Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss a patent for synthetic group selfies, smart appliance software updates, Space X's next step, scans that identify stress, Nintendo's data breach, PET scans and negative thoughts, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Keith Vanderkley, VP Engineering Solutions - Amina Technologies

Heidi in Erie, Pennsylvania listens on Money Radio WPSE and asked: "I want to watch TV out on my back deck and I haven't been able to get all of the local channels, so I'm not sure what antenna I should use. Or if I should just move the Roku outside. I was actually on your show earlier and asked about cable and I did finally cut the cable cord!"

http://www.intotomorrow.com/media/podcasts/2020/06-12-2020/06-12-2020-H3S1.mp3

Heidi, any old rabbit ears type of antenna will do. You don’t need anything special to pick up your local channels outside.

If you search you will find plenty of antennas that promise range for 120 miles, 200 miles, big numbers like that. Feel free to ignore those.

Antennas are subject to what is called line-of-sight propagation. What that means for you is that if you live in a 2 story house in a flat prairie and you put your antenna on the top floor, you may be able to reach 60-70 miles. Anything over that and the curvature of the Earth will block out the signal.

It is possible to get greater ranges but it usually involves a mast or setting up at the peak of a mountain.

For what you’re looking for, basically any basic cheap antenna should do the trick and you won’t benefit by getting any of those that advertise crazy ranges. If you can mount it higher that will probably help you out a little bit as it will help the signal clear obstacles, but you probably don’t need to do that in a place like Erie that is pretty densely populated and probably a target for local broadcasters.

Just get a simple regular antenna without any gimmicks, or if you get one of the ones that make crazy claims, don’t expect that you will actually be able to pick up Cleveland channels just because it happens to be in range of their claims.

There’s a great site I came across - NoCable.org. You can put in your address and it will tell you which local stations are in your area dn if you’ll be able to pick them up with an antenna. It has 4 different categories for the stations: “Likely to receive”, “50/50 to receive”, “challenging to receive” and “don’t even try.” - CG

Andy in Raleigh, North Carolina listens on NewsRadio 680 WPTF and is calling via the App and asked: "What are the strengths of each of the major web conferencing platforms - Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Zoom, Google Meet, Skype?"

http://www.intotomorrow.com/media/podcasts/2020/06-12-2020/06-12-2020-H3S2.mp3

Andy, The core functionality is the same: audio, video, usually a dial-in number for the person that wants to sound like they’re calling from the engine room of a turn-of-the-century steam-powered ship, screen sharing, and some recording capability, usually with cloud storage.

They each offer small enhancements over that in some way, Zoom transcribes meetings so you can kind of guess what was said from the less than stellar transcriptio...