Ask the Tech Guys 1996 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
Well, hey, hey, hey. It's Leo LaPorte and it's time for Ask the Tech Guys coming up. What are we going to do with all these Space Rocks?
Mikah Sargent (00:00:07):
And I'm mic as Sargent and we're faced with an interesting question. How do we make G P SS routing? Stupid, stupid?
Leo Laporte (00:00:14):
And how to protect yourself from your IOT devices. It's all coming up. Next on Ask the Tech Guys
Mikah Sargent (00:00:22):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This
Leo Laporte (00:00:27):
Is TWI twit. This is Ask the Tech guys with Micah Sargent and Leo LaPorte. Episode 1996, recorded Sunday, October 15th, 2023. It's a towel warmer as the tech guys is brought to you by Melissa. More than 10,000 clients worldwide rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and I e d verification software. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date this holiday season. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit and by our friends at IT pro tv. Now call ACI learning, keep your IT team skills up with the speed of technology visit. Go dot ACI learning.com/twit to listeners. You can receive 65% off an IT Pro enterprise solution plan. After completing their form. Based on your team's size, you'll receive a properly quoted discount tailored to your needs. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Hey, hey. That there is Michael Sargent
Mikah Sargent (00:01:33):
And that there is Liam LaPorte.
Leo Laporte (00:01:35):
Liam Laport here. And this is Ask the tech guys.
Mikah Sargent (00:01:39):
Yes, very serious. The show,
Leo Laporte (00:01:40):
We get to answer your tech questions or not? We try anyway.
Mikah Sargent (00:01:44):
We do. We do. Try
Leo Laporte (00:01:45):
(888) 724-2884 is the phone number. You can call us right now. Well, if right now is between two and 5:00 PM Eastern on a Sunday,
Mikah Sargent (00:01:54):
Yes. If you're listening at a different time, you can still call that
Leo Laporte (00:01:57):
Number. Oh yeah, you could,
Mikah Sargent (00:01:58):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:01:58):
Just leave a message.
Mikah Sargent (00:01:59):
You'll leave a voicemail or you can head to. Well no, also this needs to happen during the show head to call TWI TV on your mobile device because when you do, you will get connected to, I dunno what that voice is, the Zoom call where you can join us. You'll have your audio and your video right
Leo Laporte (00:02:17):
There on your
Mikah Sargent (00:02:17):
Phone.
Leo Laporte (00:02:18):
I'll show you what happens. What happens what? Because I'm going to push my action button.
Mikah Sargent (00:02:23):
That's the volume up button.
Leo Laporte (00:02:24):
Oh,
Mikah Sargent (00:02:28):
Also email us ATG at twitch tv.
Leo Laporte (00:02:31):
So there's problem number one, my printer's not working. Can you help me? It's an Epson stylus printer and I'm using air print.
Mikah Sargent (00:02:50):
This is for you Micah, by the way.
Leo Laporte (00:02:52):
What? Oh,
Mikah Sargent (00:02:55):
Thank you. Your stylist printer
ChatGPT (00:02:58):
Isn't working with air print. Let's try a few basic troubleshooting steps.
Leo Laporte (00:03:01):
See, you don't need us.
ChatGPT (00:03:02):
One, check connection. Make sure your printer and your device are both connected to the same one.
Leo Laporte (00:03:07):
Doesn't she sound like Scarlet Johansson?
Mikah Sargent (00:03:10):
It's her. It's her
ChatGPT (00:03:12):
Firmware.
Leo Laporte (00:03:12):
She sounds like a board. Scarlet Johanssen though. Then you put a little, little tin. Dude, I've
Mikah Sargent (00:03:17):
Got the dude and he's more excited.
Leo Laporte (00:03:19):
Well, you could change
ChatGPT (00:03:20):
Restart devices sometimes. A simple restart.
Leo Laporte (00:03:22):
I wanted Scarlet.
ChatGPT (00:03:24):
Turn off your printer Scarlet. And your device,
Leo Laporte (00:03:26):
It sounds a little like scarlet
ChatGPT (00:03:27):
After a minute it does. Or printer settings on the printer ensure that air print is enabled. Some printers have an option to turn on off the airplane.
Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
It's a pretty good answer.
Mikah Sargent (00:03:36):
Yeah, it is.
Leo Laporte (00:03:37):
Actually, I think we can use this from now on. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent (00:03:39):
Let's ask it. And we just sit here and nod.
Leo Laporte (00:03:41):
This is chat G P T and if you pay 20 freaking bucks a month.
Mikah Sargent (00:03:46):
Yeah, which I'm doing because I'm a fool.
Leo Laporte (00:03:48):
Well, we're doing because it's our job. Keep an eye on this thing. And it reminds me how dopey AI is basically, I mean it wasn't a bad answer.
Mikah Sargent (00:03:57):
No,
Leo Laporte (00:03:59):
I mean I guess that's not dopey.
Mikah Sargent (00:04:00):
No. So this is the thing. It's the difference between being creative and the actual answers to questions that we need. When it's practical, I don't find it dopey, but if you were to ask it the other day, I wanted to show someone how it worked and so I included their name. I said, give me a short story about this person and this and this and this. And it told the story. And the story was it was goofy, dopey, not anything
Leo Laporte (00:04:25):
Of It's mediocre. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent (00:04:26):
Mediocre.
Leo Laporte (00:04:27):
That's what basically AI is isn't and this is kind of, it's not a wrong answer, at least as far as I can tell. It looks like it's decent. It won't help you much. It's all stuff you already tried. Right,
Mikah Sargent (00:04:36):
Exactly.
Leo Laporte (00:04:40):
So chat, G P T just added the ability to talk back is what we're talking about. Not everybody had it. You had it first and I was so jealous and every morning I'd wake up and I'd open chat G P T and I'd say, can you talk yet? And it would say no. And then I got my Pixel eight and I tried it on there and it did
Mikah Sargent (00:04:59):
It through and
Leo Laporte (00:05:00):
I thought, oh, maybe because I don't know, maybe they like Android better, but then I tried it on my iPhone and it worked. So I don't know.
Mikah Sargent (00:05:06):
Do you also have access now to uploading files and photos? You should have that too.
Leo Laporte (00:05:13):
Oh man, I'm trying to, keeping up with the mic is
Mikah Sargent (00:05:19):
Force. Quit the app. Well, not right now. I'm just saying when do you want to
Leo Laporte (00:05:23):
Try? You can now give it pictures. You can say help me understand why it is this guy look so damn good. And she'll say, well, it's because he's wearing a three piece suit and a purple tie. And if you would just dress for the job you want, not the job you've got Leo, you too could look good.
Mikah Sargent (00:05:40):
The job I want is a casino dealer, casino
Leo Laporte (00:05:44):
Car dealer. I guess pit bossy. I agree. Anyway, hello. Welcome to the show. Hi.
Mikah Sargent (00:05:49):
Yeah, no, but I wanted to mention it is more something that we saw Amazon talk about and that we've seen Apple also discuss as a feature where say you're out and you see a flyer on the wall and not a fly but a flyer.
Leo Laporte (00:06:05):
I
Mikah Sargent (00:06:05):
Can take a photo of that flyer
Leo Laporte (00:06:06):
And
Mikah Sargent (00:06:07):
Then it can pull out the relevant details for me. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:06:08):
That's nice.
Mikah Sargent (00:06:09):
So then I would know sometimes
Leo Laporte (00:06:10):
Flyer information have so many paragraphs
Mikah Sargent (00:06:12):
And it's like I don't need any of this. I just want to know where the event is. What's
Leo Laporte (00:06:16):
The headline?
Mikah Sargent (00:06:16):
Yeah, well
Leo Laporte (00:06:17):
There's something you could do with it anyway. I see so many companies, you remain
Mikah Sargent (00:06:22):
Skeptical. I
Leo Laporte (00:06:23):
Remain skeptical throwing in so much money on AI and I'm starting to think, I don't know why they all,
Mikah Sargent (00:06:32):
I don't need AI and everything,
Leo Laporte (00:06:34):
So I'll give you an example.
Mikah Sargent (00:06:36):
This version of ai, I should say
Leo Laporte (00:06:37):
Adobe. Remember a year ago said we're going to buy Figma for $2 billion. They lost interest. It's just kind of faded away. Oh, that's
Mikah Sargent (00:06:46):
Right.
Leo Laporte (00:06:47):
The regulators slowed it down. And so at Adobe max, which was last week, their big conference where they announced all their new stuff. They didn't even mention Figma. They talked about AI the whole time. And it's like this is the problem. AI is the modern day squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. And I think that a lot of companies perhaps mistakenly
Mikah Sargent (00:07:08):
So you think it's a rotten squirrel?
Leo Laporte (00:07:10):
It's a
Mikah Sargent (00:07:11):
Squirrel has. It's
Leo Laporte (00:07:12):
Not a rotten squirrel. It's a squirrel puppet. And you're being fooled
Mikah Sargent (00:07:15):
Holy moly.
Leo Laporte (00:07:15):
By a squirrel puppet.
Mikah Sargent (00:07:18):
Does that imply that there's a human controlling ai?
Leo Laporte (00:07:20):
Yeah, his name is Elon Musk, by the way. Elon's facing some competition. Did you see this? Amazon has launched it's first two internet providing space satellites. The first two in what will ultimately be thousands.
Mikah Sargent (00:07:35):
I'm glad that's what you said. And not Amazon launched its own social network because I can't
Leo Laporte (00:07:40):
That's imminent. No, that's a coming. It's not just Amazon, it's not just starlink. Now many other companies and governments, according to the Wall Street Journal, sorry Elon, their headline reads, the satellites of the future are heading to space right now. So it's not just private industry, it's also governments. And I think governments have learned the lesson after the Ukraine incident
Mikah Sargent (00:08:03):
Absolutely
Leo Laporte (00:08:03):
Recounted in Walter Isaacson's book about Elon Musk, my friend Elon. I didn't know that was actually the title. My buddy Elon. That Elon had prevented the Ukraine from using drones in an attack by not giving them starlink access to that part of Crimea. Anyway, Amazon launched its first two satellites. Many governments working on these, of course, probably a lot of the launches will end up using Elon's rockets, so he probably doesn't care. Getting to this point, has taken a long time, says Luiza bone, which is actually his name, a grizzled veteran of the industry has been designing satellites for more than 30 years. Poone is now vice president of satellite systems at M D A space.
Mikah Sargent (00:08:52):
They actually use the term grizzled.
Leo Laporte (00:08:54):
Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (00:08:54):
Wow.
Leo Laporte (00:08:55):
Wall Street Journal.
Mikah Sargent (00:08:55):
Grizzled, grizzled. It must be a weekend
Leo Laporte (00:08:57):
Article. Sometimes the weekenders get a little loose. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent (00:09:01):
Let's throw in a little warning.
Leo Laporte (00:09:02):
They'll call Mr. Poone. Poone is now vice president, M D a, which is building satellites for Tesat Lightspeed, a forthcoming network receiving funding from the Canadian government. So everybody's getting into this.
Mikah Sargent (00:09:17):
Will we even be able to see anything through all of these satellites? Forget
Leo Laporte (00:09:21):
You. You thought astronomy. Forget it. Did you see the annular eclipse?
Mikah Sargent (00:09:24):
No,
Leo Laporte (00:09:25):
Neither did I. You know why clouds we're
Mikah Sargent (00:09:27):
In a bad place? Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:09:28):
We're in a, well, we aren't in a bad place.
Mikah Sargent (00:09:30):
In a bad place for that.
Leo Laporte (00:09:31):
Yeah, and
Mikah Sargent (00:09:32):
A not great place for that. But did
Leo Laporte (00:09:34):
You at home see it?
Mikah Sargent (00:09:35):
Did you out there see it?
Leo Laporte (00:09:36):
Yeah, it was the ring of fire eclipse because the moon wasn't big enough because it wasn't, I don't know far enough to occlude the full disc of the sun. So you get this, well ask Rod Pyle. He might've seen it.
Mikah Sargent (00:09:47):
He probably saw it. He
Leo Laporte (00:09:49):
Probably went somewhere to see it. John, did you go somewhere to see it? No, he's an eclipse chaser. John Jamer B, not John. Ashley Jamer B did not
Mikah Sargent (00:09:59):
Jamer B didn't see it. That
Leo Laporte (00:10:01):
Actually shocks me. We were clouded. I
Mikah Sargent (00:10:02):
Know we weren't
Leo Laporte (00:10:03):
A good grid. You were
Mikah Sargent (00:10:04):
Looking for it though.
Leo Laporte (00:10:05):
I was looking
Mikah Sargent (00:10:06):
For it. I was looking
Leo Laporte (00:10:07):
Everywhere.
Mikah Sargent (00:10:07):
I was not,
Leo Laporte (00:10:08):
I ran out into the deck and said, where? Where's the sun? It's got to be happening. I can't see the sun, so I'll never know. Okay, let me talk briefly about the new phone and then we will get to the call. Sweet. Love it.
Mikah Sargent (00:10:23):
Yeah. What?
Leo Laporte (00:10:24):
This is a big old camera bump, unfortunately.
Mikah Sargent (00:10:27):
What's it made of this time?
Leo Laporte (00:10:29):
This is made of white chocolate.
Mikah Sargent (00:10:31):
Nice.
Leo Laporte (00:10:32):
And I think it's quite tasty.
Mikah Sargent (00:10:34):
No,
Leo Laporte (00:10:34):
It feels like white chocolate though, isn't
Mikah Sargent (00:10:35):
It? It kind of looks like white chocolate. It's
Leo Laporte (00:10:37):
Soft and velvety. I believe it's either a plastic or a plastic. And then on the front it's actually very bright screen, 2,400 and brighter, even
Mikah Sargent (00:10:47):
Brighter than the iPhone. iPhone.
Leo Laporte (00:10:49):
And a beautiful screen, I would say in fact D X O mark. I dunno if you could trust them or not. Said. It's the best screen they've ever seen has a face recognizer as well as a fingerprint, which is really sweet. Except that unlike apple, where when you do the face it goes and says it recognizes you. You have no idea.
Mikah Sargent (00:11:06):
Good luck.
Leo Laporte (00:11:06):
It's like if you can use your app. So it must've recognized me, but there's also a fingerprint. No vibration
Mikah Sargent (00:11:13):
Either.
Leo Laporte (00:11:13):
Nothing. Nothing. Wow. Which is here. I'll show you. I don't know if we can do this. Oh yeah, you can do that. Look at that. Okay, so, oh, there was something. I guess it recognize me or did it.
Mikah Sargent (00:11:25):
Maybe that's a circle going. Yeah, see that's not enough. The circle pops up to say,
Leo Laporte (00:11:30):
Now if I swipe up, it says press firmly on the sensor. So clearly it didn't. It just did a circle. Fortunately the fingerprint's very fast.
Mikah Sargent (00:11:40):
Oh, that little circle is the eclipse. It's just showing you the eclipse.
Leo Laporte (00:11:43):
Oh, it's the annular eclipse.
Mikah Sargent (00:11:45):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:11:47):
Yeah. Now I see it unlocked. There's a little unlocked down there. There. So I guess it shows you, but it's not,
Mikah Sargent (00:11:52):
Yeah, it was not immediately update. Great.
Leo Laporte (00:11:56):
This I'm not using a normal pixel.
Mikah Sargent (00:11:59):
You're very minimalist.
Leo Laporte (00:12:00):
I am using it. It's actually called zero launcher. It's a zero kind of. But one thing you could do is swipe to the right and get the camera. Camera is very good. They've done a good job. Look, I could see my Steve Martin socks really? Well. It's got a macro. It's got macro is on tap to learn more. It's got 0.5 wide angle one x, two x and five x. That looks familiar. It seems like somebody else might have that too. Very similar to the, I dunno if you saw that lens jump.
Mikah Sargent (00:12:27):
Yes, a little bit.
Leo Laporte (00:12:28):
It went from, because there you go.
Mikah Sargent (00:12:30):
That's
Leo Laporte (00:12:30):
The macro. Now it's going to jump out to regular lens. It's got a pretty good five x
Mikah Sargent (00:12:36):
You, you
Leo Laporte (00:12:37):
Can see Steve's texture.
Mikah Sargent (00:12:40):
Yeah, very sharp on tech news weekly. Jason and I tried the feature where you take multiple photos together
Leo Laporte (00:12:50):
And
Mikah Sargent (00:12:50):
Then you can replace the faces and that was actually quite impressive. I was impressed
Leo Laporte (00:12:53):
By that. Yeah, there's a lot of great AI long exposure. It has a lot of nice features. Let go back, or you can also double tap this. Let me go back to my photos and find a photo that I want to remove something. So there's some chickens. By the way. I'm shooting raw and jpeg and the JPEG looks much nicer, but that makes sense because the jpeg is more processed. Let's say I'm looking, oops. Let's say I'm looking at a nice picture of a tree and I don't want want,
Mikah Sargent (00:13:25):
What's that thing in the foreground there with the chicken? Right?
Leo Laporte (00:13:27):
That's wires. I don't like those, right?
Mikah Sargent (00:13:29):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:13:29):
Okay, let's edit that sucker. We don't want wires. Magic editor. Try a new way to edit it's magic.
Mikah Sargent (00:13:37):
Ooh, wow. Look at all the colors. Very magic.
Leo Laporte (00:13:40):
More editing. Make editing new AI experience. Try a magic edit. Not sure what to do. I'm going to do stylized. Generating stylized magic.
Mikah Sargent (00:13:49):
A I a
Leo Laporte (00:13:51):
AI is working,
Mikah Sargent (00:13:52):
Making colors,
Leo Laporte (00:13:53):
Working, taking too long. I've lost that interest. I think I'll go do something else. Exiting
Mikah Sargent (00:13:59):
Screen.
Leo Laporte (00:13:59):
Goodbye there. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (00:14:01):
Whoa,
Leo Laporte (00:14:02):
Whoa. Those chickens look really pretty in the sun like that.
Mikah Sargent (00:14:05):
Sorry. What has happened to the photo? It's not,
Leo Laporte (00:14:08):
It's completely different. Oh, here's another one. Oh, it gave me a whole, but, oh. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (00:14:14):
That's fun.
Leo Laporte (00:14:15):
Oh
Mikah Sargent (00:14:17):
Good.
Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
We get a new set of something's not right. No, I
Mikah Sargent (00:14:19):
Just don't want What even was that? That's
Leo Laporte (00:14:22):
Okay. I want to do, let's do a better picture. Oh, wait a minute. I want to do a race now. What's going
Mikah Sargent (00:14:27):
On? Oh no.
Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
Okay. It's, it's not the fast jar working erase. I don't want those wires. You pick. Oh, I forgot to tell it what to erase.
Mikah Sargent (00:14:36):
So it's just thinking. It's
Leo Laporte (00:14:37):
Like, do you think there'll be no chickens
Mikah Sargent (00:14:39):
Left? I hope so. I hope it's,
Leo Laporte (00:14:40):
I hope there's no chickens. We just decided we don't like the chickens.
Mikah Sargent (00:14:44):
This is a landscape.
Leo Laporte (00:14:45):
There's only one thing to see here. And that's not a chicken. It's the barbed wire. Oh no, that's good. All right. Do know what happened? Okay, so I'm going to select this fence. You got to remember to do this before you press a race. Yeah,
Mikah Sargent (00:15:00):
I think we got it.
Leo Laporte (00:15:02):
Oh, Darren,
Mikah Sargent (00:15:03):
Lovely.
Leo Laporte (00:15:04):
Well that's good.
Mikah Sargent (00:15:05):
Oh, I see. It's showing what it's, it's
Leo Laporte (00:15:06):
Showing what it it's going to be. You're racing.
Mikah Sargent (00:15:08):
Got it.
Leo Laporte (00:15:09):
Let's do some more. Okay, now erase that generating. I am thinking
Mikah Sargent (00:15:15):
It's always providing you more than one option
Leo Laporte (00:15:16):
Generating. I am thinking, oh, this is better be good. So this is a little disappointing. I thought it would be a little fast. It used to be
Mikah Sargent (00:15:27):
Faster because it wasn't trying to generate multiple options.
