In this week's Chit Chat Across the Pond, I interview author Molly DeFrank on her book "Digital Detox: The Two-Week Tech Reset for Kids" along with Lindsay Tondee who put Molly's advice to the test with her son Forbes.

As a geek, you'll probably think this is crazy talk, but I promise you it's a fun conversation and Molly's practical steps in her book might just be what you need if your kids turn into monsters when you take their screens away.

Molly's book is available at:

* Amazon

* Barnes & Noble

* Target

You can find Molly at mollydefrank.com and you can follow Lindsay at twitter.com/idahomonkees.

During the interview, Molly mentioned the Gabb "dumb" phone she bought her 12-year-old which you can find at gabbwireless.com/...

We also talked about the Silverware Dance by Forbes and Molly asked for a GIF of it so you can all enjoy it. Silverware Dance by Forbes

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, I'm joined by long-time NosillaCastaway Seamus Lavery. Seamus started posting photos of his black lab Quaid to the live chatroom, and then explained that he’s a “puppy raiser” for Guiding Eyes for the Blind. He agreed to come on the show to tell us what it’s like to be a puppy raiser, what his responsibilities are, what he’s supposed to teach Quaid, and the uphill road it is for Quaid to qualify to be a Service Dog for the blind.

Bart is a Belgian living in the Republic of Ireland, while Seamus is a Northern Irishman who lived for 12 years in Belgium (now living in the Washington DC area). His accent is delightful and his story is fascinating.

Links Seaumus mentions:

* Guiding Eyes for The Blind

* Pilots To The Rescue

* Pilots to the Rescue delivering 3 Guiding Eyes Puppies

* Trailer for Disney+'s series Pick of the Litter

* Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History: The Dog Will See You Now

* You can follow Seamus as @batfink2001 on Twitter

Recently Tom Merritt and Sarah Lane of DTNS fame hosted what they called a Solar Round Table. The guests were NosillaCast Live Producer Steve Sheridan, an engineer working at AES Solar named Joe Briney, and Boeing 777 captain Brian Hoffman.

I tell you that whole story because when Steve got off the phone, he started telling me all about Brian’s huge projects to use solar on his farm. Steve was so enthusiastic about these projects that he started barraging Brian with questions about his projects in email, so I suggested Brian come on Chit Chat and Steve help me co-host.

You'll hear Brian explain how he and his wife planted literally more than 10,000 trees themselves, about how he grows the tilapia fish in the "pond" he built, and how creating that pond got him started getting into using solar to power his farm. He didn't just write a check and have someone come out and install solar, he bought the components but built everything himself.

While you may not follow in Brian's footsteps, it's very cool to know that it's actually possible to do this yourself and to learn about how Brian gives back to his community. Steve and I had a great time talking to Brian and learning from him and I know you will too. Don't forget to go listen to the DTNS Solar Panel Panel too!

Follow the link to the blog post to see photos of some of the panels and structures Brian built on his farm.

Referral Links:

This week our guest is Bart Busschots. This week we're going to do something a little different; we're doing an "Ask Me Anything (About Security)". I sent out the request for questions to our Slack community (), to Twitter, to a few user groups of which I am a member, and Steve posted it to our Facebook group.

With the exception of one question which I sent to him ahead of time, Bart answered all of these on the fly while we were recording. For that reason, only the questions are available in the blog post, not the answers. In order to know his answers, you'll need to listen to the show. If you're hearing-impaired, and one of the questions is of particular interest to you, send me an email at and I'll try to reproduce Bart's answer for you.

In yet another crossover episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Bodie Grimm of the Kilowatt Podcast joins me to talk about EVs. But this isn't just any EV, we get to talk to Chris Ashley of the SMR Podcast and BBQ and Tech about his brand new Ford F150 Lightning EV.

We catch Chris on the very delivery day of his new hotness, and he's one of the first people to actually get the F150 Lightning. Chris put his $100 in the ring over a year ago, and bought the Lightning (in the Laredo trim) essentially sight unseen. He is besotted with the vehicle and from what he told us, we can see why.

We start out with a big tease by talking about the work Chris had to do to be approved to install a charger at his townhouse, and what size battery he chose, but eventually we talk about what it feels like to drive with and without regenerative braking (also known as one-pedal driving), we talk about how well CarPlay works (it's over Bluetooth), what information is on the instrument panel, and a lot about the glory that is heated _and_ cooled seats. Bodie and Chris talk about how to remote start the car (which was a baffling subject for a California-bred woman). We even discuss whether Chris will fit in the frunk (aka Front Trunk).

It's a fun and informative conversation I know you'll enjoy. And be sure to check out Kilowatt, SMR, and BBQ and Tech Podcasts to have even more fun with these awesome gentlemen.

