. Exciting excerpts talk about creating oxygen (needed for living and...

Outside parties determining what is a crime and what isn't is a fair concern for all. What concerns me is that when we start cutting off access, or determining International crimes, we may find that the long arm of the law of smaller countries may wind up with courts...

Leaving all politics out of this discussion: The CES Keynote is usually an amazing treat to all. My favorite was Steve Ballmer being absolutely insane. Ivanka Trump and her work for the tech world is doing good for everyone, and I'm excited to learn of the K-12 STEM...

Modern tech now enables a movie to be updated between screenings. We've been watching digital films, downloaded via the Internet for a number of years, but the movie "Cats" is now being revised due to it's poor reception. While it's unclear what special effects were...

The Gig economy is going to take a hit next month, as California sets in new rules. Vox media is just one example, as they are forced to reclassify select contractors as employees. I'm torn between ideas where contractors may get underpaid and abused, or the flip side...

In a new twist, your options for smarthome's may become far more, just through a little change. The new standard "Project Connected Home over IP" could eliminate many of the headaches involved in determining what products are best for you and your home. I've been...

This is something that has been around for a long time, but Facebook has finally admitted that they do track IP addresses, photo tags, and check-in's to determine and link a person to their device and location. This is something where even if you opt-out, you can be...

I'm torn on this article which in today's world could be a hit piece against this company, computerized voting, or even the results of the next election. It strikes fear, and does not seem to temper that fear. Still, I've long been concerned about the lack of...

The pace of this pizza maker is amazing at 300 custom pies per hour. The 300 burger a day flipper is an amateur, considering when I flipped burgers for McD's back in the 80's, I was flipping about an hour during lunch. The biggest question is how much is automated vs...

Some companies stick with logo's because they are timeless. Some will update with a constant shift to maintain both the history, and a new nature to them. Microsoft being the latter category, has updated over icons and logos yet again, with a heavy emphasis on blues...

Someone hacks your Ring, or other device, remember that sometimes a reboot is all that is needed.Amazon's Ring cameras are now commonplace in homes of early smart tech adopters across the country, but just how secure are they? Recent reports from Ring owners read like...

For as much as I might argue that we don't need these devices listening to us, a quick thinking 18 year old in a sinking car, used his Siri to call. Emergency response arrived shortly thereafter, and rescued the young man. This is a recurring plotline in a number of...

This is a recurring theme, and we've been discussing it for a while. The largest issue, however, is that someone is finally using the term that I use... Orwellian... over how China, and much of our tech is proceeding to spy on us. China is developing a new high-tech...

I'm troubled, not by the game itself, but the idea that people could abuse this game. The trailer presents an approach of what are likely cut scenes, fully prepared portions that substitute for gameplay, so I wonder exactly how much flexibility is within the game for...

In a twist, BMW's attack by charging 300 dollars plus 80 annually, just to get CarPlay, was squashed by buyers who want the latest tech. BMW finally turned around and is backpedaling quickly. It announced that most buyers will soon be spared. Now if we could only get...

The new statistics are in, talking about how much time that we devote to the small screen, arguing in front of it, and even how much time we spend deciding what to watch next... 2943 hours, if you're interested. The results don't tell us how much this affects our...

I've pondered about the restraint of Google for years. What started out years ago, as a simple premise, a search engine without ads and a motto of "Don't Be Evil", now has it's two leaders stepping down. In my never so humble opinion, it's way too late, as those...

With bullet proof glass, but not metal bearing proof glass, this new vehicle didn't take long to gain attention for all of the wrong reasons. The specs are impressive, but the looks are simplistic. The competition is also fierce, and this is considered by Tesla as...

Another instance where records were stored unsecured. This isn't a hack, but complete and total negligence on the part of Google, exposing phone numbers and linking them to various email addresses and social media accounts. This information was housed there by another...