Nerd News Tracker

Two women are suing Apple for how the AirTag can be used for unwanted tracking. One of the women was stalked by her ex-boyfriend, who stashed the AirTag on her car. The other, by her estranged husband, who dropped one in a backpack. There have been some changes to the...

The former CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, went on TV and claimed that he didn't try to commit fraud, that he should have done a better job, that he was only worth $100k, and had only one credit card left. This is after it came out that he contributed $40 million to...

Antoewhr crypto firm declared Chapter 11... BlockFi, with 100,000 creditors, is following FTX, and a few others. Things brings back memories of some of the collapses in other markets over the years. BlockFi was one of the first firms to be "rescued" by former...

This week found another attack against Elon Musk, with media saying that because of a spat with Apple, that he was going to create a new smartphone. He then said, in essense... 'sure, if I have to'. OK, so days later, it was publicly announced that Apple and Musk had...

California is moving forward again with crazy rules regarding reducing pollution. Their current plans are now to ban all diesel trucks and buses by 2045. Environmentalists are pushing for that to be even sooner, but California has less than 2000 vehicles that meet...

One part of the crypto-crash that has been going, and continues to implode... people who struck it rich there, are starting to sell off their expensive ultra-luxury cars. The genre referred to as Exotics, with nameplates like Lamborghini, McClaren, Bugatti, etc, are...

Your next Domino's pizza may be delivered by a company branded Chevy Bolt. They are using this as a vehicle to deliver a new message, that of their new goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. 800 of these new EV Chevy's will be delivered by the end of next year....

When you start thinking about crypto, think again. The entire crypto market lost $1.4 Trillion in value this year. Depending on how you count it, this is roughly the GDP of Mexico. The equivalent of one of the top 20 economies in the world, just disappeared. FTX may...

In recent years, we have railed against the idea of subscription fees for features that are already built into your car. Heated seats that exist, but you have to may a monthly fee for. Driver assist features that disappear when a new owner buys the car. Now, Mercede's...

The idea of a loss leader, a low or negative profit product that brings you in so that you'll buy more products, has been around for a while. Amazon's Alexa has been one of those products for a long time. The latest news from Amazon, however, is that they are losing...

An item was announced during the September Apple event, and it's not hardware or software. Apple's new Emergency SOS feature is now available on all iPhone 14s running iOS 16.1 or later. There is a demo feature which walks you through the entire process without...

Netflix is looking to cleanup more freeloaders and convert them to paid accounts. They've now enabled a tool called "Manage Access and Devices". This will allow you to remove hackers, ex's, and other unexpected users. This is part of a drive that's actually a...

The Twitter overhaul continues, with Elon Musk demanding a high level of allegience. Wednesday evening, employees received an offer to continue or leave... deadline at the end of the day on Thursday. Those that left would get compensated, but that's it. Those that...

As we announced last week, Binance's offer to buy FTX on Tuesday, and prompt withdrawal on Wednesday, sent ripples. Binance CEO admitted that they were the straw that broke the camel's back, and it's a very fair statement. Many people believe FTX’s collapse will lead...

Per Zoom, if you have a Tesla, you might soon be able to do a Zoom video call while driving. I'm dumbfounded. Did they miss the decades of "don't text and drive"? It's only while it's parked, but knowing that people hack these things... it just sounds like a bad idea....

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Tuesday it was going to buy 2nd largest, FTX. A day later, they backed out. Not quietly, either. "As a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds...

Immediately after layoffs were announced, many threats of lawsuits were thrown about about something called the WARN Act. It states that you must give notice, and people focus on that part... but a way around that is to pay people, after sending them home. In...

While Twitter laid off some 3700 people, Mark Zuckerberg also pruned his Meta workforce by 11,000 workers as well. This was also telegraphed, but Zuckerberg's treatment in the press was far kinder, except for one aspect... giving notice...Meta is laying off 13% of its...

