Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss Google legal issues and the Chrome browser, Elon Musk's phone, Instagram's monthly user count, Google's Ai Mode, Alexa Plus, YouTube and TV, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



This week our science and technology reporter, Bond, Ralph Bond, tells us there’s a new monitoring device designed to measure mental workload stress that can activate an alert, for example, when an air traffic controller’s mental strain level is too high.



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Rick in St. Cloud, Minnesota asked: "Can you please suggest a good radio for counter top listening. I'm looking for something simple to use, small in size, and with excellent reception. When I search on-line, all I find is alarm clock radios or boom boxes. I just want a simple AM/FM radio with excellent reception and good sound that doesn't take up much space. Thank you."Rick, youre going to find that most of the countertop radios available today are marketed towards an older audience and they will mostly look about the same as a radio you might have bought 30 years ago.Sangean makes lots of them, most of them with physical dials rather than digital tuning. If you want a digital version, you can look at a Sangean PR-D19BK, for a more traditional look you can look at a Sangean WR-16. Theyre all roughly the same when it comes to reception, they just come with a long FM antenna and a detachable square AM antenna.C Crane still sells plenty of AM/FM radios, but mostly solar ones with emergency weather channels.Radio is very much on the decline, if you ask anyone under 60 if they own a radio, the answer will almost certainly be no. And many opt for podcasts, services like Spotify and Apple Music, and live streaming via smart speakers and other devices. The market for traditional physical radios is shrinking every day, so your options wont be as extensive as they would have been a few years ago, but theyre probably the best theyll ever be again.

When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … you could win prizes.Brondell: Pro Sanitizing Air Purifier - Removes dust, dander, pollen, smoke, and airborne viruses ($800 Value)gekogear: AIRFLUX 300 Car Jump Starter with Air CompressorSoundcore: Space One Pro Wireless Noise Canceling HeadphonesBirdfy: Wi-Fi Bird Feeder Camera with Ai recognition of over 6,000 speciesAll CALLERS -- using the AUDIO option on our Free App or 1-800-899-INTO(4686)  - automatically qualify to win prizes.Audio archived for at least 6 months

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss Meta Ray Ban Display glasses, the shift away from Netflix streaming dominance, a federal jury ordering Google to pay $425 million for user privacy violations, Bitcoin's daily trading volume outpacing Apple's by 59%, Tesla working on redesigning door handles, football broadcasting experiences, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



This week our science and technology reporter, Bond, Ralph Bond tells us that US military researchers have achieved a major breakthrough by creating a wireless power transmission system capable of delivering energy to create electricity more than 5 miles away!



Read more here.




Our guest this show: Ed Walsh, Senior Managing Consultant, Hybrid Cloud Transformation - IBM Consulting



William in Atlanta, Georgia asked: "I read somewhere that Google was going to force its Pixel users to start using Gemini instead of the Google Assistant and... that sucks because I've tried Gemini as my assistant and it's terrible at tasks and reminders and scheduling things and asking simple questions. It can do the complicated stuff like ChatGPT can but it is not a good assistant and I use my assistant every day, constantly for reminders and stuff like that. Is Google really gonna force me to use Gemini in 2025, and if so, what other devices can I use to not have to use Gemini - or how do I opt out of that if it's even possible?"William, Googles plan as we know it so far is to force everyone it can into Gemini and kill off Google Assistant starting with Pixel devices but continuing with the rest of Android devices until theyve covered every Android device with hardware that can support Gemini.Unfortunately, right now opting out doesnt seem like an option and going to a different brand will only save you for as long as it takes them to get to the rest of the Android ecosystem.Jumping to Apple wont save you for very long either, Apple has been trying to enable Apple Intelligence on their own devices that opted to leave it turned off with most of their upgrades since they released it.Ultimately, whether you find Gemini useful or not doesnt seem to be a concern, these companies appear to just be pushing a new way to extract and process your data so they can use it for your own purposes, so going forward your options are likely to get smaller and smaller unless youre willing to opt for degoogled Android-based operating systems like LineageOS or Graphene which come with their own set of compromises (especially Graphene which is very privacy centric and makes some of the things most people use their smartphones for difficult).Sorry we cant offer you more hope but these tech companies seem to have found a new way to process and monetize your information through these models, and even with their high cost to run they seem to think its worth it and are not giving us any choice.

