Nerd News Tracker

Google is about to hit up more people for a 30% take of their business. Movies, TV shows, streaming, and the rest of the digital goods are under threat. Many states are pushing back with antitrust lawsuits, similar to the actions that have been going against Apple....

Gaze into the eyes, and you might even see through that window to the soul. There's a certain creep factor, however when you note the tech companies that are forging a pathway towards retina recognition for everyday things. Your drivers license? Your insurance cards?...

A couple years ago, I talked about JEDI, a contract between Microsoft and the Pentagon. It's now unravelling two years later as they are sending it out for bid to Amazon and Microsoft... the only two companies that likely to be viable to carry the weight of the $10...

Kaseya is a network management tool that's been around for a while. Solarwinds is a similar tool, and it was attacked back in December. They took data. Kaseya was hacked last weekend, and an estimate of 1500 of their clients were hit with ransomware. This new type of...

UC Berkeley performed a number of comprehensive studies on cell phone usage, and came out with details that your cell phone may not be as safe as you'd like. 97% of American's have a cell phone of some kind, and are becoming dependent upon it. My cellphone has been my...

Do you like offices? Cubicles OK? What about open floorplans? What about no floorplan at all? Dropbox is in the middle of implementing a work concept called a Studio. Everything is movable, wide open, and revolves around fancy library concepts where everyone sees...

It may be Branson over Bezos in the Billionaire Blast Off Race to space. We've known that both of them have this quest to show off, so it's not as surprising. I'm hopeful that it's successful, as this dangerous trip is needed to challenge more people towards the dream...

In recent weeks, I've been hearing of people who are planning to change jobs soon. It's been called the "Great Resignation", as return-to-the-office is announced. The lure of working from home is just too much for most people, and they are seeking options. Family,...

Claims of a LinkedIn breach came out this week. It's a little different this time, as LinkedIn is noting that it appears to be all information that was "scraped" or actually available publicly. This is an indication that we are moving into a different type of world...

While they haven't been selling in a while, the idea of these devices is to hold data in a safe location for a long time. People don't update external hard drives until they really run out of space. WD MyBook sees massive deleted data among most of its users, and...

In case you want to know the specs needed for Windows 11. Sit down. They are a bit more than you might expect. See full story on What your PC will need to run Windows 11 | PCWorldFound at www.pcworld.com

Someone in Texas, during a recent power crunch, thought it would be great to adjust up the thermostats... from the power company side. This is not what you want in your house... 78 degrees (what they used) at the thermostat in my own home is 88 degrees in my office...

Windows 11 announcements today. They contained all of the excitement of reading an end user license agreement. Lots of caffeine is needed. You've been warned. Windows is getting a minor upgrade. See full story on Windows 11 is here: Everything you need to know -...

Imagine itemizing your company deductions... "Fred... can we write off the amount we paid to the ransomeware hackers?" The answer now apparently from the IRS is that, yes, while we don't deal with terrorists, if you do, you can write it off. Now, there's issues, such...

This hit the headlines in the last week, but it was all for not... this guy didn't really hit it rich. It was just a bad set of calculations in small numbers that flipped into big numbers. Williamson knew that Coinbase didn't really owe him this much. Still, finding...

I've been concerned over this latest program, Voila AI Artist, because it's yet another 'forced viral' approach into our phones, our wallets, and our information. Defining "forced viral". The various guilt-trip encouragements, the cute approach, the not-really...

While this is a novelty, owning the NFT of the original source code of the World Wide Web seems exciting, but also extremely out of reach for most of us. Tim Berners-Lee's creation is likely to outlast all of us at this rate, and because of that, I think this auction...

In King County, Washington, facial recognition software is now banned. Home to Seattle, Bellevue, and this quaint little town called Redmond, AKA Microsoft City. I like the idea that governments are starting to take a chance on restricting the overreach, but I also...

Decades ago, one of the early attractions of simulated artificial intelligence was Eliza. Eliza was a pretend therapist. Now, Woebot comes along, and it's much the same concept. It tries to determine your issues, and serve as therapy, based on far more responses than...

Quick note on the electric car front... Rimac has a new hypercar... 0 to 60 in 1.85 seconds. That's about a second faster than your zero to 60 time jumping out of an airplane. 1,914hp. 258mph top speed. $2.4 million USD. The production version of Rimac's Concept _Two...

Walmart is retiring their robots from stores, but Instacart is now pushing the same idea. In this case, they want to try out creating automated fulfillment centers around the country. 100's of robots would gather standard boxed and canned products, while live people...

New York Subways were also hit by Chinese hackers using a zero-day vulnerability. This is where nobody knew a door was even there until after it was opened. This was actually a better story than we usually hear. Only 3 of 18 systems were hit. No impact to customers or...

