Nerd News Tracker

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...

The latest bad news from Windows 11's early build process is that the camera will now tell if you can't use the camera, and guilt you into turning it on. The claim is that you might forget that you set it to privacy mode and wonder why it isn't working. My thought...

Amazon, probably one of the largest sellers of Roomba, has decided they will vacuum up the company for $1.7 Billion. This is after iRobot, the main corporation, cleaned house of about 10% of their employees. Still, Amazon has also cleaned up each year at Prime Day for...

Friendship can be far more valuable than money. A young Jack Sweeney caught attention a while back for running automated Twitter accounts tracking a series of famous folk. Elon Musk offered $5,000. Mark Cuban offered to be a friend, give business advise, and hang out...

Are you using Amazon Drive? Not so much your pictures and video, which will be moved to Amazon Photo's, but Amazon Drive. I ask, because they are going away at the end of 2023. Multiple pundits are talking about the obvious of using this as an example of keeping at...

HBO Max and Discovery+ are going to join forces soon, and develop a combined streaming service. This is an amazing bump for both of them, as the combined platform size will now be about 92 million subscribers. It will increase their platform and allow for savings on...

Our government is continuing to incentivise us to buy electric vehicles, even as some of us are growing more convinced that they aren't all that green. A new tax credit of $7500 for new, and $4000 for used, but the caveats include a maximum sticker price. The max...

Uber had a data breach in 2016. They just admitted it last week to the US DOJ. Apparently this goes deep, with 57 million users affected. Most companies are now being called to admit it immediately, to allow for people to protect themselves. Instead, Uber paid a...

Netflix may have spent a bundle on The Gray Man, but they are also looking to give it a sequel and a spin-off. This new twist is a plan for Netflix to drive successful properties into cash cows, rather than continuing to develop individual movies. This could pay off...

As we head to the moon, strained relations between Russia and the US is leading the Russians towards leaving the ISS in a couple of years, and building their own station. There are going to be questions as to what happens next with the ISS, as Russia has been a key...

Wednesday, 53 years to the day from when Neil Armstrong said "one small step", NASA announced a return to the moon... with mannequins. Neat thing here is that it'll be in September. One can only hope that this will result in more adventures from NASA. NASA is shooting...

And while Netflix was enjoying life, a Snap happened at Snap(chat)... Their announced 2nd quarter results were lackluster, resulting in a one day stock drop of 25%. This places them down 2/3rds over the year. Oddly enough, Netflix announced loses of a million...

Drobo is one of the companies in the Network and Direct Access Storage spaces. The fact that they just files Chapter 11 is concerning. They are claiming that they are restructuring, but they have zero product available right now, their bloh and tweet's have been dry,...

In the leadup to this week, the scary thought was that Netflix would have lost 2 million customers. Their quarterly report was exciting, however. The amazingly good news was less than a million. Now, that sounds like bad news, but when people are dialing back,...

The FCC may be looking to increase the definition of broadband. Broadband has been loosely defined as what we need as people to survive on the Internet. The tech definision has been 25 megabit downloads, with 3 megabit uploads for 7 years. Now, this is a service level...

In the day and age of increasing government interest in how we move our monies, it's no surprise that India is showing interest in following China and other countries in the desire to ban cryptocurrencies. I find myself frequently torn between the two camps, seeing...

Note: I own a BMW. BMW is pushing a new idea, where if you want heated seats, you'll have to pay a monthly fee for this. Now, it's something that's going to go in place in the United Kingdom, and perhaps other countries, but not here... yet. Tesla came under fire a...

Google has started investigating bad reviews that are being leveraged to shakedown restaurant owners. Imagine a one-star rating for a high end restaurant, and along comes some reviewer who then demands a gift card to remove the bad review. The crazy thing is that the...

The case of Twitter and Elon Musk got even more strange in the last week. A couple months back, Elon says "I want to buy Twitter", and everyone at Twitter freaked out and said no, and people even quit their jobs in the process that followed. Twitter relented, but then...

Netflix added a new level of audio to streaming this week. Spatial audio is a synthesis of more speakers in your room to mimic the big sound of a movie theater. This means that some movies are going to sound better than ever before in your home, and it doesn't require...

Interestingly, Amazon announced something new in the leadup to Prime Day. Amazon Prime is getting into the food delivery game by leveraging a deal with GrubHub. Now, you'll pay nothing for a year, but after that, you'll pay the usual fee of $9.99 a month for the...

Tesla is no longer the largest worldwide maker of electrified vehicles. China has an automaker called BYD, which admittedly sells about half electric, and half plug-in hybrid cars. Also, being part of communist China, they can build endless cars with cheap labor,...

Years ago, on Saturday Night Live, a famous skit with William Shatner telling Trekkies to "get a life" was hilarious. Little would I have expected that years later, a serious plea from a real nerd, Martin Cooper, who is considered the inventor of the world's first...

Amid some pushback from competitors like Dish Networks, Starlink from SpaceX was granted clearance by the FCC to officially advertise and provide internet services to anything mobile. Portability means you can relocate, and has been available through Starlink for a...

Amazon Prime Day is here. Now, it's not always what it's cracked up to be... there will be great deals at Amazon, but also Target, Walmart, Best Buy, and more. Amazon has developed a Christmas In July setup that drives clearing of shelves and inventory for the new...

Ruja Ignatova, who has been called 'Cryptoqueen', is now on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List. She's bilked people for over $4 Billion in a cryptocurrency scam called OneCoin. Frankly, the reward is one of the cheapest ones for someone this heinous, at $100,000. Someone...

A new creep factor as elements of the movie Minority Report sink deeper into our lives. A screen recognizes you walking through the airport and reads "Hello Benjamin, your flight has been changed to gate A14, you better hurry... thanks for flying with Delta Airlines."...