When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … you could win prizes.Brondell: Pro Sanitizing Air Purifier - Removes dust, dander, pollen, smoke, and airborne viruses ($800 Value)Scosche: PowerUP 2000 Em...

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss Ai companionship and significant others, ChatGPT for children, a TikTok deal, streaming services, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



Today, the U.S. is experiencing a significant shortage of farm workers. To help fill in the gap, advanced robot technology in many forms is being deployed. This week our science and technology reporter Bond, Ralph Bond, tells us there's an amazing new centipede-inspired, farm-worker robot.



Read more here.




Our guest this show: Stefanie O’Connell, Financial Expert at Uphold/EasyBitcoin.



Derek in Bridgeport, Connecticut asked: "My question is about smart home technology. It seems like a lot of these products like smart thermostats or smart appliances are sort of useless and I'm wondering if there's a future world where these things are well integrated and protected because it seems like we're just creating more unnecessarily complicated things that are just destined to break. What do you think?"Derek, honestly, the main goal of those technologies is not really to be helpful but to be data collection vehicles to increase the companies' bottom line. In other words, they meant to help, just not help you as the owner.It was always a little iffy when they tried to explain that you really wanted a smart washing machine so it could let you know when your clothes were ready. The truth is that washing machines have set cycles and you could just as easily set a timer, but everything you do or don't do is a potential profile improver for those companies and they can sell a more accurate profile of who you are and what you do. For example, do you wash clothes at 2pm? Well, then someone is at home during the day, maybe advertisers should spend some money in your neighborhood at that time.That's annoying enough, but the real problem is that those services are sometimes required for your appliance to work. Some simply won't turn on do their dumb-function until they've been put online so they can act like a smart-appliance. Virtually every company that makes these stops support for them long before they stop being able to do what you actually need them to do but that connection to the internet is likely still active after support ends and prone to security issues that can jeopardize your home network.Until that model stops being profitable to these companies either by more consumer-centric legislation or by the business model just not working for advertisers, they will probably continue to pump out these smart toasters and smart thermometers and smart random things that should really be dumb and consumers won't benefit too much, because ultimately the consumer is still the product not the customer.For an extreme example of smart things that didnt need to be biting the owner look up the Fisker Ocean. Its a car but the company went bankrupt before fully fixing the software and the cars relied on services that the company turned off, so they basically became barely functional, unsellable cars after something like 1 year of being put in the market.

When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … you could win prizes.Brondell: Pro Sanitizing Air Purifier - Removes dust, dander, pollen, smoke,

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss Apple's new iPhones, Watches, and Air Pods, Ai voice translation for Instagram Reels, a TransUnion data breach, Samsung's upcoming devices, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



We’ve all heard about the huge challenge of creating habitats with air, water, and food sources to someday sustain humans on Mars. But what if you could transform the atmosphere of Mars to make it an Earth-like planet. Our science and technology reporter, Bond, Ralph Bond, is here with news about a group of scientists who have a very ambitious plan to do just that!



Read more here.