Don't have a cow, but the meat industry is reeling after another cyberattack. Remember, I've said that the targets out there that are paying, are only serving to drive more attacks. We don't know how much JBS, the nations second largest meat producer, located in...

We've talked about Amazon's overreach, and on this weeks show, Keith will talk about a related Apple feature. For now, I'm going to come down hard on Amazon, and say to opt out of Amazon Sidewalk. Google the following "OPT OUT OF SIDEWALK" and there are 100 different...

This approach for Amazon to grab MGM is amazing. A pickup like this will propel Amazon forward in the streaming wars. While we can't be clear on what the deal is with Netflix, Hulu, or anyone else, the list of properties that hold up well. Some of the big names...

Tesla owners? Elon Musk has enabled your in car cameras to watch you... well, the cameras will watch. The data isn't leaving the car, but it is monitoring if you are actually attentive while the car drives for you. I get that we are all concerned about a fully...

Another electric car or truck is not amazing. Ford's F-150 line being updated to add electric options is not surprising. The ability to provide electricity back into your house in a power outage, is revolutionary. The idea that it would be able to balance household...

Thieves exist outside of our leaders too... and the bigger the payout, the more that big industries will be targeted. I've said this many times over the years. This top dollar payout will embolden the scum who would hold all of us hostage for our own information. In...

I'm not surprised that our government wants their share. Every king, emperor, or other leader has demanded their due from what their followers have made. In this case, it seems that many agencies are gearing up with their hand out for more, not just in share, but...

Words are added to Webster's all the time. The more popularity in the word, the faster it goes. NFT is now part of the lexicon of the world. An NFT or non-fungible token is a unique, only one in the world item that you can prove that you own. It's a merging of...

After being lower down the lists at the various App stores, GasBuddy is famous again. When I wanted to check gas prices near me, that's what I used, and apparently many others have as well. With outages at some stations, and gas prices climbing, everyone is ready to...

A new space race has started. IT's even the USA vs Russians in a bizarre twist. For the USA, Tom Cruise is looking to head to the ISS with a director. We do know that Tom Cruise is fond of his own stunts, but this is taking it to a new level. The Russians have their...

Bill Gates has talked about solving poverty while being one of the richest men in the world. He's lectured at TED about solving malaria. He talks about solving misery on a number of different things. Unfortunately for him, he couldn't solve the problems at home, and...

Facebook wants to keep you as their product... I mean customer. Their unhappiness over the new App Tracking Transparency from Apple has sent them into a tizzy. Their threat now, is that if you don't allow Facebook to track your every move to pitch you ads for things...

Quick tip: Amazon isn't going to call you. PayPal, Microsoft, the IRS, the FBI... none of them will call you. They aren't going to protect you from scammers... and if they are calling you... they are the scammers. There are plenty of scams out there, and anytime...

Moore's Law is still holding in the real world, as well as in other ways. Today's chips have wiring that is 7 nanometer thick, but now, IBM has 2 nm thick chips. That's smaller than the width of a single strand of DNA. 50 billion transistors in the size of your...

The obvious suspect is to blame... supply and demand. Covid has created a limited supply of drivers, but the demand is up as we return to the world. Sure, you feel comfortable getting into one car that's well cleaned, but would you feel comfortable driving around 15...

Apple making a bunch of money? 54% year over year growth in Q1? Not a surprise here. There are some material and chip supply issues hitting the industry, but Apple may have protected themselves with making their own chips, at least for a while. Apple easily beat out...

Amazon making money hand over first? No surprises. 44% year over year growth, and it's sure to be bigger soon enough. The Juggernaut has been built up strong over the years, and the crazy pandemic, as we all know, fueled a meteoric rise based on the momentum it...

Statistics are bouncing around, but it's clear that many people wish to continue working remotely after the end of the pandemic. 65% are in favor of that. Most of the rest wish for a hybrid environment... and the shocker is that 2% want to actually go back to the...

DoorDash is messing with pricing... on both sides. Their new approach is to offer 3 levels, where restaurants who pay out a lower commission, will still see customers charged higher fees. Give up more of your income, and the customers will pay less of a surcharge....

Who decides what is information and what is disinformation? As we know, there are extremists out there with diametrically opposing views of information in many fields. Now there are those proposing a... not named as such... Ministry of Truth. Anytime that someone...

The FCC is moving into an area that I don't think is government overreach, scary, or even wrong. They are looking at rules to ensure that suicide prevention is available through 988, not just by voice, which is still in progress, but by text as well. I applaud these...

