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Another week is here and I’m planning out content for the week ahead. After I take the dog for her morning walk I’ll be starting on the Weekly Wrapup. This week we’re going to take a look at a new effort by big corporations to apply copyright filters to the entire Internet. This new effort by the same cast of characters reminds me a lot of the SOPA/PIPA debacle from a decade ago.
We’re also going to take a look at that $99 Chromebook that’s on sale at Target (affiliate link), do a mini-haul video of a cool retro video game lot I bought at an estate auction, start working on reviewing a new Thudnerbolt 4 dock from HP, and maybe do a bit more with the MiSTer project now that some new 32 bit cores have come out. Beyond that component shortages have left me short of new stuff to review!
See you tonight!
Just acquired a new set piece! A local estate auction had an original Gameboy lot that included the box in what looks like great condition along with a few games. I’ll probably sell off the games and accessories but keep the unit and box. Oddly it looks like it’s coming with an NES RF adapter..
My first amateur radio project is to make contact with the ISS through a repeater onboard the station. I have yet to be successful being heard but I have managed to tune into the repeater for a majority of the station’s pass overhead. What do you hear? Not the astronauts but other amateur radio operators transmitting signals through the station’s repeater. They talk quickly but there’s very limited time to make contacts. Usually it’s just a call sign, an acknowledgement, and a farewell.
Because the station is moving so fast towards me and then away from me, the radio’s tuner needs to be adjusted slightly as it passes to account for the doppler effect. This video from Tech Minds was really helpful in dialing in the right frequencies. So that was the big progress I made last night – before that I could only hear the repeater for a minute or two. Last night I got about 5 minutes out of it – the duration of the pass in range of my location.
After I make verbal contact I’m also going to attempt to bounce some data packets off of its digipeater!
More information can be found at ARISS.org’s contact the station page.
I was assigned my callsign from the FCC last night so now I’m officially an amateur radio operator! I already made my first contact with somebody off a local repeater station. He’s located about 20 miles away from me. The cool thing is that he’s been into contacting the ISS and other orbiting satellites which is something I’m interested in too.
I’m sure we’ll have more to come on the radio topic!
At 9 a.m. eastern time today the House Intelligence Committee will host the first public hearing on UFOs (now known as “unidentified aerial phenomena” or UAP) since the 1960s.
There will likely be a classified portion of the hearing that will have more details but I am interested in hearing what comes out during the public portion. According to Politico there’s some tension internally between the intelligence community, the Department of Defense, and Congress. Here’s what one anonymous official told reporter Bryan Bender:
“They fetishize their secret society,” the official said. “It’s kind of a Skull and Bones-type vibe. They take it seriously but they have no accountability. Zero. There is a whole group of us that know in great detail this subject, a lot of which has not been reported to Congress because of security issues.”
The hearing kicks off at 9 a.m. eastern. It will be livestreamed to their committee’s website.
I used to dread Mondays back when I was working a regular job but now I kind of look forward to them. There’s always something I look forward to working on even if it’s a mundane tech product or topic.
Here’s what is preliminarily on the docket for this week. If you are receiving this as part of my digest email hit the reply button and tell me what you’d most like to see first. If you’re not the list sign up via the link or on the left hand side of the screen!
Of course my week is subject to change based on what comes in. Sometimes a shiny object might appear and that’ll take me off course :).
The problem with social media as I see it is as follows: attention seeking narcissists troll other narcissists who then air grievances seeking attention from their followers who in turn amplify the original attack in the hopes of being noticed by the aggrieved for doing so.
It’s a self perpetuating cycle that unfortunately the social engines are tuned to promote and profit from.
Just passed my amateur radio technician exam ! Once the paperwork is in with the FCC I can start communicating with technician privileges.
I’ll talk more about that on Monday’s wrapup.
Hmm I wonder if viewers would be into me cutting a 34 year old battery out of an Apple IIgs .. guess so!
Star Trek’s FX team really upped their game with Strange New Worlds. Looks great in 4K / Dolby Vision.
Second episode was fantastic – who would have thought returning to the planet of week formula makes for good Trek?