Our guest this show: Dr. Aileen Hawkins , Founding Head, King's InterHigh USA



James in North Carolina asked: "With so many smart devices collecting data in our homes, what steps can regular people take to protect their privacy?"James, North Carolina has not passed any privacy law that protects your personal data or prevents its sale to third parties.Unless a law like that is passed, there really isnt an awful lot you can do to stay safe from this kind of data collection.A lot of these devices will have some privacy settings, and its worth checking them and trying to minimize what the device collects and shares, but what you will be able to block from there will be limited.Unscrupulous companies like Facebooks Meta have also been caught doing malicious things to collect your data. For example, years ago Meta bought a VPN company called Onavo Protect and offered a free private VPN service that was actually funneling all of their users browsing data straight to Meta. That cost Meta $20M back in 2023, which to them was likely a slap on the wrist.And we know it was a slap on the wrist because in 2024 researchers discovered that all Meta apps on Android phones (the exploit was not possible on iPhones) were running servers that shared a unique identifier with Meta that allowed them to deanonymize users and track browsing data to a specific person. Yandex did the same thing.In 2024 Roku TVs displayed a message saying that if you continued to use the TV you agreed with their new privacy policy and allowed them to collect your data and bound users to an arbitration agreement. You could opt out by writing a letter and mailing it to them and waiting for them to process it. For the time between the message being displayed and the physical letter being processed your TV would effectively be bricked and you couldnt even use the HDMI ports.Modern cars share your driving habits not just with insurers but also with advertisers that may be interested to hear that you park at a certain location every weekday at 8:50am for a coffee.The only real solution you have to curb the data collection if you dont live in a State with privacy laws is to use as few of these services as you can, but in the real world that is a hard option when at a minimum a smartphone is almost inescapable.Frank in Westbury, New York asked: "Mark Zuckerberg just committed 600 billion dollars to AI development in the United States. Just wondering if you knew what that money is gonna be going towards."Frank, the only thing we really know about is that Zuckerberg intends to build city-sized Ai data centers and that they want to focus on what they call personal superintelligence, which more or less means more personalized Ai tailored to each user (think of it as the algorithm on their newsfeed that only shows you what youll engage with, but for Ai).

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss New rugged laptops from G-Tech, wrongful death lawsuits against OpenAi, Taco Bell's Ai at the drive-thru, a PayPal data breach, ChatGPT's parental controls, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



In the late 1800s the rise of steel-frame construction revolutionized architecture. And in the early 1900s reinforced concrete became widely used. As a result, the use of wood was relegated to small structures like homes, barns, etc. This week our Science and Technology news reporter, Bond, Ralph Bond, says there’s a new scientifically modified wood that’s stronger than steel and that may change the whole construction game!



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Don in LaBelle, Florida asked: "I wonder if you have any advice on buying a used phone online. I'm thinking of doing that but I'm not sure if that's a safe move or whether it's good for the budget. So any hints you might have would be appreciated."Don, given how extremely expensive mobile phones are these days and how small changes between models are, at least considering a used device is not a bad idea.There are some things to look out for: if possible dont go too old or check first to see how much replacing the battery on the device would cost.Batteries are chemical devices and theres no getting around their performance degradation issues.Even with those you may be looking at a lower price if you buy used and pay for a battery replacement if needed.You should also buy some somewhere reputable so you can be protected from someone trying to unload a stolen device. These days stolen devices may be disabled remotely so you cant use them.Buying from a legitimate business should get you safely around that area though. Site ranging from the specialized likes Gazelle.com to more general purpose sites like Amazon.com will sell used electronics and should provide you with all the assurances you need to know youll be able to use them.Overall, considering a used phone is probably a good idea, you may be able to save a good amount of money without really losing much functionality at all.

When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … you could win prizes.Brondell: Pro Sanitizing Air Purifier - Removes dust, dander, pollen, smoke, and airborne viruses ($800 Value)Scosche: PowerUP 2000 Emergency Jump StarterSoundcore: Space One Pro Wireless Noise Canceling HeadphonesBirdfy: Wi-Fi Bird Feeder Camera with Ai recognition of over 6,000 speciesAll CALLERS -- using the AUDIO option on our Free App or 1...

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss robots potentially being designed to carry babies, Roblox policy changes, Google's new products, Walmart and Target's Ai initiatives, the new Qualcomm processor, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



Cutting-edge smart glasses that offer augmented reality, built-in cameras, links to your smartphone, voice control and a host of other amazing capabilities are available now. But what if contact lenses could do some of the same things? Here to tell us about three prototype versions of futuristic smart contact lenses is our science and technology news reporter Bond, Ralph Bond.



Read more here.




Our guest this show: Kameryn Stanhouse, Vice President, Sports & Entertainment Partnerships at IBM.