Leo Laporte (00:15:30):
Well look, the barbed wire's gone though. It really is gone.
Mikah Sargent (00:15:34):
Yeah, but by barbed wire.
Leo Laporte (00:15:35):
Bye-bye. Could
Mikah Sargent (00:15:36):
We do a zoom in on that now that you've got one?
Leo Laporte (00:15:44):
No,
Mikah Sargent (00:15:44):
No.
Leo Laporte (00:15:44):
Okay. I want to do something that's a little clearer. Let me see. I had taken this picture. I wanted to
Mikah Sargent (00:15:51):
Eliminate
Leo Laporte (00:15:52):
Something. I can't remember what it was. Oh, there was some wires I was looking for and that's my mom. I don't want to eliminate her. Let's say we don't like that fence.
Mikah Sargent (00:16:02):
That's a lot of fence.
Leo Laporte (00:16:03):
That's a lot. Maybe I shouldn't eliminate fence.
Mikah Sargent (00:16:05):
You want to take a photo of the,
Leo Laporte (00:16:08):
Okay, should I do a photo?
Mikah Sargent (00:16:10):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:16:10):
Let's take a photo. I
Mikah Sargent (00:16:11):
Dunno why I can't think of what it's called. The mute switch on the ground
Leo Laporte (00:16:13):
Thing. The thing that you're tapping with your foot.
Mikah Sargent (00:16:16):
This that.
Leo Laporte (00:16:17):
Okay, I'm going to take, take a closeup. No, no, we don't want a closeup because I'm going to eliminate it. Let's say, oh, I know what we want. We want that without the wires.
Mikah Sargent (00:16:25):
Perfect.
Leo Laporte (00:16:26):
Okay, so there's our image
Mikah Sargent (00:16:28):
And we're going to make a wireless
Leo Laporte (00:16:30):
Mute
Mikah Sargent (00:16:30):
Switch.
Leo Laporte (00:16:31):
Okay. I forget how to do this. Got it. Please back up this photo to use Magic editor. Well, how do I back it up?
Mikah Sargent (00:16:42):
That's goofy.
Leo Laporte (00:16:43):
Please back up. I don't know what they want me to do.
Mikah Sargent (00:16:48):
Leo really likes his iPhone. Alright,
Leo Laporte (00:16:49):
Forget it. This isn't worth the energy Anyway. You get the idea. You got
Mikah Sargent (00:16:54):
Generating, generating,
Leo Laporte (00:16:56):
Generating. It has special hardware to do that, but obviously it's a
Mikah Sargent (00:17:00):
Phone tensor chip, right?
Leo Laporte (00:17:02):
Yeah. And it's not going to, but this is actually the other thing that is, every company we were talking about, AI is a squirrel. We talked about this on Windows Weekly on Wednesday. Every company, including Microsoft, is putting AI processing in. Apple's done it for several years now. Intel is just now getting around to it with its new desktop chips. The next generation, Microsoft does it on their surface. Microsoft calls it an N P U and neuro processing unit. So pretty much every bit of hard computer hardware you're going to get is going to have some sort of thing. It's kind of like a G P U that's capable of doing AI processing. And you could see that's what it does. So
Mikah Sargent (00:17:42):
I would love, and maybe there is one, a setting where I could say, Hey, don't generate three for me. Just
Leo Laporte (00:17:50):
Give me one. Just give me the one. Maybe if I play with it some more. Obviously I'm new to it. I only got it the other day.
Mikah Sargent (00:17:54):
Check out Tech News Weekly to see Jason Howell's full review. He's better. He's better. He's had an opportunity to really play around with it. He got it from Google.
Leo Laporte (00:18:03):
He has had it for a week longer than I, so, all right. I like it. If you're, look, I've said this, it's a very nice phone. It really is. If you're an Android user between Samsung and Google, and for a long time, Samsung really had the better hardware. I think this might be Google's finally a phone that can beat Samsung as 23 Ultra in almost every respect. Doesn't have the 200 x Zoom, but that's of limited use. I think if you're looking for a phone, and by the way, I got this for just around $500 because of, they took back the last year's phone and I got it through Google five, and there will be more, I'm sure discounts to get it.
Mikah Sargent (00:18:48):
I've been very impressed with all of the major smartphone manufacturers working to make sure that trade in value on last year or the year before that.
Leo Laporte (00:18:57):
Yeah, they really want to get you in the next phone, don't they? Yeah. I think it's also because the resale market is really good.
Mikah Sargent (00:19:03):
Exactly. I just read something that there's going to be soon a swath of perused iPhones as one of the major groups of iPhones that are out there.
Leo Laporte (00:19:14):
Oh yeah. I think a lot of people are buying it. It's probably smart. Last year's phone reconditioned, the company that does it for Apple, it takes nearly all the phones that you bring to Apple for Turnin says they still sell. What was the number? I think can it be 18,000 iPhone eights a day? Or maybe it's a month or three. iPhone eight. Eight, which I wouldn't recommend. Now that is not going to get iOS 17,
Mikah Sargent (00:19:37):
But
Leo Laporte (00:19:38):
Nevertheless, people buy the older phone because unlike you and me, they don't, don't care. They just want a S smartphone. I
Mikah Sargent (00:19:45):
See a phone that works and it's a S smartphone.
Leo Laporte (00:19:47):
Yeah. By the way, here we are on a Sunday. You're probably watching a football game instead of us, a big six success.
Mikah Sargent (00:19:54):
You're not winning. Your team's winning. You can watch us instead
Leo Laporte (00:19:56):
Might be winning. We don't want to say we don't want to spoil
Mikah Sargent (00:19:59):
It. Oh no. Any team that you're not
Leo Laporte (00:20:02):
Specifically my team. Could be any team.
Mikah Sargent (00:20:03):
Yeah, it's winning.
Leo Laporte (00:20:04):
Go pack. Go N NFL Sunday Ticket is already has more subscribers for YouTube. 1.3 million than it did for DirecTV. At DirecTV after several years of Sunday ticket only got to 1.2 million.
Mikah Sargent (00:20:20):
I don't know anything about sports subscription stuff. So I'm coming to you for this. Professional. Does N F L Sunday ticket, is that a deal that they've made with multiple groups to offer
Leo Laporte (00:20:34):
The whole N F L? So here's the way it works in the N F L, like in many sports, if your local team is playing your local broadcast channel will almost always have that. But then it's only in that part of the country. And so you may not. So for instance, if you're our Packers fan and you're sitting in a San Francisco area, you can't watch a Packers game unless the network does a national broadcast. Monday night football, Thursday night football, Sunday night football, the rest are regional. So if I were out of town and I wanted to see my game, there'd really be no way to see it. Sunday tickets shows all the games. So you can see, and this is why we got it, our son is a pa, as you know, Packers fan, so he can watch his packers every Sunday.
Mikah Sargent (00:21:18):
But my question is, does the N F L offer YouTube and this
Leo Laporte (00:21:23):
The option YouTube TV offers the Sunday ticket, they spent 2 billion a year.
Mikah Sargent (00:21:29):
Is it exclusive?
Leo Laporte (00:21:30):
Yes. Okay. That was my question. Exclusive except for N F L plus, which is only on the phone or your mobile lets you watch games. But who wants games?
Mikah Sargent (00:21:39):
Does an iPad
Leo Laporte (00:21:39):
Count as mobile? No.
Mikah Sargent (00:21:41):
Okay. Who wants to watch? That's silly, but maybe a lot of people are doing
Leo Laporte (00:21:44):
It and you can't airplay it. So yeah, it's not as many and I think this is part of the deal, the place
Mikah Sargent (00:21:49):
To go,
Leo Laporte (00:21:50):
Basically what they sold with Sunday ticket was exclusive television rights.
Mikah Sargent (00:21:55):
Got it.
Leo Laporte (00:21:55):
But in the past, you had to get DirecTV to get a lot of bars. Did. Now you have to subscribe to YouTube tv, which is 75 bucks a month.
Mikah Sargent (00:22:03):
Yeah, it's kind of pricey. Isn't It's
Leo Laporte (00:22:04):
Expensive. Plus the 250 or three $50 you spend for Sunday tickets. So it adds up. But do the math. It still doesn't add up to 2 billion a year. But this is what's happening with Apple, YouTube and Amazon. They can spend more than they make on this stuff because they're going to make it up in other ways. So Google thinks YouTube TV is going to be a profit deal based on a variety of other things. Apple tv, Amazon Prime, same thing. Right? So that's why it's difficult, I think now for broadcast networks to compete because they don't have this secondary revenue model. Anyway, that's good news, I think for Google. But again, it doesn't mean they make money on Sunday ticket, which is kind of interesting. Alright. Did you see Bigfoot was spotted in Colorado.
Mikah Sargent (00:22:58):
Oh, great.
Leo Laporte (00:22:59):
By whom? The Parkers.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:02):
Oh
Leo Laporte (00:23:02):
Yeah. Shannon and Stetson Parker. They saw the Bigfoot, they posted it on X, which is of course. Oh.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:11):
So again, you know it's true.
Leo Laporte (00:23:13):
The place you post stuff, that's for sure. True.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:17):
So your reading of this suggests there's only one Bigfoot as opposed to
Leo Laporte (00:23:22):
A
Mikah Sargent (00:23:23):
Race.
Leo Laporte (00:23:23):
A bigfoot.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:24):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:23:26):
So here's the weird thing. They were on a train. What do you see walking out there and see that right there. Right there.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:32):
I see nothing.
Leo Laporte (00:23:33):
Well, you're not looking.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:35):
Oh, you're right. Sorry. Bigger.
Leo Laporte (00:23:36):
Now I see
Mikah Sargent (00:23:36):
Bigfoot bigger. I'll
Leo Laporte (00:23:37):
Make it bigger. I see oj. Where is Bigfoot watch? They're going by on a train. There he is.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:46):
Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:23:47):
That sure looks like Bigfoot.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:48):
No, that's the next Star Wars. That's a wooki. Is
Leo Laporte (00:23:51):
It a Wooki?
Mikah Sargent (00:23:51):
Yeah. The
Leo Laporte (00:23:52):
Guy in a Wookie costume wandering in the wilderness.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:54):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:23:56):
He's obviously doing it for the train.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:58):
I think that
Leo Laporte (00:24:00):
He didn't wave like the bear in China.
Mikah Sargent (00:24:02):
When I retire, I will get a Bigfoot costume.
Leo Laporte (00:24:07):
Yeah, do that. Just prank people
Mikah Sargent (00:24:08):
And I will just go out into the world.
Leo Laporte (00:24:10):
Where do you come down on the Chinese bear situation?
Mikah Sargent (00:24:14):
I come down hard is where I come down.
Leo Laporte (00:24:18):
You know what I'm talking about?
Mikah Sargent (00:24:20):
No you don't. The Chinese bear.
Leo Laporte (00:24:21):
Oh, I thought this was a huge internet meme.
Mikah Sargent (00:24:24):
It might be.
Leo Laporte (00:24:25):
There is a probably. I could just Google China and bear it's
Mikah Sargent (00:24:29):
China bear. Then you're going to get an eBay sale for a bear made of fine China.
Leo Laporte (00:24:37):
Maybe
Mikah Sargent (00:24:38):
Take, it'll take you to Temu.
Leo Laporte (00:24:40):
It'll take me to Temu. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (00:24:42):
You mean the panda
Leo Laporte (00:24:43):
Chinese zoo denies.
Mikah Sargent (00:24:45):
Oh, the lion thing, right? That
Leo Laporte (00:24:47):
These sun bears are people in costumes. Okay. But I want you to see it.
Mikah Sargent (00:24:53):
Alright, let's see. Is this a person?
Leo Laporte (00:24:54):
No, we got to watch CNN for a while to see this. That's
Mikah Sargent (00:24:58):
Our sun bears are not people in costumes.
Leo Laporte (00:25:00):
That's what the China Zoo says. The bear looks a little bit like a human in a costume, especially when you see it's wrinkly butt. Oh, they didn't show it too bad because let's go to the, let's maybe see it and we'll show it. It has a wrinkly butt and then it waves.
Mikah Sargent (00:25:19):
It waves,
Leo Laporte (00:25:20):
Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (00:25:20):
Oh, I
Leo Laporte (00:25:22):
Don't think bears have that behavior.
Mikah Sargent (00:25:24):
No, that's not, and I don't remember Sun bears looking like that. Anyway,
Leo Laporte (00:25:30):
But that's a real tongue.
Mikah Sargent (00:25:31):
That is a sun bear.
Leo Laporte (00:25:33):
Okay, so anyway, wrinkly butt sun bear.
Mikah Sargent (00:25:36):
Oh, it's a special kind of ud bear.
Leo Laporte (00:25:40):
It sure looked like. Here's another
Mikah Sargent (00:25:42):
Related to the big foot.
Leo Laporte (00:25:43):
Here's another picture of the wrinkly butt because is this going to be C nnn again? Please don't. Yeah, there we go. See there's the wrinkly butt.
Mikah Sargent (00:25:51):
Oh yeah. It
Leo Laporte (00:25:53):
Doesn't look.
Mikah Sargent (00:25:53):
No, that's a human being. Stand
Leo Laporte (00:25:55):
There. This is K T L A now. Sorry. This is what I don't like about YouTube. You can't get the original anymore. Maybe the New York Times will. I want to see there's the wrinkly butt.
Mikah Sargent (00:26:06):
Yeah, that's a person.
Leo Laporte (00:26:08):
Doesn't that look like a person in a bear suit? The
Mikah Sargent (00:26:10):
Bear doesn't stand like that.
Leo Laporte (00:26:11):
And then waves, bears don't wave
Mikah Sargent (00:26:16):
And proportionally it doesn't look right. It's just not, it's
Leo Laporte (00:26:20):
Mike B is a believer. He says, no, no. Bears wave m c. We have
Mikah Sargent (00:26:25):
Seen bears wave
Leo Laporte (00:26:26):
Sun bears do walk on two legs. It's not the two leg thing.
Mikah Sargent (00:26:29):
It's the proportionality. For me, it's the
Leo Laporte (00:26:31):
Posture, the wrinkly butt and the Hey guys.
Mikah Sargent (00:26:33):
Yeah. It's the way the wave is happening.
Leo Laporte (00:26:37):
Alright.
Mikah Sargent (00:26:37):
Anyway.
Leo Laporte (00:26:38):
I would've thought you'd be all over the
Mikah Sargent (00:26:40):
Sunar. I've not heard of the sun bear. Yeah, I know about the other bear in China that they No, it was,
Leo Laporte (00:26:46):
Here's an actual bear waving. They
Mikah Sargent (00:26:47):
Were trying to make it look like a lion. Oh, that's cute.
Leo Laporte (00:26:50):
Bears do wave.
Mikah Sargent (00:26:52):
Yeah, but it's How do
Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
They get that behavior? They're mimicking.
Mikah Sargent (00:26:56):
I think it's probably, what is opera conditioning?
Leo Laporte (00:27:00):
I
Mikah Sargent (00:27:00):
Think they probably have done it enough and it
Leo Laporte (00:27:01):
Results in
Mikah Sargent (00:27:02):
Some sort of reward. They were probably swatting at a bee originally. And then everyone's like, that's way big. We're so happy here. Have some stab some steak. Steak. Have some white kettle corn. It's going to make you feel so great inside.
Leo Laporte (00:27:18):
Don't give bears kettle corn. Don't
Mikah Sargent (00:27:19):
Give bears anything. They're not supposed to eat.
Leo Laporte (00:27:22):
In fact, I have learned that you shouldn't feed wild animals anything. You know who? I know this
Mikah Sargent (00:27:28):
Because you have a menagerie at your home now because you've been feeding wild or someone has been feeding wild animals things.
Leo Laporte (00:27:35):
17 turkeys, 17 wild turkeys.
Mikah Sargent (00:27:40):
Do they leave a wild Turkey mess?
Leo Laporte (00:27:42):
Yes.
Mikah Sargent (00:27:43):
Oh no.
Leo Laporte (00:27:44):
And my lovely wife, who is an animal lover, I frankly, I'm happier with 17 turkeys out there than 17 cats in here, so I'm not complaining mind you. But she buys, she bought,
Mikah Sargent (00:28:00):
I'm
Leo Laporte (00:28:00):
Not kidding, 200 pounds of walnuts, a hundred pounds of sunflower seeds. She likes to give 'em a varied diet.
Mikah Sargent (00:28:07):
Good.
Leo Laporte (00:28:08):
In our pan, he's full of big giant sacks of walnuts and sunflower seeds, and by the way, she gets them peeled.
Mikah Sargent (00:28:17):
Okay, good.
Leo Laporte (00:28:18):
You don't want turkeys to have to That's hard. That's
Mikah Sargent (00:28:20):
Hard
Leo Laporte (00:28:20):
For them to fingers. So anyway, they
Mikah Sargent (00:28:22):
Like to wave and not pull apart. Walnuts
Leo Laporte (00:28:25):
Don't feed wild animals
Mikah Sargent (00:28:30):
Because
Leo Laporte (00:28:30):
You don't want to know a praise on turkeys.
Mikah Sargent (00:28:34):
Oh no. Have you found some
Leo Laporte (00:28:36):
Turkey remains? Well, I don't know. The number keeps going down. It was 24 wild turkeys. I don't know.
Mikah Sargent (00:28:42):
I think what mostly preys on wild turkeys are automobiles. Right?
Leo Laporte (00:28:47):
Not our wild turkeys, because people really on our road are very careful.
Mikah Sargent (00:28:52):
Oh, okay.
Leo Laporte (00:28:53):
I have yet to see a wild Turkey in the road. Dad, I don't have the ad clipboard for today, so I don't know.
Mikah Sargent (00:29:00):
Let me check what you've got today. Would you
Leo Laporte (00:29:02):
Check for me and see what we have to do? And then we will go to the phones at (888) 724-2884.
Mikah Sargent (00:29:09):
How would you like me to send this to you?
Leo Laporte (00:29:12):
Well, why don't you read the
Mikah Sargent (00:29:13):
Ad?
Leo Laporte (00:29:14):
Alright.
Mikah Sargent (00:29:14):
You know what? We're going to take a
Leo Laporte (00:29:15):
Quick break. I'll jump in.
Mikah Sargent (00:29:17):
Perfect. We are going to take a quick break. I know these guys to tell you about Melissa.
Leo Laporte (00:29:22):
Oh, I do these
Mikah Sargent (00:29:22):
Guys. We bringing you this episode of Ask the Tech guys, Melissa, Leo knows Melissa's the contact data quality experts. And hey, you know this holiday season is in full swing. So let Melissa help your business meet online shopping expectations. You can go ahead and increase your R O I. You can reduce waste and costs associated with lost and undeliverable packages and improve your customer's overall satisfaction. Leo's talked about getting multiple huge books from Restoration Hardware. I think it was.
Leo Laporte (00:29:53):
Oh yeah, we got like four of the catalog. And the thing is, it was the same name and address, so they should have known that they were sending duplicates. What a waste of money and time. Melissa would've solved this with their amazing deduplication feature.
Mikah Sargent (00:30:08):
Absolutely. You need to go ahead and make sure that you are prepared. Retailers are gearing up for the holiday season and here are some of the ways that Melissa can help you get started. You can start by cleaning out your contact data with Melissa's data cleansing solutions. All of your stale, outdated data gets replaced with verified accurate information, such as replacing old addresses for people who have moved and adding new emails or phone numbers that would help in that situation where, hey, we already have 'em once. We don't need to keep having 'em in here. And customers, they want a seamless experience with efficient delivery. So make sure your business is meeting their expectations with next day and two day delivery implementation. I want that stuff as soon as I can get it. And Melissa is going to help to ensure that it addresses are verified and standardized at checkout so that you can make sure that the addresses are correct with their auto complete tool.
