Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss the FCC's new robocall rules, a lawsuit against Amazon for the way Alexa manages health information, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Markos Kern , CEO - Fun With Balls

Dustin in Woodbine, Georgia listens on WBQO When You Need to Know and is calling via the App and asked: "I'm looking at purchasing a TV for outside, underneath my screen enclosure. Do you recommend any certain TVs for the outside, for being down in Georgia in the weather and hot climate, or can I just put a regular TV?"

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Dustin, regular TVs may survive outside but you shouldnt count on it. Its not what theyre built for and the weather in some areas can fall outside of their operating specs.

Georgia mostly has relatively mild weather compared to places like South Florida for the humidity or Minnesota for the cold, but there are still no guarantees that the TV will last.

If you want to try this with a regular TV, dont buy one thats too expensive at least until you know your weather wont kill it.

If you want something that will live outside permanently and dont mind paying a steeper price for it, there are weatherproof TVs.

For example, the Furrion brand sells them almost exclusively. Their TVs tend to be a little bit more expensive ($1000 is not rare), but you can find outdoor TV from lots of brands from pretty unknown and inexpensive ones like QIMO to huge names like Samsung, which will sell them at a premium and will most likely ask for a few thousand dollars (for example, a Samsung 55 Terrace retails for roughly $3500).

If youre happy to test this out with a relatively cheap TV knowing you may lose it, give it a try. Georgia weather is not that extreme so you may luck out and be able to use an indoor TV outside without any issues, but you dont want to spend your money on a top of the line indoor TV without at least testing with a cheaper model first.

Either way you go, Id recommend also getting an outdoor cover for your TV. While it wont make it waterproof, itll at least offer some protection when youre not using it. You can find those on Amazon for like $20.

Jeff in Ackerman, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk Mississippi and asked: "Is there any laptop that compares to the iMac - on the IBM side?"

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Jeff, the iMac is a desktop computer but even if you mean the MacBook line the answer is still no.

IBM sold their consumer PC line to Lenovo back in 2005 and they havent made consumer laptops or desktops since then.

They still do make high end corporate servers and other machines, but nothing for the consumer market.

If you want to buy the descendants of their old Thinkpad line, Lenovo still makes them and their higher end models are competitive with MacBooks. Lenovo also makes very inexpensive models that are not comparable, so you will have to spend a little more money and buy a premium model if you want it to compe...

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Facebook becoming a trillion dollar company, cases against Facebook being dropped, Amazon opening their headquarters as a cooling center, and more.

Philip in Shreveport, Louisiana listens on 710 KEEL and is calling in using our free App and asked: "Wanted to know more about cell phone power boosters. I have one in my truck, but for some reason, I can't really tell if it's working. How do you check for that?"

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Philip, the only real test is to see if your signal is better or not when you use it.

If this one is in your truck then odds are that sometimes its helping because theres a little bit of a signal but not enough for your phones antenna, and its boosting it enough to be usable, but trucks move so sometimes theres probably not enough of a signal to boost and other times theres probably no benefit in using it because the signal was good to begin with.

Signal boosters are powered devices, theres the antenna but theres also a repeater that needs to be plugged into power to be able to operate.

If you want to know if the booster is having an effect just unplug it when you think your signal may be low and look at your phones bars.

If they stay the same, then its probably not helping, but if they drop or you completely lose service then your device was having an effect.

Son in Houston, Texas listens to the Free Podcast, brought to you by Blubrry and asked: "I'm in the process of getting an air-conditioner for my living room. I'm kinda confused between the mini-split system and the window unit. I'd like to know which is better and what the plus and minus of both of them."

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Son, the better system depends on your needs and how much you want to commit. The window unit obviously wins easiest installation, you can secure it to the window frame yourself in a few minutes, after that plug it in and you're ready to go.

The split unit will have an inside blower and an outside compressor, you will need to punch a hole through a wall to connect the two and depending on how your house is set up you may need to hang the outside unit on a wall.

The split unit is much better in terms of noise, the noisy part is outside your house rather than half in/half out, and it allows you to keep your windows closed. That last part is also why they tend to be more efficient than window units, and in the Houston summer you will probably notice that.

The window unit can easily be pulled and stored or moved to another location and does minimal damage to any structure, so if you're renting and think you may be moving soon, it may be a safer way to go if you want your security deposit back.

