Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
What I found a bit dystopian was Alex’s comment about wanting his kids to have their smartphones available so he knew when to pick them up…
Over here, generally, if you are old enough to have a smartphone, you are old enough to get yourself safely to and from school. I would hate live somewhere, where my kids couldn’t be independent and go to and from school with their friends.
I was even more shocked, when he said that they were 15!
3 Likes
I’ll be honest, Alex’s comment about that bothered me as well. Why not determine this before the kids leave for school? Or have a calendar that has the information as to which activities are being done on which days?
Maybe I’m just old, but there’s no reason for a kid to need a cell phone during school hours. If the parent needs to reach their kid, they can do what parents have done for years, call the school and leave a message in the office. Now, get off my lawn.
3 Likes
Regarding AM radio, I haven’t listened to it since the early 80s, I thought it was long dead, it has been stereo FM for decades, here in Europe…
Yes, I haven’t listened to terrestrial radio in almost 20 years. I’ve had SiriusXM for almost 17 years. When I realized I was hardly spending any time in the car, I dropped it and switched to streaming from my phone.
1 Like
AM radio is going pretty strongly here in the UK. The BBC’s news and sport radio channel - Radio 5 Live - broadcasts only on medium wave, and Radio 4 still broadcasts on long wave.
Of course, both channels are also available via DAB radio but audience levels for the analogue radio stations are still substantial, thanks in part to the large number of cars which are fitted only with non-digital radios.
I do find myself listening more and more to radio broadcasts via the BBC Sounds app on my iPhone and iPad. Being able to rewind to the start of a radio programme is very useful, particularly news bulletins!
1 Like
In UK there is “digital radio”… for some reason that never really took off here in North America (probably related to licensing fees.) In North America, FM is stereo and so has the music channels, and most of talk radio is on AM in mono. Personally, I’d prefer they replace the analog broadcasts with digital ones, use the AM spectrum for cell coverage or something, and reserve one digital channel for emergency broadcasts and alerts.
Digital Audio Broadcasting is a technology that has been pretty successful in Europe but less so in other parts of the globe. Within the EU it’s now mandatory for all new cars to come fitted with DAB radios.
It’s been so successful in some European countries that they have switched off their analogue radio network and use DAB exclusively (Norway is one example I think). Ofcom has a roadmap plan for doing this in the UK, though the exact timeline for switching off FM/AM broadcasts still has not been finalised.
1 Like
I work for a manufacturing company and we have been back in the office since the end of 2022. Even during the pandemic, somebody from each department was on site each day, as the company needed to continue working (we make components for shampoo, toothpaste, cosmetics, disinfectants and paper coatings, among other things).
One of the reasons they went back to full presence so quickly was company morale. Two thirds of the workers are factory floor workers and they had to continue working 5 days a week on site during the pandemic, and us office workers were seen as lazy slackers, because we were on site 4 or 5 days a month.
We do still have the option to work from home (1 day a week), but very few do it on a regular basis
Going back into the office isn’t just about those that work from home at the moment, it is about the whole company. Amazon is a huge logistics operation that “does some web development on the side”. There are more people in the company that have to turn up every single day than those that have the luxury of being able to work from home.
For a start-up or a technology company that is 100% office workers, that is a very different situation to one that has to balance the morale of people who have no choice but to be on site, who are the majority of employees, and those that have the luxury of not having to turn up each day. Those that have to turn up each day look at those in home office as lazy grifters and those that work from home look down on the poor saps that have to go to work each day. It causes friction between the departments, all of which are necessary and all of which need to communicate with each other on a daily basis, if the company is to remain successful.
1 Like
I have a similar concern to Alex though. Part of my incident response kit was a battery LW/SW radio for use when the country blacked out. A landline telephone too - although my copper landline has already been removed 
My 2014 Nissan Qashqai has DAB and the Philips radio we have in the kitchen is also DAB, I rarely listen to the radio, but when I do, it is DAB these days. We leave the kitchen radio running during the day for our dog - she is very old and blind and gets easily wound up by noises outside and either barks or whines, the music playing seems to keep her calm.
Our old house had glass fibre to the door, our current flat still has copper, although the exchanges have been 100% digital for years now - they dropped out ISDN line in 2016 and switched us to VOIP, the connection at the new flat is VOIP as well. That said, the VOIP number is redirected to my mobile phone, we don’t have any DECT phones in the house any more.
The grandparents of my step-daughters had just telephone, no Internet, but it was still a VOIP line, connected to a DSL router with a DECT base station and an analogue port for an old telephone.
Just put a Sony Apple CarPlay/Android Auto head unit in my old Subaru. Should have done it years ago, so much better than struggling with phone mounts or trying to use the out-of-date nav mapping that came with the car. Plus it has a DAB+, FM and AM radio.
3 Likes