(00:30:58):
And not only does having a verified address at checkout ensure the address is deliverable, but it also cuts down on keystrokes, which is important to me that I only have to start to type in my address and it takes care of the rest. It can cut that down by up to 75%, making your customers experience quicker and easier, so you're going to get more completed sales that way. They also offer bundles and cross-selling to existing customers for a more cost efficient way than finding new ones. This holiday season is the perfect time to do this since customers are most likely shopping for others. Profiling your data can give you a better understanding of your customer base and those bestselling products, which can help you create more effective marketing strategies, know what people are interested in, and then also matching and de-duping your data will clean your database, allowing you to see a complete 360 degree view of each customer. This will also help you better understand your customers, allowing for more personalized marketing and a better customer experience. And this is the most important thing to me. Since 1985, Melissa has specialized in global intelligence solutions and contact data quality. Melissa continually undergoes independent security audits. It's SOC two, HIPAA and G D P R compliance.
Leo Laporte (00:32:12):
I just realized Melissa's older than you.
Mikah Sargent (00:32:14):
It actually is. They've been
Leo Laporte (00:32:15):
Doing this longer than you have.
Mikah Sargent (00:32:16):
They've been doing this longer than I've been alive. And that SOC two, HIPAA and G D P R compliance I think is very
Leo Laporte (00:32:21):
Important. They're careful with your data. Make sure your contact data, your supplier data is all up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free. melissa.com/twit. That's M E L I ssa.com/twit.
Mikah Sargent (00:32:37):
Thank you, Melissa, for sponsoring this week's episode. Ask
Leo Laporte (00:32:39):
The tech guys. They came back, they got the asteroid, they got the rocks, the benu rocks. We will talk to Rod Pyle space guy about the rocks coming up in just a little bit. Also, it's been delayed, but he's back. Chris Marquardt and our photo. That's right. It's time to pick our photo. What do you call it? It's not a competition.
Mikah Sargent (00:32:58):
Assignment.
Leo Laporte (00:33:00):
Assignment,
Mikah Sargent (00:33:00):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:33:01):
The results of the photo assignment coming up. And don't worry, he's not like Gordon Ramsey. He's not going to yell. Kick. Terrible
Mikah Sargent (00:33:08):
Shadows.
Caller (00:33:09):
Terrible.
Leo Laporte (00:33:11):
Let's hit our first call in. John Ashley, who do you, would you?
Mikah Sargent (00:33:14):
I've been seeing
Leo Laporte (00:33:16):
Michael
Mikah Sargent (00:33:16):
Popping his video in and out, so I think we should pick up on Michael in Long Beach.
Leo Laporte (00:33:21):
Do I? Or do you? Looks
Mikah Sargent (00:33:23):
Like they're taking
Leo Laporte (00:33:24):
Care of it. Send a breakout room. Hello, Michael. Michael, join us in the Stargate. You don't have to turn on video if you don't want to.
Caller (00:33:33):
Am I that hideous?
Leo Laporte (00:33:35):
No, we want to see your gorgeous face. Hello, Michael? Yeah, looks great.
Caller (00:33:38):
How are you guys?
Leo Laporte (00:33:39):
We are great. How are you?
Caller (00:33:41):
Good. I got to tell you, between the pre-show and the start of the show, one altered states and two OJ references only on the
Leo Laporte (00:33:48):
Internet. I'm glad somebody's keeping track. Micah, before the show said, I want to do a sensory deprivation tank. And I said, well, whatever you do, don't watch the Michael. I mean the William Hurt movie alter states before you go because you won't
Caller (00:34:04):
Grow a sixth toe.
Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
Yeah, you'll grow a six, whatever. What if one
Mikah Sargent (00:34:07):
Already has a sixth toe? I don't.
Caller (00:34:09):
Well, you'll grow a
Leo Laporte (00:34:10):
Seventh. Where do you go to do APR in Napa? I want to go. Let's go. We'll go together. Let's do it. We won't share the tape. No, no,
Mikah Sargent (00:34:16):
No. There are
Caller (00:34:17):
Multiple your own glasses
Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
When you're in there. Otherwise the
Mikah Sargent (00:34:19):
Sensory would not be deprivated
Leo Laporte (00:34:22):
Deprived. What can we do
Caller (00:34:23):
For you, Michael? Every other day?
Mikah Sargent (00:34:25):
Join us, everyone.
Caller (00:34:27):
A plex question for you guys. I was running for about three years, a plex server on a raspberry pipe and it worked fine. I had some trouble with it. I could never get the, it had a U S B, like a terabyte little notebook drive attached, could never get it mounted. I ran an update on it. I realized it had been a year since I'd run any updates. So ran it and then all of a sudden when I'd unplugged the drive, put it in my laptop in my office, it was based off wired in the living room, the main area. And all of a sudden I would put something in and I wouldn't scan. I would scan for files and the files wouldn't show up. So I said, screw this. I went on eBay. I bought a Mac Mini from 2014 and it's been great.
Leo Laporte (00:35:14):
Yeah, that's probably
Mikah Sargent (00:35:14):
A better
Caller (00:35:14):
Way to go into it. I can S M b mount the drive on my laptop,
Leo Laporte (00:35:19):
Toss
Caller (00:35:20):
The files in there. It's fantastic. The question I have for you, so that's a recommendation. I guess two questions. I forgot what the first one was, but anyway, I'll go to the second one then I got nervous on the radio.
Leo Laporte (00:35:35):
Wait a minute before you say you work in radio obviously, right?
Caller (00:35:39):
No, I am a sometime podcaster. Okay,
Leo Laporte (00:35:41):
Because you've got a fancy mic, you've got fancy headphones and you have a very fancy voice. It sounds like maybe you would work in radio down there in Long Beach. No, though. You
Caller (00:35:52):
Know what? A friend of mine works in radio and when I found out what he made in radio, I was glad I
Leo Laporte (00:35:55):
Wasn't working. Smart man. It only took me 46 years to figure that one out. I
Caller (00:35:59):
Went into another career complete. He's on a major city classical station program.
Leo Laporte (00:36:05):
Oh yeah. No money in classical. Yeah.
Caller (00:36:08):
Yeah. But oh, here's my, so I have, it's a terabyte drive attached and it's getting a little full. And what I've been doing is I bought a two terabyte, S s d, Samsung S S D to back it up. And I could probably just do it and see what happens. But I'm wondering if I could just, and I've been cloning it with carbon copy cloner.
Leo Laporte (00:36:30):
Perfect.
Caller (00:36:31):
And they're both X fat format. Could it be as simple as me plugging in this two terabyte drive and then it would read it? Or would I have to reconfigure things and look for a new drive? I'm curious.
Leo Laporte (00:36:44):
Oh, that's a great question. So you want to know. So first of all, Plex is a media server, really good one. One we often recommend it's free to use, but then there is a subscription. I bought the lifetime subscription because it wasn't that expensive.
Caller (00:36:56):
30 bucks a year.
Leo Laporte (00:36:57):
So it's not, and it gives you all sorts of features. You can rip movies from A D V D, put 'em on there. It'll download the cover art and all the information. It'll organizes it and knows about if you're watching a TV series, it knows about seasons. It's really smart. Gives you the summaries. I think we all agree now, there were a lot of other competitors like Myth tv, Kobe and so forth, but Plex is clearly the top of the heap at this point. You can run it on a raspberry pie as you did. In fact, that's the first way I ran it. But the processor on the raspberry probably is pretty slow. Obviously it's a $35 computer. You're going to get much better performance even out of that old Mac Mini because it's Intel and it's a good processor. I run Plex on a nas, a network attached storage.
(00:37:44):
And for the very reason that you, you're trying to add a drive because I want lots of storage. That's the one thing Plex does. Those movies, they're a gigabyte each. It adds up pretty fast. So Tonology NAS has enough horsepower to do transcoding. If you get a recent one, that's one of the things Plex will do for you as it'll transcode it into different styles depending on what screen you're going to watch it on. It really is smart. It's really super good. Your question though, it's interesting. Can I just add another drive to my Plex setup to my Mac mini and it will just use it? And that's an interesting question. I think if you create a volume, maybe some of our Plex users, there's quite a few of them.
Caller (00:38:29):
And what I was thinking maybe would just be to swap out the drive since it's cloned. I'll use this two
Leo Laporte (00:38:34):
Terabyte drive. Yeah, you could do that. Absolutely. Yeah.
Caller (00:38:36):
I
Leo Laporte (00:38:37):
Thought you want, maybe the other way to do is just plug in that second drive and now you've got three terabytes. That's
Caller (00:38:43):
True. Yeah. I've got everything. I was recently pruning everything and it's amazing how there was some, I'm a Christmas Carol fan fanatic and there's a bunch of them that are unavailable, but they're on YouTube, so I downloaded them.
Leo Laporte (00:38:59):
Isn't that great? Threw
Caller (00:39:00):
'em in,
Leo Laporte (00:39:01):
Put
Caller (00:39:01):
The year in and I got the cover art that I needed.
Leo Laporte (00:39:04):
Isn't that great? It's
Caller (00:39:04):
Insane.
Leo Laporte (00:39:05):
I love that. I also am a big, I
Caller (00:39:07):
Love the different versions.
Leo Laporte (00:39:09):
The old Alistair, what's his name? Alistair.
Caller (00:39:11):
Alistair Sim. Reginald Dawn. I probably have 20 different versions of it. Wow.
Leo Laporte (00:39:17):
And then there's the very famous that Andy ICO recommends every year audio. Patrick Stewart, Christmas Carol.
Caller (00:39:24):
Oh, the Patrick Stewart. Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:39:24):
You got to add that to it.
Caller (00:39:26):
Got that many. But anyway,
Leo Laporte (00:39:29):
That's awesome. See, so people say, oh, it's just a piracy tool. It's not, I mean, this is a perfect example of somebody who wants to curate a collection. And that's what I think. You
Caller (00:39:39):
Can't get it anywhere else. If I could buy it, most of the stuff in there I've bought, but there's stuff I can't find anywhere. I use Downie actually on a,
Leo Laporte (00:39:47):
Yeah, I was going to ask. So yeah, if you use Downey with YouTube, it can extract the video. It'll get the highest quality. And then, I mean for Alistair SIM's, Christmas Carol, which was
Caller (00:39:58):
I had that had
Leo Laporte (00:39:58):
Burned, I had those thirties. It's not going to be super great quality. So user 8,700 says, go into the plex settings, delete the D V R. I don't know if you want to do all this and then reinstall with the extra drive in there
Caller (00:40:14):
Maybe. Or I could just swap. I'll try swapping it first.
Leo Laporte (00:40:16):
I think you could swap without any problem. I understand what you're saying because something like TiVo, for instance, had to bless the drives. That's the phrase they used to make it usable with TiVo. I don't think Plex has any such restrictions.
Caller (00:40:29):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (00:40:29):
One
Caller (00:40:29):
Other quick question about it. So when I had the raspberry pie, it was in the living room where the modem and my, I've got a TP link deco mesh system. So the main deco was in there and I had to plugged in via, I had to get a switch obviously. But what I've done now, most of the time I'm the one watching this in my home office. I've got a pretty good size, four K tv, a soundbar and a subwoofer. What I did was I plugged the ethernet cable from the Mac Mini into one of the ports on the deco, one of the extra ports. There's two on each little satellite and it works great.
Leo Laporte (00:41:09):
Yeah.
Caller (00:41:10):
So it's not technically hardwired from the main No.
Leo Laporte (00:41:14):
But yeah, a number of mesh systems, eero started that I think. And Orbi have ethernet on the satellites. And so they're wirelessly connected to the base station as you point out. But they have a very fast back channel. So it's not going to be as fast as ethernet would be, but it's going to be maybe more reliable.
Caller (00:41:34):
I think it cuts off on part of the back. Half of it is gone because it's connected. It thinks it's wired.
Leo Laporte (00:41:38):
I
Caller (00:41:39):
Get three, I thinking I'm provisioned for three
Leo Laporte (00:41:41):
Hundreds. Interesting. So does it slow down wifi devices on that satellite?
Caller (00:41:45):
No, it works fine a little. I have a little U S B C dongle for my laptop. I've got a Mac Air M one, and even on that, it's got an ethernet port on it and I get 300 down on it as opposed to like one 50 if it was just unwind.
Leo Laporte (00:42:03):
Sounds great. And you're not using the DVR function, are you?
Caller (00:42:06):
No, no. Again, I was just, can I easily swap one drive?
Leo Laporte (00:42:10):
Yeah. Yeah. If you're not using the dvr, forget what I said about the DVR thing. I think this is all going to work fine. That's only if you were using the DVR so it would know to use the second drive as well as the first.
Caller (00:42:24):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:42:25):
You're physically putting stuff on the drive, so that's not a problem.
Caller (00:42:29):
And it's so much easier now I can just mount the drive on my computer
Leo Laporte (00:42:32):
As
Caller (00:42:32):
Opposed to, I used to run to the living room, unplug it, plug it in back. Oh, that's frustrating. Is this my life? I said to myself,
Leo Laporte (00:42:40):
Well that's why a NASA is such a great way to do this because the NASA is available to every system on the network.
Caller (00:42:46):
Yeah, that's too much of a footprint. I think
Leo Laporte (00:42:48):
It's a big for my
Caller (00:42:49):
Wife to take. It's a big L.
Leo Laporte (00:42:51):
Fair enough. My NAS is in the closet right next to the towels and I just tell my wife it keeps the towels warm. What are you worried about? It's a towel warmer. This is a towel warmer. Not a nas. What are you? Crazy. Nice
Caller (00:43:01):
Fresh towel, baby. Alright, well thank you lads. I appreciate
Leo Laporte (00:43:05):
Time. Hey Michael, it's great to talk to you. Great to hear from you and I hope you'll continue to call. How's the queen? Mary? Can you see her out the window?
Caller (00:43:13):
I can't see her out the window, but it's funny. I was watching an episode of the 18 recently and they shot it both being LA and hey, that's the Queen Mary, they
Leo Laporte (00:43:21):
Shot. You're in Long Beach baby in 1987. That's
Caller (00:43:25):
Awesome.
Leo Laporte (00:43:25):
Michael, a
Caller (00:43:26):
Pleasure talking to you. Alright, thanks guys. Thanks. Thank
Leo Laporte (00:43:27):
You.
Caller (00:43:27):
Absolutely. Always welcome.
Leo Laporte (00:43:28):
Yeah, there was a jeopardy just the other day. Jeopardy had a picture of the Queen Mary and said, what is this boat? Or whatever, and I knew right away. I knew right away. Nice. Alright. Hi, is the show live? Yes. JF Simon. If it weren't live, could I do this? Whoa. Ow. I just got dizzy. Holy cow. Oh no. Coming up. Rod Pyle. Should we do a voicemail before we get to Mr. Rodney j Pyle? If you want to do a
Mikah Sargent (00:43:54):
Voicemail, let's do a voicemail.
Leo Laporte (00:43:56):
Let's do a voicemail. Let's do a voicemail.
Mikah Sargent (00:43:58):
Maybe you can look up a Space Force thing while we're listening to the voicemail.
Leo Laporte (00:44:02):
Good, thank you. Thank you for the tip.
Caller (00:44:05):
Hi, this is Louis calling from Westfield, New Jersey. My daughter recently got her driver's license and ideally, I'm
Leo Laporte (00:44:13):
So sorry, Louis, she would take the
Caller (00:44:14):
Same route to and from work each day without being modified by the G p s app. I've tried Google my Maps, but when it gets imported into the G P S app from Google, it turns out that they allow for traffic and they suggest alternate routes. And I've looked at Apple Maps and other solutions, but nothing seems to work. Your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Mikah Sargent (00:44:37):
Oh, that's
Leo Laporte (00:44:37):
A really interesting
Mikah Sargent (00:44:39):
Question. Interesting. Yes, because these things are too smart these days, right? What it sounds like you're asking for people who maybe wondering it's a route that remains the same for a
Leo Laporte (00:44:53):
New driver. So he doesn't want to use do any rerouting.
Mikah Sargent (00:44:56):
Yeah, no smart rerouting based on traffic or anything like that. The same route to and from where this person needs to go. Now I mean it that doesn't account for road closures or other issues like that. Of course. Did
Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
You see the guy who drove off a closed bridge suing Google saying, oh, come on, you told me to drive off the bridge. So I did.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:20):
That's silly.
Leo Laporte (00:45:22):
Actually, I think his family is suing.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:26):
He
Leo Laporte (00:45:27):
Drove off the bridge.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:28):
Oh no.
Leo Laporte (00:45:29):
So I shouldn't mock it.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:30):
I don't think that there's a way to turn off
Leo Laporte (00:45:34):
Traffic
Mikah Sargent (00:45:35):
Alterations.
Leo Laporte (00:45:35):
I turn off the G P s.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:36):
Yeah, you just need to
Leo Laporte (00:45:37):
Make your daughter drive. Exactly. Drive like a human.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:41):
So
Leo Laporte (00:45:41):
You don't want to drive off any bridges because the G Ps told her. I noticed, I don't know, you probably noticed this too. I bet you at home noticed this. I don't know how to drive anymore.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:49):
I don't know where anything is.
Leo Laporte (00:45:50):
If the G P S doesn't tell me turn left, I just go and I ignore signs. I just drive because the G P S will tell me. And that is actually, that's a bad crutch. I agree. So if your daughter's a new driver, maybe. I mean, we're not answering the question. Don't use the G P Ss. Here's the real question.
Mikah Sargent (00:46:12):
I just had the thought.
Leo Laporte (00:46:13):
What?
Mikah Sargent (00:46:14):
So you are going to get in the vehicle and you as the person who knows what you're doing, and you're going to have your phone and you're going to turn on voice memos or some other tool and you're going to hit record
Leo Laporte (00:46:25):
Record.
Mikah Sargent (00:46:26):
And then you're going to the drive the route and say turn left here following
Leo Laporte (00:46:31):
The speed, speed limit and all that. Be her gss. Exactly. Be the g p s.
Mikah Sargent (00:46:33):
Be the G P Ss.
Leo Laporte (00:46:34):
That's an interesting way to
Mikah Sargent (00:46:36):
Start. But because I was going to say what they're saying in the chat too. Yes, yes. I was going to reference the office. I was going to suggest that you have, wait a
Leo Laporte (00:46:44):
Minute, play the sound. What is going on? This is great. Is Dwight telling
Mikah Sargent (00:46:48):
No, the G p s is telling Michael that he should veer
Leo Laporte (00:46:51):
Off. Sometimes
Caller (00:46:53):
You lose everything and everything falls apart Right up there. It said. Right. So take a right. No, no, no. Look,
Leo Laporte (00:47:02):
Of course Dwight knows better than
Mikah Sargent (00:47:04):
To
Caller (00:47:04):
The right bare, right over the
Leo Laporte (00:47:05):
Bridge. Look at that. Look at that old G p s.
Caller (00:47:07):
Maybe it's a shortcut. It's
Leo Laporte (00:47:08):
Like an old Tom Tom.
Caller (00:47:10):
It can't mean there's a light there. He knows where it's going.
Leo Laporte (00:47:14):
He's driving right into the lake. She knows where he's going to drive right into the Lake. Lake. Okay. Do not be a Michael Scott.
Mikah Sargent (00:47:21):
Exactly.
Leo Laporte (00:47:23):
Okay. A paper. In the old days before all this technology, you'd go to Google and you'd say, I need the route. Or MapQuest, I went
Mikah Sargent (00:47:32):
To MapQuest.
Leo Laporte (00:47:33):
MapQuest, I need the route to Grandma's house. And MapQuest would I used to print 'em out. Remember
Mikah Sargent (00:47:39):
That? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:47:39):
Yeah. But could you send it to your phone and have your phone direct you? No, I think you had to.
Mikah Sargent (00:47:47):
Yeah, you had the printout, you had to print
Leo Laporte (00:47:48):
It out.
Mikah Sargent (00:47:49):
But that is not great for a new driver.
Leo Laporte (00:47:51):
No. You don't want her looking at something.
Mikah Sargent (00:47:52):
You don't want her looking at something. And
Leo Laporte (00:47:53):
Frankly, I think with the G P Ss, you kind of don't want her having that G P s there. That's distraction.
Mikah Sargent (00:47:59):
I think you should do.