Dennis in Slidell, Louisiana"I can use Google Maps, but I'm a truck driver and Google Maps sometimes sends me on roads I can't be on. Is there a good Google Maps out there? And I would also like one that showed radar, so I know when it's raining."

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Peloton threatening to brick treadmills, a bill to limit the power of large tech companies, Starlink going global, Instagram on computers, insuring space passengers, Verizon's smart display, a virtual SIM test-drive of T-Mobile, Android TV users, AI policing Facebook, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Anna Khomenko, Head of Marketing of CookingPal

Norm in Broomfield, Colorado listens to the podcasts on TuneIn and is calling via the AskDave button on our site and asked: "Question on all the new high power charging devices, specifically for Apple devices. There are built-in safety factors but they require a special high power cord, I think. Can you give me some advice? Do I throw away my old Apple lightning cables and just stick with the new USB-C cables or the new USB to lightning cables that are made for these devices?"

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Norm, it depends on what youre plugging your phone into.

The USB standard is able to negotiate how much power to feed a device, but newer versions of the iPhone can take advantage of more power.

For example, the iPhone 11 was reported to be able to take advantage of at least 22W of power while charging, the real number may be higher since these were informal tests by reviewers. 22W translates to a 4 amp charger, but you can plug your iPhone straight into a MacBook Pros 87W charger and it will feed the iPhone with no issues.

If you want to take advantage of that kind of high powered charging, then yes, you should probably replace the stock USB cable. Those are usually estimated to be roughly 12W cables, so youll want a higher gauge cable.

Having said that, phones charge pretty quickly even with stock chargers so dont expect a bigger charger and a sturdier cable to get you to 100% in 3 minutes, it will still take a fairly normal amount of time for the phone to charge.

Bob in Hendersonville, Tennessee listens to the podcasts and asked: "Wondering about a situation where a lot of people know me and I know them, but I don't know what their name is. Wondering if they've created an app that will use facial recognition and tell me who that person is."

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Bob, hopefully not.

That seems like a huge violation of peoples privacy and a horrible idea that will almost certainly lead to even more people (especially elderly people who tend to be less aware of technologies like that) being scammed by people pretending to be their long lost friends or relatives.

Theres too much facial recognition as it is, if you want to know who the person is you can always sneak a picture and ask your phone. If youve ever tagged them on the device itself or any of the creepy social networks weve come to accept, you can probably already get a name.

When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener,

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Brave browser, first time buyers and SmartTVs, Instagram's suggested posts, Honda and electric vehicles, new Roku devices, anti-drunk driving technology, self-deleting media on WhatsApp, Georgia using technology to improve traffic at intersections, stretchable OLEDs, consumers upgrading phones and moving carriers again, and more.

Debra in St. Cloud, Minnesota"I currently have an Apple 'i5 Phone' and am upgrading to a 'Galaxy A32 G5" Android phone and they tell me thet can not load up my phone numbers and photos to my new phone. They say I have to put everything in manually. I'm also interested in how I do iCloud. I pay for iCloud every month. If I just sent all the pictures to iCloud, will I be able to then recieve them on my new Android phone?"

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Debra, transferring in the opposite direction is pretty simple because Apple put in the work to offer an out of the box import tool, but Google hasnt done the same so youre going to face more challenges.

Your best bet is to look for a tool Samsung made a while back called Samsung Smart Switch. If your new phone is compatible (Samsung doesnt list all compatible phones, but it probably is) then it will do roughly what Apples assistant does for iPhones and youll be able to migrate your data to your new phone.

Samsung even supports other brands, so your chances of a Samsung phone working well with the tool are good, but they still list Android 4.3 or newer on their site as the main requirement, which may hint at the tool being out of date and abandoned.

iCloud will backup your photos, contacts and lots of other data, but your Android phone wont be able to access it, so if you want to send all your pictures somewhere, youd be better off downloading Google Photos or some platform-agnostic tool like Dropbox and syncing them there instead so that they can be downloaded on your Android phone by just downloading the same app and logging in.

Alan in Williams, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk Mississippi and asked: "Have a question about Android - will Facetime and iMessage come to Android?"

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Alan, we dont know but theyre not included in the current expansion plans.

iMessage and FaceTime are getting Windows support, but thats a far cry from Android support.

Apple did announce at its developers conference recently, that Facetime is going to be available on the web - so users can call in from Android devices and Windows PCs. But its not specifically coming to Android.

