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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss Zuckerberg and layoffs, Hertz and EVs, Dish and Disney’s negotiations, iPhone 14s lower demand, Samsung’s success with smart TVs, and more.
Patrick in Tyler, Texas asked: “Living in Texas, I drive a lot for my work. It seems like every small town has their radar traps and police setup to catch speeders. Wondering if you could go over the latest radar guns that the police use, and how they work, and also the best radar detectors on the market and pricing for them.”
Patrick, radar guns pretty much work the same way they always have.
They send out a beam of radio-frequency energy and rely on the doppler effect to figure out the speed of the car reflecting the beam of energy back relative to the speed of the gun. If the radar gun its stationary theres nothing to account for, if the police car is moving the system has to account for the speed of the police car.
Its pretty old, pretty simple technology overall.
As far as best detectors go, thats relative these days, but there are many capable detectors these days.
The Valentine One Gen2 will tell you theres a radar around and will try to locate it for you and tell you if its coming from ahead, behind, or from the side.
That can be helpful to figure out if the signal its picking up is anything to worry about or just the automatic doors from a store by the side of the road. The Valentine One retails for around $500.
The Escort 360c is more expensive at $800, but besides more user friendly features like a Novice mode with simple advice like slow down it tries to defeat radar detector detectors that aim to make it harder for your detector to be able to tell your speed is being measured until its too late and potentially fine you if youre in an area where radar detectors is illegal.
For a totally different option, you can try Waze, a free app in which users can report speed traps and other road hazards. It wont cost you anything and it may save you some money, but if youre the first person to encounter the speed trap, it can do nothing to warm you about it.
Karl in West Dakota asked: “I often get a link in my text messages on my iPhone. I know I can click it and it’ll open up in the browser on the phone, but that’s small, hard to read and a pain in the butt. I’d like the best way to get that link so I can open it on an iPad, or a Windows 10 or an iMac computer in a more easily readable area.”
Karl, as long as youre using the same iCloud ID on your iPhone your iPad, and your iMac, you can use the messages app on your iMac or iPad to send and receive text messages.
That will not be limited to just iMessages, any text message will go to your iMac and iPad as well as your phone.
You can also AirDrop a link from your iPhone to your iMac or iPad and it will automatically open in your default browser.
As far as the Windows computer goes, the easiest solution is probably to just send the link to yourself on an instant message or email and just click on it to open it on the computer, but some carriers will also let you read your texts online so it may be an option for you if your carrier offers the feature.
Ray in Niagara Falls, New York asked: “I’m having problems with my printer. It’s fine with printing shipping labels from eBay, but when I try to print a label from the US Postal Service, it won’t print. The minute you press the “print” button, it charges you for the label and you gotta go in and request a refund which can take up to a couple months. I don’t know if you can help me out with that. I didn’t put the disk in that came with the printer because I use aftermarket ink and someone told me that if you use aftermarket ink and put the disk in, your printer won’t work because of the aftermarket ink after that.”
Ray, what does your computer tell you when you try to print? Are there any errors?
We cant really tell you what may be going on without more information, but a simple solution may be to print to PDF, then open the PDF and print it from outside the USPSs website.
You can also try a different browser, there may be something about the USPSs site that your browser is misunderstanding and it may be passing the printer the wrong information.
If you can print from a PDF but not from the site, then switching to a different browser is probably a good idea.
You can also try to upgrade the drivers from your operating system itself, but any official upgraded drivers may come with the aftermarket ink block that youre concerned about.
Unfortunately, printer manufacturers are almost universally hostile towards consumers so thats a problem you may run into across different brands.
If youre lucky you may find workarounds online for your particular model, but those have become rarer as printer manufacturers have figured out that people will work hard to get around their draconian restrictions and work harder on making it difficult to get around them now.
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