Leo Laporte (00:48:01):
So this is the question, and if anybody wants to help us, that'd be great. How, is there a way to sends instructions to a G P S and not have it modify them, just use it every time? I don't think so. I think it's the whole point of the G P Ss is to modify it.
Mikah Sargent (00:48:16):
Yeah. That's what it's designed to do. It pays attention to traffic. And again, what happens? See, there's a scene. There's a scene in a Bug's Life that's my favorite Pixar film. And right at the beginning, the ants are marching along, they're carrying food, and a leaf falls from the sky into their path and the ants freak out. They don't know what to do. So they have to bring in a specialist
Leo Laporte (00:48:37):
Who
Mikah Sargent (00:48:37):
Takes them around the leaf. So think about what happens if you have the same route every time. And then there's a road closure. There's something that happens. Now your I think daughter was what you said has no idea what to do. The leaf's in the way, and now what do I do? Just sit here and wait for Dad to come and save me.
Leo Laporte (00:48:53):
And if dad records it and she follows his instructions, she's going to hit the leaf.
Mikah Sargent (00:48:58):
Yes. So don't hit the leaf. There it is. Yeah, there's the,
Leo Laporte (00:49:03):
I'm
Mikah Sargent (00:49:04):
Lost. Where's the line? And it's just mere feet in front of the
Leo Laporte (00:49:09):
Ant.
Mikah Sargent (00:49:10):
But
Leo Laporte (00:49:10):
I
Mikah Sargent (00:49:11):
Think just teach
Leo Laporte (00:49:12):
Your child the route. Right? There might be an app, somebody suggesting Map My Ride, which I think is for cyclists, but there might be a map, an app rather, that lets you send a route to the app and lets it follow it. I mean there might be,
Mikah Sargent (00:49:28):
Wait, map My
Leo Laporte (00:49:29):
Ride
Mikah Sargent (00:49:30):
Under Armour.
Leo Laporte (00:49:31):
Yeah, they bought it. It wasn't used to be Under Armor. Got got it. Got it. They bought it. And it's for bicyclists. I mean, I don't know if you want to file a bicycle map. I think this is fraught with peril.
Mikah Sargent (00:49:42):
Yes. And
Leo Laporte (00:49:42):
Leo and Micah's recommendation is, you don't do any of this, but we're just coming up with things. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (00:49:47):
We're trying to give you an answer. But honestly
Leo Laporte (00:49:51):
Just, you know what
Mikah Sargent (00:49:54):
You did do the old school, you
Leo Laporte (00:49:55):
Print out the map quest and you put it on a whiteboard. Okay.
Mikah Sargent (00:49:59):
And
Leo Laporte (00:49:59):
You get a pointer
Mikah Sargent (00:50:00):
And
Leo Laporte (00:50:00):
You sit here in front and you say, now we are going to memorize this route. Just like D-Day. Right? You're going in right here. Your goal is to get
Mikah Sargent (00:50:11):
Here, little triangles at different places and square.
Leo Laporte (00:50:13):
You'll be turning left 30 feet past the driveway. At that point there will be a light. What will there be a light? There will be a light. Wait till the light turns green. What color? Green. See, and she'll know. And then that way you've created a, I
Mikah Sargent (00:50:34):
Dunno what the, I don't think there's a good answer
Leo Laporte (00:50:36):
For this. I dunno what the answer is
Mikah Sargent (00:50:38):
Other than Yeah, just teach the child the route, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:50:43):
You could. Ah, scooter X has a good thought. So with GPSs you can say, I want to stop here. I want to stop here. I want to stop here. I want to stop here. So you can kind of force it by entering the instructions.
Mikah Sargent (00:50:57):
You've got so many way points
Leo Laporte (00:50:59):
By putting in way points to say, turn left at the shell station, put a pin at the Shell station.
Mikah Sargent (00:51:05):
I
Leo Laporte (00:51:05):
Think this is in general
Mikah Sargent (00:51:07):
Not a great idea. I think just learn the route by human, you and your daughter in the vehicle. It's a good question
Leo Laporte (00:51:13):
Actually.
Mikah Sargent (00:51:13):
And
Leo Laporte (00:51:14):
This is actually a good exercise for a new driver.
Mikah Sargent (00:51:16):
I agree.
Leo Laporte (00:51:16):
How to do route planning on your own without the G p s. Oftentimes kids First car doesn't have that fancy g p s in it. Right.
Mikah Sargent (00:51:25):
And it's a good idea to get that spatial awareness.
Leo Laporte (00:51:28):
Yeah. So you don't drive into the lake.
Mikah Sargent (00:51:30):
Exactly. It can't mean that there's a lake there. The machine knows what it is doing. My favorite part is that later on he's complaining about it and he says basically that computers are trying to bring about the destruction of humanity because it told him to drive into a lake. It's fantastic.
Leo Laporte (00:51:50):
It's so funny if you don't know this, Micah used to do a podcast where they would watch every episode of the office and comment. And obviously that was
Mikah Sargent (00:51:59):
One of them. Somehow I managed.
Leo Laporte (00:52:01):
Somehow I managed. They're still's completed.
Mikah Sargent (00:52:03):
No, no, it's done now. They
Leo Laporte (00:52:04):
Finished.
Mikah Sargent (00:52:04):
Yeah. I was there for the final episode. They invited me back on, which was very nice.
Leo Laporte (00:52:10):
You go check it out that last season. It takes a certain
Mikah Sargent (00:52:12):
Something
Leo Laporte (00:52:13):
To do that last season. But you're a man and you did it. I did.
Mikah Sargent (00:52:18):
I did it.
Leo Laporte (00:52:19):
Ladies and gentlemen, in just a moment, we are going to be joined by a very handsome fella on a boat. But first a word from our sponsor. Should I do that now or is that too soon? No, let's play the Space Force theme, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, astronauts of all ages. Here he comes, direct you by the satellite. Rod Py Spaceman.
Mikah Sargent (00:52:47):
Oh man. And is he a spaceman or what?
Leo Laporte (00:52:50):
Here's the pile. Pile.
Mikah Sargent (00:52:52):
I need some of those glasses. Woo.
Leo Laporte (00:52:54):
Interplanetary robots. True stories of space, exploitation. This guy's writing all the time. Here's another one. Amazing stories of the Space Age. Here's another one. Blueprint for Battlestar. Wow. Serious Scientific by Sci-fi. It's greatest. Conveniently handy. He's also the editor in chief of this fabulous publication from the International Space Society. I'm sorry, the National Space Society. A Astra.
Mikah Sargent (00:53:20):
Wow. And all of the spines are just so cracked.
Leo Laporte (00:53:22):
Oh, I've read every one of them. Cover to cover over and over. Now these are my office
Mikah Sargent (00:53:26):
Versions. This note you've made
Leo Laporte (00:53:27):
Here. I have them all at home too. And the bestselling, this was a huge bestseller, wasn't it? First on the moon, on the 50th anniversary of Apollo. I just saw an article. This was the bestseller of all time or something. It really did really well. Did you sell a million copies?
(00:53:49):
One article? I saw an article it said of thousands, tens of thousands of copies. But that was enough. Yeah, that was enough. So, hey, I have a solution for your G P S problem, I think. Oh, okay. All they have to do is buy my 2017 Jaguar excess, which has a navigation system that is so glacial it might as well be painted onto the screen. It'll just show them. It'll be like a Thomas brothers guide right on the screen. It'll just never move. It's literally, we kind of take these G p s for granted, but it's amazing how rapidly this transformations. I've met a great, many of you had a Thomas guide in the backseat, so you could get around town. Certainly if you live in LA you have to.
Mikah Sargent (00:54:34):
When we drove to Colorado years ago, we used the MapQuest printout and it was like, no one lose that.
Leo Laporte (00:54:41):
Somebody in chat room. Well, that's the 21st century thing. Yeah. Somebody in the chat room said, and I thought this was kind of almost a piece of poetry coffee. What did he say? Coffee circles on my Thomas guide. It was just very beautiful to me. It was evocative. Anyway, it's like guidance haiku. Yeah. Yeah, guidance haiku. There's your start. I want by the end of the show, by the way, interesting thing about Thomas Guides. I used to run a production department at a large commercial production facility, television spots, and I had like 30 guys working for me. All of 'em had Thomas brothers guides and we discovered in the first year we were using 'em that there's a deliberate mistake on each page that they could track. Copy. There's a word for that. And my guys would always find it that dead end road that said it went through or something.
(00:55:32):
They called and say it's wrong. And of course they had to go to payphone. We didn't have cell phones. Anyway, very small thing there. Hey, they do that on purpose so that if somebody steals the map, they know because we intentionally put this, we did this wrong and yeah. Yeah. I called 'em to yell at 'em and they said, yeah, it's on purpose. It's on purpose. Map makers have done that for hundreds of years. Wow. Yeah. And I wish I could remember the name of it. There's an actual name for the thing. Anyway, I will remember someday it's Columbus running into Florida. Yeah. Who knew that wasn't on the map. Wasn't on here. Yeah. We just wanted to make sure you weren't stealing it. So guys, did you see the partial eclipse yesterday? We were talking about that before the show. It was a little cloudy here in Petaluma.
(00:56:19):
We did not, did you? The annular eclipse actually had seen an annular before. That doesn't sound right. I had seen an annular eclipse before and this one was going to be partial and I've seen lots of partials, so I actually did other things, but it was fascinating. We weren't unfortunately on the West coast here, at least down Ryan, we weren't along the line of the eclipse that came in. If you want to see the true ring of fire effect, the annulus around the shadow of the moon, you had to be in Oregon going down through Texas. Yeah, there's a path. This was Albuquerque, New Mexico from R. Now that totality, wow is a perfect, are we sure that's not
Mikah Sargent (00:57:03):
Just a Photoshop image?
Rod Pyle (00:57:04):
I don't think N P R would lie you to question everything. October 14th, Albuquerque next. If they knew exactly. You still can't. Okay, so here's a problem. Okay, so you still can't look at annular straight up because it's just too much sunlight. It's going to hurt eyes. That guy's using a welding glass. Not a good idea. That's a bad juju, is it? Yeah, because he'll end up with cataracts just like I had even Don't do this. Don't do that. You can get these glasses. I remember the last total eclipse people were giving out these glasses. It has to be sufficiently filtered out so you don't burn your retinas and you have to make sure they're ISO certified glasses. And of course anybody can print that on there. That's true. So don't just go on Amazon. I remember in Amazon there wear some fake glasses. There were many and there were people that got hurt. So you need to go to Celestron or go to a local store.
(00:58:04):
Walmart or all targets the best to target. And I remember this, look at the ground. Look at the ground because you'll see shadows of the annual eclipse. For instance, tree leaves. And I remember this outside the brick house, John, I dunno if you were with me, but we were seeing all of these and you see hundreds of these little mini eclipses on the ground as the shadows come through and it's really quite remarkable. Look at that. That's a pretty cool thing. Do not take a paper plate because you look stupid. But these are glasses that are appropriate and I remember those are the last total eclipse. You could source these, but they're very, you can't see through 'em at all if you just put 'em up and look at 'em. They're really dark. And celestron among other companies makes little plastic binoculars, some viewing binoculars that give you a little bit of magnification.
(00:59:00):
So those are handy too. And of course, the reason we had an annular eclipse is because the particular position the moon was in its orbit was a little further from earth. So it's smaller than the sun. Just in terms of apparent, oh see, I was trying to think this out. I was trying to logic it out in my mind as I was talking and I got it wrong. I thought if it's farther, it would block more. But no, if it's closer, that makes sense. It blocks more and because the moon's orbit is both elliptical and tilted with respect to the sun. That's why we only get them occasionally. But as a full-blown agnostic, at least, if not atheist, I have to say the few times I sort of lean towards the religions, when I realized somebody figured out how to make the moon the exact right size to eclipse the sun perfectly. It is kind of amazing, isn't it? That's too weird. Yeah, that's a little, it's kind of amazing. And why is a year exactly a year or a month? Exactly a month. And how come the full moon comes every month?
(01:00:06):
So alright, forget I said that. Okay. And in 2024 we got the real thing happening. So I presume you guys are going to dash out. I know John is show location, right? John has given up his vocation as a eclipse chaser. You've seen one, you've seen 'em all basically. No, you've seen three. You've seen partials, you've seen 'em all. You see a total eclipse. You just want to go back. We actually, it's flew to Australia and gotten a boat to see a total eclipse off Karen's many years ago. That was fun. Wow. Well, mic has got an expression on his face. He's never seen the Total solar. No. Ever. I don't think so. It is uncanny. Almost make, all you got to do is drive to Texas real close. N B D Let's all go to Texas next year. Yeah, 20, 24. April 8th, I'm going to buy, that's soon.
(01:00:59):
My Eclipse Smart glasses. Yeah, very quick. Okay, we're all going to Texas, coming over Mexico, cross Texas diagonally and then exit over newfound. So there's a whole swath of estates you could be in. Would you like the list? That's actually the title of my autobiography. Exit over Newfoundland. But anyway, I didn't want to talk about Made me feel like Johnny Cash, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania. That's not your That's Johnny Jets song. Your song is Space Force. Sorry buddy. I know. And you know Johnny Jet and the other guys get these cool songs and I get, oh God. To a certain audience. That's cool. I was hoping you would talk about the Rocks, to be honest with you, I'm much more interested from Benu, from Benu. Oh yeah. And we had a really bad space joke on Friday's podcast installment from a friend of mine named Martin Lawler.
(01:01:55):
How did it go? What did the janitors say about the Benny Rocks? I'd love to see them once all this dirt is cleaned up. Careful, careful. It's all about the dirt. This is a seven year mission, seven year mission to get these. It does look like dirt, doesn't it? Yeah. Ain't much to it, but it's a bigger sample. They expected. They thought they maybe got about two ounces. They had trouble closing the jaws on the sampler got jammed up, but they did get them closed. Turned out they got about a cup. So eight ounces, which is a cup. The only previous sample return was just grams. So this was great. They're just starting to look at it. My understanding is they have found organics, which is kind of the big, this is the holy grail looking at asteroid material. Let's be very clear. I think people confuse it. It is not life. It's the building blocks. It's not carbon, not it's just carbon. It's the very basics like organic carbon. But the further along it gets in terms of amino acids and all that life science stuff, the more likely it is that we'll eventually figure out, okay, so life came from asteroid impacts on earth. We get it now. One NASA Astrobiologist said, we picked the right asteroid, 4.7% carbon by weight. That's a lot of carbon.
(01:03:16):
You need carbon for life's our life. Life forms, as I learned from Star Trek. Me too. But it isn't by itself enough to make life. No, you got to have other things going on. And that's why I loved that scene. If you were a fan of Star Trek, the next generation when Q takes Picard back to the beginning of time and they're staring at a puddle of goo and he says, now watch this. This is magical. Oh, it didn't happen. And it was the moment where life was supposed to start on earth. And of course, oh, and did they wink out suddenly because life never was started. They were observing. Well, no, the script writers weren't that. That would've been travel. Yeah. Well that would've been the last episode for sure. Right? If you wanted a serious finale, it's like wink there.
(01:04:10):
So that's exciting. I'm also excited about Psyche. Yeah, so finally we got a launch, I think it was a day late on a Falcon Heavy. A couple of my photographer friends went out to shoot that. And one of the things besides Starship, I got to go see a Falcon Heavy launch. It's got multiple sonic booms and those two boosters come back and I just want to see that. It would be cool. But yeah, psyche's a big metal asteroid. We did an episode of that too with the PI for the mission, the principal investigator. They say $10 trillion worth of metal. Well, but that only works until you start returning big chunks of platinum earth and the value of platinum crashes. That was my first thought. Pound of platinum for 40 bucks. Anybody. We got so much. But it's good for industrial uses. I mean, there are reasons you would want this platinum.
(01:05:05):
Yeah, the big thing about finding metals in space like that is using them in space. So while there is a school of thought that says, oh, let's bring it back to earth because it's valuable. If you can manufacture goods that you use out there, you just saved yourself a small force of launching big chunks of metal that are made into things. So that's where it's good. And it doesn't have to be platinum and there's all kinds of metal on the moon too. But yeah, this will be an incredible mission. It'll take I think, what, six or seven years to get out there. It's not quick. I blast Elon a lot, so I want to say thank you Elon for the Falcon Heavy and the Starship, because SpaceX really has become our primary way of getting into space these days. Well, and you just gave me a great segue.
(01:05:49):
Thank you. Oh, you lovely man. Because I want to thank you Elon for not being Boeing because we just got the announcement that Starliner, which was contracted with Boeing to replace the shuttle I know to take astronauts to Space Station in 2014. They were given almost twice the money that SpaceX got, and they still haven't flown this thing with people in it. They've had one successful robotic test flight, mostly successful. So they're saying, oh, we're going to have another slight delay, not before April of 24. So you've got this crew that's been training and waiting since 2017 expecting to use this thing to go to the space station. Can you imagine how envious they're of the ones that get to fly on the dragon, which has worked seven times now. So they've had problems with sticky valves, they've had problems with, oh, we forgot the stuff we wrap the wiring in is flammable.
(01:06:45):
Oops, faulty parachute lines that can't support the load if there's one parachute out and bad programming that didn't allow the first one to actually owe rendezvous at the space station, which is what its whole ette is. So it's really frustrating to watch this. Why is Boeing so bad at this when Elon is so good at it? Well Leo, when you and I were young, Boeing was it right? The 7 47, they were this incredible company and then the 7 37 max and it's been downhill ever since. That's actually an interesting pun. You should put the 7 37 max, but I won't call that out. It's been straight down ever since. Some people have said it's ever since they moved their headquarters out of the Seattle area. I don't know. And by the way, I shouldn't say Elon because it isn't just Elon. In fact, there are some who say it's exactly not Elon, that Elon put the money up for it, but it's Gwen Bell and a very talented team at SpaceX.
(01:07:39):
Elon gave them the playground, but they're the ones who built the objects and so credit to them. Absolutely. Yeah. Credit to the team. Gwen Shotwell is a guy named Tom Mueller who was his propulsion chief, but Musk did have a lot to do with it because he's kind of a crazy man and he pushed these people beyond any boundaries that a normal human being was set for themselves. So you got to give him credit for that and for being a self-educated engineer. I mean I can't understand that stuff. And he just sat down and got it from books. It's a mishmash of both. But I mean they made it work and they did what big bad Boeing couldn't do. I think partly maybe also it's Boeing's publicly owned and it's got shareholders maybe.
(01:08:28):
Anyway, it's just so frustrating to watch this if we had been doing the Apollo program just through Boeing. Yeah, I'm just going to say it. We would've landed the first people on the moon like 1984. So it's really good that we spent more money back then. But anyway, so hopefully this year SpaceX will have a competitor. We'll have two aids to get the Space station and Boeing will fly out their contract or something. Yeah, I saw a great old documentary the other day and I thought of you, I know you worked at JPL L for a little bit in publicity. Voyager to the Final Frontier came out in 2012. I know this documentary and I just really enjoyed it because Voyager, which was launched in 77 is now close to, what is it, 50 years and they hope to get it running, keeping it going for that long until 2027 has been this most amazing success.
(01:09:27):
And they show the team dwindling down to just a handful of people who've been with it. They're now old, they're now in their seventies and eighties and they're still kind of running the project until Voyager one and two finally shut down. And it reminded me of the story that we just heard a couple of months ago about losing the signal to Voyager and then getting it back. And it's just really cool that these people are so dedicated to spent their entire life supporting Voyager To just give us some context in terms of the technology, Voyager was launched in the late seventies using technology from the late sixties and early seventies. So when it's running data that it receives from earth, the command strings and all that, when it's recording those uploads, it's doing so on real to reel tape. Yeah, it's amazing. It's running it back and forth, but it's still there.
(01:10:20):
It's been working for almost 50 years. Although they talk in this documentary, and this is a 10 year old documentary about how they have to selectively shut down systems so they don't run out of juice. They're slowly running out of juice, but not just the fuel to reposition it, but even the battery capacity slowly depleting. Well a nuclear, it's a plutonium plug. Oh it is. Oh, that's explain. It wasn't solar, huh? Oh, that's interesting. No, no, no. Way too far out. And we had extra plutonium then. There's a lot less of it now. So it's a chunk of plutonium surrounded by thermocouples and the plutonium is still well within its half life. So that's not the problem as much as the thermocouples degrade over time. And so they're down to just a few watts and it's amazing that we can pick it up. And then when they lost the signal, I thought, oh, that's the end at the power levels.
