Computer Talk Radio Broadcast 10-10-2026

Let's dive into the news, and Apple has long had a magnetic break-free cable.

for their power.

And it's been a unique solution.

It is proprietary.

Nobody else has this.

And it has no other functionality other than the power.

Microsoft, this past week, announced their new Surface Laptop Ultra.

And while it's coming with the usual added specs, more memory and CPU and drive availability features, They've added a new spin, a breakaway spin.

They have made a special magnetic USB-C connection point for power, but also it supports the standard USB-C connectivity.

So just like the Apple product, they've got built-in magnets that hold it in place and all of that.

But it's also capable of everything else that you'd expect from a USB-C port.

Now, it is a very specific port amongst the three USB ports, but that's not really a bad tradeoff.

It's going to be interesting to see how it works and if others try to copy the design idea and take it perhaps even further.

This is, of course, one of the biggest changes we've seen in USB in a very long time.

So we're going to be watching that here at Computer Talk Radio.

Some of the pushback against Flock and all of the other automated license plate readers is gaining traction.

The Fourth Circuit announced a week ago that warrantless searches for license plates can violate the citizenry's Fourth Amendment protections.

The key finding was that police cannot use these cameras to indiscriminately go on out and collect all kinds of massive amounts of data and then retrieve detailed history of individuals without probable cause and a warrant.

This is similar to previous rulings on cell phone location data and other different rulings like that.

The court's statement was that while motorists, you and I, driving down the road were visible, but we also have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of our physical movements.

This is an important thing.

This is kind of a wake-up call that Flock is going to need to face because we really do value our privacy, and there is no reason why we should be identified everywhere we go, everything that we do, all of these different things, because that is, of course, as the courts say, unreasonable.

Now, there is an underlying case to this, and I am going to note that this isn't the poster child of who some would want to represent our fight against Flock.

But this is still a meaningful decision.

So I'm not going to knock it.

Let's dive into the news, and Apple has long had a magnetic break-free cable.

for their power.

And it's been a unique solution.

It is proprietary.

Nobody else has this.

And it has no other functionality other than the power.

Microsoft, this past week, announced their new Surface Laptop Ultra.

And while it's coming with the usual added specs, more memory and CPU and drive availability features, They've added a new spin, a breakaway spin.

They have made a special magnetic USB-C connection point for power, but also it supports the standard USB-C connectivity.

So just like the Apple product, they've got built-in magnets that hold it in place and all of that.

But it's also capable of everything else that you'd expect from a USB-C port.

Now, it is a very specific port amongst the three USB ports, but that's not really a bad tradeoff.

It's going to be interesting to see how it works and if others try to copy the design idea and take it perhaps even further.

This is, of course, one of the biggest changes we've seen in USB in a very long time.

So we're going to be watching that here at Computer Talk Radio.

Some of the pushback against Flock and all of the other automated license plate readers is gaining traction.

The Fourth Circuit announced a week ago that warrantless searches for license plates can violate the citizenry's Fourth Amendment protections.

The key finding was that police cannot use these cameras to indiscriminately go on out and collect all kinds of massive amounts of data and then retrieve detailed history of individuals without probable cause and a warrant.

This is similar to previous rulings on cell phone location data and other different rulings like that.

The court's statement was that while motorists, you and I, driving down the road were visible, but we also have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of our physical movements.

This is an important thing.

This is kind of a wake-up call that Flock is going to need to face because we really do value our privacy, and there is no reason why we should be identified everywhere we go, everything that we do, all of these different things, because that is, of course, as the courts say, unreasonable.

Now, there is an underlying case to this, and I am going to note that this isn't the poster child of who some would want to represent our fight against Flock.

But this is still a meaningful decision.

So I'm not going to knock it.