Norman in Chattanooga, Tennessee asked: "I had a smaller house and I moved. I had Ring cameras setup. This house is bigger with two stories and my cameras don't work downstairs or at the other end of the house - or even outside. My router is in a closet in the front of the house. What can I do to make these Ring cameras work at different areas of my house because I want to put up like four different cams."Norman, Ring cams are only as good as the Wi-Fi they have to work with.If you improve WiFi coverage in your new house that should also improve the cameras abilities to work everywhere.Your best option, especially for a big house, is a mesh network. You can find devices from well known brands like Ubiquiti, Google, Netgear, and others.Some of the best regarded mesh devices are made by a company called Eero. Eero was purchased by Amazon and before that Amazon also purchased Ring, so their cameras should work nicely with those network devices.Having said that, WiFi is WiFi, so dont feel tied to them because theyre owned by the same megaconglomerate.An Eero Pro 7 pack will cost you around $700, but an Eero 6 pack will cost you $150 for 3 devices and if you need gigabit speeds a 6+ will cost you $224.Googles Nest WiFi Pro will cost you around $300 for 3 devices. Netgears Orbi will be about the same.As you can probably tell by now, theyre not the cheapest networking solution, but theyll keep your whole house connected seamlessly as if it was a single network coming from a single device and any mesh network should give you a solid connection to your cameras.

When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … you could win prizes.Brondell: Pro Sanitizing Air Purifier - Removes dust, dander, pollen, smoke, and airborne viruses ($800 Value)Scosche: PowerUP 2000 Emergency Jump StarterSoundcore: Space One Pro Wireless Noise Canceling Headphone...

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss ChatGPT's study mode, smartphone eyecandy, investments in Intel, Amazon's App Store closing down, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



When doctors need to look inside a patient’s brain during surgical procedures traditional endoscopes have helped a lot, but they can cause unintentional damage to brain tissue. This week our science and technology news reporter, Bond, Ralph Bond, tells us of a breakthrough innovation involving a new ultra-thin brain surgery camera.



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Our guest this show: Robert Ferrara, Google Senior Tech Expert with Google Gemini at Google.



Robert in Atlanta, Georgia asked: "Is there a PC utility or a device that can convert speech to text?"Robert, yes there are plenty, but you may have to pay depending on how much you want to transcribe.If youre thinking about dictation, you may be able to get away with using some free websites like VoiceToText or SpeechNotes. They wont be as accurate as software like Dragons Naturally Speaking, which is trained to your voice, but theyll be reasonably ok and you can tweak as you go. Naturally Speakings Home edition, the cheapest one available, costs $150.If you want to transcribe a pre-recorded audio file youre pretty much looking at either paid software or paid online services.Microsoft 365 includes limited audio transcription. You can open a Word document and select Home, then Dictate, and then Transcribe and upload your audio file.That will be a good choice if youre transcribing less than 300 minutes of audio a month, but it does have that limit of 300 minutes a month.Between software and online services, online services are the best choice since they largely rely on Amazons, Googles, Microsofts, or IBMs speech to text engines, which are constantly being improved behind the scenes.You can look into automated services like HappyScribe, which will charge you 20 cents a minute. You can go the manual route and look into Fiverr or Amazons Mechanical Turk, on which a human being will type up the text for you. It will take longer, but it will be more accurate from the start.

When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … you could win prizes.Brondell: Pro Sanitizing Air Purifier - Removes dust, dander, pollen, smoke, and airborne viruses ($800 Value)Scosche: PowerUP 2000 Emergency Jump StarterSoundcore: Space One Pro Wireless Noise Canceling HeadphonesMatias: USB-C Keyboards for your Mac in Silver and Space GrayAll CALLERS -- using the AUDIO option on our Free App or 1-800-899-INTO(4686)  - automatically qualify...

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss The death of AOL's dial-up service and Dropbox's password manager, back-to-school deals, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



These days I’m happy if my smartphone’s battery can take me though a busy workday without needing to recharge. But what if my future smartphone had a battery that could last for decades! This week our science and technology news reporter Bond, Ralph Bond, says it may just be possible.