(01:11:17):
That was it. And it wasn't supposed to do another sweep to try. It's got a fail safe protocol that may or may not work. It wasn't supposed to do that until mid-October like now. But they managed to ping it and get the signal back, which I thought was brilliant. And like you say, the staff is like, I don't know, 12 people or something. Their yearly budget's a couple million dollars. And as I think I've mentioned here before, mission control for Voyager is a couple of banquet tables and a couple of old sun workstations. I mean using ancient language. I don't even know which one they're using, but it's just incredible. And they have the same principal investigator Ed Stone that started with the mission. So cool. He just never left. It's so cool. Yeah, I think he's in his eighties now and easily it's their goal, of course these people to see it to the end and they would be extremely happy if they were able to get it to 50 years, which would be 2027.
(01:12:11):
So we all were watching like say they're shutting off bits of it to try and keep other parts working well now beyond the solar system, it is the farthest human object ever from our planet and still learning things. It's really incredible and commands are over 10 hours out and back, so it's way out there. But most of the instrumentation they shut off was stuff they really wouldn't be using out there anyway is my understanding. So it is still doing its job and New Horizons, which is well behind Voyager, but is also left the solar system, which the N s Ss who, by the way, the group I work for actually commissioned that documentary you're talking about. We ran a campaign, I think I mentioned to you before, to try and save new horizons and I don't know how much of it was us, but they did good decide to extend the mission.
(01:13:04):
So Alex Stern, fantastic, wonderful, stay on. Fantastic. And they're going to look for another KY Belt object to rendezvous with. So yeah, we get to go look at another creepy rock out beyond the edge of the solar system. It's pretty darn exciting. Cool. This is one of the reasons we realized we need a show about space this week in space with this man here, rod Pyle and his partner Terrick malick from space.com. It is a wonderful show. If you're not yet subscribed, twit tv slash TWIs. Subscribe to it because not only bad jokes but great information about something that is still very still back frankly and very exciting. Really, really exciting. And join Club Twit. That's where we started. Yeah, it really is. Thanks to the club, we were able to get that launched. So thank you Club Twit members and thank you Rod Pyle.
(01:13:52):
Thank you so much. Rod, if you want to get, you're still doing the ad ASRA magazine, if you want to subscribe, join the national space society nss.org and Ron is the editor of this among other things. Are you working on a book? I'm working on trying to get a book contract, which is a different conversation. You'd think after putting out four books, two of which did very well in 2019 that it would be a slam dunk. But we're visiting lots of publishers who are hemming and hawing because do you have a proposal, a pitch? Oh yeah. Can you tell us or is it secret? It's kind of off the books until I get a yes, but I could tell you that it's part of the original Apollo team and one of the only people that's never had a biography written, I love it, hanging on my wall in my office at home is the original Apollo 11 computer, which is the most primitive thing you've ever seen.
(01:14:50):
The guidance computer to get the lamb on ground and it's really, to me, it's one of the most important objects in our history. It's kind of a holy relic, huh? It is a Holy Relic. Yeah. Hey, thank you Rod Pyle. Thank you. Thank you. Have a wonderful day and we will see you in a month. Okay, take care guys. Don't forget Chris Marwar coming up, our photo guy. Our photo assignment will be reviewed momentarily, but before we go on now, I think it'd be a good time to talk about our wonderful sponsor as the tech guys is brought to you by a C I Learning, a C I learning. You may say, well who are they when they're at home? Well, you remember it Pro tv. They've been with us since the very beginning. A C I learning is it Pro TV and a lot more and that's cool about it.
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It's like, come on, I know this guys. So this insights tool is so useful because they're going to learn something they don't know yet. That's great. By the way, a C I learning has I S O certification. You know you're getting the world-class training your team deserves. Keep your IT team up with the speed of technology visit Go dot ACI learning.com/twit. You'll get a free trial as a TWIT listener and up to 65% off an IT Pro enterprise solution plan. So there's discounts for individuals, big discounts for teams. It really depends on the size of your team. Fill out the form, they'll tell you exactly what the discount is going to be. Up to 65% go dot aci learning.com/twit. We love these guys. We've been with them since they started as it pro way back in the day, I think 2013. We're so proud of what they've done and how much they've accomplished and I tell you what, every time we do a meetup when we did one in Green Bay, I meet people who say thank you for it pro thank you for a c I learning because I have a great job now or I've got a new job, I've got great skills.
(01:19:53):
That really gives me a nice warm feeling. Thank you. Well done. Go dot aci learning.com/twit. Awesome call time. Do you have an
Mikah Sargent (01:20:04):
Email? Oh, you do have three calls too. I want to pick up one of the actual phone caller.
Leo Laporte (01:20:09):
Well please, John Ashley, should we talk to Cameron?
Mikah Sargent (01:20:12):
Oh, we've got some phone calls.
Leo Laporte (01:20:13):
Phone callers. How about Brian? Hey, on the phone
Mikah Sargent (01:20:21):
That's (888) 724-2884. Is
Caller (01:20:24):
That me?
Leo Laporte (01:20:25):
That's you my friend. Where are you calling from?
Caller (01:20:28):
I am calling from Sisters Oregon.
Leo Laporte (01:20:31):
Oh, sisters Oregon. You know where that is? John
Caller (01:20:35):
Outside of Ben.
Leo Laporte (01:20:36):
It's just near his sister actually, which is weird, but that's how that is. Okay, outside of Ben. So what can we do for you Brian?
Caller (01:20:46):
So we are going on a trip around Asia and I want to know phone wise, safety wise, so I have a G Power 22 with a Google five plan and so we're going to be Japan and Thailand and Singapore.
Leo Laporte (01:21:11):
Are you going to China is a question. No,
Caller (01:21:14):
No, I'm not getting off the boat. I'm not, no,
Leo Laporte (01:21:17):
Not getting off the boat. So that would be the only place where security might really be a concern. I think you can even the Singapore government, which is not exactly a Democratic government, but is still a friend and I think you'd be okay in all of those places if you're worried about, are you worried getting hacked?
Caller (01:21:39):
Well yeah, just so a Motorola phone versus I'm a Android.
Leo Laporte (01:21:46):
Here's the only relevant question, are you getting security updates?
Caller (01:21:52):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
Okay, so that's the thing to do. Lemme find my phone, I'll just show you, is to go into the settings and see how recent your security updates are because that's really what's going to tell you if that phone is secure. Lemme go to
Caller (01:22:10):
That
Leo Laporte (01:22:11):
As long as you have the latest security updates. Let's see here it is. System update. It'll tell you here it is, this is a pixel, but it'll be similar on the Motorola. What version of Android is not the key. You're probably still on 1314 is the latest, but that's not the issue. It's the Android security update. Now because this is a brand new pixel, it's up to date through October 5th, which is they do the security updates usually the first week of the month. If you are August or thereabouts July or August, you're fine. Very few phones actually are as up to date as the Pixel. Obviously Google pushes the pixel first. The way it has to work with a third party manufacturer like Samsung or Motorola is Google does its updates, sends them to the manufacturer, the manufacturer has to then vet it with their hardware and all of them have unique software as well. Motorola is pretty pure. So do you know what your most recent security update is?
Caller (01:23:15):
Well it says Android version 12. I don't know what, that's
Leo Laporte (01:23:19):
Not an issue. Again, that's just for features. So it is a little behind on Android, but that's not the end of the world at all. By the way, lately these updates haven't changed a whole lot. It's right below that. It's the security update. Those are the patches that make sure that your Android is secure.
Caller (01:23:37):
Okay,
Leo Laporte (01:23:38):
And do you see a date on this security update?
Mikah Sargent (01:23:42):
Scoot Rec's a suggesting you might be able to find it in security and privacy if it's not showing up there.
Leo Laporte (01:23:47):
Yeah, I was looking in the settings.
Mikah Sargent (01:23:50):
That's where I would go too.
Leo Laporte (01:23:52):
Where it says system, lemme see if it's security and privacy.
Caller (01:23:58):
That security, that's pretty locking.
Leo Laporte (01:24:02):
Yeah, it has a system and updates there as well. And it will also there say in this case security update from October 5th. You also actually this is a good one. Google Play System update August 1st. That's also important because the play store is where you download apps. You want to make sure it does the scanning to make sure those apps are secure. You want to make sure it's up to date as well. It's the same with Windows, it's the same with Mac, it's the same with Linux. The version of the operating system is about features. The security updates are what you really care about. And in the case for instance of a Mac or an iPhone, you might not have the latest operating system, but if you have the latest security updates, you know that you're running fairly secure.
Mikah Sargent (01:24:47):
Someone in the chat says that their Moto G Power's last update was March 14th.
Leo Laporte (01:24:52):
It's not ideal but it's not awful. It's in this year and that's pretty typical. March is a little, I would much prefer to see it a few months old. That's six months old. That's actually almost seven. That's kind of a little bit.
Mikah Sargent (01:25:07):
And Leo, how important do you feel pairing the security update is with using A V P N while traveling overseas?
Leo Laporte (01:25:15):
I don't think you need A V P N while you're traveling. V P N isn't going to make you more secure particularly. Is that what you're worried about, Brian?
Caller (01:25:26):
No, not necessarily. Just knowing that carrying this phone around, you're
Leo Laporte (01:25:31):
Not hackable
Caller (01:25:32):
Different places and
Leo Laporte (01:25:33):
Stuff. Here are a couple things I would do if you're not using,
Caller (01:25:37):
I don't put a lot of stuff on my phone.
Leo Laporte (01:25:39):
Yeah, it's fine. Here's a couple of things I would do. If you're not using Bluetooth, turn it off. It is a vector for attacks. Bluetooth is actually fairly risky, so turn it off if you're not using it. If you do use wifi out and about your hotel's probably okay, but if you use it out and about, I would probably use A V P N in that case. You are out and about and I don't know about the G Power, but most Android phones have built in VPNs from Google and that's
Caller (01:26:11):
Sufficient. Yeah, Google FI gives you that.
Leo Laporte (01:26:12):
Yeah, FI gives you that. So that's sufficient FI I think is very secure. As much as we sometimes knock Google because they're ad supported and they don't really, they seem to really want to know information about you so they can sell ads. They are probably the smartest security people out there. So in terms of pure security, I think you could trust Google Privacy, maybe not so much, but security for sure. So make sure you have two-factor on all your accounts that allow two-factor, especially banking and credit card accounts so that people can't get to your money. Turn off Bluetooth, make sure you have the latest updates, not just on your operating system, but all your apps go to your play store. Sometimes a play store gets stuck and refresh it and get all those updates. I think it's fine. I travel with my Google five phone all the time and I don't even think about any of this.
(01:27:07):
Maybe the one real risk is crossing the border back into the US because we know that Customs and Border Patrol has the right to take your phone without probable cause and look at it, download it, search for stuff. They recently lost a case. We recently, the good guys recently lost a case where an attorney whose phone was confiscated, even though he had global entry, the highest security level for a US citizen reentering the United States. They still took his phone and they took everything off of it and he appealed, went to the Supreme Court and lost. So we know that customs has that, not the Supreme Court Federal court. The customs has that, right, so that doesn't bother me either. I don't know what he did to trigger that, but I wouldn't even worry about that. I think you're pretty secure. How about your laptops or your tablets? Are you going to bring extra stuff?
Caller (01:28:09):
Yeah, my wife has to bring her Chromebook with her, so to do work and so she's on a
Leo Laporte (01:28:13):
Chromebook. That's good. You be good there. Good choice. Yeah, somebody's saying and this is good. Thank you. Santa Barbarian, turn on the sim card pin. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. Just don't forget it. Yeah, don't forget your pin. But that keeps people from extracting information from the SIM card and you might call your carrier as well and make sure you have a pin set up with carrier fi I think is really secure. I have never heard of a case of sim swapping with Google Fi, so I trust them a lot. Now somebody else has a Modo G Pure, not the Cheap Power. That's more recent. August 31st update. That's fair. That's much better's sufficient March makes me a little bit nervous, so check and see. I think you're probably all right. Here's another one. Android 12 with Security patch from August. The security patch is what you worry about, not the Android version.
Caller (01:29:10):
So switching to a Pixel phone or anything wouldn't necessarily be Well,
Leo Laporte (01:29:15):
If you want an excuse to do it, go ahead.
Mikah Sargent (01:29:18):
You would get the most recent security updates.
Leo Laporte (01:29:20):
You know what you really do it for because you want to have great pictures
Mikah Sargent (01:29:23):
When you're in
Leo Laporte (01:29:23):
Singapore and Taiwan and get all those really great pictures you don't even really need with a good phone, whether it's an iPhone Pro or 14 Pro or the
Mikah Sargent (01:29:32):
New Pixel
Leo Laporte (01:29:33):
Eight, you don't need to bring cameras.
Mikah Sargent (01:29:35):
Honestly, these things are so good.
Leo Laporte (01:29:36):
Now,
Mikah Sargent (01:29:39):
Our
Leo Laporte (01:29:40):
Most recent trip to Europe, I
Mikah Sargent (01:29:42):
Tested this thesis
Leo Laporte (01:29:43):
With the iPhone 13 and I was
Mikah Sargent (01:29:46):
Very happy with the
Leo Laporte (01:29:46):
Pictures I got.
Mikah Sargent (01:29:48):
Yeah, I mean when it boils down to it, if the question is would a newer phone be more secure? I will say a newer phone will have more recent security updates and in that way, yes, it would be more secure.
Leo Laporte (01:30:02):
For instance, I think the Pixel eight has a secure hardware enclave. I don't believe that Jeep Power does
Mikah Sargent (01:30:08):
It's little things like that.
Leo Laporte (01:30:11):
So their secrets are stored in a
Caller (01:30:12):
Seven
Leo Laporte (01:30:14):
Seven's very good too. Yeah, look at the seven A. That's very affordable and a great phone. It will be better than the G Power for sure.
Caller (01:30:25):
Okay,
Leo Laporte (01:30:26):
And a couple hundred bucks. 300 bucks. Yeah. Hey, have a great trip. Are you on a boat?
Caller (01:30:33):
We're going to be on a boat for 14 days and then to Thailand
Leo Laporte (01:30:38):
For
Caller (01:30:39):
Two and a half weeks.
Leo Laporte (01:30:40):
So jealous. Oh, so jealous. That is going to be a wonderful trip. You're going to have a great time.
Caller (01:30:48):
Well yeah, we're looking forward to it.
Leo Laporte (01:30:50):
I bet you are. Enjoy. Yeah, don't let anxiety about security bother you. You're fine.
Caller (01:30:55):
Nope, just checking some boxes.
Leo Laporte (01:30:59):
It's a good thing you're smart to pay attention. Bring a good V P N. That's not a bad idea. What you do on open wifis, including the hotel and the boat's wifi can be risky. Also, if you are on a boat, make sure you turn off data roaming when you're at sea because you don't want to use battery. The cellular at sea on a boat is very, very expensive.
Caller (01:31:20):
Okay,
Leo Laporte (01:31:21):
Yeah. Nowadays it doesn't join that automatically was my experience, but if it does, you're really going to be
Mikah Sargent (01:31:29):
Sorry and if it doesn't join it automatically, then it's probably spending a long time looking for something to join
Leo Laporte (01:31:34):
That's going to kill your,
Mikah Sargent (01:31:35):
It's a battery and if it does join it automatically, then it kills your bank. So really
Leo Laporte (01:31:39):
I always turn off data roaming. Now the nice thing about Google Fi is you get free international
Mikah Sargent (01:31:44):
Data,
Leo Laporte (01:31:45):
So not free, but it's the same cost as
Mikah Sargent (01:31:47):
It is in the US
Leo Laporte (01:31:48):
So when you get ashore you can turn data roaming off. But yeah, I think most of the time you want it off. Hey, have a great trip when you leave. Yes,
Mikah Sargent (01:31:57):
Safe
Leo Laporte (01:31:58):
Travels
Mikah Sargent (01:32:01):
December, beginning of December.
Leo Laporte (01:32:02):
Perfect. Oh, great. Time to travel too. Oh, I'm so jealous. Have a great time. Thanks for calling.
Mikah Sargent (01:32:10):
We will. Thank you.
Leo Laporte (01:32:11):
All right, take care Brian. Thank you. Yeah, and a Chromebook is a good choice. I think even then you're pretty safe. Plus before you go through customs and border patrol, if you really don't want anybody looking at your stuff, do a power wash. The beauty of a Chromebook is when you power wash it, it's back to its original state and then you get home, you log into your account and all your data is there. I thought
Mikah Sargent (01:32:30):
You meant power wash your
Leo Laporte (01:32:31):
Body and that. Well that's always a good idea. Yeah, no, don't power wash your body. That's a problem. Alright, what are we doing now here? Do we have a lot of voice? Oh, actually it's up to you.
Mikah Sargent (01:32:45):
Let's go through a couple. There's a couple of people that are hanging out on the line.
Leo Laporte (01:32:48):
Well, if they care enough to join us live then we should talk to. I agree. I agree.
Mikah Sargent (01:32:55):
All right, let's try. I won't say
Leo Laporte (01:32:57):
Scott or Jesse one,
Mikah Sargent (01:32:58):
I dunno. We'll see who it is.
Leo Laporte (01:32:59):
Push a button and I'll find out.
Mikah Sargent (01:33:01):
Star six to unmute yourself. And remember, you
Leo Laporte (01:33:04):
Can call in (888) 724-2884 to join
Mikah Sargent (01:33:09):
Us and ask your
Leo Laporte (01:33:10):
Question, your first name and where you're calling from, please. Caller.
Caller (01:33:15):
Hey, this is Jesse. I'm calling from Lexington, South Carolina.
Leo Laporte (01:33:18):
Hi Jesse. Welcome.
Caller (01:33:22):
Hey, so this month it is cybersecurity awareness month and it's the last call you just had. I was thinking I use Quad nine as my private D N Ss
Leo Laporte (01:33:34):
9.9 0.9 0.9 report.
Caller (01:33:38):
I've checked the dark web report from Google and results about you. Cover card has something called online privacy protection that removes my address and my information from the white pages.
Leo Laporte (01:33:53):
I love that.
Caller (01:33:54):
And then there's this new app from Consumer Reports that just came out called Permission for and I just tried it.
Leo Laporte (01:34:01):
Oh, I like that. It took
Caller (01:34:03):
Data from McDonald's
Leo Laporte (01:34:04):
And
Caller (01:34:04):
Burger King and all these different places. It made it easy to opt out of my data as swiping on Tinder. It used to be that I had to take this big long list of data brokers and I tried to go through each one and it used to take me an entire day and now it only takes me a few minutes, but it also got me thinking. I looked@youradchoices.com and Google my ad center. I have been trying to get rid of tmu and TikTok ads. Never clicked on them. I've never interacted with them. I have not interested with them. I've even tried clicking that little X you see on the corner to try and tell Google, no, I'm
Leo Laporte (01:34:46):
Not going to
Caller (01:34:47):
See this ad and I still keep getting stuff.
Leo Laporte (01:34:52):
So Jesse, this is really
Caller (01:34:53):
What I could try to do.
Leo Laporte (01:34:54):
Yeah, this is really important. It's Cybersecurity Awareness month. That's great. I did not know that. Let's celebrate. There is a difference between cybersecurity and privacy. They're kind of linked like that a little bit like tip tip, but they're different things and they have different goals. So cybersecurity, the goal of keeping bad actor out of your system is actually probably a little bit easier to achieve, especially for normal people. It's a little more challenging if you're the target. If you're a spy, you work for a three letter agency or if you're Scarlett Johansson, there are people trying to get your data, but you and me, no one's trying to get our data and so sometimes they call this the threat model. What is it you're worried about? What is it you're trying to protect against? For us, it's not that hard. There are lots of things you can do.