I speculated about this in my May 2nd Weekly Wrapup video and now it appears as though it’s coming to pass:
Elon Musk today announced that the Twitter deal was “on hold” until he could verify the company’s claims that fake users account for only 5% of their overall user figures.
Any acquisition has a period of due diligence to ensure that the company being acquired is worth what the owners say it is – and in the case of Twitter the number of users is the foundation of Twitter’s value proposition.
As a mostly free service Twitter relies on advertising and advertisers want large audience numbers with some assurances that the audiences Twitter serves are actually real people.
Twitter has long struggled with calculating the exact number of unique users on their service. In fact they disclosed that they had been overstating user numbers from March 2019 through the end of 2021 according to their most recent quarterly results:
In March of 2019, we launched a feature that allowed people to link multiple separate accounts together in order to conveniently switch between accounts. An error was made at that time, such that actions taken via the primary account resulted in all linked accounts being counted as mDAU. This resulted in an overstatement of mDAU from Q1’19 through Q4’21.
This overstatement alone accounted for 1.9 million duplicated users. If Twitter is overstating users that they know are humans behind the keyboards how can anyone be confident in Twitter’s claims that fake users are only 5% of their user base? Given the company is incentivized to demonstrate user growth they likely did not invest the resources to detect fake accounts and remove them.
Musk is in the driver’s seat now. If he walks away from the deal the stock tanks as it will erode confidence in the validity of Twitter’s user numbers. Twitter’s Board of Directors will likely feel some pressure to reduce the $44 billion price tag to get the deal done.
I attended a Google event in New York city to watch the Google I/O keynote. Here are the things I found most of interest:
Google will be releasing a new low cost phone this summer called the Pixel 6a. The new 6a, like the prior models, incorporates many of the features of their flagship phones. This one will get the same Google Tensor processor as their flagship Pixel 6 phones along with what will likely be a great display and camera system. It’ll sell unlocked for $449 in July. If you like pure Android phones but don’t want to spend more than $500 I think this will be a winner.
Oddly they also announced a Pixel 7 phone even though we’re only a few months into the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. The new phone will have a second generation Tensor processor.
You can see all of my prior Pixel device reviews here.
Google also announced the much rumored Pixel Watch that will launch around the same time as the Pixel 7. It’s a sleek Wear OS device designed to pair up with Android powered smartphones.
I’ve always found smartwatches to be big and clunky – and that includes my beloved Apple Watch which has largely followed the same design as the original from 2015. The Pixel Watch looks like a real improvement in overall smartwatch industrial design. It might very well be the nicest looking consumer product I’ve seen Google put together. I’m eager to see how this performs and looks in person.
After abandoning Android tablet devices a few years ago, Google is getting back in the game. This includes releasing a new Pixel Tablet and also redesigning their core Android apps to work better on tablet devices. Those tablet app updates are apparently rolling out at the time of this writing. The Pixel tablet, however will not be released until sometime in 2023. It’ll be powered by Google’s Tensor chip.
The last thing that intrigued some of my fellow watch party attendees are these new translation glasses that were teased at the end of the presentation. The glasses will project a translation from a speaker into the lens for the wearer to read.
No doubt this is something that was iterated from the ill-fated Google Glass project from a decade ago. This use case seems to make a lot more sense. And these actually look like glasses! See my original coverage of the Google Glass here.
Google also had a bunch of other software feature announcements including continued work on their AI systems which are getting better and better each year. They will soon release an app called the “AI Test Kitchen” that will demonstrate the progress they have made with natural language interaction. It’s really fascinating stuff.
Hopefully we’ll get some of these things in for review!
Boost Mobile is a prepaid wireless carrier here in the USA owned by Dish Network. They are introducing a new program that will let you bring your monthly bill down to nothing – but you have to sing for your supper by earning “Boostcoins.”
Here’s how the company says you earn them:
Boost Mobile’s BoostOne app allows users to earn blockchain-backed “Boostcoins” by playing games like “Spin & Win,” watching videos, and engaging with thousands of partners to complete offers to earn coins that can be redeemed for discounted and free wireless service.