Read more here.




Our guest this show: Anna Bilych, Founder and CEO of Les Amis.



Debbi calling in via the AskDave button at IntoTomorrow.com asked: "I have a question about determining whether a website is safe to put my credit card information on. I use a - I think they call them an MVNO - one of those cheaper phone plans. And I gave them my credit card and in a few weeks, my credit card was hacked and I had to get a new card. Then I found out that that particular company was not being responsible and had leaked the information on peoples' credit cards out. Is there a way to tell in the future, if I go to put my information in, if it's going to be safe?"Debbi, there are two parts to this: the technology and internal security practices. And for the benefit of our other listeners who may not know, MVNO stands for Mobile Virtual Network Operator. These are companies that basically piggyback on another cell network. These would be the low-cost cell services - carriers like Tracfone, Boost Mobile, Consumer Cellular and many others.You can check to see if theyre using the technology that allows your credit card information to travel securely in a properly encrypted connection by checking your browsers address bar when youre on the page in which you need to enter your information. If theres a little padlock there and an https address, thats your browsers way of telling you that the website is using an SSL certificate and the information you enter in there can be securely transferred.The other side of that is the internal security practices of the company and the truth is you cant really know what theyre doing for sure.There have been plenty of recent cases of big names doing really unsafe and careless things. Parler famously had millions of profiles content downloaded because incredibly enough they didnt randomize their user IDs, so just incrementing the user ID by 1 allowed anyone with basic programming skills to programmatically download the contents of the next profile and keep the chain going until they reached the last user in the database.Facebooks default security settings are so poor that default profiles can be scraped by anyone, something they want to convince us is normal. Its not normal, its just the result of their own poor business practices. They sell your information and youre more likely to use their service if you can be creepy and read up on another users profile before you friend them, its a choice to share as much as they do.If the MVNO you used happened to not sanitize inputs on the page, or otherwise opened themselves up to attacks, their database may have been accessed by someone else and youd really have no way to know that was a possibility before you signed up without running penetration tests on the page (which you cant really do without consent since youd be considered to be trying to hack their page and could get into trouble yourself).The best way to avoid issues with virtual number providers is really to just go with a big enough...

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss YouTube's profanity rules, chatbot usage and Google's traffic, iPhone 18's lineup, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



The basic technology behind refrigerators has remained largely unchanged since the early 20th century, when household refrigerators became widely available. But now there's a whole new way to make refrigerators work, and our Science and Technology reporter Bond, Ralph Bond, is here with the big news.



Read more here.




Our guest this show: Alice Williams, VP of Marketing at T-Mobile.



Peter in Wilmington, Delaware asked: "Wondering if you can give any advice on positioning an indoor HD antenna so that it receives the maximum number of over-the-air television stations."Peter, unfortunately its a case by case situation.Over-the-air TV can be blocked by physical obstacles such as buildings, trees, and mountains and your reception will likely be better if youre close to the source and higher rather than lower to the ground.If an outdoor antenna is an option for you, those tend to work better since you can position them higher and outside the walls of your own home.For an internal antenna, the only thing you can really do is try it in a few different locations and see which ones are less affected by your own home, your neighbors, the obstacles between you and the tower, etc.There are a few websites like nocable.org that will allow you to put in your zip code and get a list of local TV channels and their distance to you as well as the cardinal direction to their antenna. That can help you get a picture of what you may be able to realistically reach, and where youre better off positioning your antenna. Nocable.org in particular will also give each channel a marker to let you know which channels may be easy to get and which will be challenging to receive.

When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … you could win prizes.Brondell: Pro Sanitizing Air Purifier - Removes dust, dander, pollen, smoke, and airborne viruses ($800 Value)Scosche: PowerUP 2000 Emergency Jump StarterSoundcore: Space One Pro Wireless Noise Canceling HeadphonesMatias: USB-C Keyboards for your Mac in Silver and Space GrayAll CALLERS -- using the AUDIO option on our Free App or 1-800-899-INTO(4686)  - automatically qualify to win prizes.Audio archived for at least 6 months