(01:35:47):
We always talk about password manager. One of the most common ways people get hacked is with password compromise and something they call credential stuffing, which is basically reusing a password on all the sites to see if they can get in. That happens. It just happened at 23 and me and a lot of information was exfiltrated, so use a password manager, generate a unique password for every account. All good password managers will tell you if the password you're using on a site is either reused from another site or has been compromised, pay attention to those warnings, fix those sites. That's step one and it will go 90% of the way, 99% of the ways if you use two factor authentication wherever you can. It doesn't have to be a fancy Yuba key or some, you don't have to use pass keys, just get an authenticator. I use two f a s.
(01:36:42):
It's free. It allows you to encrypt and then save back up your keys to Google Drive or iCloud, which is nice because then it's easy to move from phone to phone to F A Ss and generate two-factor authenticator codes everywhere you possibly can. Certainly on any banking, unfortunately, a lot of banks don't trust their users and they're afraid that if they do two factor with their users, they won't like it, so they'll authenticate via text messaging or on your phone that's not as good, but that's better than nothing. Turn it on wherever you can. Those two things alone for most people are going to protect their security, but now you're talking about a second issue, which is privacy. This is a great app by the way. Permission slip from Consumer Reports. It's iOS and Android and this is attempting to take advantage of opting out now because thank you G D P R and the California Privacy Protection Act because these laws are telling advertisers and data brokers.
(01:37:47):
In fact, governor Newsom in California just signed a bill last week that said you have the right to remove your information from data brokers and it doesn't go into effect until next year, but that's going to be very important and they have to pay attention. They have to act on it. A lot of times you try to remove it from a data broker and a week later it's back. They can't do that anymore in California and as California goes, so goes the nation. So that's what's happening here with permission slip. Consumer reports has given you a variety of things that you can say, I request to opt out. Now, companies are not great in honoring this, but you can try. There's also a setting on your browser called do not track. That literally doesn't do anything because companies have managed to lobby their way out of listening to this, but using a good browser with privacy protections will help.
(01:38:39):
I don't use Chrome or any Chrome derivative. Remember Google, 80% of its profits come out of advertising. They're not strongly incented, in my opinion, to protect your privacy use Firefox. It's a very good browser and it does much better job. There are others like Brave that will also protect your privacy. If you're using Firefox, the Firefox extension, you block origin, make sure you get the origin one. You block Origin, we'll do a lot to protect your privacy. I think you can do a lot. You're smart. Using Quad nine is a great choice. That is a Swiss company that does an alternative D N Ss and I think it's a very good choice. I use next dns.io. I pay for that. They do the similar thing. In fact, they block a lot of ads. They block a lot of ad data brokers. I see you nodding.
(01:39:32):
Yeah, I use it as well. Yeah, yeah, but Quad nine is free and it's fine. It does a good job. Actually, CloudFlare offers a similar service with Quad one. They have 1, 1 1, 1 1, and they have 1 1 1 2 and 1 1 3 giving your higher levels of protection, but I think that's a good idea. Protecting your D n S does in many cases, block ads and keep you from seeing ads, and if the ads don't show up in your system, then the advertisers aren't getting any data about you. So it really is helpful if you want to do that. We're, look, we're an ad supported network.
(01:40:06):
I'm not against ads. Some people just say, I don't want to see any ads ever. Ads are what makes a lot of what happens on the internet possible, but you also have the right to privacy and I think it's completely reasonable to say, I don't want to be tracked and Apple's a t t is a good choice. Turn off tracking on your iPhone. When a new app launches, you get a choice to say, don't track me. It's kind of similar to this. The permission slip program from Consumer Reports permission slip cr.com. The problem with this honestly, is when you check that box on Apple's a t t, you're saying, oh Apple, don't let that app know anything about me. Don't let that app look at other apps, but Apple knows everything. Your I S P knows everything. There are plenty of places that know everything regardless of what you do, and those are the ones that are selling your information well, data brokers are getting information from your I S P. Apple doesn't sell your information, nor does Facebook, nor does Google, because that's actually the crown jewels. Those guys use that information to sell ads so they know about you. It's pretty hard not to let Google, apple and Facebook meta know about
Mikah Sargent (01:41:29):
You.
Leo Laporte (01:41:30):
If you use any of their stuff, they know and you can't turn it off. You can't say, I don't want Instagram to know what I'm doing
Mikah Sargent (01:41:36):
Because you're doing it on Instagram
Leo Laporte (01:41:37):
And you're logged in, so you've given them all the information they need to track you, but you should know they're not selling that to data brokers. That's such valuable information for them.
Mikah Sargent (01:41:47):
They wouldn't want to,
Leo Laporte (01:41:48):
It's
Mikah Sargent (01:41:48):
Better for them to do that. They're
Leo Laporte (01:41:49):
Selling that to the people who are selling underwear and ed pills and believe me, I bought a lot of weird stuff on Instagram. Those people know what you bought. They know who you are, they know where you are. They know all that stuff and you can't really stop that. Even if you check the box for apple's, at and t, at t just keeps them from looking at other apps on your phone. It limits the kinds of things they know, but if you're logged in to Google or Facebook or any Facebook app, they know or Apple, they know everything you're doing. So privacy is different from security. Certainly secure yourself. You can do the best you can with privacy. I just went back to Facebook. I want to keep an eye on what's going on with this information, especially after the horrific attacks in Israel. I want to see what disinformation is being foisted on people. I don't like to go to Twitter either,
(01:42:42):
But I do because I want to see what's being put out there. That's part of my job, and so I rejoined Facebook acknowledging that by doing so, I'm giving them a ton of information. For me, it's not a big deal because everybody knows everything about me anyway. I talk about everything and I'm not trying to protect my privacy, but if you are concerned about that, there are things you can do. They're just of limited use. Easier to protect your security than your privacy these days. Anything you wanted add? I went on in a long haran. You
Mikah Sargent (01:43:12):
Covered it. You covered it. It's a lot of the stuff that I'm doing already.
Leo Laporte (01:43:15):
Yeah. I think our best, we have our own best practices based on everything we know and have learned from listening to Steve Gibson over the years and so forth, and I think we do the best we can,
Mikah Sargent (01:43:27):
And even when we do the best we can, there's still places where things slip through. I
Leo Laporte (01:43:31):
Still get a gosh darn Instagram ad for that bag that I just can't. Mine
Mikah Sargent (01:43:36):
Is always, I don't like how much Instacart is talking to other services. Instacart,
Leo Laporte (01:43:42):
They know what you buy your
Mikah Sargent (01:43:43):
Groceries store. They know the groceries I'm buying and they
Leo Laporte (01:43:45):
Tell
Mikah Sargent (01:43:46):
Others about what I'm buying.
Leo Laporte (01:43:48):
So that's what we call first party data. The problem with first data is Apple can't block it because you have to be logged in and Instacart has to know what you're buying
Mikah Sargent (01:43:56):
That whole thing. Apple can't do anything about that,
Leo Laporte (01:43:58):
Right? That's part of the deal here. I'm getting an ad on Instagram for hearing aids. Now it knows I'm an old man. It doesn't know that I already have hearing aids, but I have to say I'm very tempted. It's like, oh, these look cool. Yeah, there's my son. By the way, you should watch all of his videos because he cooks wonderful. Oh, Henry, stop it. Let's see what other ads. Yeah, they know. I like coffee.
Mikah Sargent (01:44:23):
Here's
Leo Laporte (01:44:24):
A Phillips latte. Go. Wow, it's 25%.
Mikah Sargent (01:44:26):
Stop it. Scroll, get out of there. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
Don't look at the light cashmere crew sweaters. It knows I'm a preppy, right?
Mikah Sargent (01:44:35):
Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:44:35):
So by the way, Instagram to me is the perfect example of what ad tracking can do. I have bought so much stuff I wish I hadn't bought on Instagram. It's very good, right?
Mikah Sargent (01:44:46):
Yeah, it is. It's the best. I've purchased these. It's the best. Yes, it is. It's very good at what it does.
Leo Laporte (01:44:50):
There is nobody better. In fact, I go back and look at the Christmas presents. Lisa has given me, half of them were on Instagram the other day. I'm saying, oh, Lisa, that woman has the same sneakers as you. And then I realized, oh, their Instagram. What's that? That's a sharpening device. For some reason, I guess I watch a lot of Saul, Hank.
Mikah Sargent (01:45:11):
I've got a great sharper,
Leo Laporte (01:45:12):
But
Mikah Sargent (01:45:12):
That looks pretty cool.
Leo Laporte (01:45:13):
Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (01:45:13):
See, see, look, see. No,
Leo Laporte (01:45:15):
It's got, I watch Saul Hank's cooking ads, right? It's cooking videos so they know, oh, you must be a cook. And I get this isn't the only company that advertises sharpening devices to me.
Mikah Sargent (01:45:26):
These turkeys. Those
Leo Laporte (01:45:28):
Turkeys. Oh, and here's one from Temu. We know you work hard, so you can't get away from Temu. Sorry. They know 'em on an iPhone, right? So what are they going to show me? iPhone charging stuff, right? You can't get away from them. More coffee. This one's Nespresso. Oh no, wait a minute. No, no. It's an espresso competitor. Oh. Oh,
Mikah Sargent (01:45:51):
Is it mushroom? It's probably mushroom,
Leo Laporte (01:45:53):
Yeah. No, it's compostable pods. Nespresso pods. They're cost less and they break down in 90 days. I might just shut
Mikah Sargent (01:46:00):
From those mine noses. I like green.
Leo Laporte (01:46:02):
Can you take the next call? What are you getting? Green stuff? Green. How
Mikah Sargent (01:46:06):
Does it know
Leo Laporte (01:46:06):
You? Not green?
Mikah Sargent (01:46:07):
I don't know. But then I actually have received as a gift, a hat that was an Instagram ad before, so I think it might know that too, because the person who bought it was also in the house and would've tapped on the Instagram. A Lisa
Leo Laporte (01:46:19):
Is always buying me Instagram stuff. I go back and find out, well, you don't have a green phone. I don't know how it knows you like green. It's a blue phone. Anyway, Brian, I'm sorry, Jesse. That's some of the stuff that we think about. I think you're smart to be paying attention to this, but I think you can also drive yourself crazy
Mikah Sargent (01:46:41):
Because
Leo Laporte (01:46:41):
Even though both Mike and I do all of our best practices,
Mikah Sargent (01:46:45):
We're still,
Leo Laporte (01:46:46):
Instagram still knows what we want.
Mikah Sargent (01:46:48):
Just the other, there was something that actually annoyed me for the first time. I got a notification from Instagram that said, Hey, you might want to check out this thing you interacted with before.
Leo Laporte (01:46:58):
And
Mikah Sargent (01:46:58):
It was the ad. I thought that's too much.
Leo Laporte (01:47:02):
Yeah, but there's no way to stop that. No, except not to use. Except to not use it. Those apps,
Mikah Sargent (01:47:08):
Yes, that's
Leo Laporte (01:47:09):
The agreement. How far? But that's the trade-off, right? Instagram's free. So we get this free app. YouTube is free, meta is free, Facebook is free. So we get these free things. How do you pay for free things? We're not cheap. We're using lot of B
Mikah Sargent (01:47:24):
Storage, the bandwidth, all of that.
Leo Laporte (01:47:26):
They pay for it with advertising and that's how the internet is run.
Mikah Sargent (01:47:30):
And the two support professionals, they have
Leo Laporte (01:47:33):
YouTube. We for a long time recommend you block, origin. YouTube video has a lot of ads. I pay for premium because I don't want to see the ads and I want to support YouTube because
Mikah Sargent (01:47:45):
I think it's a good
Leo Laporte (01:47:45):
Thing. A lot of people use you lock origin. YouTube has figured that out and is now blocking you Block Origin. It's
Mikah Sargent (01:47:51):
Blocking the block, blocking
Leo Laporte (01:47:52):
The blocker. So this is a little cat and mouse game that's going
Mikah Sargent (01:47:55):
To go
Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
On. I would submit pay attention to your security, understand privacy, and then really think about how far you're willing to go. If you really want to be private, stop using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, apple. I guess I would not have a smartphone, to be honest. That is a huge invasion of privacy. How far are you willing to go? And then you decide, well, it's worth it to me to use a smartphone, so I'm okay. That's all I can say. Jesse, does that all make sense?
Caller (01:48:34):
Yeah, it does make sense. Thank you for the explanation.
Leo Laporte (01:48:38):
It's a great question. Anything
Caller (01:48:39):
Else you wanted to share?
Leo Laporte (01:48:40):
Yeah,
Mikah Sargent (01:48:41):
Did I?
Caller (01:48:43):
Yeah,
Mikah Sargent (01:48:44):
No, everything that Leo said, we have a very similar threat model.
Leo Laporte (01:48:48):
I took that one over
Mikah Sargent (01:48:49):
And privacy model. It's very similar. Yeah, we
Leo Laporte (01:48:51):
Are in agreement.
Mikah Sargent (01:48:52):
The only thing that I do is that I will occasionally, and I'm getting the wrap up gesture, so I will wrap this up.
Leo Laporte (01:48:58):
We don't wrap this
Mikah Sargent (01:48:59):
Year. This
Leo Laporte (01:49:00):
Is not radio.
Mikah Sargent (01:49:01):
The only thing that I'll occasionally do is just, it's for my own personal sort of satisfaction. If there's something on Instagram or some other place that really does get me, and I do think that it's cool and I want to check it out, I will put down the device. I'll wait 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I will go onto a different device. I will turn on my V P N, I will go into private browsing mode, and then I will check it out so that it can't link me between having served me the ad in one place and me going and checking it out in the other place.
Leo Laporte (01:49:33):
You use a credit card,
Mikah Sargent (01:49:35):
Stop, Leo. I'm just saying yes. It caught me still.
Leo Laporte (01:49:38):
Lemme just tell you, the credit card companies feed that information back. The company doesn't need to. You did all those things. The company knows exactly who you are when you bought it.
Mikah Sargent (01:49:46):
And
Leo Laporte (01:49:47):
They say, oh yeah, he saw the ad. We know we saw the ad. 10 minutes later he bought it. Google actually offers a service get this, that ties your credit card purchases to the Google ads. You see? How do they do that? Well, they must have a deal with the credit card companies, right? Or the merchants. But they can, when you buy ad on Google, you can say, yeah, I'd like to see when somebody that sees the ad buys something with a credit card. It doesn't matter if you did it on the same device, right?
Chris Marquardt (01:50:15):
Because the credit card. So yeah, I guess I can stop doing that.
Leo Laporte (01:50:20):
It doesn't matter. No, it makes you feel good, do it. The real point is you can be private, but you have to go live in a cabin, pay cash, not have electricity, not have a TV set, not have a telephone. That's ultimate privacy. Anything less private, anything beyond that, you're going to give up some privacy and it's up to you to decide how much do I want to give up? And it's all a matter of convenience and living in the modern world, we're going to give up some privacy. That's the way it is. I'm not as bleak as Scott McNeely when he said, privacy is over, privacy is over. Get over it. I think you can protect some privacy. You just have to decide how much. And now we give you, this is one of the things we talk about. We give you the skills to do this, but understand there's a limit on what you can do. We're going to be back. You're watching, ask the tech guys that their Micah Sarge,
Chris Marquardt (01:51:24):
That their Leo Laport
Leo Laporte (01:51:25):
And more of your calls at 88, 87, 24, 28 84 coming up
Ad (01:51:33):
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Leo Laporte (01:52:03):
All right. You only what do for? Lemme do an email. No,
Chris Marquardt (01:52:07):
Because it's one. It's one. So we've got,
Leo Laporte (01:52:09):
Oh, Chris Marquardt in town
Chris Marquardt (01:52:12):
Here.
Leo Laporte (01:52:13):
Hey Chris, mark Watt. Now I know why you were wrapping us. Our photo guy from chris marwar.com, he leads those wonderful expeditions. The last one was driving around in a Tesla, right?
Chris Marquardt (01:52:27):
Yes, in Eastern Europe high. Good to be back.
Leo Laporte (01:52:30):
Yay. We missed you. Did you have fun?
Chris Marquardt (01:52:33):
Oh yes we did. We did. I came back from Eastern Europe, from the eastern European electric photo road trip. Had a blast. We had two amazing groups, 3000 driven electrically, 12 fast charges, eight borders crossed, lots of places photographed and explored.
Leo Laporte (01:52:54):
Wonderful.
Mikah Sargent (01:52:54):
That's so
Chris Marquardt (01:52:55):
Cool. That's cool. And
Leo Laporte (01:52:55):
Another one, another one's coming up, right?
Chris Marquardt (01:53:00):
Not this year, no. I'm planning to do more of these next year for sure.
Leo Laporte (01:53:04):
Discover the top floor.com. If you want to find out about Chris's workshops, and please put me on the list for Bhutan the next time you go to Bhutan.
Chris Marquardt (01:53:13):
We'll talk offline about that,
Leo Laporte (01:53:17):
Chris. We had a photo assignment way.
Chris Marquardt (01:53:20):
YouTube thinks I'm a young expecting mother. I get ads for baby formula.
Mikah Sargent (01:53:24):
Congratulations Chris. What I'm doing,
Chris Marquardt (01:53:26):
Whatever I'm doing, I must be doing something right. Well
Leo Laporte (01:53:29):
See, that's the problem. If you do do a good job protecting your privacy and you get ads that are completely worthless. Yeah. So I'm not sure which is
Chris Marquardt (01:53:36):
Worth that. It gives me a good feeling. They apparently don't really know who they're talking to.
Mikah Sargent (01:53:40):
My ads on Apple News are terrible. It doesn't know enough about
Chris Marquardt (01:53:44):
It. That's a good sign.
Mikah Sargent (01:53:45):
Yes,
Chris Marquardt (01:53:46):
That's a very good sign. I'm
Mikah Sargent (01:53:46):
Doing it right, but then I'm like, well, I kind of miss Instagram. It's terrible. It's bad. Anyway,
Leo Laporte (01:53:54):
What was our assignment this week?
Chris Marquardt (01:53:57):
Our assignment this week was adorable. We had, well this week, last month, a long, long assignment. We had a lot of people hand in photos. By the way, we have just crossed the tech guy group has just crossed 14,000.
Leo Laporte (01:54:12):
Wow. Some big growth over the last couple of months. That's fantastic.
Chris Marquardt (01:54:16):
Yes, absolutely. So yeah, I'm totally happy about this. So yeah, that guy group on flicker and here are a lot of the photos. And of course I have a
Leo Laporte (01:54:28):
Lot of babies. A lot of dogs I kind of
Chris Marquardt (01:54:30):
Figured. Of course, of course. So I was looking at them and they're all amazing. But of course I tried to find a theme and I went with animal photos.
Leo Laporte (01:54:44):
So here we go.
Chris Marquardt (01:54:47):
These are adorable. Tom Downing. That's the first of the three. I chose goats, goats, goats can be scary, but these are like, look at them. They're eating. They're shot from above. They're all looking up at the photographer. So I think that's pretty adorable.
Mikah Sargent (01:55:04):
If I ignore the one in the bottom left, then Yes. Incredibly adorable.
Leo Laporte (01:55:08):
It's the eyes, isn't it? I can't
Mikah Sargent (01:55:09):
Do the
Chris Marquardt (01:55:09):
Eyes. Oh, don't look at the eyes. Just don't look at the eyes. Then I'm fine.
Mikah Sargent (01:55:13):
Especially the one in the far right that's really
Chris Marquardt (01:55:15):
Small. And it's so cute.
Leo Laporte (01:55:17):
I love goats. That is cute. But the problem with goats, they're so smart. Sweet. Look at the little
Mikah Sargent (01:55:22):
Chewy. Oh my goodness. I just want to pad
Leo Laporte (01:55:24):
It Tom. Nice job with your goats. Good goats. I feel like those are Tom's goats.
Mikah Sargent (01:55:29):
Tom, you got good goats. It's
Chris Marquardt (01:55:30):
Good
Leo Laporte (01:55:31):
Ghosts buddy. Alright, next one. That is
Mikah Sargent (01:55:34):
So cute.
