Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss The Office leaving Netflix for NBC's own streaming service, Apple evaluating moving production from China, drones and airports, Apple's 15" MacBook Pro recall, Uber Elevate will test fast food delivery by drone in San Diego, a rain battle of the smart assistants, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Michael Irigoyen, Executive VP of Sales at Odyssey Toys

Jason in Fairbanks, Alaska and asked: "I have some laptops and desktops that I want to donate to a charity, and I was wondering what is a cheap or free way to make sure that all the data is securely deleted from the hard drives?"

http://www.intotomorrow.com/media/podcasts/2019/06-28-2019/06-28-2019-H2S1.mp3

Jason, the first thing we should mention here is DoD 5220.22-M.

Plenty of software, free and otherwise will mention how they apply Department of Defense level security by wiping the drive to DoD 5220.22-M standards.

That standard basically consisted of writing all 0, then all 1, then something random with a check after each pass. There’s nothing wrong with that method, especially if several passes are involved, but keep in mind that it is misleading to clean DoD level encryption when offering that.

That method is not permitted by any member of the Cognizant Security Authority which includes the DoD, the Department of Energy, the CIA, and plenty of others as a way to secure a drive. No software-only method is allowed at all.

For your purposes, it’s probably more than enough, and you should mostly just try to choose a method that does as many passes as you have the patience for of random data, and there are plenty of solutions.

DBAN is probably worth a try, it’s been around forever, it will give you just about every data destruction option you can imagine, it doesn’t rely on an OS so it works on just about any computer and it’s free.

All of that goes for CBL data shredder too, except that it does offer a Windows UI in case you’d prefer to set things up from there.

Both should destroy your data beyond anything a casual user will be able to undo.

Lisa in Carey, North Carolina listens on 680AM WPTF and asked: "We would like to get my parents something for the doorbell so that when someone's at the door they can see who's there. They don't have smartphones, so the Ring system wouldn't work, so we need something that has a simple screen, something that can work wireless, something super simple. Just a camera that's streaming from the front door would be perfect but I've looked and don't see anything that is that simple."

http://www.intotomorrow.com/media/podcasts/2019/06-28-2019/06-28-2019-H2S4.mp3

Lisa, the simples ones are a dying breed. People seem to be going for the smart ones these days and there’s a good reason for that: they cost about the same.

Having a quick look we found the MOUNTAINONE 7” which comes with a screen but doesn’t link up to a smartphone, for $130.

For around $80 to $150 we found plenty of others too, but it’s hard to tell you must about it because they all go roughly by the name of “Video doorbell with 7 inch monitor”.