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Dave and the team discuss a hardy USB flash drive, Waze's beacon program upgrades, tech-illiterate Congress and tech-legislation, Tinder for dog adoption, a lost cryptocurrency password, and more.

 Chet in Chattanooga, Tennessee asked: "How dangerous are these smart meters that measure electricity usage in the home?"

People seem to have a lot of fears about the signals they put out and the potential exposure to them, but really not only are going to get more radiation from your cellphone, but you’ll probably get more radio waves from your microwave.

Our local power company here switched to them several years ago, and now all homes in South Florida have them. It’s funny because I remember walking outside to take the trash out one day and just happened to notice that there was a brand new meter on the side of the house with a digital display. I wasn’t even aware they switched it out! Though, I kinda miss the old one where you can judge how much power you were using by how fast the little disc was spinning around.

Where there could be room for some concern is in the privacy arena. Many people don’t like the idea of inviting home a device that can measure how much power is being used every couple of minutes. With that level of granularity, not only is it clear when you’re home, but experts may be able to narrow your use down to which appliance is likely to be on.

The number of people who will have access to that data will be very limited, but we live in the world of incredibly unscrupulous companies like Facebook and Uber, so giving that level of information to anyone is understandably unnerving. If you’re ok with that side of things, the rest should be safe.

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