Chris Marquardt (01:55:36):
Squirrel. This is a photo by Ray Cardenas.
Mikah Sargent (01:55:40):
It's almost like a
Chris Marquardt (01:55:41):
Mohawk, just the look on its face. It's very, it's like a very human expression, more like taking a picture of me. It's so exciting picture
Mikah Sargent (01:55:52):
Of me. This is adorable. Adorable squirrel. I,
Chris Marquardt (01:55:58):
And then last but not least, a regular Deante photo of a cat, A black and white photo of a cat covering its eyes and we had to put a cat photo in here.
Mikah Sargent (01:56:13):
There's a softness
Chris Marquardt (01:56:14):
To this photo,
Mikah Sargent (01:56:16):
Chris, that I really like. It's almost got like a creamy quality around the edges. How's that done?
Chris Marquardt (01:56:24):
Well, if you use a smartphone, that's what portrait mode does. And a portrait mode emulates lenses with big apertures that let a lot of light in. And these also have air quotes, proper cameras. Those have that. It's called boke, and that's what this is. This is not taken with a smartphone, but you can get a similar effect by using a smartphone and by zooming in, by using a pho lens that helps you throw things in the foreground, in the background out of focus.
Mikah Sargent (01:56:59):
Okay, cool.
Chris Marquardt (01:57:00):
So there we go.
Mikah Sargent (01:57:01):
Yeah, that last one is the winner for me especially. That's such a gorgeous, gorgeous shot.
Chris Marquardt (01:57:08):
And I'm not really
Mikah Sargent (01:57:10):
The cat person, but that is very adorable. Yes. So I guess that means it's time to draw for the next assignment. Exciting.
Chris Marquardt (01:57:20):
The fishbowl is here, and of course we are going to pull another word out of the
Mikah Sargent (01:57:25):
Fishbowl
Chris Marquardt (01:57:27):
This time it is. Here we go. Shiny.
Mikah Sargent (01:57:32):
Shiny. Okay, shiny.
Chris Marquardt (01:57:37):
That's photographically interesting because yeah,
(01:57:40):
Just a couple of tips because is it too late for me? Too late? It's my adorable picture. Oh, you broke. Oh, there's an adorable, she's got shiny
Mikah Sargent (01:57:54):
Eyes. Does that count?
Chris Marquardt (01:57:56):
Very good. Yeah. Well, if we're a closeup of the eyes, that would count for shiny in general. I mean, when you ask for shiny pictures, people will, they might go to their cars or something. Keep in mind you're photographing the light
Mikah Sargent (01:58:09):
Source,
Chris Marquardt (01:58:10):
So you are photographing the reflection of a light source in something shiny. And with tinier, smaller, shiny things, bigger light sources work better. The best example is look at commercials or photos of smartphones. You know how they always have a diagonal bright light source over that they're using a big light source, a big soft box to cast that kind of a reflection there. So yeah, just a couple of things to keep in
Mikah Sargent (01:58:40):
Mind. Awesome. Shiny for the next shiny photo one months ago.
Leo Laporte (01:58:45):
I missed adorable
(01:58:46):
By that much.
Mikah Sargent (01:58:46):
By that much.
Leo Laporte (01:58:50):
Oh, Lily, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Mikah Sargent (01:58:52):
You are adorable, Lily, you
Leo Laporte (01:58:53):
Don't get to be adorable. She's pretty adorable. Chris Marwar is at discover the top floor.com. Check out all the works he does. He's got several great books, a book about film photography, a book about wide angle photography. And now with these new iPhones and pixels, I feel like we can do some pretty good wide angle photography with
Mikah Sargent (01:59:12):
Those
Leo Laporte (01:59:12):
Camera phones.
Mikah Sargent (01:59:14):
Definitely. Definitely. These are amazing. Smartphones are just amazing cameras these
Leo Laporte (01:59:18):
Days. It's kind of my favorite thing for street photography is a wide angle. Thank you, Chris, thank you so much. It's always great to see you. And remember again, shiny, shiny. If you are not yet on flicker, just there goes my adorable. I lost her. Goodbye ado. If you not on flicker, it's free to join flicker.com and then once you're on flicker.com, don't forget to join the now 14,000 strong tech guy group. You'll know you're in the right place. And thanks to Renee Silverman, our moderator, she's a great photographer in her own right, but also is the one who will accept your submissions over the next couple of weeks for
Mikah Sargent (01:59:58):
Shiny.
Leo Laporte (01:59:59):
Thank you Chris.
Mikah Sargent (02:00:01):
Thanks for having me.
Leo Laporte (02:00:02):
Appreciate it. Thanks
Mikah Sargent (02:00:02):
So much.
Leo Laporte (02:00:03):
Take care my friend. It's always great to see Chris and it always inspires me. Really the whole point of this.
Mikah Sargent (02:00:08):
I know. Same is
Leo Laporte (02:00:10):
To get out and take pictures
Mikah Sargent (02:00:11):
While you are out. The beautiful photo of a cat, just gorgeous. This black and white cat where the cat was sort of pawing over its face and it was that
Leo Laporte (02:00:24):
One.
Mikah Sargent (02:00:24):
No, it's all black and white and there was this creamy quality to it. It
Leo Laporte (02:00:29):
Was
Mikah Sargent (02:00:29):
Captured with a telephoto from a distance and zoomed in and it just was striking and that really inspires me to want to use the telephoto lens on the iPhone. Exactly. To try to capture some of that.
Leo Laporte (02:00:41):
I suspect a lot of these photos these days are coming to us from iPhones or smartphones. This one, no photos, please.
Mikah Sargent (02:00:50):
Yep, that's the one. That's
Leo Laporte (02:00:50):
The one. Lemme just check. No, that was a Canon five D Mark four. That was a very pro camera. And you're right, it was a 200 millimeter telephoto. She had to sneak up on that. Kitty cats are very, very camera aware.
Mikah Sargent (02:01:04):
One of my dogs is and the minute you've point anything at her, she immediately is doing something else.
Leo Laporte (02:01:10):
Not going to do that. Not going to do that. Let's take, what do you want?
Mikah Sargent (02:01:15):
We got to take a break.
Leo Laporte (02:01:16):
Take a break and then when we come back more of your calls. You're watching Ask the tech guys when we take breaks on the video. They're this long.
Mikah Sargent (02:01:24):
Yes,
Leo Laporte (02:01:25):
But on the audio sometimes they'll put a commercial in there. That's just so you know what we mean.
Mikah Sargent (02:01:29):
Oh yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:01:30):
If you're going, why are they
Mikah Sargent (02:01:30):
Saying
Leo Laporte (02:01:31):
This? We don't do it in the video for some reason. Should I do the email?
Speaker 11 (02:01:35):
All right, let's do
Mikah Sargent (02:01:35):
An email. He doesn't
Leo Laporte (02:01:36):
Sound too happy about that. I know it's a printer question. Oh no, it's even better.
Mikah Sargent (02:01:42):
Is it a complaint?
Leo Laporte (02:01:43):
H T T P error 4 31.
Mikah Sargent (02:01:46):
Whoa.
Leo Laporte (02:01:48):
I know. I'm not familiar with that one. On my desktop. Windows 11 and Chrome, when I go to, I don't know if I should say the site, pod bay fm, I get this page isn't working error 4 3 1. However, when I do it on edge it is working
Mikah Sargent (02:02:06):
Request header fields are too large,
Leo Laporte (02:02:10):
So that's interesting. Let me just do it here. I don't know what pod bay open. The pod bay door out.
Mikah Sargent (02:02:14):
That's exactly what I thought.
Leo Laporte (02:02:15):
I'm sorry. I'm sorry Dave. I can't load that site. So it's a podcast network and I was able to do it just fine on Firefox.
Mikah Sargent (02:02:26):
Mozilla says that there are two reasons why this may happen. One, the server will produce this error if the referer U R L is too long. So it could be a short U R L that's expanding and it's too long or if there are too many cookies sent in the request.
Leo Laporte (02:02:43):
Ah, interesting. So that would be one thing you could do is try clearing your, you don't have to clear all your cookies when you clear cookies, you can find the ones. Look at all the cookies in your browser, find the ones for pod bay. Clear those out. I would also clear your cache that you can do safely. You don't want to clear all the cookies. Some of those cookies are to save you from logging into Facebook, for instance. That's a cookie. So if you clear 'em all, it's not the end of the world. It just means that you'll kind of have to start over with some sites log in again, things like that. So I would just start by clearing the pod bay cookies and clearing the cache.
Mikah Sargent (02:03:19):
It is odd that it's working in one browser, right?
Leo Laporte (02:03:22):
My guess. Well then that's why we would think it's cookies or cache.
Mikah Sargent (02:03:25):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:03:26):
That is specific. It's not Chrome. It's itself. In fact, I wonder, do I have Chrome on here? I don't. Alas, do you have Chrome on your
Mikah Sargent (02:03:36):
Computer? I do believe so.
Leo Laporte (02:03:38):
Watch Chrome. I'm just curious if you can get there.
Mikah Sargent (02:03:40):
Okay, and what are we going to
Leo Laporte (02:03:42):
Pod bay fm. Pod
Mikah Sargent (02:03:44):
Bay f fa.
Leo Laporte (02:03:45):
Close the pod bay door. Hal open the pod bay door.
Mikah Sargent (02:03:49):
It loaded for me.
Leo Laporte (02:03:50):
Okay, so it's not Chrome we figured out it's not browser specific. It is specific to your environment and almost certainly clearing the pod bay cookies and clearing the cache. We'll fix that. I think that's all you need to know. There we go. I think that's the answer.
Mikah Sargent (02:04:05):
Yeah, we
Leo Laporte (02:04:05):
Got one and thank you Thomas. It's a good question actually. And that's an interesting error. You never see that
Mikah Sargent (02:04:11):
Error. That's nice to learn about new errors.
Leo Laporte (02:04:13):
4 31. Yeah. Now let's do something John Ashley,
Mikah Sargent (02:04:18):
I guess we'll go to another phone. Caller. Wow,
Leo Laporte (02:04:21):
John Ashley
Mikah Sargent (02:04:22):
Loves the phone
Leo Laporte (02:04:22):
Callers. Do
Mikah Sargent (02:04:26):
I want error 4 51 unavailable for legal reasons.
Leo Laporte (02:04:32):
Wow, that's Fahrenheit 4 51 too.
Mikah Sargent (02:04:35):
For those of you at Home Star six on mute,
Leo Laporte (02:04:43):
We have picked you up and I don't want to say the name, we don't know if it's your first name or last name, but you should be on the Air Star six and if you tell us your first name and city, we will believe it.
Caller (02:04:55):
My name is Norm and I'm calling from San Diego, California.
Leo Laporte (02:04:59):
That checks out. Hi
Mikah Sargent (02:05:00):
Norm.
Caller (02:05:03):
How's everything today?
Leo Laporte (02:05:04):
Hey, it is great. We're having a wonderful day. How is it in San Diego? I bet the sun is shining.
Caller (02:05:09):
It's sunny and bright and warm.
Leo Laporte (02:05:11):
One of my favorite places in the world. San Diego. What can we do for you?
Caller (02:05:17):
Well, I have been listening or watching your show for quite a few years.
Leo Laporte (02:05:23):
Thank you, norm.
Caller (02:05:24):
And I've been streaming it to my Samsung Smart tv. Good. Up until about four weeks ago when the live stream will no longer work.
Leo Laporte (02:05:37):
Almost certainly you're using an old obsolete app. We never made any apps and many third parties, very kind fans and friends made them for a variety of devices, but almost all of them have now gone
Mikah Sargent (02:05:53):
Deprecated,
Leo Laporte (02:05:54):
Gone out of service.
Caller (02:05:57):
Well, I'm going through the browser that's built in.
Leo Laporte (02:06:01):
Oh, but it's a Samsung browser built into your TV set. That's interesting.
Mikah Sargent (02:06:06):
And you go to what tv?
Caller (02:06:09):
I get to twit tv, but I can't get the live.
Mikah Sargent (02:06:14):
Interesting.
Leo Laporte (02:06:15):
Can you watch podcasts, like non-live shows? If you go to a show and click the play button, will that play?
Caller (02:06:24):
I wasn't able to get, I get a list of podcasts, but I never get anything that streams live. I checked the certificate says it's from GoDaddy and it's good until 2024. April.
Leo Laporte (02:06:38):
April
Caller (02:06:38):
Of 2024. Correct.
Leo Laporte (02:06:39):
Yeah, that's our
Caller (02:06:40):
Certificate. I guess that's not the problem, but I get the TWIT logo and the schedule that doesn't show me a schedule. And then three little,
Mikah Sargent (02:06:53):
This sounds like
Caller (02:06:53):
Squares it bounce.
Mikah Sargent (02:06:55):
Yeah. So what this sounds like
Leo Laporte (02:06:56):
To me
Mikah Sargent (02:06:57):
Is that your, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a firmware update to your television. This is
Leo Laporte (02:07:03):
One of the reasons we don't really like smart tv
Mikah Sargent (02:07:06):
And it sounds like it's toggled off scripts on websites. It sounds like you aren't now gaining access to things that are embedded in a webpage, which is why that schedule wouldn't be showing as it should. Lemme
Leo Laporte (02:07:19):
Page, lemme give me small alternative instead of the browser that you'll prefer to the browser. There probably is a YouTube app on that Samsung tv. You could use that and go to the twit channel. The live feed is there as are all the shows. So youtube.com/twit, you could do that in the YouTube app instead of the browser. Okay. Yeah, that would probably be better. Let's see. What other ways could you Well, I would say that'd be the
Mikah Sargent (02:07:45):
Best. That's
Leo Laporte (02:07:46):
Probably the best. When people say, Hey, your app stopped working. First of all, we say, well, it's not our app. Somebody made it and he's gone on to better things and use YouTube because almost everybody has a YouTube app and we are on YouTube.
Caller (02:08:00):
The
Leo Laporte (02:08:00):
Live is on YouTube. All the shows have their own YouTube channel. It's one of the things we benefit from YouTube. It's one of the reasons I pay them a premium. I really think YouTube is a great service to mankind. So that's one way you could do it. Twitch. We're on Twitch. We're on kick. K i k. There are a variety of other streaming services you could use. What else? What else could
Caller (02:08:23):
They, yeah, I think I tried Twitch and I wasn't well, but directly from the twit U R L where I tried to stream
Leo Laporte (02:08:32):
It. So you're on TWI tv.
Caller (02:08:34):
I've always used YouTube.
Leo Laporte (02:08:36):
You're clicking the live button on. So I went to TWI tv and up at the top there kind of circled in blue so you won't miss it. The live button. And that actually is YouTube live and you've tried the, you're saying I've tried the other one's Kick and Twitch and they don't work for you either. I
Caller (02:08:54):
Tried Twitch.
Leo Laporte (02:08:55):
Yeah, so I'm wondering if it's maybe also this player that we're using.
Mikah Sargent (02:08:59):
I really that's
Leo Laporte (02:09:00):
Embedded on our site.
Mikah Sargent (02:09:00):
I don't know because when he went to the schedule page, he also wasn't able to see the schedule,
Leo Laporte (02:09:07):
Which is embed calendar
Mikah Sargent (02:09:08):
On Google Calendar. I think that the browser has for some reason stopped showing embeds and I think that it's probably a security feature. We've seen in the past how embeds and websites can take over things on smart TVs. So I think that the smart TV did a far more update to try and keep you protected and in doing so, it has disabled what you were able to do in the past, which was view embedded contents on a webpage.
Caller (02:09:33):
Okay. It makes sense to me. Yeah. I checked for updates and it said everything was up to date. There were no current
Leo Laporte (02:09:40):
One. Yeah, this is a problem. Samsung made a refrigerator with a browser embedded that no longer works. Your refrigerator works fine, just not the browser your refrigerator
Mikah Sargent (02:09:51):
Is running.
Leo Laporte (02:09:52):
Yeah, so I'm sure that that Samsung has a YouTube app right now. I'm not saying use the browser. I'm saying use the YouTube app.
Caller (02:10:00):
The YouTube app. Okay. I will give that a try. I
Leo Laporte (02:10:02):
Think that'll work better. You're going to get a better picture. It'll just work better in general. This is YouTube, but it's a YouTube embed and the reason that's a security flaw is because you're embedding the contents of a webpage on another one. And there are all sorts of potential problems with that. It's called an iframe and it's all sorts of potential problems with that. And so it may well be that Samsung has just decided, we don't really want you to do that. We don't want you to get
Mikah Sargent (02:10:28):
Your TV hacked,
Leo Laporte (02:10:30):
But YouTube should be just fine.
Caller (02:10:33):
Okay. Well thank you for that.
Leo Laporte (02:10:36):
Yeah, thank Yeah, thank you for watching all this
Mikah Sargent (02:10:37):
Time. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:10:38):
I appreciate it. Thank you. Norm.
Caller (02:10:40):
Yeah, the first time I thought the problem was on your end, but I can get it on my computer, so I know that that wasn't the issue
Mikah Sargent (02:10:49):
Just by
Caller (02:10:50):
Tv.
Mikah Sargent (02:10:51):
Thank you for testing that. I appreciate that you looked somewhere else to see. That's what we like to teach is we don't just fish for people. We like to teach 'em how to fish. So
Leo Laporte (02:11:01):
It's funny because
Caller (02:11:03):
I've
Leo Laporte (02:11:03):
Had many Samsung TVs and I never want to use the browser.
Mikah Sargent (02:11:05):
I
Leo Laporte (02:11:06):
Always feel like
Mikah Sargent (02:11:06):
It's like, yeah, exactly. It makes me, it's excuses me out. So yeah, get in that app that, Hey
Leo Laporte (02:11:12):
Norm, thank you for watching.
Mikah Sargent (02:11:13):
Thank you so much. Okay. We really
Leo Laporte (02:11:14):
Appreciate it.
Caller (02:11:15):
Well thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Leo Laporte (02:11:17):
Take care. Burke is saying, tell 'em to join the club.
Mikah Sargent (02:11:22):
I don't think that would fix it. Yeah, I dunno if they have a Discord app for Samsung. So yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:11:27):
It's nice that you watch on tv. Honestly, I often second guess my decision to do video. It's a very expensive,
Mikah Sargent (02:11:34):
We've got a light
Leo Laporte (02:11:35):
Studio and
Mikah Sargent (02:11:36):
We have to
Leo Laporte (02:11:37):
Have a lot more team members to do it, but I think there's some immediacy that you get. You wouldn't know, for instance, that I'm wearing Steve Martin
Mikah Sargent (02:11:43):
Socks. Exactly.
Leo Laporte (02:11:45):
If you weren't watching.
Mikah Sargent (02:11:46):
Absolutely. And
Leo Laporte (02:11:47):
If you have a Samsung TV that's
Mikah Sargent (02:11:49):
In high depth,
Leo Laporte (02:11:50):
Beautiful. You
Mikah Sargent (02:11:51):
Can see pink pants, all the ribbing of the sock.
Leo Laporte (02:11:54):
I got to tell Steve, I'm wearing him on my feet. If you're not a member of Club Twit, this is one way to get rid of all the ads and the trackers. Yeah. We have also tracking technology advertisers. I wish they didn't and agencies demand it. They say we're not going to buy your ads unless we have some way of verifying they're working. Now we use a very lightweight and in my opinion, privacy focused tracking capability. I can explain it, but I won't. The good news is though, if you pay seven bucks a month, not only do you get no trackers, you get no ads. You don't even get this ad for Club twit. But that's
Mikah Sargent (02:12:30):
Not
Leo Laporte (02:12:30):
All. You get access to our wonderful Discord, which is a very nice community of club Twit members talking about all kinds of geeky things, not just the
Mikah Sargent (02:12:38):
Shows.