In this Lite version of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Bart Busschots talks to us about he thinks about security. Rather than try to tell us with exacting precision what to do about a current threat, instead, he talks about how to be proactive, how to convince others to accept changes in the name of security, and how to increase your security by reducing your attack surface. It sounds like a grim and boring subject, but of course with Bart as our steward for the subject, it's filled with anecdotes and examples from real life. In addition to the podcast recording, he's given us a full blog post on the subject as well.

CCATP #730 – Bart Busschots on Thinking About Security on podfeet.com/...

Our guest this week on Chit Chat Across the Pond is John Siracusa of the Accidental Tech Podcast, Reconcilable Differences, and Robot or Not. He’s also the developer of two interesting Mac apps: Front and Center and SwitchGlass. You can find his blog at Hypercritical.co. You can find him on Twitter @siracusa

I've been a fan of John's for a long time but I never knew anything about his background, so I asked him to start at the beginning and explain where he came from. Next I ask him some questions about screen brightness and arrangement of windows that I've heard him talking about and always wanted to investigate his ideas further.

Then we get into a super meaty discussion where he explains display technology from LCD to OLED to QD-OLED (or Quantum Dot OLED).

John was as delightful as I'd hoped, as knowledgeable as I'd expected and I had a fantastic time with him.

Back in August of 2019, Bart Busschots told us about how someday in the future, we would be able be living a passwordless future because of something called FIDO, AKA Fast ID Online. Back then it was really only helping corporations but this week the FIDO Alliance made an announcement that shows real promise that the dream will be realized for normal humans.

In this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite, Bart gives us a human-friendly explanation of why FIDO is awesome, how it will work, why it works, and what problems it solves. He even breaks it down into who will have to do what for this to work, and the good news is that normal humans won't have to do anything at all.

While this may sound like a super nerdy topic, and it does include a few brief ventures into private/public key cryptography, it's really a joyful discussion of a future without password breaches. When Bart and I stopped recording, I asked him, "Did you notice how much I was smiling during this recording?" I think you'll really enjoy hearing about FIDO and why passkeys rock.

Find out more about the FIDO Alliance at fidoalliance.org/...

One of my pet peeves is podcasters who air reruns. Today I am that podcaster but I think I can justify what I'm doing so bear with me here. On June 1st, 2014, Dr. Maryanne Garry made her debut appearance on Chit Chat Across the Pond. In this terrific interview, she explains her research and the research of others in the field of how memories are formed and retrieved. Every time Dr. Garry comes on as a self-proclaimed "Crusher of Dreams", these episodes seem to garner the most interest from the listeners. This seminal episode with Dr. Garry is the best of the best, and crushes every dream you have that your memory is flawless and it's everyone else who is misremembering. She explains the repressed memory fad that started in the 1990s, and how damaging this never scientifically-validated was to many people. She explains how she can actually induce false memories in people at an alarming rate.

Now here's why I'm rerunning it. Eight years ago, Chit Chat Across the Pond was not a standalone podcast; it was embedded inside the NosillaCast episode #473. I've always wanted to be able to point people directly to this interview and I couldn't because it didn't even have a chapter mark to jump to in the audio.

Not only is it a fabulous interview and one where she mocks me at every turn, and I want new listeners to hear it, but even if you have heard it, it's delightful to listen to again. I asked Maryanne to listen and see whether she'd want to rerecord because of changes in the last 8 years and she said that it's great just like it is.

In the beginning I say that she works at the University of Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand. She has since then she has moved her research lab and teaches at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand.

Links she mentions:

* Tale of Two Microphones from Chris Breen at Macworld

* Steven Colbert in a segment entitled "Who's Honoring Me Now" calls out her paper where she sites his term Truthiness

* Book referenced - Picking Cotton (on Amazon)

* Doctored photo research with Kim Wade: http://m.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24286258

* Wrongful Convictions: innocenceproject.org

* Overexposed? Camera Phones Could Be Washing Out Our Memories:

http://www.npr.org/2014/05/22/314592247/overexposed-camera-phones-could-be-washing-out-our-memories

* Other interesting reading - People with Easier to Pronounce Names Promote Truthiness of Claims: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0088671

In this ~lite episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Bart Busschots explains why it's a good idea to have your an email address on your own domain. Then he digs deep into all of the different technologies involved in owning a domain, forwarding email, explains MX and NX records, and how to make sure you're never caught up in a spam scam. After digging deep, he then brings us up a level and explains the easy things you can do to have email forwarding that might protect you from some problems. I've worked my way through all of the technologies that Bart described, but I didn't understand a lot of it until Bart explained it in this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond.

You'll find detailed shownotes of everything Bart describes at