Elon Musk wasted little time with cleaning house, with adjusting to his way of business and more. Layoffs, return to office for people who are near one, and more. Yes, there are some people talking about the end of Twitter, and it could be. Remember that Elon has been...

Sony is planning a new VR headset, the PSVR2. The announcement presented better specs than the Meta Quest 2, which has been the market leader, but it also comes at a higher pricetag than Meta's model. Sony also announced it'll come with 20 games at launch, but it...

TikTok has come under fire from many, due to it's ties to China. FCC Commissioner, Brendan Carr said this past week, that the US Government should ban them due to their ties, and the potential for usage as a spy tool, as well as covertly influencing political...

Amazon Prime has offered Music for a long time, to the tune... all puns intended... of 2 million songs. Now, they've expanded the catalog to the full 100 million that normally came with Amazon Unlimited. They'll still keep the premium service around for people who...

Lego is pulling out of the robotics space after spending 24 years exciting youth into the next step towards an industry that will be needed for many decades to come. Mindstorms will no longer be moving forward, and considering the last product announced was 2 years...

Tis the season for higher rates. On the heels of last weeks announcement that YouTube Premium was going up, Apple also bumped their various subscription programs up by $1 to $3 a month. This isn't as dramatic, and frankly, is far better of a deal with Apple's larger...

Apple confirms they're throwing in the towel on the USB-C debate, and that's fine. As we mentioned a few weeks back with the EU announcement, the speeds on USB-C are ages ahead of lightning. Apples own product line has already indicated that for a while...Apple's Greg...

YouTube Premium, which we don't talk about a lot, due to their small size, also had announcements this week. They are bumping thir plans from $18 a month to $23 a month. This is both overdue, and bold at the same time. It's been the same price for five years, so...

Earlier this year, there was panic, when Netflix announced a slowdown and a loss of about a million viewers, in part due to their disconnect from Russia. Without adding Russia back in, while previewing Netflix Basic, and so many other things, Netflix announced a 2.4...

Parler was created a while back as a free speech platform, but then shutdown from app stores after the US Capitol incidents in January 2021. Kanye West has decided that he wants to buy Parler now, which is an interesting decision for something that has yet to make...

Another blow to the electric car industry is happening as a number of EVs have been bursting into flames, or worse, in the aftermath of Hurrican Ian. Running one of these cars through water that is too deep, can cause a short circuit... ask me another time about water...

Netflix Basic will be here in on November 3rd. $7 a month in the US will get you 4 to 5 minutes of ads, a reduced resolution of 720p, and viewing on only one device at a time. Lastly, they'll remove the download feature. This has been talked about a bit in recent...

Sony, known for their part in the audio world, has come up with over-the-counter hearing aids. This wil be an amazing item for folks who are starting to lose their hearing, and are looking for something to hold over until the day when one needs something a little...

The EU approved a law that will require all mobile phones, tablets, and cameras use the same charging port. Apple is the one holdout, and Keith has his own ideas of the meaning behind this. The law requires all mobile phones, tablets and cameras sold in the EU to be...

Google developed a gaming service called Stadia. Originally, it was Cloud Gaming, but the service was found to be lackluster, and people weren't buying because it wasn't popular enough. Google, to their credit, will be refunding all game and add-on content purchases...

Amazon announced some cool items... not enough for me to spend a segment on, but here goes. Kindle Scribe, a Kindle reader with a pen for making notes, lists, and more, moving into the realm of the iPad, but cheaper after the pen. Halo Rise is a sleep monitor, smart...

Edward Snowden has been a man without a coutnry for a long time... nearly 10 years. Now, after waiting 2 years, Russian leader Putin has extended citizenship to Snowden. His wife is also said to be applying for citizenship as well. Snowden's knowledge and later...

A new Texas law seeks to top social media platforms from removing posts if they are part of a viewpoint. It actually goes further to bar Facebook, etc, from banning, or shadow-banning. At the same time that it will protect some who claim censorship for political...

