Tech News and Commentary

Dave and Chris discuss Ai companionship and significant others, ChatGPT for children, a TikTok deal, streaming services, and more.



“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond



Today, the U.S. is experiencing a significant shortage of farm workers. To help fill in the gap, advanced robot technology in many forms is being deployed. This week our science and technology reporter Bond, Ralph Bond, tells us there's an amazing new centipede-inspired, farm-worker robot.



Read more here.




Our guest this show: Stefanie O’Connell, Financial Expert at Uphold/EasyBitcoin.



Derek in Bridgeport, Connecticut asked: "My question is about smart home technology. It seems like a lot of these products like smart thermostats or smart appliances are sort of useless and I'm wondering if there's a future world where these things are well integrated and protected because it seems like we're just creating more unnecessarily complicated things that are just destined to break. What do you think?"Derek, honestly, the main goal of those technologies is not really to be helpful but to be data collection vehicles to increase the companies' bottom line. In other words, they meant to help, just not help you as the owner.It was always a little iffy when they tried to explain that you really wanted a smart washing machine so it could let you know when your clothes were ready. The truth is that washing machines have set cycles and you could just as easily set a timer, but everything you do or don't do is a potential profile improver for those companies and they can sell a more accurate profile of who you are and what you do. For example, do you wash clothes at 2pm? Well, then someone is at home during the day, maybe advertisers should spend some money in your neighborhood at that time.That's annoying enough, but the real problem is that those services are sometimes required for your appliance to work. Some simply won't turn on do their dumb-function until they've been put online so they can act like a smart-appliance. Virtually every company that makes these stops support for them long before they stop being able to do what you actually need them to do but that connection to the internet is likely still active after support ends and prone to security issues that can jeopardize your home network.Until that model stops being profitable to these companies either by more consumer-centric legislation or by the business model just not working for advertisers, they will probably continue to pump out these smart toasters and smart thermometers and smart random things that should really be dumb and consumers won't benefit too much, because ultimately the consumer is still the product not the customer.For an extreme example of smart things that didnt need to be biting the owner look up the Fisker Ocean. Its a car but the company went bankrupt before fully fixing the software and the cars relied on services that the company turned off, so they basically became barely functional, unsellable cars after something like 1 year of being put in the market.

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.Brondell: Pro Sanitizing Air Purifier - Removes dust, dander, pollen, smoke,