Apple likely doesnt have too much interest in supporting Android since its not just a competing OS but one that wont necessarily evolve at the same pace in the same areas and get the same features.

Android may not incorporate a feature that Apple wants in iMessage right away and focus on another improvement first. If that were to happen Apples iOS iMessage could fall out of sync with the Android version and thats something they may not want to deal with unless they see a benefit.

At the moment it doesnt seem like they do and neither are a part of Apples few Android apps.

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Microsoft announcements, Amazon's Prime Day, laundry in space, Amazon's growth in different areas, a Snapchat filter removed, a web related NFT, and more.

James calling in via the AskDave button on our site"I want to know about aluminium battery technology. I heard that a university in California says that aluminium battery technology is better than anyu battery out there now."

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James, its just not around - and it may never be, so dont worry too much about it for the time being.

At the moment that - and graphene - are nothing but possible technologies that may be used in a few decades but for the moment are just the subject of academic papers.

The biggest advantages of aluminum-ion batteries over lithium-ion batteries are weight - theyre lighter, and aluminum is less likely to catch on fire violently and quickly the way lithium-ion batteries sometimes do.

That last part is not that big of a deal in applications like phones, but its a much bigger deal on modern planes, electric cars, and other uses that require much larger and much more dangerous batteries.

If youve heard about the Teslas that catch on fire every now and then and cant be put out for hours, this type of battery would be less prone to that problem (also, all other hybrids and electric cars seem less prone to that too so we wouldnt make Tesla our first option).

The downside of aluminum-ion batteries is that their shelf life would be much shorter, and in the real world thats a problem for virtually all of the major applications that would benefit from this type of battery.

Gary in Tupelo, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk Mississippi and asked: "I have an S8 plus Samsung phone. Bixby got turned on and I can't turn it off. It keeps turning my phone on every eight seconds and running my battery down. How can I fix this?"

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Gary, in modern versions of Samsungs OS you should be able to turn it off by going into your phones settings and then navigating to Advanced Features.

Once there you should be able to see an option to turn off Bixby features.

Alternatively, you should be able to just hold your finger on your home screen for a few seconds and then swipe to the left. That should reveal a toggle to turn off Bixby and given that you didnt turn it off intentionally, its a good bet that you accidentally turned it on that way.

Gene in Brunswick, Georgia listens on 93.7 FM WBQO and is calling via the AskDave button on our site and asked: "What type of device can I get that's not expensive and will give me Wi-Fi in my camper?"

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Gene, all of your choices will require some kind of phone service, so your first and least expensive option is your smartphone.

It probably has a hotspot already that you can use to get access in your camper right ...

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss spending during Prime Day, Steven Spielberg and streaming, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Robbie Cabral, Inventor, CEO and Founder - BenjiLock

John in St. Simons Island, Georgia listens on FM 93.7 WBQO When you need to know and asked: "I have a question about a surveillance system, I guess. I live in a condo complex and it's an aging population. We'd like to kind of keep track of everybody without being obtrusive. In other words, people coming and going and making sure nothing's happened inside, but not being obtrusive by knocking on their door every 30 minutes. If you guys know of anything out there that's for sale, or any kind of service, please tell me."

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John, if you want to track people in common areas you may be able to find a facial recognition system but most are not for authorized for civilian use and you will almost certainly run into legal trouble if you don't get rock solid consent from all the residents.

We haven't found any systems sold to the general public that are not for things like opening a door when someone willingly activates it, so you may face an uphill battle if you want to find something like that.

If you want to track people within their own homes, you won't be able to find anything that would allow you to do that legally.

If your residents want to be tracked, there are smartphones and other wearables that can be set to alert you if someone falls, if their heart rate is irregular, or they say they need help, but that's up to each individual to get and wear rather than a pre-built solution for a whole condo.

If you just want people to be able to ask for help you can set them up with something inexpensive like a basic smartspeaker that won't come with a monthly bill, but will allow them to call you using their voice if they can't reach a phone.

You can also look to very low-tech solutions. I remember many years ago, my grandmother lived in a condominium retirement community. Each of the front doors had a little plastic slider on it, similar to those little stick on covers for a laptop camera. In the morning, each resident was asked to simply move the slider to one side, revealing a red box underneath. at some point later in the afternoon, they were asked to slide it to the other side, revealing a blue box. Then they had volunteers go around twice a day and if someones slider wasnt on the correct color, then theyd knock on the door and check on the resident to make sure everything was okay. Very low-tech, but it got the job done.