Going to California? Left your heart in San Francisco? Well, the cops can now access private security cameras city wide, without a warrant, so long as the camera's owner allows it. OK, there's a few limitations, like life-threatening emergency, or how to deploy...

Elon Musk will announce a robot late next week. Tesla Bot, also known as Optimus, is going to start off in their own factories, but the expectations are that they will later move into the home and be our Rosie the Robot Maid, or something more. Of course, some of us...

Windows 11 has a new release out, but if you're resisting, Windows 10 is still being supported through until late 2025. They clearly know that the world is not enthusiastic about the newer version, which after a year, still has yet to have more install base than...

Jeep announced 3 new EV's to come next year, modeled after the Wrangler, a crossover, and the full-size Wagoneer. One has to wonder about the off-road capabilities, and what you do when you're stuck with a punctured gas tank... or in this case, battery pack, on a...

General Motors, the first major company to mass produce an purpose built electric car (the EV1 from 1996), has announced an electric version of the Equinox SUV. The big news here is that it's expected to go for $30,000, while the small Tesla Model 3 is far more. The...

Amazon's CEO (remember that Bezos stepped down a little more than a year ago), Andy Jassy, the newish CEO announced tha tAmazon wasn't going to require return to office anytime soon. It's merely a counter to many who are pushing full or partial returns, and may garner...

There is a format of messaging called RCS, and it's a standard developed by Google. There's been a call from Google, developers of the Android phones, for others to adopt this format. Who is the big "other" in this? Apple. Tim Cook, however, said this week that he...

SpaceX just picked up an add-n to their contracts. With the impending exit of the Russians from the International Space Station, SpaceX will now pickup 5 more missions to space worth $1.4 Billion. Not to shabby, as this brings the services out until 2030, when NASA...

The ability to clean up our sent messages started many years ago with email. It's only recently that iOS (16) allowed you to recall a message, Teams to edit sent messages, and so forth. Twitter is also testing out the same feature, after a certain tweet happy...

Have you been getting robotext messages from various political campaigns? I get about 3 or 4 a week, and we're not even in the thick of it yet. I'm getting messages from 4 political parties, 2 different states, and far more. Stats say that 68 million text messages...

Snapchat undergoing an overhaul isn't all that much of a surprise. We used to hear a lot about it, but it's moved to the backdrop. Most stats show that Snap is at the lower end of usage, with many other platforms leading. Now, they do have 8% year over year growth,...

Apple is making news in the leadup before their event in September. Amongst the big tech companies we all know including Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Google... they are tracking the least amount of data about us. That's nerd speak for respecting more of your privacy...

Another event is right around the corner. Traditionally, this is the big iPhone event, and usually watches, but anything else can happen. Keith will be on hand the following show, September 10th, to boil it all down, and tell us what was great and what grated. We'll...

It was not long after the Twitter whistleblower came forward, that media sources everywhere started screaming in Twitter's defense. Yep, the counter claim is that security problems are everywhere and this isn't a big deal. Of course, it is a big deal, as Twitter has...

On Tuesday, Twitter's previous head of security, Pieter Zatko turned whistleblower. From leadership lying to the board, to misleading government regulators, denying vulnerabilities, and claiming deletion of data when they don't, it turned into a massive data dump....

Ever thought of hacking your John Deere tractor? We've talked about John Deer's draconian fight against the right-to-repair. Their claim is that they own the software, and nobody should ever have access to their own million dollar tractors. Farmers have been working...

Apple is going back to the office for a mandatory 3 days a week. There's a variety of pushback already, including some of their major names who shifted over to Google. There are various options for exceptions, I'm sure, but it is interesting that their loss of talent...

[Link has bad language] Imagine a guy who sells his product... say a pizza... for $24. Now imagine someone selling his own product for $16, for an $8 loss, to compete with him. Doordash did exactly that to this guy out there. In a crazy ploy, the pizza restaurant...