These Boostcoins are of course “blockchain-backed” but have their value pegged to the dollar. According to CNET it looks like 100 boost coins equals about a dollar.
I visited an amazing public access station in Farmington, Connecticut the other day. NutmegTV is one of the largest in my home state and does some amazing work helping people connect with their communities.
Nutmeg has found some innovative ways to pivot to online platforms and offering services to local businesses, non-profits and individuals. They even do film and tape transfers for local customers.
As more and more people cut the cable cord these local community assets are losing funding which is tied to cable subscriber numbers. It’s time to rethink how these stations are funded.
With video becoming more and more important local access facilities are more valuable than ever. Nutmeg TV is a real model for how to transition to modern content production and delivery. But I do believe local telecommunications monopolies should continue to provide resources.
The iPod has been officially discontinued just a few months shy of its 21st birthday. The iPod, much like the iPad, was something that you really couldn’t appreciate unless you tried it. After that you had to have one.
The success of the iPod is most certainly thanks to Apple retail stores that started opening around the time the iPod was introduced. In the early days iPods only worked with Firewire equipped Macs – so they likely sold a lot of Macs around that time too.
The last iPod is the 7th Generation iPod Touch that I reviewed back when it was released in 2019. You can watch the review here.
Starlink has become a key communication tool for the Ukrainian military and the Russians are having a hard time detecting and jamming it. As we’ve found in our Starlink coverage the service is remarkably easy to connect to and offers bandwidth on par with low to mid range cable Internet services.
Elon Musk in a tweet today says that the satellite network has so far resisted Russian jamming and hacking attempts. Starlink’s network engineers are up against a tough adversary with state level resources so they no doubt will have to remain on their toes.
The service doesn’t work as well in the eastern part of the country as the satellite network still relies on ground stations to connect users to the Internet. But SpaceX is working on a laser based orbital relay that would bypass many ground stations to route traffic. At some point we might see SpaceX launch servers into positions to act as CDNs for streaming services, etc.
I have two “in and out” New York City trips this week for new product overviews. I did one yesterday and have another tomorrow. My Dad’s best business advice for me was to always go to industry events that you’re invited to. You never know who you’ll meet or what opportunities you’ll find.
NYC is an easy trip for me thanks to a local commuter rail station. The downtime on the train has been super helpful for my HAM radio adventure as I have time to finish up studying for my technician license exam. I am going to try and test this Saturday!
Whenever head out for a day it means I have to make up the time to keep my production cadence. I like to post a minimum of three videos a week. So today I’m going to try to shoot two videos back to back to take the pressure off the end of the week. I shot Monday’s wrapup on Sunday night.
5G is pretty common around my neck of the woods now, but it’s the “sub-6” variety that operates largely on the same frequencies as 4G. Still I’m finding that speeds are always very consistent and presumably these new 5G cell cites can handle more capacity.
Lately I’ve found that the higher frequency MMWave “ultrawide band” indicator is popping up more and more often as I’m traveling around. They even activated one at my local high school presumably for its football field that attracts large crowds for games.
Generally the MMWave cells require you to be outside and fairly close to the cell. But I’ve found that I’m picking up mmWave inside of trains (if the cell is close enough) and in a few cases next to windows in view of a cell on the street.
The speeds from these MMWave cells can be all of over the place depending on where you are in relation to the cell and what kind of connectivity it’s receiving from its fiber optic connection. Most of them I’ve encountered on Verizon’s network deliver speeds not much better than sub6 or LTE:
But I have experienced some in New York City that deliver crazy speeds. Check out this one from the middle of Grand Central Terminal: 1.6 gigabits per second downstream and a health 141 megabits upstream!
So although speeds will vary dramatically from one mmWave to the next I do think we’ll be seeing many more livestreams from stadiums and other large public gatherings now that the wireless bandwidth is there to support more customers simultaneously. I’m eager to see how things work in Las Vegas the next time I go to CES.
I covered the different types of 5G a few months ago. The wireless carriers are definitely hyping things up a bit but there are some areas where the tech will improve connectivity.
Dear Apple,
Please hurry up. My travel laptop is definitely feeling a bit long in the tooth. The M1 would be awesome in this form factor!
