Gadgetory

please ensure your seat backs and tray tables are in the upright and locked position and turn off any handheld electronic devices wait a minute what I mean I understand why I had to check my paintball gun but it's my tiny little iPhone really going to bring down a Boeing 787 does it really matter if I'm watching the an excellent recent tech quickie episode about fax machines as the plane rolls down the tarmac well to answer this question we need a little bit of history the United States Federal Communication Commission or FCC you know the same group of folks at the center of every debate over net neutrality banned phone calls on planes way back in 1991 when the privileged few that had cell phones were carrying around things that looked like this this rule was passed over concerns that the radio waves emitted from a cell phone could interfere with more important radio transmissions such as communications between air traffic control and pilots so that your plane can avoid you know little obstacles like thunderstorms mountains and other planes later on as other types of devices like portable audio and video players became more widespread there was further concern that even devices that didn't transmit data over the air could interfere with critical airplane electronics like Positioning Systems and to be very clear this was more than the type of idle paranoia that you'd find at a typical PTA meeting in fact one passengers handheld DVD player caused an instrument in a cockpit to indicate the plane was pointed in the wrong direction in an incident back in 1999 with that said modern aviation electronics or avionics resist interference far better than they used to and on top of that there's never been any definitive evidence linking portable consumer electronics to an actual crash so in response to this reality the Federal Aviation Administration relaxed their rules about exactly when passengers could use their gadgets in 2013 and since then US flights have been allowed Electronics use throughout the flight even below 10,000 feet which was previously banned because takeoff and landing are the most dangerous segments of flight where lots of things need to happen with precision in a particular order for safe departure and arrival but the new rule only allows the use of non transmitting devices so while you can use an iPad to watch a movie that you've saved to its local storage you can forget about a voice call on a cellular network hence the famous airplane mode that stops all transmissions to end from the device but why I mean we're living in the age of in-flight Wi-Fi for crying out loud which you can learn more about here and the FCC has even allocated specific frequencies to cellular connections to reduce the risk of interference with flight why are we still told not to make a quick call while waiting on an overpriced cocktail from the flight attendant well the answer may be as simple as the powers that be being fine with the rule as it is in April 2017 the chairman of the FCC actually rejected a proposal to allow cell phone calls on flights because he the quote valued a moment of quiet at 30,000 feet with the press release not saying a single word about actual safety and in Europe passengers are allowed to use their cellular data it's just calls that are banned to avoid annoying other passengers and I guess there are also those who further speculate that this could be a case of government regulators cozying up to companies who want to charge people for in-flight communication services we're not going to get too deep into how true that may or may not be but now that I think about it with the lag at nickel-and-dime by the airlines these days it wouldn't surprise me that much if that were true although with that said it wouldn't surprise me that much to see a credit card reader on the lavatory door at some point so speaking of getting nickel and dimed synergy doesn't do that synergy is a software download that solves the problem of having two keyboards and two mice on your desk at the same time forget that stuff just install synergy on all your computers and share one Mouse in one keyboard between two or more so you'll no longer confuse which one goes with which they offer a basic and a pro option with a one-time payment for lifetime access features include things like clipboard sharing between computers dragging and dropping files between computers the ability to set up hotkeys and even the ability to share your peripherals between different operating systems seriously you can have like a Windows a Mac and a Linux PC you just move your mouse across them it's like freaking magic so if you want to try out synergy and save some money check out the link in the video description now so thanks for watching guys dislike or like leave a comment with video suggestions check out our other channels and don't forget to subscribe