Renny in Windsor, Ontario listens Online via TuneIn and asked: "I recently bought a new widescreen TV and it has a number of HDMI inputs, but my Marantz doesn't have any HDMI outputs. I did get it to work by using the RGB connections and the sound cable. However, I wanted to connect a backup DVD player and the LG has only one input for RGB/RCA. So I bought an RCA to HDMI cable, but it doesn't recognize the payer. I don't understand why it doesn't work."

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Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss John McAfee's death, Hyundai buying Boston Dynamics, the EA hack, Microsoft's market capitalization reaching $2 trillion, carrier upgrades due to the increased traffic after the pandemic, 5G T-Mobile drinks, Roku and Quibi, Oculus Ads, TikTok downloads, issues with payment apps, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Ji Shen, CEO and founder - Pathway Innovations and Technologies

Joe in Hazleton, Pennsylvania listens online and asked: "I have a very inconvenient problem with Windows 10. Whenever I come back out of sleep mode, I have my computer set to not ask me for a password, but Windows asks me for a password anyway. Then I have to click the power button and restart and then of course, it tells me "you may lose any unsaved work, are you sure you want to do this?" Yes, I want to do it because I don't want to have to put in a password. How can I fix this?"

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Joe, you can tell windows you don't want it to ask you for the password when it wakes from sleep (or any other time).

Just go to your Settings, then click on Accounts, and then Sign-in Options.

Once you get there you'll see a heading that reads "Require sign-in" and just below that a dropdown menu with options.

If you set that to "Never", then Windows 10 will stop asking you for your password. Of course it will likely want you to enter your password to save those settings, but hey, you can enter it one last time.

Matthew in Hartsdale, New York listens Online and asked: "Question about my iMac computer. I've had it since 2009, it had a lot of memory and it's great. Served me very well. I've noticed recently that I'm getting the rainbow spinning wheel when I try to open an application and I can't go further than the desktop. Would you be able to help me find out why this is happening?"

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Matthew, 12 years might as well be a century in computer years, just about anything can be wrong with that iMac. 2009 was the first year for the unibody iMacs. To Apple's credit they're still patching that model today, it will only be dropped with the release of Monterrey later this year.

If your software is not running it may be because of anything from hardware issues like faulty RAM or even a faulty hard drive or processor, all the way to software. You may be trying to run something more modern and demanding than a 12 year old computer can handle, or some file may have been corrupted and may need to be reinstalled. You can try to run a permissions repair job in Disk Utility but don't get your hopes up, age eventually gets everything and everyone and your computer may be at the end of its life.

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.

The 2021 COOL “Into Tomorrow” HOT Summer Giveaway:

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Pink Floyd and Facebook, restricting and limiting tech companies, evicting Bezos from Earth, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Michael Braunold, CEO of Elepho

Steve in Kenosha, Wisconsin listens to the podcasts and is calling via the App and asked: "About to move into a new apartment and looking for the best Wi-Fi router. It's a small apartment - about 1,000 square feet. Working from home a lot and streaming. Looking for your suggestions."

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Steve, if your apartment is 1000 square feet just about any router will do.

The best thing you can do is not go for the cheapest model you can find. More expensive models will work better and need to be restarted a lot less often. Some even handle that in the background so you never have to do it yourself.

Unless youre a hardcore gamer you probably dont need anything like a Netgear Nighthawk 6E, which would probably cost you about $500, but you can look at something like a $100 TP-Link Archer AX50 which can handle the same speeds.

You can also try a Linksys EA6350 for less than $100 or an Asus AC2900 for under $200.

All of those routers are gigabit routers, so streaming should not be a problem as long as your internet connection is fast enough.

If your walls are particularly thick, you can look into mesh routers, but those will cost you more money and you most likely wont need them to cover 1000 square feet.

Just avoid $20 routers and youll be happier in the long run.

James in Nashville, Tennessee calling in via the App"What do you think will happen first, SpaceX launching rockets with people in them from point A to point B on the earth - or supersonic jets that take us across the ocean in just hours?"

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James, neither is commercially viable, so the answer is whatever governments want to subsidize first.