Leo Laporte (02:12:39):
You even get shows that we don't put out in public. These are shows, in effect, paid for by club twit memberships like Hands-on Macintosh Micah's show or Hands-On Windows with Paul Thora, the Untitled Linux show with the wonderful Jonathan Bennett. We have the GIZ Fizz with Dick d Bartolo. We have Scott Wilkinson's, home theater geeks. There's a lot of content in there plus a lot of special events just for our friends in the Discord. In fact, let me just check. We just had John Scalzi on the sci-fi author in a
Mikah Sargent (02:13:12):
Conversation with
Leo Laporte (02:13:12):
Aunt Pruitt an's our community manager. He does such a great job putting together events, home theater geeks coming up October 19th. Oh, Micah and I and a bunch of the team, Lisa will join us. We're going to do an escape room October 26th. That will be interesting.
Mikah Sargent (02:13:30):
So fun right here in the twit studio. That
Leo Laporte (02:13:32):
Will be very interesting. Stacey's book club. Stacey Higginbotham doesn't do Twig anymore. She's retired from podcasting, but she couldn't give up the book club. So she's going to do the Kaiju Preservation Society in November. A fireside chat with Renee Richie, who's now creator liaison at YouTube. Jeff Jarvis, doc s and I will do an old farts fireside chat in December, so get the fire lit for that. And early next year a fireside chat with our AI guru Anthony Nielsen. But we have more events coming. These are all available to Club Twit members. And you don't even have to be there live because there's also a TWIT plus feed that has all of these shows, so you can subscribe to that feed and get all of these shows after the fact. I think there's a lot of value in it. We wanted to give you something because seven bucks.
(02:14:21):
I know it's hard for a lot of you, a couple of lattes. You got to give up if you can afford it. If you can't, don't worry. This show's free. We'll continue to offer shows for free as we always have. We're not taking shows away, but it sure does make a difference to us. And I have to tell you, I don't know if you just saw the article about W N Y C, which was a great podcast studio. They're pulling back all their podcasts for some reason. I have my theories, but I'm not sure. People aren't buying podcast ads anymore. And as a result, frankly, we're a little underwater here. We have a fairly expensive studio and lots of very talented staff who we pay ridiculous salaries to. Right. Micah
Mikah Sargent (02:15:10):
Three story shoebox with a tandem garage. Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:15:13):
Not ridiculous, but that's a good point. I'm actually not getting paid because when there isn't extra money, I can't get paid at Lisa. I can't get paid. But that's fine. That's part of the deal. But we would like to keep doing what we're doing and we'd like to keep the lights on and keep the staff employed and keep the shows going. So if you want to help us out, now would be a good time. Buy one for your friends. $7 a month Twitter tv slash club twit. Thank you. And to all the club twit members who are forced to watch this, they're watching live. Somebody asked us the other day, can we not have ads in the live broadcasts?
Mikah Sargent (02:15:51):
Let's see. How does that work? Yes. Actually, you know what? We should do what? We should get some custom made maid twit, blue earplugs and we can give them to our club
Leo Laporte (02:16:03):
Members and you just don't listen. You just put them in during and then blinders.
Mikah Sargent (02:16:06):
Yeah. Yeah. And some sunglasses that are just completely sealed. And
Leo Laporte (02:16:09):
Then we need some sort of electric shock technology to tell them when the end, when
Mikah Sargent (02:16:12):
It's time to come back in. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:16:15):
I'll work on it.
Mikah Sargent (02:16:16):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:16:20):
All right. Mr. John Ashley, we have time for one more. What else?
John (02:16:24):
Oh, you want to do one more?
Leo Laporte (02:16:25):
Okay. Why not? All
John (02:16:25):
Right, we'll take another phone. Caller
Leo Laporte (02:16:28):
Another loves his phone.
Mikah Sargent (02:16:31):
They'd be hanging out on the line. 8 8 8 7 2 4 2 8 8 4.
Caller (02:16:38):
Hello.
Leo Laporte (02:16:38):
Hey, what's your name and where are you calling from?
Caller (02:16:41):
This is Stuart from Los Angeles.
Leo Laporte (02:16:43):
Hi Stuart. Welcome.
Caller (02:16:45):
Oh, thanks. Thanks for having me on. And in light of your socks, excuse me,
Leo Laporte (02:16:53):
I was watching an old Steve Martin Saturday Night Live monologue, and he did that and I thought, oh, wow, there it is. Excuse me.
Caller (02:17:05):
Steve's listening,
Leo Laporte (02:17:06):
Rolling
Caller (02:17:06):
His eyes, I'm sure.
Leo Laporte (02:17:07):
Oh, poor guy. I mean, you can imagine walking down the street. That's all he gets. I was in a car with him once and we got out of the car and a guy goes, Hey, Steve Martin. Excuse me. Now that's 50 years ago, practically. He's still getting it. Oh man. So you got to love your success, I guess, right?
Caller (02:17:30):
Yes. Or
Leo Laporte (02:17:30):
Else you'll be safe.
Caller (02:17:32):
Yeah. I have a two-part question, and it's somewhat in line with some of your theme earlier. It has to do a bit with security. I originally was resistant to turning my home into a smart home, but slowly over time, I've been accumulating things that started off with security cameras, which I thought were necessary, but now it's turned into other things
Leo Laporte (02:17:55):
In security cameras nowadays. Yes.
Caller (02:17:57):
Yes. I have a ring system, but as I keep adding on various doodads or things, of course some of these things are logging onto my wifi network and two part problem. One is potentially interfering with bandwidth for real usage, and the other is trying to separate the security aspects of those things. So maybe, and I'm not sophisticated enough to figure out how to have two different lan.
Leo Laporte (02:18:33):
Yeah. So here's the problem with iot devices. There isn't a lot of security on a lot of them for a variety of reasons. Some are no name brands from China that they just never did security. Sometimes the firmware is insecure and they don't have a way to patch it. Sometimes they have a way to patch it, but they don't want to patch it or they don't bother to patch it. Sometimes they have hardwired in logins and passwords, and the threat is that even obviously people say, well, I don't care if somebody turns my lights on without my permission. That's not a big deal. But the problem is, if your internet connected light bulbs give somebody access to your internal network, then they can go on and do other things. In other words, it's like opening a door into your house. You lock all the doors, but you've got a window wide open that's not so secure.
(02:19:27):
So there is some real reasons to be secure concerned with iot devices. The good news is going forward, companies are paying a lot more attention. And if you buy an iot device from Matter or Home Kit, Apple's home kit, if you get these certifications that matter cert on the side or the HomeKit CT on the side, those Apple, for instance, demands a certain level of security among other things, the ability to patch over the air so that they can fix a problem. If one shows up, you're going to be much more secure. So that's the first step is to pick devices that are certified by HomeKit, I guess matter.
Mikah Sargent (02:20:09):
Yeah. I would say more HomeKit, not even really. Amazon certification is, yeah, home kit robust stick
Leo Laporte (02:20:17):
With HomeKit.
Mikah Sargent (02:20:17):
Yeah. Yeah, because oftentimes the home kit devices are also going to support a lot of the other stuff because it's the hardest to get that HomeKit certification. So if you look for that, then you are likely that you'll have the other certifications involved and the other interoperability involved. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:20:34):
Now you were mentioning this separate network for iot devices. I do this at home. Steve Gibson recommended this. There are some downsides to that. Steve's original solution, he called it the three dumb router solution, and you can actually Google Security now three dumb routers and you can hear his explanation. Actually, if you just Google three dumb routers, you'll probably find somebody's text explanation. It's kind of spread around. The idea is you can have three kind of simple routers. One connects to all the iot devices via wifi. One connects to your computers and devices you want to keep secure. And then the third router is the connection to the internet.
Mikah Sargent (02:21:11):
So
Leo Laporte (02:21:12):
Internet splits, and then there's no conversation between the branches on that tree, the IOT branch, and the regular land branch. There's a problem though. Many iot devices want to talk to the land branch.
Mikah Sargent (02:21:27):
My
Leo Laporte (02:21:27):
Sonos devices, for instance, have to be on the same network. Printers often have to be on the same network. So now your ring cameras don't, by the way, ring goes to Amazon servers and then down,
Mikah Sargent (02:21:39):
So
Leo Laporte (02:21:39):
It can bridge that gap. But a lot of devices, so I have set this, and you can do this by the way, with some more modern, more sophisticated routers with a single router creating something called a virtual land. These are separate isolated lands and a vlan, a virtual land does this kind of virtually provides kind a barrier between the two. That's nice because you can then say, well, if it's a printer and let it talk to the other guy. You can kind of use rules to control how that's going to work. But again, it has the same issue. It's complicated to set up, and honestly, I don't know how much
Mikah Sargent (02:22:20):
It
Leo Laporte (02:22:20):
Really helps. I think you'd be much better off sticking with known secure devices.
Mikah Sargent (02:22:24):
Yes, I
Leo Laporte (02:22:24):
Think ring's fine. I agree. I don't think you have to worry about Ring.
Mikah Sargent (02:22:26):
Yeah, ring. And I think they have proven in the past how important that and encryption is and how they respond to issues very quickly. That's one that you can trust to do what it needs to do. But I'm with you. I've tried using my guest network in the past as the
Leo Laporte (02:22:48):
Some guest networks are isolated, some are not. Exactly,
Mikah Sargent (02:22:51):
And depending on what system you're using, you may or may not be able to do that tunneling thing or be able to phone home thing that you talk about. So it just ends up being kind of messy and complicated, which is the
Leo Laporte (02:23:02):
Main benefit I get from the VLANs on my ubiquity system is, and this is a capability that ubiquity has. Not all routers will have. The iot lane is 2.4 gigahertz.
Mikah Sargent (02:23:13):
That is nice.
Leo Laporte (02:23:13):
And the other lane is both is not. 2.4 is five only. And so that's helpful with some iot devices. I would say just really going forward, get IOT devices with security built in the ability to update. It's really important from a manufacturer, well-known manufacturer. What do you like for the, you used to do a show on this. I
Mikah Sargent (02:23:39):
Did, yes. For security cameras, as much as Amazon's sharing with,
Leo Laporte (02:23:48):
That's a separate issue with the police departments. The police
Mikah Sargent (02:23:50):
Departments. As much as that part is troublesome, I do trust rings. The fact that it pays attention to it
Leo Laporte (02:23:59):
Encrypts the video. See, here's one example we recommended for a long time, those inexpensive cameras from
Mikah Sargent (02:24:07):
Wise
Leo Laporte (02:24:07):
Wise,
Mikah Sargent (02:24:08):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:24:09):
But their first edition was insecure and they couldn't patch it. So it's always going to be insecure. You actually have to get rid of it if you want to be secure. There are cameras, a lot of baby cameras, baby monitors do that. Send unencrypted video or they have poor security for logins that bad guys, and this has happened again and again with a lot of brands can look at your video. You know what? Somebody watching you in the house, my wife will not let me put a camera in the house for that reason.
Mikah Sargent (02:24:33):
Yeah, same.
Leo Laporte (02:24:34):
Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (02:24:34):
Not my wife, but yeah, same.
Leo Laporte (02:24:35):
I can't the house, well, we like to walk around naked and no, we don't. But if we did, if ever did, that would be
Mikah Sargent (02:24:42):
My dogs like to walk around naked.
Leo Laporte (02:24:43):
Your dogs are always, yeah, so that's not just like they could hack into my stuff. They could watch me.
Mikah Sargent (02:24:50):
I don't Creepy. So
Leo Laporte (02:24:51):
If you're using cameras, rings fine, but get a camera that has encrypted video and strong security around it, things like that.
Mikah Sargent (02:25:00):
Even better if you just have it on the local network. But I know people do like to be able to check on things while they're gone. Right.
Leo Laporte (02:25:07):
Quippy in our club says, and I think he's right. And most cameras let you do this. Only turn on the cameras when you're not in the house, that's when you care anyway.
Mikah Sargent (02:25:17):
Yeah. I tried to argue that as the way to do it in my home. And that was not allowed still. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
Still.
Mikah Sargent (02:25:24):
Which it's fair.
Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
No, Lisa is the same way. She does
Mikah Sargent (02:25:26):
Not want, don't even see that There's a camera there. Cameras in the house and I don't blame her's.
Caller (02:25:30):
Yeah. Well, I wasn't so as concerned with the ring system as much as there were some lights outside for the holidays that I wanted to get and they were tied to the wifi network so you could turn on colored lights or change the
Mikah Sargent (02:25:46):
Them and connect. Then I
Caller (02:25:48):
Like, now this is like, yeah, no, it was like, well,
Leo Laporte (02:25:51):
I'll give you an example. Hugh was from
Caller (02:25:53):
China.
Leo Laporte (02:25:54):
Yeah. See, don't. Hugh, which was from Phillips. It was a well-known brand was the number one colored lights. There was an exploit and people could get into your network through your Hue lights. They fixed it. But that's the problem. And definitely don't want to use a no name. Now Hue fixed it with a push firmware push. So you want get something that can be updated. You want to keep an eye on it,
Caller (02:26:15):
But would setting up one of these VLAN
Leo Laporte (02:26:18):
Systems
Caller (02:26:18):
And putting those lights on that system
Mikah Sargent (02:26:21):
For that? Yeah.
Caller (02:26:24):
Well, I mean all of these, but you're suggesting don't ever buy a product that isn't a big brand name or moving through these companies
Leo Laporte (02:26:33):
Would give
Caller (02:26:33):
Certificates. Steve,
Leo Laporte (02:26:34):
Who is the most security focused guy in the world, intentionally bought cheap, no-name Chinese wifi plugs
Mikah Sargent (02:26:43):
Intentionally.
Leo Laporte (02:26:45):
And he was very confident that he could land them out and stuff.
Mikah Sargent (02:26:48):
I'm not so confident. I just don't feel good about it.
Leo Laporte (02:26:51):
I'm not so confident. And Steve probably is a target. I'm going to say
Mikah Sargent (02:26:55):
That's the thing is he's
Leo Laporte (02:26:56):
Threat model
Mikah Sargent (02:26:56):
You. You're not, you're probably
Leo Laporte (02:26:59):
Okay. So I would worry about cameras. I wouldn't worry so much about people hacking with lights, but if you could keep 'em on a separate net, put 'em on the guest network, that's better than nothing.
Mikah Sargent (02:27:10):
Especially if they're all on that separate guest network, then it's not as much of an issue whenever it comes to needing to talk to the main network or anything like that. And especially if you're having it as kind a holiday thing. It's a trouble during the holidays, but then afterwards you don't have to worry about it.
Leo Laporte (02:27:24):
Yeah. TP link is fine. There are known brand names that are
Mikah Sargent (02:27:27):
Fine.
Leo Laporte (02:27:30):
I suspect more. Yeah.
Caller (02:27:32):
I was using the have at t fiber line and I called at t no service, no customer service. But they recommended yes, turning on the guest network, which I had had. But the guest network is just two point for, well,
Leo Laporte (02:27:51):
That's what you want.
Caller (02:27:51):
The main one is both.
Leo Laporte (02:27:53):
No, that's what you want. 2.4 for IOT devices, it travels farther. It's more than fast enough. And many iot devices only have 2.4 gigahertz radios built in.
Caller (02:28:04):
Right.
Leo Laporte (02:28:05):
So you always want two. I think
Caller (02:28:08):
Some reason some of them wouldn't reach for some reason. I don't know why, but
Leo Laporte (02:28:12):
Only talk to
Caller (02:28:13):
My main one.
Leo Laporte (02:28:13):
Five does not,
Mikah Sargent (02:28:15):
Five wouldn't reach as far. Yeah. So that's odd. I
Caller (02:28:17):
Know, but I don't know. I guess these
Leo Laporte (02:28:19):
Things have crappy antennas or crappy radios. They're cheap. And so everything is kind of as cheap as it can be.
Mikah Sargent (02:28:26):
And if they all individually wifi radios, that's in
Leo Laporte (02:28:29):
Trouble too,
Mikah Sargent (02:28:31):
Because they all kind of end up talking over one another. That's why that's another recommendation for Philips Hue, because it has them all talking to one device separate from your network. That device handles all of the
Leo Laporte (02:28:43):
Communication and then that device can be land out. I think more and more routers are going to be smart about this. Mean could, he does all sorts of nice security things. For instance, I can block all traffic from China, Russia, Ukraine. I don't let traffic in from anywhere but the us. Right. Because it's got to be me. And there's all sorts of things you can do with a good router. And I think routers are going to get better and better at this. They're the front line. Yep. They're in the defense. They
Mikah Sargent (02:29:10):
Are. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:29:11):
And many routers now offer VLANs four iot devices. I think there's ASUS routers that do this.
Mikah Sargent (02:29:16):
That is also another benefit of HomeKit stuff because Apple has with certain routers, ERO is one of them, a special VLAN that is specific to HomeKit enabled devices. Oh,
Leo Laporte (02:29:28):
That's great.
Mikah Sargent (02:29:29):
And it is. They work with the manufacturers directly to learn what the actual URLs are from the firmware updates. And then you can block basically all other communication to those devices so that you still get your firmware updates, but everything else remains. You can't communicate in other ways. So yeah, that's another benefit there.
Leo Laporte (02:29:52):
If's a good question. It's a good concern. There's no really good answer for it. I guess
Caller (02:30:00):
Michael almost answered my kind of other part, which was, yeah, I have had this smart things from
Leo Laporte (02:30:07):
Samsung. Samsung.
Caller (02:30:08):
The question is switching over to Apple Home kid and how to, I guess I'm oblivious to know it's not the same as the vlan. I know, but it's on a different communication system, not the wifi. Right? It's on a different,
Leo Laporte (02:30:25):
It's wifi to the hub. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (02:30:27):
Yeah, exactly. It's wifi to the hub. Yeah. It gets very complicated. And I also, I hesitate to have someone, unless they really are trying to make the jump to suddenly throw out their whole system. You know what I mean? To completely go away with something that you've worked with forever. You've invested in, that's, that's a lot of cognitive cycles, trying to rework everything. So it's not necessarily that it's going to be worth it in the long run. I think the most important thing that you can do at the end of the day is decide what you are comfortable with doing, how much work you're comfortable with doing, and how much inconvenience you're comfortable with to determine if you want to have it on this separate VLAN or on this separate guest network that's all on its own. Because outside of that is a complicated process to take it even further. Well, if you want to come over and do it at my
Leo Laporte (02:31:30):
House, I'll turn my cameras off. I'll turn 'em off. You can even do it naked. Alright, that sounds I'm in. Oh Lord. Alright, well thank you so much. I'm glad you're asking the questions. Those are the right questions to ask. Alright, have a good one. You too. Take care. And that does it for us, the tech guys. Wow. Wow. We did. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes. We do ask the tech guys live Sundays from two to 5:00 PM Eastern. That's 11 to two Pacific time, 1800 utc. You can watch us do it live at live twit tv. And if you're watching Live on anything, but at Samsung tv, you can also call in and join us live via the Zoom call twit TV or the phone number. Now when we're not on the air, you can always email ATG at twit tv or call 8 8 8 7 2 4 2 8 8 4 and leave a voicemail. You can also email us with a video question. We'd love those too. But we do love hearing from you and we're so glad you watched the show this week.
Mikah Sargent (02:32:39):
Yes, thank you so much for tuning in and
Leo Laporte (02:32:41):
Catch Micah on Tech News Weekly on Thursdays. On Tuesdays. iOS today with the wonderful Rosemary Orchard and of course his hands-on Macintosh Show, which is club members only. Although you've put some stuff on the
Mikah Sargent (02:32:54):
Yeah, every once in a while one will
Leo Laporte (02:32:56):
Trickle out. Yeah, that's good. Can see what you're missing. Let's see what else. You joined the club, right? Okay, that's good. I don't have to mention that. Got that. That's about it. Yeah, I think that takes care of it. I think we're done. All I can say is on behalf of Micah, Sergeant
Mikah Sargent (02:33:12):
And Leo LaPorte,
Leo Laporte (02:33:13):
Have a great geek week. Bye-bye. Listeners of this program, get an ad-free version if they're members of Club twit. $7 a month gives you ad-free versions of all of our shows Plus membership in the club. Twit Discord, a great clubhouse for twit listeners. And finally, the TWIT plus feed with shows like Stacey's Book Club, the Untitled Lenox show, the GIZ Fizz and more. Go to twit tv slash club twit and thanks for your support.
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