Apple announced things again. Keith will be giving his rundown on this weeks show. Apple is getting a later-than-usual start on product launches. See full story on Apple announces AirTags, new iMacs and iPads - AxiosFound at www.axios.com

Imagine a world where the minimum wage delivery guy or gal is now required to setup your Ikea style furniture. That's Amazon's latest move. I struggle with letting strangers in my house, but now we're going to have them sit there for two hours making sense of the poor...

Imagine you disagree with someone, so you report them for expressing "mistaken opinions". Whatever the cause may be, from climate change to gun control to the pandemic, you could report your political enemy. Now China now has a way to snitch on your friends there......

Who comes to mind when you think of spying on citizens? The NSA? FBI? Russians? Hackers? The US Postal Service? Scary enough, yes, iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, is run by the postal service, and has been monitoring electronic communications across...

Nvidia tops a list of median monthly pay for internships. Wait, interns getting more than minimum wage? Yes, with the top of the list at $105,000. Of course, all of the companies drop off from there. But tech and finance companies make the bulk of the pay offerings,...

James O'Keefe is the man behind Project Veritas, and is the latest right wing big name to be permanently banned. The ban was over usage of multiple accounts, but O'Keefe's lawyers have started to prepare lawsuits, claiming this is false. It portends the end of yet...

There are many naysayers, and many supporters, and I'm not going to get mixed into this. Reporting just the facts, Coinbase, a company that sells digital currencies, went public, and due to the major price of Bitcoin, started off with a market value near $100 Billion....

In that Amazon union effort in Alabama, only about 1/4 of the ballots were found in favor of unionizing. Only a little more than half of the potential voters even bothered, which strikes an even deeper blow to the unionizers. There's continued talk about foul play...

Matchbox is now offering scaled down versions of a number of electric cars. It's an interesting nod to the future that is coming at us quickly. Matchbox is launching a new series of toy cars based on real-life electric and hybrid vehicles, in a bid to make its...

The National Archives handle information on all of our former Presidents. This is a standard goal to ensure that all information is protected from editors, both positive and negative. Twitter, however, has blocked the Archives from archiving President Trump's...

E3 has been around for years, and last year was a long drawn out mess. The Entertainment Software Association claims they have solved this with a targeted 3 day event in June, the typical time, and confirmed some of the biggest names in the industry. It'll be...

Another data leak from Facebook, with over 500 million users. They claim that it's old, and has been long since resolved, but in the age of the spin doctors, and a lack of accountability from Big Tech, who knows. Data included is your Facebook ID ties to your phone,...

Do as we say, not as we do. The ACLU has long been critical of Facebook, and people who share data. In today's world, however, hypocrisy comes easily to some, including those claiming to protect us. It's a shame, but I also realize that in today's world, that's part...

Microsoft's augmented reality headsets are coming... just not to us. 120,000 of them will be outfitted onto helmets for the US Army. It is a promising advance for the tech, and when the military budgets fund research and development, the general public frequently...

Malware keeps striking big names in government. It's interesting how the long term rule was "we don't negotiate with terrorists", but once people starting losing data... So, Broward County has the 6th largest district in the country, and are being asked to pay $40...

Down at the very Southern tip of Texas lies the town of Brownsville. Elon Musk is looking to get rocket scientists to move there for SpaceX, instead of the current digs in places like Southern California, Cape Canaveral, and so forth. If you're willing to move to the...

I find it amazing that AT&T would be doing this, but they are actively lobbying against fiber across the country. Why? They claim that 10Mbps uploads are good enoughf or anyone. Strange, as that's the upload speed that I had nearly 20 years ago. Today, I get...

Amazon worker votes are being counted in Alabama as to if they are going to unionize. Amazon is now the country's second largest private employer at 800,000 workers and this was the first union election at Amazon in years. Many unions are watching, and even some...

I forget if I covered this a few months back, but T-Mobiles entry into streaming TV is already dead. I remember thinking "what are you guys doing" when it came out, as it isn't really their wheelhouse, it was a late player in a crowded market, and it wasn't logical to...

I know there are companies out there that assist in cheating at videogames, but I always considered them as walkthroughs and things like hints and more. Books and magazines, and the follow-on like websites. But for $10 to $200 a month gamers were competing in...

Backpedaling fast when you've made a bad move is good. Cricut, mentioned last week for their intent on making makers pay, stepped back not just once, but twice after the backlash. First step back, they said they wouldn't impact current customers who registered by the...

Chip disruptions come in a variety of forms. A bit over a month ago, there were concerns in Texas, and now due to a fire at a Japanese facility. In this case, the chips involved go into cars, but it's unclear what chips, what car manufacturers, and more. They expect...