Realistically, we can build a supersonic passenger jet any day we decide to do it, but space launches are a delicate mess and can only be performed from particular places in the world to increase efficiency, they almost always get delayed (usually by days), they cant carry an awful lot of weight, they stress their ships in a way even supersonic flight doesnt, and statistically they kill an awful lot of people given how few actually take flight in spaceships.

Supersonic commercial jets are more likely, but either way governments will need to extend some welfare to a billionaire or megacorporation before either of the two happens.

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.

The 2021 COOL “Into Tomorrow” HOT Summer Giveaway:

Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Google featuring search results from smaller shopping sites, Amazon allowing customers to sue them instead of going through arbitration, devices and broadband in homes, Hubble’s computer trouble, Windows 10’s retirement, entertainment and the pandemic, Amazon workers’ injuries, the Xbox Fridge’s release date, Amazon’s COVID-19 test, Facebook’s upcoming smartwatch, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Nick Rossmann, Global Threat Intelligence Lead - IBM Security X-Force

Fred in Merced, California listens via Podbay and is calling with the App and asked: "I have an Acer computer with a solid state drive. I heard that with SSDs, they should be put into hibernate mode when shutting down, but rather be kept in only "sleep" mode or powered down completely. What I've heard is that longevity of the SSD will not be as long as with sleep mode or complete power down. Let me know. Thanks."

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Fred, both SSDs and HDDs have a shelf life, in the case of SSDs that was more noticeable on write operations but its largely no something anyone really notices anymore.

SSD cells are built to support a given number of write operations, that number varies depending on the model and is not really standard. These days most users will replace the computer before even thinking about how much longer the SSD has left. Theyve improved greatly over the years.

Generally speaking, hibernation will put more strain on the drive since everything that is in RAM will be saved to the drive every time, but given how large SSDs are these days its not a huge problem for them.

If youre hibernating your operating system several times a day, youll probably benefit from using sleep mode, but realistically, you most likely wont notice the difference in the long run and your drive will last.

Gigi in Saint Simons Island, Georgia calling via the AskDave button on our site"With the influx of hackers stealing and ransoming information, I was wondering... What is your opinion of having paper backups? And - How many digital backups would you recommend?"

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Gigi, paper backups are common, theyre even borderline required if you use multi-factor authentication.

Multi-factor authentication uses your phone or another physical device to confirm your identity before you can log into a site or program. If you happened to lose your device, youd typically use a temporary code from a paper backup to allow yourself to log in and address the situation.

If your concern is storing passwords on your computer, youre better off use software like 1Password or LastPass to encrypt your passwords in a way that a hacker could not decrypt.

The reality is that most peoples passwords are not stolen from them, theyre either freely given by the user when theyre tricked by a phishing email, or theyre stolen from the company theyre logging into if they have terrible security practices and dont encrypt their authentication data co...

Our guest this hour:

Thomas Serval, CEO - Baracoda

Rich in Purcellville, VA and asked: "Dave, Taking questions via text is a very Into Tomorrow thing to do. I'm in the process of buying a new TV online and am wondering what specs to look for to make I get the best possible picture. There's resolution, contrast, HDR, and many others so I'm not sure which matter most and what to look for."

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Rich, your budget matters most, if you can buy an 8K OLED screen, youre probably good to go, and Best Buy has some in stock for just $20,000!

If youre in the maybe cheaper than a brand new car camp like most of us, 4k will give you the best resolution that youre likely to access content in for a little bit, youll probably even forget you didnt buy 4K if you dont go below 1080p (the difference is not as stark as standard to HD). HDR will get you better contrast, so deeper blacks, brighter whites, that kind of thing.

Whatever you buy, leave some room in your budget for speaker or a soundbar if you dont already have any of those. Modern TVs are thin and that doesnt leave any room for decent speakers. Some TVs sound so bad that you may not even understand a movies dialogue.

In reality, if you care about picture quality, you probably want to look at the picture with your own eyes before you buy. Everyone uses the same buzzwords but the quality differs across sets.

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.

The 2021 COOL “Into Tomorrow” HOT Summer Giveaway:

The 2021 COOL “Into Tomorrow” HOT Summer Giveaway: Call anytime, 24/7 – 800-899-INTO (4686), click the Ask Dave button on the website, or use the “Message to Studio” option on the FREE Into Tomorrow App!

All CALLERS -- using the AUDIO option on our Free App or 1-800-899-INTO(4686)  - automatically qualify to win prizes.

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